Review of Diller's "Sentimental Types and Social Reform in Uncle Tom's Cabin"

Christopher Diller, in his article "Sentimental Types and Social Reform in Uncle Tom's Cabin," meanders from subject to subject without focusing long enough to make a substantial point. He begins his article discussing Stowe's religious opinions and how they tie into sentimentality in the novel The Minister's Wooing. He segues into the explanation of types, the different types that were prominent when Stowe was writing Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the way Stowe uses types in Uncle Tom's Cabin. When Diller finally reaches his thesis, pages later, he does not mention sentiment and barely touches on the idea of "social reform." Although Diller uses extravagant words and the article reads intelligently, the ideas he expresses and the thesis he extends do not collaborate. 

Diller's ideas do not match up in his article, "Sentimental Types and Social Reform in Uncle Tom's Cabin." His opening paragraph, instead of stating what he will address in his article, speaks of a novel Stowe wrote after Uncle Tom's Cabin. Five lines into his essay he quotes a long passage from The Minister's Wooing that can, with a stretch of logic, be tied back to Uncle Tom's Cabin. The stretched explanation would be that both books speak of religion and sentimentality and she gives a high amount of sentimentality to objects of death. Diller's opening statements are confusing and seem to be for another topic altogether.