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Summary Of Catherine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie

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Hope Leslie is a novel written by Catherine Maria Sedgwick, which defies stereotypes commonly held within the genre of frontier romance novels, as well as during the seventeenth century, which is when the novels takes place. Sedgwick develops themes that were common to the genre in a unique way that distinguishes this novel from the rest. The racist notions often found within frontier novels was rewritten by Sedgwick, because Sedgwick portrayed Native Americans in a different light than other authors, especially male frontier novelists. Native Americans in this novel are not just mindless savages, instead she gives the Native Americans a voice and a story, they are seen as people defending their land from the white men who claimed it as their …show more content…

Hope and Magawisca go against the grain of what is typically expected of women during this time period. The entire novel shows a different perspective of frontier writing instead of simply following the typical genre clichés, she doe not develop a white male hero, and she instead has a white male play the antagonist in the second half of the book rather than having the stereotypical Native American villain. Sedgwick alters themes that are commonly portrayed in frontier romances, like racism towards Native Americans. Sedgwick approaches Native Americans differently in Hope Leslie, Native Americans are given a voice and they have their own hero within the story, in Magawisca. According to Cheri Ross, Sedgwick “disliked the racist nationalistic philosophy of whites towards Native Americans… [whereas] male authored novels on the other hand valorized the behavior of the white expansionists and exhibited intolerance and bigotry towards Native Americans”. These racist portrayals of Native Americans were seen in our reading of Edgar Huntly, here Edgar mercilessly killed several Native Americans, which were repeatedly referred to as …show more content…

In Sedgwick’s novel the two most heroic characters were females with one of them being Magawisca. Having a Native American portrayed as a hero was rare, and having a Native woman as one of the heroes further emphasized that this novel as written from a feminist perspective. Hope and Magawisca were two strong willed young women, they did not passively wait to be rescued they instead opted to act for themselves, which contrast with male-authored frontier novels in which “women’s voices were silenced” (Ross). Sedgwick assigns Hope and Magawisca characteristics, like heroism and bravery, that were traditionally only assigned to male characters, with the combined force of Hope and Magawisca, Sedgwick provides a “devastating critique of women as inherently passive and weak” (Ross). With Magawisca being a hero in the story she was not portrayed as the stereotypical “noble savage” she is “firmly established as intelligent, virtuous, and credible” any violence from her tribe is merely the result of her people being displaced and their land being conquered (Ross). Hope and Magawisca both lived in male dominated societies, but Sedgwick presents them

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