Recently Uncle Tom’s Cabin was recommended, in the L.A. Times Sunday Book Review, as a classic well worth exposing oneself to in maturity. I was eager to do so for a few reasons, not the least of which is that I had read that the title character is actually a heroic figure in the novel, and not at all the sort of grovelling, obsequious character that the term “Uncle Tom” has come to connote.
So as luck would have it, when visiting my parents not long after, I found a copy of the novel which I’d bought myself when I still lived there, but never gotten around to reading. Well actually, I did get around to starting it, but gave it up for the same reason I feel like giving it up now: the dialect rendition might as well be a foreign language, not only the way the slaves speak, but often their masters as well. Am I being too sensitive? I just can’t take this exaggerated language seriously. So I’m wondering if anyone else has encountered this and if they managed to work through it, or gave up reading IUncle Tom’s Cabin as I feel I’m about to do?
Read it aloud. Seriously. The dialect has a fascinating rhythm and “flavor” that really makes the book more powerful, but like you, I find it impossible to read to myself.
And try Joel Chandler Harris (Uncle Remus) to done git you in de mood.
As any Southerner can tell you, Harriet Beecher Stowe never travelled far enough south to even enter a slaveholding state. The dialect was something she knocked together from other writers of the time.
Writing in dialect was very popular at one time, in books, newspapers, and ads. I wrote a paper on racism and media, and I have an Aunt Jemima pancake ad from the 1930’s, which is a long paragraph of dialect: “Lawsy! Mekkin’ pancakes is the most impawtenes’ thing Ah does. . . .” The whites in these ads always spoke the King’s English, while what blacks said was written out phonetically, even if both actually pronounced the word the same.
Dialect is difficult for the modern reader, but in earlier times, it was considered amusing, especially since reading aloud was a favorite family passtime.
I have to say I haven’t tried UTC, but I was just trying to slog through * Huck Finn * and I kept running into the same issue every time Jim spoke. It was so annoying I just gave up.
And for something completely different to twist your brain, I’d suggest you next read, “The Acid House” by Irvine Welsh. I particular, the story, “The Granton Star Cause”.
“Every !@#$$ time ah come doon here, some wide-o pills ays up aboot what ah should n shouldnae not be !@#$ daein.”
Play is called: "Small House of Uncle Thomas."
…
Lover’s name George. Jee-orrrge!
…
Of a sudden she can see
Wicked Simon of Legree
…
Buddha make the water hard. Buddha make a miracle!
I also recommend reading the book out loud. That’s how I was able to get through Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston. And I’m glad that I did because it’s an excellent sotry.
Margaret Mitchell did that too in Gone With the Wind. All the slaves speak slave dialect (sorry, I don’t know how to make that politically correct, so bear with me.) but the Southerners speak “normally.” I do remember that some of the Yankees’ conversations were “dialected” as well.
I think it was a sign of the writing era. Nowadays with historical novels, such as John Jakes’ books, you don’t see that.
Yes she did. While she was still a reporter for the * Atlanta Journal * she was much praised for the “accuracy” of the black dialect she used in her human interest stories.
When the “sequel” to * Gone With the Wind * was written a few years back, the author, Alexandra Ripley (IIRC), refused to write in dialect, but still used “slave grammar” (for want of a better term) such as: “I knows, Miss Scarlett. I knows!” because she wanted to retain the rythm of Mitchell’s original work.
