Eliza (character)
Eliza is a character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. A slave (personal maid to Mrs. Shelby), she escapes to the North with her five-year old son Harry after he is sold to Mr. Haley. Her husband, George, eventually finds Eliza and Harry in Ohio, and emigrates with them to Canada, France, and Liberia.
Eliza is also a main character from Neal Stephenson's novels Quicksilver and The Confusion. Her last name is not revealed in a mysterious manner that suggests it may have some significance.
Eliza is a native of Qwghlm who as a young girl is abducted into slavery by Barbary pirates. Years later she is sold off to the Grand Turk to be a part of his harem. She is kept in a virginal state, so that the Grand Turk might have a virgin slave girl with whom to celebrate the fall of Vienna. When the Turkish armies fail to take Vienna, the harem virgins are ordered put to death, but at the last moment Eliza is rescued by Jack Shaftoe, with whom she has many adventures across Europe.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Eliza's shrewdness and financial acumen combine with her sexual attractiveness to earn her entry into the highest ranks of European society. She is made an unwilling spy for Louis XIV, who makes her a Countess, and a much more willing spy for William of Orange, who promises to make her a Duchess. Meanwhile she connives with Gottfried Leibniz to undermine the French war against the German states, and with Bob Shaftoe, the brother of Jack.
All the while, Eliza seeks to find the identity of the man who is responsible for her enslavement. This, the reader learns early on, is the Duc d'Arcachon. Eliza discovers this much later, only after she has become embedded in the d'Arcachon household.
