American copyright law before 1856 did not give novel authors any control over derivative stage adaptations, so Stowe neither approved the adaptations nor profited from them.
[12] Minstrel show retellings in particular, usually performed by white men in
blackface, tended to be derisive and
pro-slavery, transforming Uncle Tom from Christian martyr to a
fool or an
apologist for slavery.
[4]
Adapted theatrical performances of the novel, called
Tom Shows, remained in continual production in the United States for at least 80 years.
[12] These representations had a lasting cultural impact and influenced the pejorative nature of the term
Uncle Tom in later popular use.
[4]
Although not all minstrel depictions of Uncle Tom were negative, the dominant version developed into a stock character very different from Stowe's hero.
[4][13] Stowe's Uncle Tom was a muscular and virile man who refused to obey when ordered to beat other slaves; the stock character of minstrel shows became a shuffling
asexual individual with a receding hairline and graying hair.
[13] To Jo-Ann Morgan, author of
Uncle Tom's Cabin as Visual Culture, these shifting representations undermined the subversive layers of Stowe's original characterization by redefining Uncle Tom until he fit within prevailing racist norms.
[12] Particularly after the Civil War, as the political thrust of the novel which had arguably helped to precipitate that war became obsolete to actual political discourse, popular depictions of the title character recast him within the apologetics of the
Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
[12] The virile father of the abolitionist serial and first book edition degenerated into a decrepit old man, and with that transformation the character lost the capacity for resistance that had originally given meaning to his choices.
[12][13] Stowe never meant Uncle Tom to be a derided name, but the term as a pejorative has developed based on how later versions of the character, stripped of his strength, were depicted on stage.
[14]
Claire Parfait, author of
The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852–2002, opines that "the many alterations in retellings of the Uncle Tom story demonstrate an impulse to correct the retellers' perceptions of its flaws" and "the capacity of the novel to irritate and rankle, even a century and a half after its first publication".
[3]
Uncle Tom wiki
EVEN THO ITS 4 OF THEM!!!
