Uncle Tom's Cabin - 汤姆叔叔的小屋

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Houghton Mifflin Company, 1881

Title
Uncle Tom's Cabin

Author
Harriet Beecher Stowe

Country
United States

Language
English

Genre
Novel

Published
1852 (two volumes)

“You are the little woman who caused a great war.” This is what Lincoln said in his interview with the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe. Although there are some joking elements in this sentence, it does not affect Lincoln's confirmation that the book plays an important role on the road of American slavery liberation.

林肯在接见《汤姆叔叔的小屋》一书的作者斯托时如是说：“你是引发一场伟大战争的小女人”。虽然这句话中有一些开玩笑的成分，但这并不影响林肯肯定这本书在美国奴隶制解放的道路上发挥了重要作用。

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Life among the lowly is an anti slavery novel published by American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852. In this novel，the views on African Americans and American slavery had a profound impact and to some extent, intensified the regional conflicts that led to the American Civil War.

《汤姆叔叔的小屋：卑贱者的生活》是美国作家哈里特·比彻·斯托（斯托夫人）于1852年发表的一部反奴隶制长篇小说。这部小说中对于非裔美国人与美国奴隶制度的观点曾产生过意义深远的影响，并在某种程度上激化了导致美国内战的地区局部冲突。

Uncle Tom's cabin, the best-selling novel in the 19^th century, is considered to be one of the main reasons for the rise of abolitionism in the 1850s. Later, he was made into a film by German director in 1965. It mainly tells the story of Tom, a loyal slave who went through several resales, after witnessed the tragic fate of many slaves, called on them to fight for themselves, and finally died peacefully in the failure of the slaver trader. This book strongly explains the irrationality of slavery and plays an important role in the history of American struggle for the independence of slaves.

《汤姆叔叔的小屋》这部小说身为19世纪最畅销的小说，被认为是刺激1850年代废奴主义兴起的一大原因。后在1965年被德国导演拍摄成电影，主要讲述了忠心的黑奴汤姆经历了数次转卖，见证了许多黑奴的悲惨命运后，号召他们为自己战斗，最后在奴隶贩子的失败下安然去世的故事。这本书强烈阐释了奴隶制度的不合理性，在美国争取奴隶独立的斗争历史上起到了很大的作用。

Uncle Tom's cabin is dominated by the same theme: the evils and immorality of slavery. When Stowe writes about minor themes in her writing - such as the moral authority of the mother and the possibility of salvation provided by Christianity - she emphasizes the connection between these themes and the horrors of slavery. In almost every page of the novel, Stowe actively promotes the theme of “the immorality of slavery”. Sometimes she even changes the tone of the story to preach the destructive nature of slavery.

《汤姆叔叔的小屋》的全书都被同一个主题所主宰：奴隶制度的罪恶与不道德。当斯托夫人在她的文字里写入次要的主题时——譬如母亲的道德权威以及由基督教提供拯救的可能性——她都会强调这些主题与奴隶制的恐怖之间的联系。几乎在小说的每一页里，斯托夫人都在积极推动着“奴隶制度不道德”这一主题，有些时候她甚至会改变故事叙述的口吻，以向人们“布道”奴隶制的破坏天性。通过对黑奴制度拆散他人家庭的刻画，斯托夫人用文字展现出了奴隶制度的罪恶。

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was born in an American pastor family. He was a teacher and an active abolitionist. She lived in Cincinnati for 18 years, where she experienced a period of escape, which laid the foundation for her novel. This novel was first serialized in the national times in 1852. After serialization, it immediately aroused strong repercussions and was widely recognized by people.

哈里耶特·比彻·斯托夫人（1811-1896）出生于美国一个牧师家庭，曾做过教师，也是一名积极的废奴主义者。她在辛辛那提市住了18年，在这里她经受了一段逃亡生活，这为她创作这部小说奠定了基础。这部小说首先于1852年在《民族时代》刊物上连载，连载以后，立刻引起强烈的反响，受到人们的广泛认可。

Part of Uncle Tom's cabin was inspired by Josiah Henson's autobiography. Henson was a black man who was once a slave owned by slave owner Isaac Riley, lived and worked in the northern Bethesda area of Maryland. In the book “A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin” published in 1853, Stowe mentioned a lot of inspiration and material sources for writing this novel. Stowe also explained that the reason why she published the realistic work was to support her views on the evils of slavery.

