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Parrot Forum

     The above quotation is stamped on countless refrigerator magnets and embroidered on dishtowels across the world; and yet, how many of us ever stop to think about what it really means? After all, why is it important that a concept as ethereal and abstract as love should have significance in the kitchen, a place supposedly reserved for preparing that which is necessary only to maintaining the physical body? This question can perhaps be best answered by the “little woman” named Harriet Beecher Stowe, in her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin – written before we even had refrigerators, much less magnets bearing heartwarming little proverbs.
     Whereas it may at first be overlooked, the description of different types of kitchens in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is in fact a recurring theme in the novel and not to be trivialized. On the contrary, Harriet Beecher Stowe uses the image of the kitchen to encompass one of the most pertinent aspects of her argument against slavery: that of the importance of the home and domestic life in the fight against oppression and injustice. An indoctrinated member of the infamous “Cult of True Womanhood,” an unofficial sisterhood designed to combat women’s lack of physical and political power by encouraging them to develop the power of influence, Stowe uses representations of the ideology of this alliance – whose central tenets are piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity – as weapons in her narrative battle against slavery’s evils. She aims these weapons straight at the heart of female readers belonging to the same sisterhood, especially mothers; and with what territory should her feminine readership be more closely acquainted that that of the home, whose very heart is indeed the kitchen?
     Logically, the woman who seeks to truly “feed” her family must not only do so with physical sustenance, but with moral and spiritual nourishment as well; ideally, beginning by satisfying the physical needs of the body and progressing toward the spiritual nourishment, as it is the more difficult to attain of the two. Satisfaction of the physical need for food begins in the kitchen, which then becomes a symbol of sustenance; this idea becomes a metaphor for the site of a greater (spiritual) type of sustenance, and the end result is an image of the kitchen as a place given not only to the comprehensive (physical and spiritual) nourishment of the individual, but also to the spiritual life of the home in general. This aspect of spirituality is what makes the kitchen such an important symbol in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; since Stowe’s principal arguments against the institution of slavery are based upon somewhat abstract, universal (Christian) ideas of morality/spirituality, in order to strike the proper chord with her audience she must relate these ideas back to the home. This she appropriately does by describing the kitchen environments of each home in the novel, drawing parallels between the specific condition of the kitchen and the state of the home in general, allowing the reader to conclude that the kitchen in each case is in fact a microcosm of its respective home. In turn, these kitchen-home relationships become a metaphor for the disastrous results that the condition of slavery creates in society.
     The first kitchen described in the novel is that of Uncle Tom’s wife, Chloe, owned by the Shelby family. The Shelbys are a typical slave-owning Kentucky family, generally treating their slaves well, and Mrs. Shelby even shows an unusual sort of benevolence toward them, allowing them to marry and be slightly more autonomous in their domestic lives than would be allowed by most other mistresses. As a result, Chloe’s kitchen is a peaceful, happy place where all come to be nourished; even Young Master George Shelby visits for special treats, and it is here he teaches Uncle Tom to read and write. Chloe’s cooking is renowned in the area, and later in the novel permits her to travel to the city to become apprentice to a pastry chef, earning money to help buy her husband after he is sold down river and therefore showing the immense power and possibility in her kitchen skills. She further shows the power her kitchen has when she uses it to delay the departure of the slave trader Haley, who is after Eliza, by slowing down dinner preparations. Additionally, Chloe’s kitchen is a place of spirituality: it is there that the slaves hold their church services, and Tom speaks his uncommonly powerful sermons. By its appearance Chloe’s is an example of the perfect kitchen where characters are nourished physically and spiritually, and whose movement affects the state of the rest of the house; and indeed, the slaves in the Shelby household are well-organized and generally content – most of the time.
     In almost direct opposition to the ideal order and regularity of Chloe’s kitchen is the disorganized mess of Dinah’s, in the St. Clare household. St. Clare himself once compares it to “chaos and old night” (184), evoking an image of the underworld inhabited by Satan and his minions from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Nothing in Dinah’s kitchen has a proper place, everything is sort of jumbled up together and dirty dishes and messy counters abound. But Dinah does have a special aspect to her kitchen that closely mirrors a larger form of social order: she maintains a hierarchy with her underlings and helpers, delegating duties and maintaining her position as a sort of supreme power, and using a pudding-stick to punish those who step out of line. Stowe says:

Dinah ruled over the woolly heads of the younger members it a rod of iron, and seemed to consider them born for no earthly purpose but to “save her steps,” as she phrased it. It was the spirit of the system under which she had grown up, and she carried it out to its full extent (180).

