Incompatibility

Eva St. Clare is the idealized character to represent the incompatibility of slavery and Christianity. She is a completely moral being, devout Christian and laments the existence of slavery. Although her family owns slaves she does the best she can to make the slaves feel that they are valuable human beings and are loved. Eva sprouts a friendship with Tom and asks that her father buy him in order to look out for him. Eva’s father is not a Christian, and although he is a fairly decent master as far as slavery goes he is not the moral being that she is. Eva assists Tom in writing letters because he is illiterate; this is an example of Eva’s moralistic value. By helping Tom have a voice she is using her voice/love as an agent for change. Although Eva is surrounded by racist individuals (ie. St. Clare, Marie and Ophelia) her purity and anti-slavery stance eventually trickle down and seep I to their own beliefs. Although it takes Eva’s eventual death for racist Ophelia’s transformation, her death is what initially sparks her father’s realization that slavery is wrong as well. On her death bed she requests her father release all of their slaves and by the time he comes to understand that this is the right thing to do, it is too late and her father passes away as well. However, even though her father may have been too late to have the slaves released he did manage to find religion. Eva’s character is used to display that true, pure, devout Christians and slavery do not mix. It is either you are a Christian or you do not believe in religion but you do believe in owning and selling slaves. Stow uses Eva to be at the farthest end of the spectrum away form slavery.