Inventing Americas: 1800–1865 103Linwoods; or “Sixty Years Since” in America (1835), which portrays the life of New York
City during the Revolution, and Married or Single? (1857), a contrast between differ-
ent types of women aimed at showing the valuable activities in which unmarried
women might engage. The main figures in these novels tend to be women, and often
women of independence and courage. There is, for instance, a character called Aunt
Debby in Redwood who is described as “a natural protector of the weak and oppressed.”
Similarly, the heroines of both Redwood and A New England Tale are female orphans
who have to make their way in the world. Jane Elton, in A New England Tale, suffers a
difficult adolescence of restrictions imposed by poverty and Calvinist orthodoxy,
before finally achieving the emotional maturity required for the responsibilities of
marriage and a family. Ellen Bruce, in Redwood, also meets her destiny in marriage.
But, in this novel, marriage is part of a larger narrative vision which sees the influence
of women as a whole producing an age of virtue, family harmony, and love.
Hope Leslie, too, focuses on the destiny of women, but in even more interesting
ways than Sedgwick’s other novels. There is a white heroine, whose name gives the
book its title. There is also a Pequot woman, Magawisca, who saves a white man,
Everell Fletcher, from execution at the hands of her father, the chief, in the manner
of Pocahontas. Her act involves considerable physical, as well as emotional, courage,
since she offers her body to the weapon aimed at Everell’s neck and, as a result, loses
her arm. “All paid involuntary homage to the heroic girl, as if she were a superior
being,” the reader is told. Hope Leslie herself shows similar heroism when, on not
one but two occasions, she frees Indian women from what she considers unjust
imprisonment. And Magawisca resumes her status as an evidently “superior being”
toward the end of the narrative, when she is captured by the whites. At her trial for
“brewing conspiracy ... among the Indian tribes,” she is defended by the historical
figure of John Eliot, whom Sedgwick identifies as the “first Protestant missionary to
the Indians.” Magawisca, however, insists that she needs no defense, since the tribu-
nal has no authority over her. “I am your prisoner, and ye may slay me,” she declares,
“but I deny your right to judge me. My people have never passed under the yoke; not
one of my race has ever acknowledged your authority.” Clearly, their heroism makes
Magawisca and Hope Leslie doubles. Their primary allegiance is to conscience, what
Magawisca calls “the Great Spirit” that “hath written his laws on the hearts of his
original children.” Obeying those laws, they defy those set in power in their respec-
tive societies, who are determinately male: Magawisca defies her father, of course,
and both she and her white double Hope defy the authority of the Puritan fathers.
What is equally notable about this rewriting of Western tropes is the intimacy that
evidently exists in Hope Leslie between white and Indian characters. Unlike Cooper,
Sedgwick is perfectly willing to contemplate marriage between the two races. Faith
Leslie, the sister of Hope, is carried into captivity while still a child; she marries
Oneco, the brother of Magawisca; and she then refuses the chance offered her to
return to the Puritan community. Sedgwick is also willing to countenance signs of
kinship between women of the two races. In one narrative sequence, Hope Leslie
resists “the prejudices of the age” – and, for that matter, the conventions of female
behavior – by liberating an Indian woman called Nelena from prison. Nelena hasGGray_c02.indd 103ray_c 02 .indd 103 8 8/1/2011 7:54:38 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 38 AM