When we first meet Topsy in the pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the enslaved young girl grins, "goblin-like," and repeatedly professes her wickedness. She embodies blackness to her young mistress Eva's whiteness; she plays devil to Eva's saint, base earth to Eva's ethereal spirit. She comes into the St. Clare family as a civilizing project, a heathen to be educated, tamed, Christianized.
