Religion and Neuroscience in Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Abstract

“Religion and Neuroscience” invites a new reading of Stowe’s masterpiece from the perspective of these two combined subjects, depicting Eliza’s bodily stamina and Uncle Tom’s spiritual mindfulness over slavery’s evils. In neuroscience, the amygdala plays a key role in their confrontation with slavery: the flight/fight/freeze triad of stress hormones running throughout the body under duress is what causes Eliza to flee and Uncle Tom to freeze. Stowe chooses this pattern of flight for Eliza and freezing for Uncle Tom; their actions affirm her positive ideas about motherhood and Christian salvation. Images of neuroscience are well ahead of Stowe’s time with her description of the limbic system, housing the almond-shaped amygdala, but not identified by a neuroscientist until 1952. In multiple ways, Stowe’s novel advanced ideas that caught up with her a century later, although resonating emotionally with her nineteenth-century audience that made Uncle Tom’s Cabin a masterpiece against human bondage.