Harriet Beecher Stowe

     Harriet Beecher Stowe was a writer during the Antebellum Era and in many of her writings she expressed her opinions about slavery and woman's rights. Her religious beliefs and opinions about abolition were shown in her writing as well. During the transcendentalism period, abolition of slavery and rights of women were two major issues, which Stowe influenced through her writing as an author. She promoted rights for women and their capabilities and was against slavery and talked about the injustices of it. Her writing gave her a voice and she used it to her advantage, because during this time women were not allowed to vote and did not have any authority at home or job wise. Stowe's writing about slavery and women's rights defiantly changed the transcendentalism time period.
    She was most famously known as the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which was a book based on Stowe's observations of the lives of African-Americans working as slaves. "I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and broken-hearted with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity - because as a lover of my county, I trembled at the coming day of wrath" (pbs.org). This quote is an example of how her faith influenced her opinion on slavery and why she was against it and effected by it. Her writing helped advance the abolitionist movement which worked towards ending slavery.
     Not only did she focus on the issue of slavery in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," but also brought up the importance of the role of a mother. This tied in with her strong beliefs that women deserved more rights during this time period and how mothers impacted the lives of those around them. "If the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should, in times past, the sons of the free states would not have been the holders, and proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves; the sons of the free states would not have connived at the extension of slavery (472)" (womanwriters.net). Her beliefs in women's rights are evident. She used her writing to speak her opinion so that maybe people's view on women would change, and then one day women would be given the rights that they deserved.