     Here the author is drawing an obvious connection between the modus operandi of Dinah’s kitchen and the larger institution of slavery, insinuating that because the old cook grew up in this hierarchy enforced by violence, it is the only way she knows how to live and is therefore inclined to replicate the system in her kitchen. Buried within this is an admonition to whites that if perpetuated, the system of slavery will continue to teach slaves to carry on a tradition of arbitrary hierarchy and violence. And the worst of it is that Dinah does not even realize that she is mimicking the ideals of the institution that has held her in oppression; on the contrary, she sees her world (namely, her kitchen) as a separate sphere from world of whites, which is evident in her rebuke of Miss Ophelia when the woman comes to put her kitchen in order: “What does ladies know ‘bout work, I want to know?” (182), and later, “I don’t want ladies around, a henderin’, and getting my things all where I can’t find ‘em” (183). Of course, she is dumbfounded when Miss Ophelia actually starts cleaning up the kitchen, but instead of coming to the conclusion that white ladies are capable of working, she decides that Miss Ophelia simply must not be a lady. This is direct evidence that the ideals of slavery are so deeply ingrained in Dinah and her kitchen that they are affecting the life of the home, and indeed, the St. Clare household is almost a replica of that kitchen: the slaves are undisciplined and disrespectful to their master, who refuses to admonish them in any way and even expresses his disdain for slavery in general, yet is too lackadaisical to free his own slaves. On the other hand, the mistress of the house is a heartless tyrant who cruelly uses her personal servants, and she and her husband are constantly at odds over the issue of the slaves’ treatment. Like the haphazard placement of the elements of Dinah’s kitchen, the slaves themselves have no true idea of their place within the household – and indeed, this also speaks to slaves in general, who through constant circulation and separation by sale have been robbed of any true place in society.
     Now, considering the chaotic state of Dinah’s kitchen in comparison to Chloe’s idyllic one, it might be assumed that the quality of food made there would be much inferior to that of the Kentucky slave’s, but not so; her dinners are of the highest quality, “with which an epicure could find no fault” (180). From the appearance of things, one could not know about what goes on below in the kitchen; this seems to suggest to the reader that appearances are not everything, and calls back into question the real nature of Chloe’s kitchen in the first example. Upon closer inspection, we may find that even there, some things are not as they should be; for example, the fact that although Mr. Shelby professes great esteem for his slaves – and mostly for Uncle Tom – he is not above selling them to a cruel slave trader in order to pay off his debts. In effect, Mr. Shelby undermines all of Mrs. Shelby’s attempts to encourage her slaves toward more domestic lives (encouraging them to marry, etc.) when he insists treating them as mere property, even after they have been treated almost as members of the family – showing that despite his esteeming comments, he still only thinks of his slaves as chattel, and his to be sold. Additionally, the relationship of Young Master George with Chloe and her kitchen deserves reexamination; for although he visits there often, each time he does he is allowed to dominate the place. Even though he is only a boy of thirteen, he speaks to Chloe and Tom with great authority and orders them around as if they were foolish children. Also, Chloe fixes special dishes for him and feeds him before she feeds her own family, which upsets the idea of a mother’s primary obligation toward her children and husband. Furthermore, let us not forget that despite the harmonious appearance of Chloe’s kitchen and the Shelby household, Uncle Tom still gets sold down river – the worst possible thing that could happen to a slave – and Mr. and even Mrs. Shelby neglect to help in any real way, resulting in Tom’s tragic death. The fact that a slave from such an “ideal” vision of a slaveholding household could come to such a terrible end reinforces the idea that there is something wrong – some element that works as a caustic agent to ultimately cause destruction in even the most harmonious system – and that something is slavery itself. After all, the common ingredient between Dinah’s and Chloe’s kitchens is that they both harbor the institution of slavery – albeit in somewhat different manifestations – and that is what ultimately keeps them from being able to act as the true centers where the family is held together in their respective households. As a result, families in both places are disrupted; Eliza runs away, Tom is separated from his wife and children forever, the St. Clare household is broken up and sold upon the master’s death, and it is only after certain characters escape from the institution of slavery that they are miraculously reunited in the end.
     In light of these realizations about the true natures of Chloe’s and Dinah’s kitchens, we may now fittingly seek an example of the truly ideal kitchen in the one household in the novel where slavery is not an institution: that of Rachel Halliday, in the Quaker settlement that harbors Eliza after her flight from the Shelby plantation. Rachel presides over her kitchen with a quiet but firm hand; everything runs smoothly in accordance with her gentle orders, issued from the rocking chair where “for twenty years or more, nothing but loving words and gentle moralities, and motherly loving kindness, had come” (117). The motherly element of this description is perhaps its most revealing aspect, as motherhood was for Stowe the epitome of domesticity; indeed, in Stowe’s prose Rachel is personified as the ideal mother-figure, possessing “just the face and form that made “mother” seem the most natural word in the world” (117). Additionally, as a Quaker family, religion and spirituality are an important part of the Halliday home – and in fact, the Quakers are known for their teachings of compassion and brotherly love as well as their tendency toward close-knit, family-centered communities, and in Stowe’s time were well-known supporters of the abolitionist movement. But the most important detail of the Halliday household is that slavery and its ideals have no place there; on the contrary, instead of the enslaved black woman cooking for the privileged white one out of obligation, in Rachel’s kitchen it is the other way around: Rachel herself prepares the meals that nourish and sustain the poor, tormented runaway slave, and not out of requirement but out of true compassion and love, the way Stowe believed it should be done. And sustenance from Rachel’s kitchen gives Eliza the strength she needs to begin her journey into freedom.
     Finding meaning in Stowe’s use of kitchen imagery is not too difficult a task; her comparison of Chloe’s and Dinah’s kitchens shows the almost polar variations that can occur in slaveholding households, but the ultimate destruction that takes place in both homes proves that no matter how things may at first appear, tragedy will always be the result when slavery is at the core. The only way that true harmony can be achieved is through a system that is not based on slavery, as seen in the example of Rachel Halliday’s Quaker kitchen, where the scenarios of the other households are reversed, and the result is a hopeful end for the sufferer through the kindness of a fellow human being. Now it is up to us as readers to conduct our own kitchens with the same values of motherly nurturing, compassion for one’s fellow man, and most importantly, love.