Adaptation Displacement: Historians estimate that the vast majority of audiences in the 19th century knew Uncle Tom's Cabin from the plethora of minstrel show adaptations rather than the original book. This ended up being a major factor in the novel's association with anti-Black racism, to the point where "Uncle Tom" became shorthand for a Black person who compromises the interests of Black liberation by cozying up to white society. It also motivated more critical reevaluations of the book in the 20th and 21st centuries, which noted how even though its portrayal of Black people was altruistic in motivation, it's still steeped in white supremacist tropes and did just as much as the plays to popularize various anti-Black stereotypes.
Anvilicious: Slavery is wrong, and the book ensures the readers will not forget that. Its not-so-subtle message caused an uproar in the South, with many states banning the book altogether or rewriting the story to no longer have this message.
Common Knowledge: As stated above, a shocking amount of people think this book is a pro-slavery racismfest. Admittedly, the Black characters are caricatured in a manner that was common in depictions of Afro-Americans at the time, but the book unapologetically opposes slavery nonetheless. Many Southern stage adaptations, however, were exactly this.
Complete Monster: Simon Legree is a chilling reminder of the evils of slavery in human form. Legree is brutal to his slaves, working them to death because he considers it a financial boon to himself. It's also made clear he'd do it solely for fun. Legree endeavors to break their spirits and make them despair as he breaks their bodies and minds. Legree is a torturer, rapist and murderer whose only frustration is the good-hearted slave Tom will simply refuse to break, spurring Legree on to greater cruelties to force his submission.
Fair for Its Day: The black characters are caricatured, but they're at least treated as human beings, and the whole point of it was to condemn slavery. When released, the novel outraged Southerners, and an entire genre was created in response. Over the years, supporters of slavery created In Name Only adaptions of the novel that used the worst of the blackface caricatures. It was these characterizations that stuck in the public's consciousness and gave rise to the term "Uncle Tom". The Uncle Tom character featured in the novel is anything but the stereotype: he's killed for adamantly defying his cruel owner in order to ensure freedom for some fellow slaves.
Yes, there's one of these in the whole drama. More exactly, the extremely sly and tricky antics that the Shelby slaves use to delay the slave trader who purchased Harry and Tom so they can help Eliza run away with little Harry.
Ophelia's argument with the cook, Dinah, pitting her stereotypical New England sense of order and systems against Dinah's (also stereotypical) slapdash methods.
Harsher in Hindsight: In the afterstory, George, Eliza, and Harry migrate to the newly formed Republic of Liberia. Stowe couldn't know it at the time she wrote the book, but this decision likely worsened the future prospects of their descendants drastically. Nowadays, while Canada is one of the richest states in the world, Liberia is one of the poorest.
It Was His Sled: Little Eva dies. People who know barely anything else about the plot will know this, whether from the "Small House of Uncle Thomas" play in The King and I, from Shirley Temple's Show Within a Show death scene in Dimples, or from somewhere else in pop culture.
Memetic Loser: Poor Uncle Tom was a victim of this. Decades of Anti-Tom literature and Minstrel Shows transformed the once wise and self-sacrificing man into a simpering suck-up slavishly devoted to his white masters from which the term "Uncle Tom" and thus the Uncle Tomfoolery trope is named after.
Memetic Mutation: A common idiom that came from the novel: as noted in Wikipedia, the minor character Topsy "professes ignorance of both God and a mother, saying 'I s'pect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me.'" The phrase "grew like Topsy" is still sometimes used as a synonym for rapid or unplanned growth.
Overshadowed by Controversy: Not many people would claim to have read the novel. It is widely known though that there was intense controversy of its publishing, particularly in years leading up to the The American Civil War.
Tear Jerker: The whole book due to it taking place during the pre-American Civil War timeline.
Values Dissonance: Aside from the obvious racial issues, there is one point where we're recounted the story of a pair of boys stoning a kitten to death, their mother gets uncharacteristically upset, but they never stone a kitten to death again, so lesson learned. It's treated as a case of "boys will be boys", quite at odds with today where a woman putting a cat in a bin was treated with worldwide rage.
was created in response. Over the years, supporters of slavery created In Name Only adaptions of the novel that used the worst of the blackface caricatures. It was these characterizations that stuck in the public's consciousness and gave rise to the term "Uncle Tom". The Uncle Tom character featured in the novel is anything but the stereotype: he's killed for adamantly defying his cruel owner in order to ensure freedom for some fellow slaves.