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Tessa Stein Professor Calabro ENG 2012 28 March 2021 Women of Hope Leslie The novel, Hope Leslie: or, Early Times in the Massachusetts, by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, recounts a dramatic conflict between colonists, Native Americans and the British Empire. The novel is unusually progressive for the time it was published, in 1827. It offers strong feminist overtones and ideas of equity and fairness toward Native Americans, both of which were rare for the time. Sedgwick became one of the most notable female novelists of her time because of her experimental Romanticism. In Hope Leslie, Sedgwick offers socio-political commentary on women's roles in the private and public spheres by challenging the restrictive codes of Puritan domesticity and providing a new model of social order. She does this by presenting a unique portrayal of her characters despite the customs of the time. The novel Hope Leslie depicts the role of Puritan women in the seventeenth century. Hope, the main character, begins her journey on the western Massachusetts frontier. The frontier’s lack of domestic spaces allows Hope to act on her natural impulses, but she then goes to the Winthrops' civilized Boston "government-mansion," where she is forced to act according to the artificial “codes of domesticity” (Hankins, 2014). At the time that Sedgwick wrote Hope Leslie, women were entering the public realm but at the same time, were being encouraged to marry and submit their identities to those of their husbands. We see this in the novel when Governor Winthrop and Mr. Fletcher have a conversation about Hope needing to be quickly settled with a suitable husband. Garvey notes that once married, women could not sign contracts

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or control their own earnings or property. Women had to comply with these confining cultural demands and be both passive and dependent (Garvey, 1994). As a part of the Puritan belief system, individual desires must be sacrificed for the greater good. Lubovich explains that for Mrs. Fletcher, marriage signals a lack of choice and individuality; the decision to marry is not mutual, but based on parental authority, the importance of family ties, economics, and class (Lubovich, 2008). The idea of matrimonial duty is demonstrated in the novel when Winthrop explains that “passiveness … next to godliness, is a woman’s best virtue” (160) in the Puritan tradition. A woman’s obedience to her husband was a religious obligation. Madam Winthrop is described as being admirable and respectable because “she recognized, and continually taught to matron and maiden, the duty of unqualified obedience from the wife to the husband” (150). The role of these women was to fulfill their marital obligation. Female characters that aren't wives are shown obeying male characters and standing at the mercy of patriarchal authority as well. When Sir Phillip is with Rosa, arranging for the abduction of Hope, Rosa “mechanically obeyed” him (334). The novel presents domesticity as a restrictive value that interferes with the natural impulses of all women. At several different instances in the novel, we see the restrictions placed on women in the private sphere as well as the resulting fear of backlash they face in the public sphere. Garvey argues that the competing demands that social prescription and conscience place on Sedgwick's heroines reflect a conflict between external expectations and internal impulses that mirrors contradictions inherent in the polarization of society into private and public realms (Garvey, 1994). Sedgwick reflects the society of violence and repercussion for women at the time in her book. Garvey explains that for a woman to insinuate her authority beyond the range of passive, domestic influence by projecting a voice onto the public stage was still a politically radical act

