Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Uncle Tom's Cabin

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 04:21, 5 May 2007.

---

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Because Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel in the world during the 19th century, and is one of the most influential novels in history, this article has been rated as top-level importance by WikiProject Novels. The article was promoted to good article status two months ago. Since then I've added more heavily referenced information while also putting the article through a peer review. Best, --Alabamaboy 22:05, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

• Support This article has brilliant prose, is well referenced, comprehensive, well organized, uses appropriate images, features a neutral POV, and appears stable. Well done! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 03:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
• The 'Other characters' section only has one or two sentences for each character. It's not a problem at all, but could it be would it be more effective if it were combined into one paragraph? --Phoenix (talk) 03:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I've condensed them into a bulleted list. Does this work for you?--Alabamaboy 00:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Sure, thanks; Looks much better. Support. --Phoenix (talk) 03:04, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Finally, a good page on a piece of literature (so rare around here!). I peer-reviewed this article; it was good then and is even better now. But there are just a few tiny issues that I would like to see improved before I support:

• The over-riding theme in Uncle Tom's Cabin is Stowe's desire to show the evil of slavery, especially with regards to how this "peculiar institution" forcibly separated families from each other. - perhaps you could reword this sentence so the theme isn't "Stowe's desire" but the "evils of slavery"?

• What about this as introductory sentence to the "Themes" section: Uncle Tom's Cabin is dominated by a single theme: the immorality of slavery. While Stowe weaves other subthemes throughout her text, such as the moral authority of motherhood and the redeeming possibilities offered by Christianity, she emphasizes the connections between these and the horrors of slavery." (or something like that)

Works for me. I've made the change. What do you think?--Alabamaboy 22:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• The "Themes" section is missing a close paranthesis.
• Can you make the "Themes" section flow a little better? Right now the only transitions we have are "another" and "final." What are the relationships between these themes? For example, you end the first paragraph with a quote by a woman; the next paragraph is about the moral authority of women - surely you could make a better transition there?

• I would have liked to see even more transitions, but it is fine, I suppose. Awadewit 04:41, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Uncle Tom's Cabin is written in the sentimental[27] and melodramatic style common to 19th century sentimental novels and domestic fiction (also called women's fiction). - I think you have to explain why it was also called "women's fiction" and how sentimental novels were not considered as serious specifically because they were written by women. This is all in Tompkins.

• This is fine, but it might be good to make Tompkins' point here that it was the sentimental style that was popular at the time. Awadewit 04:41, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• On the death of Little Eva - do you have any reader-response on that? I know that Little Eva was like Clarissa - readers wept buckets - it would be good to illustrate that reaction.

I've added in contemporary reactions to the novel. Some interesting stuff, if I do say so myself! Best, --Alabamaboy 22:18, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• I thought it was Tompkins' book, Sensational Designs, that was the foundation of the revisionist thinking on UTC, not the essay.
• A lot of the paragraphs in the "Literary significance" section begin "other critics" and "other scholars" - it is a little repetitive. Awadewit 04:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The essay "Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Politics of Literary History" by Jane Tompkins is from her book In Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction. The reason I went with the "landmark essay" is that I have a strong citation stated that the essay is a "landmark piece of criticism." Since the essay is specific to the subject and has such a good cite, that's what I mentioned (although the citation for the essay does say it from from Tompkins book).

I agree wholeheartedly that it is a landmark piece of criticism and I'm sure you could find many sources to say that. My beef is with the word "article." Shouldn't it say "book"? To an academic, it sounds like you are referring to a piece published in an academic journal and Tompkins' chapter is most emphatically not that. I would go with, "in her landmark book Sensational Designs, Tompkins...".

I changed it. Check it out now.--Alabamaboy 01:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I made edits based on your other suggestions (aside from the reader-responses to Little Eva's death, which I'll have to look for). Please let me know what you think and if further changes are needed. Best, --Alabamaboy 00:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• I support this well-written, well-researched and comprehensive article. Very nice work. Awadewit 00:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Comprehensive, well-written. A few notes on the images though. I think it would be more aesthetically pleasing to have the author look towards the text in the first image. And the first image in the adaptation section disaligns the main article line from the actual text. Moving these would probably mean moving around more pictures to balance things, but I think it would nicely finish the article. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:19, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I've reformatted the images to fix this problem.--Alabamaboy 15:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.