Preacher’s daughter a writing teacher> Fritz portrayal brings famous woman to life

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE AND THE BEECHER PREACHERS, by Jean Fritz, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, N.Y., 1994. $15.95, 144 pages.

When Jean Fritz spoke at OZ Books in Southwest Harbor some years ago she was writing “Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Beecher Preachers,” so she went to the old “Bowdoin” house in Brunswick where Harriet Beecher Stowe lived.

“I just sat there until I got some sense of what Harriet was like,” the author told an attentive audience. That feeling for her subject and her impeccable research have made Jean Fritz the premier author of historical biographies for young people today.

After 30 books, however, “Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Beecher Preachers” was the author’s first biography about a woman.

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“Harriet Beecher had always understood that, along with her sisters, she was second best in her family,” she said.

The daughter of the most famous preacher in America, Lyman Beecher, Harriet Beecher knew that, as a woman, she couldn’t preach in the 1820s, but she could teach. She started teaching at age 16, at the Hartford Female Seminary for Girls (which her domineering older sister, Catherine, started), and at 21 was teaching in Cincinnati when her family moved West. Working all the time, she doubted there would ever be time left for herself (sound familiar?). Writing began for fun when she was determined to be more social and became a member of the Semi Colon Club.

Living at the edge of a Southern slave state, Harriet was well aware of the evils of slavery. Her own Aunt Mary had run away from her husband because he owned slaves.

Even after her marriage to Calvin Stowe, and five children, she vowed not to be “a mere domestic.” She wrote three hours daily. It was 1852 when the idea for “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” came to Harriet Beecher Stowe in church. She was 41 years old when she scribbled the story out. Her husband said after reading it: “The Lord intends her to write this story.”

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is often noted as one of the 10 most influential books ever written and referred to as the first protest novel. Still, when Harriet Beecher Stowe went to Europe in 1853, her brother had to make speeches for her. It was considered unseemly for ladies to speak in public.

Back home, the power of the pen clearly transferred the author from an “intermediary” to an abolitionist. “If only I were a man!” she would declare. As a Beecher woman, writing was her only acceptable way of preaching.

Considering how difficult travel was, it was amazing that Harriet Beecher Stowe went to Washington to meet Abraham Lincoln to ensure that he was as committed to emancipation as she was.

“So this is the little lady who made this big war,” the president responded at their meeting.

Jean Fritz’s pen makes readers “put themselves in another person’s shoes.” As middle to junior high school students read about Harriet Beecher Stowe’s life they will, it is hopes, look for the powerful women influencing politics today.