Approaches,
Attitudes, and Angles
1. Sedgwick's treatment of Native Americans
A. Different from that of her contemporaries
B. Legend of Pocahontas
C. Tradition of sympathy for Native American culture
1. Began with the period of Spanish arrival
2. Literature of the early Puritan colonies
D. Conflicting attitudes toward the primitive
1. As dangerous savage and as nature's noble soul
2. The capture of Faith Leslie (and her eventual marriage to Oneco)
A. Compare to Mary Rowlandson's "Narrative”
B. According to legend, one of Sedgwick's female ancestors experienced a similar abduction
2. Sedgwick's complex attitude toward the early Puritan colonies
A. Patriotism
B. Objections to Puritan oppressiveness
3. Sedgwick’s unusual position as an important woman writer
A. Her sympathy for those without power in society
B. The "ventriloquization" of Native American culture by Sedgwick to express questions about women's culture
1. Sedgwick's picture of solidarity between women (Hope and Magawisca)
2. Sedgwick's sympathy for Indians being destroyed by the English settlers
A. The Indian massacre repeats an English one
B. Compelling speech of Mononotto
C. Discussion of the marriage of Faith Leslie to an Indian.
3. Political significance of Hope and Magawisca's defiance of the Puritan magistrates
A. Both Indians and women are excluded from the political system.
B. Political and personal need for liberty and independence
C. Magawisca's defiance of the English vs. Pocahontas's marriage to an Englishman
D.
Natural law vs. patriarchal law that (Magawisca's vs.
E. The family as the primary unit in politics
1. Each family represented by its male adult members
2. Interests of wives and children (who have no public voice in political decisions) are represented by the men
4. "To my dying mother thou didst promise kindness to her children. In her name I demand of thee death or liberty" reflects 19th century "cult of the mother"
1. Sedgwick’s contribution to the creation of a national literature
A. Extensive descriptions of nature
B. Subject matter of the novel
C. Hope Leslie more developed than earlier American women's novels
1. Heroine w/o parental support creates her own success before marriage
3. No "seduced and abandoned" plot as found in The Coquette
4. No excessive sentiment
5. Heroine defies female norms conventional both in life and literature
6. The power of public oratory within a novelistic context
7. Has more "public" scenes than expected in a "woman's" novel
1. Hope Leslie acceptable reading for young women of the early 19th century
2. Blend of historical fact and adventure p
3. Popular - fit into a tradition established by Sir Walter Scott
1. The Last of the Mohicans, published one year earlier
a. Sedgwick refers to Cooper's novel in the text
b. She countenances marriage between an Indian and a white woman
c. Sympathy for motives of the Indian attack on the white settlers
d. Women not just the means of alliance between men
e. Women at the center of her novel, rather than on the margins.