To know whether or not Harriet Beecher Stowe's book, Uncle Tom's Cabin is an example of feminist rhetoric, we simply need to define what that we understand by the term feminist. This is difficult to do when you consider that this book was written over one hundred and forty years ago and that feminism has gone through many different stages since that time. To do this properly, one must first define feminism in the historical context of the 1850s, when Uncle Tom's Cabin was published, instead of defining feminism today. Feminism was not commonly known or associated with women's rights in the 1850s. At the time Stowe published this anti-slavery book, it was a major issue. From the freedom of slaves to the women's rights movement. The movement was led by women known as Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Stanton. Women's right to vote was first proposed in the United States in 1848 at the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, just two years before the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. . The women's rights movement of this era advocated for a declaration of sentiments for the Declaration of Independence to adopt a resolution on women's suffrage as well as more liberal divorce laws, less restrictive clothing, coeducation and the right of married women to control their property. Seventy years passed before the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution granted women the right to vote. The women's rights movement was taking place around the time Stowe was writing Uncle Tom's Cabin. One of the major issues throughout the novel was motherhood and the importance of maternal duties. At the end of the novel, Stowe empowers women, in the role of mothers, middle of paper......hange. For Uncle Tom's Cabin to be considered not only as an abolitionist novel but also as a feminist novel, it would have to question the exclusively domestic or private role of women. Stowe fails to do so. Although she addresses and discusses many women's issues, she fails to adopt a feminist perspective because of this failure. She does not allow her female characters to situate themselves in society outside of their private domain. Stowe does give women in the private sector indirect influence over society through their roles as wives and mothers, but does not allow this power to be expressed alone in the public sphere. For this reason and because of the emphasis that the women's rights movement of Stowe's era placed on the inclusion of women in the public sphere, Uncle Tom's Cabin, while certainly abolitionist, was not cannot be considered a feminist novel..