“I do not want her, I am sure” | Nineteenth-Century Literature | University of California Press Skip to Main Content Close UCPRESS ABOUT US BLOG SUPPORT US CONTACT US Search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All Content Nineteenth-Century Literature Search User Tools Register Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University Sign In Toggle MenuMenu Content Recent Content Browse Issues All Content Purchase Alerts Submit Info For Authors Librarians Reprints & Permissions About Journal Editorial Team Contact Us Skip Nav Destination Article Navigation Close mobile search navigation Article navigation Volume 74, Issue 4 March 2020 Previous Article Next Article Article Navigation Research Article| March 31 2020 “I do not want her, I am sure”: Commodities, Gifts, and Poisonous Gifts in Uncle Tom’s Cabin Alexandra Urakova Alexandra Urakova A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexandra Urakova is a senior researcher at the A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a Core Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies of the University of Helsinki (2018–2020). Her essays have appeared in such journals as Nineteenth-Century Literature (2009), Revista Anglo Saxonica (2016), New England Quarterly (2016), and Edgar Allan Poe Review (2014) as well as in collections including the Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by J. Gerald Kennedy and Scott Peeples (2019). She is currently working on a monograph on dangerous gifts in nineteenth-century American literature; the research has been supported by the Institute for Advanced Study of the Central European University and by the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. ] D B [ Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Literature (2020) 74 (4): 448–472. https://doi.org/10.1525/ncl.2020.74.4.448 Split-Screen Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data PDF LinkPDF Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Guest Access Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Alexandra Urakova; “I do not want her, I am sure”: Commodities, Gifts, and Poisonous Gifts in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Nineteenth-Century Literature 31 March 2020; 74 (4): 448–472. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ncl.2020.74.4.448 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All Content Nineteenth-Century Literature Search Alexandra Urakova,“‘I do not want her, I am sure’: Commodities, Gifts, and Poisonous Gifts in Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (pp. 448–472) This essay focuses on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) in discussing the interrelation of sentimentality, slavery, and race. It asks what happens when a slave himself or herself becomes a gift in the way that Mr. Shelby buys Eliza as a present for his wife, and St. Claire seems to bestow Uncle Tom upon Eva and ultimately gives Topsy to his cousin Ophelia. Although much has been said about “sentimental property” or “sympathetic ownership” in Stowe, the instances of exchanging slaves as gifts in the novel have been surprisingly overlooked. Touching upon one of the novel’s important and precarious themes—the distinction between people and things—the aforementioned episodes not only contribute to our understanding of the novel’s gift economy but also invite us to revise the complex attitude to racial otherness in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I claim that while pursuing a sentimental ideology of the gift that comes to support racialist implications of its abolitionist rhetoric, Stowe’s novel also contains a radical potential of its critique embodied in the image of the poisonous gift of a slave child, Topsy, who figures as an unwelcome, wasteful, and repellent present. Concurring with critical opinion that Stowe’s racism is in the sentiment, this essay suggests that the novel’s unsentimental, explicitly racist metaphors paradoxically inform one of Stowe’s strongest antislavery arguments. Keywords: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, gift economy, race, sentimental ideology This content is only available via PDF. © 2020 by The Regents of the University of California 2020 Send Email Recipient(s) will receive an email with a link to '“I do not want her, I am sure”Commodities, Gifts, and Poisonous Gifts in Uncle Tom’s Cabin' and will not need an account to access the content. *Your Name: *Your Email Address: CC: *Recipient 1: Recipient 2: Recipient 3: Recipient 4: Recipient 5: Subject: “I do not want her, I am sure”Commodities, Gifts, and Poisonous Gifts in Uncle Tom’s Cabin Optional Message: (Optional message may have a maximum of 1000 characters.) 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