Communications in Humanities Research ISSN: 2753-7072
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Research Article

Fictional Authority: Gender Criticism in Narrative Tension of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Shiyu LiuSchool of Foreign Language, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China*

* Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract

Harriet Beecher Stowe utilizes many unique narrative techniques in Uncle Tom's Cabin in order to articulate female voices. Based on Susan S. Lancer's theory of narrative voice, this essay intends to reveal the author's intention of using authorial, personal, and collective voices to give many female characters the right to express themselves, to speak for women group, to show predicaments of female groups in real society, and to construct female discourse authority. It also further indicates that Mrs. Stowe was constrained by her social environment which made her have to blur the authorial gender until the final chapter, express female personal voices through male groups, and blur the range of the collective to gain the acceptance of male readers. This fictional discourse authority is in tension with the limitations of female real-life marginal situations, thus further satirizing the circumstances where female authors wanted to change but could not break the restrictions of male authority.

Keywords: Uncle Tom’s Cabin; female narrative voice; Susan S. Lanser; gender criticism; authority
Published: May 15, 2025
DOI: 10.54254/2753-7064/2025.22835
Volume: CHR Vol.57
pp. 129-136
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