Despite this positive reaction from readers, for decades literary critics dismissed the style found in Uncle Tom's Cabin and other sentimental novels because these books were written by women and so prominently featured "women's sloppy emotions."[49] One literary critic said that had the novel not been about slavery, "it would be just another sentimental novel,"[50] while another described the book as "primarily a derivative piece of hack work."[51] In The Literary History of the United States, George F. Whicher called Uncle Tom's Cabin "Sunday-school fiction", full of "broadly conceived melodrama, humor, and pathos."[52]
Trots den positiva responsen från läsare har litteraturkritiker i årtionden avvisat stilen i Onkel Toms stuga och andra sentimentala romaner eftersom de här böckerna var skrivna av kvinnor och så iögonfallande behandlade "kvinnors känslodrypande känslor".[31] En litteraturkritiker sade att om romanen inte handlat om slaveriet hade "det bara varit ännu en genom att säga att det var "söndagsskoleberättelser" och bestod av "breda uttänkta melodraman, humor och patos".[34]ParaCrawl Corpus ParaCrawl Corpus