ABSTRACT
Mid-century white women writers participated in nation building by writing novels of social reform that advocated assimilation rather than racial exclusion of their colored brothers and sisters. By the end of the novel, the influence of the angelic white little Eva and Aunt Ophelia cured Topsy of all her recalcitrance and she later becomes a virtuous young woman, making Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel the urtext of American social reform novel. Although she participates in her society’s anxieties surrounding the parentless orphans, Stowe further complicated the perception of the female child for 19th-century readers by bringing race into her portrayal. The Reconstruction era was especially notable for the sudden increase in the number of orphans. Orphans of all races increased as a result of diseases, ravages of war, and displacement. The increase in the number of orphans facilitated their easy manipulation by society.
