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Chapter 42
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Uncle Tom's Cabin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Slavery and Race
Christianity and Christian Charity
Women
Home
Freedom
Summary
Analysis
George Harris, Eliza, and Harry now live, after having been free five years, in a small apartment outside Montreal. One day, a local Amhertsberg pastor arrives with two women, and de Thoux reveals that she is Emily, George’s sister. Cassy then reveals she is Eliza’s mother. All pray and sob together. Over the next several days Cassy softens considerably, and her faith in life is slowly restored. De Thoux tells George that her husband has left her a fortune, and George asks that he might receive an education. They all move to France along with Emmeline, and George receives a degree from a French university.
It turns out that Eliza is Cassy’s daughter—again, the coincidence is perhaps not particularly realistic, but in knitting together these two families, Beecher Stowe underscores the importance of familial love and the notion that, ultimately, this love must triumph over wickedness, at least for a lucky few. If slavery is banished, far more slaves will be reunited, either on earth or in heaven.
Themes
After returning to the United States (“political troubles” having started in France), George writes a letter to a friend arguing that he must take the side of black people and champion their freedom. He wishes for an “African nationality” and hopes that a free black republic might be established in Africa. George argues that he cannot help his enslaved comrades in America as of yet, since the institutions are too complex and difficult to detangle, but a free and Christian African nation might allow for the betterment and development of all black persons.
George’s letter lays out a plan for the betterment of black people through the creation of a free state in Africa. This state, Liberia, was in fact established by abolitionists. George is less clear on how to deal with the problem of universal emancipation, and indeed this question remain unsolved well into and after the American Civil War, when legal slavery was abolished but Jim Crow laws insured slave-like conditions for many throughout the South.
Themes
Miss Ophelia and Topsy move to Vermont, where Topsy becomes a Christian and eventually serves as a missionary in Africa. Madame de Thoux also finds Cassy’s long-lost son, years later, who joins Cassy Emmeline, and the Harrises in Africa.
Topsy, too, participates in African liberation and finds that her abilities are well-suited to work overseas.
Themes
