She’s been cast off by Legree, who intends to replace her with fifteen-year-old Emmeline, yet she still maintains a strange fascination and power over her master. As a 'quadroon,' or someone who is one-quarter black, she’s already in a strange in-between position in the racially charged South. Legree can force her to work in the fields, but she has a lady’s convent education. She’s hardened to her suffering, yet she takes innocent Emmeline under her wing. She’s a slave, but she has pride and noble bearing. Even so, we learn about Cassy’s suffering in flashbacks – it doesn’t happen 'onstage.' Cassy is a contradictory and fascinating character. Stowe makes something of an exception in her otherwise sentimentally whitewashed novel by describing Cassy’s past as, first, a common law wife, and then as a sexual slave. It wasn’t a secret by any means, but it wasn’t usually talked about. In 1852, this was still a relatively unusual subject. Nearly ten years after Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published, former slave Harriet Jacobs wrote her autobiography, exposing the scope of sexual abuse of black women by white slave owners. The reader breathes a sigh of relief for Emmeline – and a sigh of pain for her real-life counterparts, who usually weren’t so lucky.Cassy, Legree’s literal sex slave, is a minor but important character who gives Stowe an opportunity to suggest, with a few broad strokes, the extent of the sexual mistreatment to which female slaves are subjected. Though she is timid, Emmeline bonds quickly with Cassy and they escape from Legree together.

After this, Stowe doesn’t even need to show us a rape scene – we get it. One of the most disturbing scenes in the novel is Legree’s treatment of Emmeline at the slave warehouse – he walks right up to her, looks at her teeth, and gropes her body in a sickening, dehumanizing way. Nevertheless, it becomes obvious to the horrified reader that many girls like Emmeline are raped by white slave owners on a regular basis. Stowe leaves matters ambiguous as to whether Legree ever does rape Emmeline, although she implies that a combination of Cassy’s protective influence and Legree’s superstitious fears keep him away from the girl until she escapes.

Separated from her mom at the auction block, Emmeline is bought by Simon Legree, who intends to keep her as his sex slave, a younger replacement for Cassy. Emmeline, a beautiful fifteen-year-old slave girl, has been raised in an upper-class household by a Christian mother.

Mrs bird in uncle toms cabin