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(Garvey, 1994). Garvey also points out that when women respond to the demands of their consciences, like Hope and Magawisca do, they risk becoming victims themselves. After standing up for themselves, Hope is placed under overlordship and Magawisca is imprisoned and physically maimed. Each time Hope or Magawisca violates the boundaries of her place as a Puritan or Indian maiden, she risks punishment. Garvey argues though that this is not because of the harm her actions create, rather it is because she crosses the line into traditionally male realms of power (Garvey, 1994). When Hope rescues Nelema, Magistrate Pynchon is more worried about the threat to social norms that this “lawless girl” poses and less concerned about the loss of a prisoner. Lubovich explains that Pynchon believes Hope needs a “stricter control” (Lubovich, 2008). The reactions of men against female action implies a fear of reprisal that underscores the vulnerability of all women who presume to intervene in public affairs (Garvey, 2014). He also argues that men become the vehicle for extending female authority throughout public institutions making women's intervention in the public realm unnecessary. In the novel, Madam Winthrop says, “the only divine right to govern … was that vested in the husband over the wife” (151). Women lose their voice in the public sphere because of their fear of consequence. We see this mentality in characters like Esther who, at least initially, strictly speaks in line with her Puritan upbringing. She says to Hope, “you do allow yourself too much liberty of thought and word: you certainly know that we owe implicit deference to our elders and superiors;—we ought to be guided by their advice, and governed by their authority” (188). Lubovich remarks that Esther is all that an early American woman should be. He says, “she embodies a reasoned and respectable version of femininity” (Lubovich, 2008). Hope is constantly being corrected for her transgressions of traditional, socially sanctioned femininity, because as Lubovich says, “unlike Esther, Hope disobeys all the rules and codes of true womanhood (Lubovich, 2008). Sedgwick

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also represents the consequences of domesticity through the downfall of different female characters. Rosa blows up Chaddock’s ship, killing herself and Sir Phillip. Before throwing her lamp into the barrel of gunpowder, she says, “it cannot be worse for any of us” (342). Rosa resents her situation and makes that decision accordingly. Hankins argues that Jennet and Mrs. Fletcher both die as a result of of their relationship to the domestic: the silently submissive Mrs. Fletcher is killed in an Indian attack after refusing to remove her family to the fort until her husband returns home, and the aggressively tyrannical Jennet is killed in the same explosion after trying to derail Everell and Hope's plan to free Magawisca (Hankins, 2014). Hankins says, “Hope Leslie is an example of women's fiction that is hyper-aware of domesticity's potential collusion with patriarchal conquest” (Hankins, 2014). The triumphs and punishments of Sedgwick's female character serve as commentary on the restriction on female action. Sedgwick further emphasizes this negative temperament towards women through her portrayal of male characters. Garvey explains that Sedgwick distinguishes the impulses that motivate action in men from those that motivate action in women (Garvey, 1994). Governor Winthrop and Chief Mononotto both make potentially disastrous errors in judgment in the novel. Sir Phillip is portrayed as “rakish”: being of immoral conduct and womanising. He says “ladies must have lovers, idols must have worshippers, or they are no longer idols” (211). He believes that without a man, a woman is useless. Lubovich confirms this idea and says that at the time, being a wife validated one's experience and usefulness (Lubovich, 2008). Sir Phillip also conveys his regard toward women when he says “there is a potent alchemy at work for us in the hearts of you women, that turns hate to love” (338). He is convinced that even if Hope initially hates him for having her kidnapped, he will eventually win her heart. He thinks he can always get what he wants from women. He also assumes Rosa’s submission in the same scene of the

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book: “trusting that when the time came she would of necessity submit to his authority” (339). Sir Philip continually sees things in terms of how they can benefit him and advance his own desires. Another male character, Mrs. Fletcher’s servant says, “a woman’s fears were always ahead of danger” (60) which dismisses women in another way. The way in which Sedgwick writes about the male character in the novel affirms the oppressive disposition toward women that men maintained at this time in history. Sedgwick challenges the cultural confines of domesticity throughout the novel. Hankins argues that “Hope Leslie's cyclical concept of history poses a direct challenge to Romantic historiography's reliance on the essentializing rhetoric of domesticity” (Hankins, 2014). Lubovich explains that Sedgwick “creates women characters who trouble gender, who are difficult to define, and who challenge the status quo by embodying a radical sense of individuality” (Lubovich, 2008). At different points in the novel Hope and Magawisca disregard these social conventions. Her female characters transgress the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Sedgwick makes Hope Leslie and Magawisca instruments of social progress. Hope refuses to subordinate herself to men or to stay behind the scenes. Hope voices her opinion in public, even when she knows it will not be well received. Hankins says, Hope’s liberal impulses make her a nearly irresistible force of reformative discipline” (Hankins, 2014). Hope addresses the town magistrate when Nelema is accused of using witchcraft and eventually sets her free. She risks her own punishment by circumventing male authority and independently bringing the demands of her conscience into reality. Garvey argues that by portraying her women characters as civicminded individuals who are unjustly persecuted as witches and spies, she revises the history of Puritan New England (Garvey, 1994). Sedgwick replaces the disenfranchised white woman of domestic fiction with the forsaken Indian woman of Romantic historiography as the figure who

