Uncle Tom's Cabin Chapter 35 Summary

Summary

The chapter opens in the large, decaying sitting-room of Simon Legree’s house, described as damp, disorderly, and foul-smelling. Legree is making punch and brooding over a recent quarrel with his driver Sambo and with the enslaved woman Cassy, who returns to reproach him for his brutality. Cassy and Legree exchange bitter words: she professes a preference for the field over his household tyranny, and he vows to break any rebellious slave. Legree’s cruelty has roused Cassy’s resentment, especially because of Tom’s mistreatment, which has made her more defiant.

Sambo enters and nervously produces a folded paper he calls a witch thing; when Legree opens it a silver dollar and a long, shining curl of fair hair fall out. Legree reacts with unexpected terror, seizing and burning the curl, then smashing the coin through a window in agitation. The narrative then flashes back to explain why a curl of fair hair—connected with Legree’s long-dead, pious mother—strikes him with such horror: in earlier years his mother tried to reclaim him, and upon her death she sent him a lock of her hair and a forgiving letter that he burned, but the memory haunts him like a vision of judgment. Haunted by remorse he tries to drown it in drink and bluster.

Legree, unnerved, summons his drivers to the house to make noise and distract himself; their drunken revelry becomes a loud, obscene performance. Cassy, having ministered to Tom earlier, observes the riot and contemplates whether it would be a sin to rid the world of Legree, then slips upstairs to knock at Emmeline’s door. The chapter closes with the hymn-like chant of the enslaved singers rising through the empty halls, underscoring themes of conscience, terror, and the enduring power of memory and maternal love.

Key events

1. Legree broods in his decayed sitting-room and quarrels with Cassy.
2. Sambo brings a folded paper; it contains a silver dollar and a fair curl of hair.
3. Legree reacts with panic, burns the curl and smashes the dollar through a window.
4. Narrative flashback reveals Legree’s dead mother and the hair’s earlier significance.
5. Legree orders noisy entertainment by his drivers to banish his fears.
6. Cassy watches the drunken uproar and goes upstairs to Emmeline’s door.

Analysis

This chapter intensifies the novel’s psychological and moral conflict by exposing Legree’s inner torments and showing how symbols of love and faith can become instruments of conscience. The seemingly small token—the fair curl—functions as a charged symbol: it is at once a relic of maternal love and a trigger for Legree’s guilt and terror. The chapter uses a concentrated flashback to reconfigure Legree from a mere brute into a man with a wounded history and a conscience that persecutes him; this deepens the moral stakes and suggests that even the most hardened oppressor carries remnants of human vulnerability.

Cassy’s presence and her rage at Legree’s cruelty align her with a moral opposition centered on compassion for Tom, and her quiet decision to see Emmeline hints at solidarity among the enslaved women. The hymn that drifts through the house and the repeated refrain about mourning at the judgment-seat of Christ creates an atmosphere of impending moral reckoning and foreshadows that spiritual judgment will be significant to the story’s ethical arc. Narratively, Stowe contrasts vivid physical detail of decay and debauchery with interior scenes of memory and remorse, using sensory description and a supernatural or psychological shudder to imply that memory and love resist complete annihilation, even in a house devoted to cruelty.

Important quotes

““I’ll break every bone in his body, but he shall give up!””

Simon LegreeLegree threatens a rebellious slave, showing his violent resolve and temper before the later terror when the curl appears.

“There dropped out of it a silver dollar, and a long, shining curl of fair hair,—hair which, like a living thing, twined itself round Legree’s fingers.”

NarratorThe paper Sambo brings spills out the dollar and the curl; the hair immediately affects Legree with uncanny power, precipitating his panic.

“O there’ll be mourning, mourning, mourning, O there’ll be mourning, at the judgment-seat of Christ!”

Sung hymn (Narrator)A slave hymn echoes through the house, reinforcing themes of judgment, separation, and the moral consequences of cruelty.

Characters in Chapter 35

• Simon Legree
• Cassy
• Sambo
• Emmeline
• Quimbo
• Uncle Tom