《汤姆叔叔的小屋》的一部分创作灵感来自乔赛亚·亨森的自传。亨森是一位黑人男性，他曾是奴隶主艾萨克·赖利所拥有的一名奴隶，生活并劳作于马里兰州北贝塞斯达地区。在1853年发表的《汤姆叔叔小屋题解》一书中，斯托夫人提到了写作这部小说的大量灵感与材料来源。斯托夫人同时解释发表《题解》这部写实作品的原因，是为了支持她对奴隶制度恶行的主张。

At the end of the 15th century, after the establishment of colonial rule in America, European colonists brought in a large number of blacks from Africa to serve as slaves in order to solve the labor problem in the colonies. In America, the use of black slave labor is very extensive. In addition to all kinds of plantation labor (sugarcane, cotton, tobacco, coffee), black slaves are also engaged in grazing, mining, and serving as domestic servants. Slave owners also send slaves to carry out transportation and handicraft production. Under such a system, black slaves had no human rights and were completely the property of their owners. They could not deal with any decision, even if they were forced to separated or tortured to death.

15世纪末，欧洲殖民者在美洲建立殖民统治以后，为解决殖民地的劳动力问题，从非洲运入大量黑人充当奴隶。在美洲，使用黑人奴隶劳动非常广泛，黑人奴隶除从事各类种植园（甘蔗、棉花、烟草、咖啡）劳动外，也从事放牧、采矿，充当家庭仆役，奴隶主还派遣奴隶从事搬运和手工业生产。在这样的制度下，黑奴没有人权，完全就是奴隶主的所有物，他们对待任何决定都不能反抗，即使是让它们骨肉分离或者被折磨致死。

At the same time, this novel was written in the United States in the 1850s, which was the flourishing period of romanticism. The publication of this novel must cause a great disturbance, especially the opposition of Southern politicians and writers. Its publication had a profound impact on the transition to realistic literature for American literature.

同时，这部小说写于19世纪50年代的美国，正是浪漫主义兴盛时期，这本小说的发表必然会引起轩然大波，特别是遭到南方政客和文学家的反对。它的发表对美国文学向现实主义文学过渡发展产生了深远的影响。

Uncle Tom's cabin not only has a great impact on the development of American literature, but also has a wide effect on the development of protest literature. Over time, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring were deeply influenced by Uncle Tom's cabin.

《汤姆叔叔的小屋》不仅对美国文学的发展产生了巨大的影响，还广泛地影响了抗议文学的发展。后来厄普顿·辛克莱的《丛林王子》与雷切尔·卡森的《寂静的春天》都是受《汤姆叔叔的小屋》影响至深的作品。

Since then, many writers have praised the novel, saying that it focuses on expressing the anger of the North against the unjust slavery system and the Fugitive Slave Law, and praises it for injecting impetus into the abolitionist movement. This book also aroused many people's anti slavery consciousness and fight enthusiasm. James Baird weaver, a general and politician on the federal side, once said that it was this book that made him actively participate in the abolitionist movement. With the joint efforts of many people, the U.S. Congress signed the 13th Amendment Bill of the United States Constitution after the American Civil War, formally abolishing American slavery.

自此以后，许多作家都称赞了这本小说，称其集中表达了北方对不公正的奴隶制度与《逃亡奴隶法》的愤怒，赞其为废奴主义运动注入了前进的动力。这本书还激起了许多人的反奴意识和斗争热情，联邦一方的一名将军及政治家詹姆斯·贝尔德·韦弗就曾说过，正是这本书让他开始积极地投身到废奴主义运动当中的。在许多人的共同努力下，美国国会在美国内战后签署了《美国宪法第13条修正议案》，正式废除美国奴隶制度。

There are translations of this work in almost every language in the world. This is also the first American novel translated by China. The ensuing Civil War not only liberated the fate of American slaves, but also inspired other suffering people in the world to stand up for their own interests. Although the novel has great controversy, and in addition, the book, together with the works of art adapted from it, formed the black stereotypes, weakened its historical role as an “important anti slavery tool”. However, it is still an important material to understand American slavery. After re study, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and other scholars think that it is the core literature of American race relations and a significant moral and political exploration on the characteristics of these relations.

世界上几乎每种语言，都有此作品的翻译。这也是中国翻译的第一本美国小说。这之后随之带来的南北战争，不仅解放了美国黑奴的命运，还激励了世界上其他深受苦难的人民站起来争取自己的利益。虽然这部小说也存在极大的争议，并且和由此改编的艺术作品一起造成了黑人刻板印象的形成，一定程度上弱化了这本书作为“重要的反奴隶制工具”的历史作用；但它仍然是了解美国奴隶制的重要材料。小亨利·路易斯·盖茨等学者重新进行研究后，认为其是美国种族关系的核心文献，以及对这些关系特征进行的一次意义重大的道德与政治探索。