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must remain the unassimilated source of the natural values that the United States claims for itself (Hankins, 2014). Magawisca refuses to stay in the white settlement despite Hope's promise that the settlers will soon grow past their prejudices. She does this as resistance toward Hope's efforts to domesticate her. Hankins says, “Magawisca reveals the artifice behind Hope's benevolent democracy and disrupts the process of domestication that threatens to assimilate her” (Hankins, 2014). This is another example of breaking away from the oppressive system. At the end of the novel, Esther forgoes marriage and symbolically sacrifices private intimacy. Garvey argues that in neither Hope nor Esther's case does Sedgwick's expansion of women's moral authority break down the boundary between the "extended sphere" of the public realm and the "limited routine" of the private realm. He says, the woman who hopes to affect morals in an "extended sphere" must either accept the community into her household--as Hope does--or she must sacrifice domestic pleasures and have her moral influence co-opted by the public realm--as Esther does (Garvey, 1994). At the very end of the novel, the narrator concludes that many women would be happier if they could learn, like Esther, that “marriage is not essential to the contentment, the dignity, or the happiness of woman” (370). Lubovich’s interpretation of this ending is to say that despite the absence of husbands, women can still be content, dignified, and, most of all, happy (Lubovich, 2008). This ending to the novel suggests that there is hope for women trying to escape these overbearing relationships. Through the novel, Hope Leslie, Sedgwick identifies and challenges the limits on women's independence in the public and private spheres. She suggests ways that women’s roles must continue to evolve in order for women to contribute fully to their society. Sedgwick asserts that the female conscience is as valid a source of social authority as is the legal power held by men. She shows that even women who adhered to the submissive roles expected of them, like

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Madam Winthrop, Martha Fletcher, and Esther Downing, they can still have a positive influence on those around them. Lubovich argues that Sedgwick offers an important critique of marriage, both through Hope's marriage and through granting a renewed sense of individualism to Esther Downing (Lubovich, 2008). In Hope, Sedgwick provides the model for a new, woman-centered, social order. Hope marries Everell but does not then recede into domestic oblivion. Instead, she incorporates most of the community into her family. Lubovich argues that Sedgwick rewrites marriage by having Hope marry her brother figure rather than a traditional man or a dominating master. This marriage allows for equality, individuality, and usefulness--both to the couple's family and to their community because one's brother does not possess the same kind of legal ownership over his sister that a husband does over his wife (Lubovich, 2008). Sedgwick calls for an expansion of a woman's sphere beyond domestic settings and argues that a woman's intervention in political affairs becomes not only legitimate, but necessary.

Works Cited Gregory Garvey, T. (1994). Risking reprisal: Catharine Sedgwick's Hope Leslie and the legitimation of public action by women. Atq, 8(4), 287. Retrieved from https://login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login? url=http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login.aspx? direct=true&db=ahl&AN=9502011627&site=eds-live&scope=site Hankins, L. V. (2014). The voice of nature: Hope leslie and early american romanticism. Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, 31(2), 160. Retrieved from https://login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login?

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url=http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login.aspx? direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsglr.A393795593&site=eds-live&scope=site Lubovich, M. (2008). 'Married or single?': Catharine maria sedgwick on old maids, wives, and marriage. Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, 25(1), 23. Retrieved from https://login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login? url=http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login.aspx? direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsglr.A180364381&site=eds-live&scope=site...