How Uncle Tom’s Cabin drew on The Pilgrim's Progress
A documented line of influence: Harriet Beecher Stowe demonstrably engaged John Bunyan’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan · 1678
EnlightenmentThe influenced
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe · 1852
The Age of the NovelRelevance
7/10
On Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s page
- Stowe quotes Bunyan directly and built Tom's story on his blueprint — a pilgrim's progress through bondage toward salvation
- The Pilgrim's Progress supplied the allegorical machinery: a journey of the soul through tribulation, characters named for what they are
- Read Bunyan first and you'll see Stowe's abolitionist novel for the Calvinist pilgrimage it is underneath
On The Pilgrim's Progress’s page
- Stowe poured Bunyan's mold into the most explosive novel of the 19th century
- Uncle Tom's Cabin is a Calvinist allegory in Bunyan's shape — Tom's life retraces Christian's pilgrimage, the soul's salvation pursued through earthly tribulation and earthly hell
- Even the method carries over: characters named for the virtues they embody, so the moral stakes are never in doubt