How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"You know poor little Carlo, that you gave me," added George; "the creature has been about all the comfort that I've had. He has slept with me nights, and followed me around days, and kind o' looked at me as if he understood how I felt. Well, the other day I was just feeding him with a few old scraps I picked up by the kitchen door, and Mas'r came along, and said I was feeding him up at his expense, and that he couldn't afford to have every n***** keeping his dog, and ordered me to tie a stone to his neck and throw him in the pond."
"O, George, you didn't do it!"
"Do it? not I! – but he did. Mas'r and Tom pelted the poor drowning creature with stones. Poor thing! he looked at me so mournful, as if he wondered why I didn't save him. I had to take a flogging because I wouldn't do it myself. I don't care. Mas'r will find out that I'm one that whipping won't tame. My day will come yet, if he don't look out." (3.24-26)
As if George’s master didn’t seem violent enough based on his treatment of George himself, Stowe gives us this image of him drowning a dog and stoning it as it dies. That someone who could be this cruel to a defenseless animal would be able to own the bodies of men and women is a source of extreme horror. What violence might he perpetrate on their bodies? The mind boggles, and not in a good way.
Quote #2
Standing by the bar, in the corner of the room, was a brawny, muscular man, full six feet in height, and broad in proportion. He was dressed in a coat of buffalo-skin, made with the hair outward, which gave him a shaggy and fierce appearance, perfectly in keeping with the whole air of his physiognomy. In the head and face every organ and lineament expressive of brutal and unhesitating violence was in a state of the highest possible development. Indeed, could our readers fancy a bull-dog come unto man's estate, and walking about in a hat and coat, they would have no unapt idea of the general style and effect of his physique. (8.5)
Tom Loker’s violent tendencies are obvious in his face and general manner. Appearances are rarely deceiving in this novel, and we’ll see that Tom’s bloodthirst is boundless. The idea that you can tell whether someone is violent or kind just by looking at them is one of the conventions of the sentimental novel.
Quote #3
"I s'pose you've got good dogs," said Haley.
"First rate," said Marks. "But what's the use? you han't got nothin' o' hers to smell on."
"Yes, I have," said Haley, triumphantly. "Here's her shawl she left on the bed in her hurry; she left her bonnet, too.
"That ar's lucky," said Loker; "fork over."
"Though the dogs might damage the gal, if they come on her unawars," said Haley.
"That ar's a consideration," said Marks. "Our dogs tore a feller half to pieces, once, down in Mobile, 'fore we could get 'em off."
"Well, ye see, for this sort that's to be sold for their looks, that ar won't answer, ye see," said Haley. (8.75-81)
Slave catchers like Haley, Marks, and Loker not only beat, whip, and torment their slaves – they’ll set vicious dogs on them. The only check to this violence is the fear that the dogs might do so much harm to a woman that she would no longer be valuable as a sex slave. Shudder.
Quote #4
Henrique struck him across the face with his riding-whip, and, seizing one of his arms, forced him on to his knees, and beat him till he was out of breath.
"There, you impudent dog! Now will you learn not to answer back when I speak to you? Take the horse back, and clean him properly. I'll teach you your place!"
[. . .]
"How could you be so cruel and wicked to poor Dodo?" asked Eva.
"Cruel, – wicked!" said the boy, with unaffected surprise. "What do you mean, dear Eva?" (23.13-14, 19-20)
Violence is the everyday norm for Eva’s young cousin Henrique, who is so used to balancing gallant behavior toward whites with brutality toward blacks that he can’t see his own cruelty and hypocrisy.
Quote #5
True, there is religious trust for even the darkest hour. The mulatto woman was a member of the Methodist church, and had an unenlightened but very sincere spirit of piety. Emmeline had been educated much more intelligently, – taught to read and write, and diligently instructed in the Bible, by the care of a faithful and pious mistress; yet, would it not try the faith of the firmest Christian, to find themselves abandoned, apparently, of God, in the grasp of ruthless violence? How much more must it shake the faith of Christ's poor little ones, weak in knowledge and tender in years! (31.57)
The violence to which slaves are subjected isn’t just evil in its own right – it also interferes with their religious faith. To a 19th century audience, this would have been one more good argument against such an institution.
Quote #6
These two colored men were the two principal hands on the plantation. Legree had trained them in savageness and brutality as systematically as he had his bull-dogs; and, by long practice in hardness and cruelty, brought their whole nature to about the same range of capacities. It is a common remark, and one that is thought to militate strongly against the character of the race, that the n***o overseer is always more tyrannical and cruel than the white one. This is simply saying that the n***o mind has been more crushed and debased than the white. It is no more true of this race than of every oppressed race, the world over. The slave is always a tyrant, if he can get a chance to be one.
Legree, like some potentates we read of in history, governed his plantation by a sort of resolution of forces. Sambo and Quimbo cordially hated each other; the plantation hands, one and all, cordially hated them; and, by playing off one against another, he was pretty sure, through one or the other of the three parties, to get informed of whatever was on foot in the place.
Nobody can live entirely without social intercourse; and Legree encouraged his two black satellites to a kind of coarse familiarity with him, – a familiarity, however, at any moment liable to get one or the other of them into trouble; for, on the slightest provocation, one of them always stood ready, at a nod, to be a minister of his vengeance on the other.
As they stood there now by Legree, they seemed an apt illustration of the fact that brutal men are lower even than animals. Their coarse, dark, heavy features; their great eyes, rolling enviously on each other; their barbarous, guttural, half-brute intonation; their dilapidated garments fluttering in the wind, – were all in admirable keeping with the vile and unwholesome character of everything about the place. (32.31-34)
It is a rare person who rises above the harshness and cruelties of his situation. Simon Legree deliberately cultivates a cruelty in his slaves that allows him to govern them better. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and only Tom refuses to be turned into a dog.
Quote #7
Legree took a silent note of Tom's availability. He rated him as a first-class hand; and yet he felt a secret dislike to him, – the native antipathy of bad to good. He saw, plainly, that when, as was often the case, his violence and brutality fell on the helpless. Tom took notice of it; for, so subtle is the atmosphere of opinion, that it will make itself felt, without words; and the opinion even of a slave may annoy a master. (33.2)
Simon Legree is sensitive to Tom’s silent judgment of his violent behavior, even though he feels no real remorse for what he does.