Religion as characterization and plot in Uncle Tom's Cabin

As the daughter of an eminent evangelical minister, Harriet Beecher Stowe was raised to be extremely pious and to view the world through a Christian lens. This point of view and piousness is omnipresent in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mentions of Jesus or God or Heaven is present on almost every page and provides the moral framework of the novel. Stowe positions slavery as morally objectionable because it goes against the Bible. Additionally, the commitment to Christianity is used to gauge the goodness or badness of any given character. For instance, Tom, Eliza, and Evangeline are the most "good" characters in the novel because they are Christian and try to spread the word of Christ to other characters while the "bad" characters Legree and the slave traders outright say they are not Christian or that they do not want their slaves to be religious. Once the piousness level of a character is established, Stowe attributes either that all the good they do is tied to their Christian nature or that all the bad they do is because they lack Christian nature. Topsy is a good example of this. When Evangeline is dying and telling the house they must be Christians and go to Heaven, Evangeline pleads with Topsy to accept Christ and finally "be a good girl" (879).

All the pious characters also have a scene where they are being told or are telling another character that even though things are awful, Jesus will guide them through and they will emerge victorious on Judgement Day. These scenes of piousness precede something awful happening to the characters. When Susan and her daughter Emmeline are about to be sold, Susan tells Emmeline that the Lord will be "faithful to you" as long as Emmeline remains pious (884). Soon after, they are sold and separated. This set up foreshadows the reoccurring hardship that the black characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin face.