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ource of happiness. Her father is proud of her. She comes up in her father’s dream after her death. She admonishes and saves her father in the heaven. The story tells us that a child can save others by devoting her life. She gets spiritual power that she can’t get from people she loves. The spiritual power she gets after death and the holy and pure born to her makes Eva an angel that saves the world. The subject on angel who saves the world is a main subject in the religious culture of the nineteenth century. Because of the intensely religious consciousness, Mrs. Stowe endows litter Eva heavy religion mission as an angel. To some extent, the character of Eva loses a bit of authenticity. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Stowe wants to call on people to do as or more than the child does.
2.3 Ideal Mothers--- Mrs. Shelby, St. Clare’s mother, Legree’s mother
Maria in Bible gives us an impression of a great mother who is full of love. She supports and understands Jesus whatever happens. She is also tolerant of all her children. Although her children besides Jesus made many mistakes, she still forgives them and believes them. In her opinion, mothers can never give up their children.
Mrs. Stowe takes her novel as a kind of “tool” to realize a world that is composed by Christian universal love, but not the rights. The Utopianism in her mind shows a tendency: the realization of Christian universal love should go through the daily life, the sacrificial principle lies in maternal love. Mrs. Stowe herself is the mother of six children. When she cherishes her children, she thinks of the slave’s child who was sold to an unknown place, she feels painful, so she composes many pious Christian mother in this novel, such as Mrs. Shelby, St. Clare’s mother and Legree’s mother. These mothers have the common merits---they are all kind, moral, saintly and soon. They are all the ideal mothesr of children.
2.3.1 Mrs. Shelby
Mr. Shelby’s wife is a deeply devoted woman who strives to give a kind and moral influence upon her slaves. “She have tried---tried most faithfully, as a Christian woman should—to do my duty to these poor, simple, dependent creatures. I have cared for them, instructed them, watched over them, and known all their little cares and joys, for years.” [21]P34 She appalls when her husband negotiates selling his slaves with a slave trader and realizes that slavery is wrong and very unchristian. When she finds things cannot turn for the better, she feels sorry for the slaves that would be sold and indignant with the slaver.
2.3.2 St. Clare’s mother
She is a lofty and pure mother and names St. Clare’s name as her name to hope her son would be the same character of hers. Though her husband loves and pampers her, yet he does not approve of her participating in the matters of slaves. She is against slavery because she thinks that we are all men born of women, and not savage beasts, but she does not object any word of her husband or expresses any different advice on her appearance. We can find this from St. Clare’s recalling, “She never contradicted, in form, anything that my father said, or seemed directly to differ from him; but she impressed, burnt into my very soul, with all the force of her deep, earnest nature, an idea of the dignity and worth of the meanest human soul. I have looked in her face with solemn awe, when she would point up to the stars in the evening, and say to me, “See there, Auguste! The poorest, meanest soul on our place will be living, when all these stars are gone forever,－will live as long as God lives!” [22]P232 Her words greatly influence St. Clare’s attitude to slavery. She does not want to come into conflict with her husband, and she wants to fight against slavery in a peaceful way. This is also the way Mrs. Stowe advocates in liberating slaves and abolishing slavery. She strikes people by her cordial and sincere character. She also instills into St. Clare that every man, no matter Whites or Blacks, all have the spirit St Clare recalled that, “There was a morbid sensitiveness and acuteness of feeling in me on all possible subjects, of which he(my brother) and my father had no kind of understanding, and with which they could have no possible sympathy. But mother did; and so, when I had quarreled with Alfred, and father looked sternly on me, I used to go off to mother’s room, and sit by her, I remember just how she used to look, with her pale cheeks, her deep, soft, serious eyes, her white dress,－she always wore white; and I used to think of her whenever I read in Revolutions about the saints that were arrayed in fine linen, clean and white.” [23]P232 From St. Clare’s recalling, we can learn that St. Clare’s mother is full of love for her children and resembles Maria in understanding her children.
There is a part of St. Clare’s recalling, “She had some fine old paintings; one, in particular, of Jesus healing a blind man. They were very fine, and us上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] 下一页
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