Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau and the Voices...

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau and the Voices of the Oppressed There have been many writers who dedicated much of their work towards representing the voices of the oppressed. Among them are Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry David Thoreau. Although these authors were dedicated to the same cause they approached the subject from their own perspective, reflecting on an issue that was relevant to their position in life. Their literature was used to address, or in some cases attack, problems within society such as race, equality, and gender. The voices of Stowe, and Thoreau were used as an instrument in representing the injustices of those who had no one else to protect them. Oddly enough, this protection was from the very†¦show more content†¦Later in life she was bound by the stern discipline of an older sister, and upon her marriage to Calvin Stowe was overcome with poverty, poor health, and the demands of motherhood with a rapidly increasing family. She knew from personal experience what it was like to be oppressed. It was during these year s of her life she would learn, and relate to, the sufferings of others. These years of her life may have seemed unbearable at times, but without them she may never have had the courage to speak out for others. All of these emotions were poured out onto the pages of Uncle Tomà ¢s Cabin. It is possible that she could see similarities between the circumstances of her life and that of a slave: neither she nor the slaves were viewed as individuals with rights of their own. Uncle Tomà ¢s Cabin was an assertion for individual rights for slaves and was quite possibly her own declaration of independence. It was in this writing that her resentment toward the repressive influences in her own life ... attached itself to the symbol of the black race (Adams 45). Stowe spoke out for the slaves in several of her writings. She believed the sin of slavery to be the denial of humanity to man. As such, the argument in one of her novels began: if the Negro is a man, what possible excuse can there be for denying him liberty and equality? (Adams 67). Also, in Biographical Sketch of TheShow MoreRelatedThe History of American Literature3501 Words   |  15 Pageshis life as a slave and his struggle toward freedom, Douglass emphasized the primary role that literacy played in opening opportunities for African Americans. He represented his ability to write his own story as the ultimate act of a free man . Harriet Jacobs offered a different but no less upsetting representation of slavery in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). In the book, Jacobs told of the sexual abuse experienced by young female slaves. During the late 1700s and early 1800s, romanticism