The Gendered Narrator: The Voice of the God/Mother in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Dred

Stowes second slave novel, received in the shadow of Uncle Toms Cabin, has met with rather mixed reviews since its publication. The novel is narrated in a unique way, reflecting Stowes idea of womens role in society. I call this role, and this narrator, the Godmother. She is creative and nurturing, authoritative and motherly, didactic and intrusive. The Godmother emerges as she recreates herself in her heroines, narrates in the halting and disrupted rhythm of domestic life, and asks the reader to be an obedient child that will take the moral to heart. How readers respond to a text is based on expectations created by social issues, the genre, and the author. Dreds initial reception is evidence that its earliest readers were not entirely predisposed to accept the role of the obedient child.