Hope Leslie

Hope Leslie
Author(s)	Catharine Maria Sedgwick
Original title	Early Times in Massachusetts
Language	English
Publication date	1827

Hope Leslie or Early Times in the Massachusetts is a novel written by Catharine Maria Sedgwick. The book is considered significant because of its strong feminist overtones and ideas of equity and fairness toward Native Americans, both of which were rare at the time the book was written. The book is a historical romance, set mostly in 1643. A number of historical figures appear, including Puritan leader John Winthrop, Puritan heretic Samuel Gorton, and the Pequot Indian Mononotto.

Plot summary

The story begins in England with William Fletcher, a young man in love with a girl named Alice, whose father has forbidden her marriage to Fletcher on account of religious difference. Alice's father forces her to marry Charles Leslie instead. In despair, Fletcher decides to leave England and relocate to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the Bay colony, Fletcher marries a woman named Martha although he is still in love with Alice. After living in Boston, Massachusetts for a while, William moves the family to the newly founded Springfield, Massachusetts and calls his home Bethel.

While there, Fletcher receives a letter that says Alice died while voyaging to the new colonies, but before dying, committed her two children, Alice and Mary, to Mr. Fletcher's care. Governor Winthrop procures two Indian servants to help Mrs. Fletcher with the increased domestic workload. The two servants are a sister and brother, Magawisca and Oneco, who are the children of the Pequot chief Mononotto. Mr. Fletcher and Oneco travel to Boston to pick up Alice and Mary, who have been rechristened as Hope and Faith. Oneco and Faith return to Bethel while Mr. Fletcher and Hope stay behind.

Before Mr. Fletcher returns from Boston, Mononotto and two Mohawk warriors attack Bethel. Mrs. Fletcher and her infant son are killed, and Magawisca and Oneco are reunited with their father. Everell and Faith are taken captive. Mr. Fletcher, Hope, Digby, and Mr. Cradock arrive home to find everyone dead. They discover Jennet, a servant woman, who recounts the attack.

Mononotto leads his party through the wilderness to an Indian camp. There Mononotto attempts to execute Everell in retaliation to the wrongs he has suffered. Magawisca intervenes by throwing herself between the axe and Everell's neck. Her arm is severed and Everell escapes unharmed.

The next scene opens with a letter Hope has written seven years later to Everell who is studying in England. She writes of an episode where Cradock gets bitten by a rattlesnake while climbing Mount Holioke (later renamed Mount Holyoke). Nelema stops by and does a treatment and he is cured. Jennet calls it witchcraft and Nelema is made to stand trial. Hope frees Nelema from jail and Nelema promises to send her sister Faith to her.

Hope is sent to live with the Winthrops in Boston for a while. Everell returns to America and stays with Mr. Fletcher, who now lives in Boston. Esther Downing, a niece of Mrs. Winthrop’s, becomes good friends with Hope. She seems to be everything that Hope is not: faithful, prudent, and studious. She is also kind. She tells a story of how Everell came to her death bed and her ensuing recovery. Esther is infatuated with Everell, which saddens Hope greatly. Everyone hopes Esther and Everell will marry, except Mr. Fletcher, who hopes to match the two children he raised.

The Winthrops want to pair Hope with Sir Philip Gardiner, a stranger who arrived in town on the same boat as Everell, and who has developed an interest in Hope Leslie. Sir Philip's page, Roslin, seems very odd indeed. It is later revealed that Roslin is Rosa, a former lover of Sir Philip's whom he has disguised as his male page. One evening, Hope and Esther attend a lecture pertaining to the case of Mr. Gorton. Uncharacteristically, Hope appears quite anxious. We later learn that Hope had that day received a visit from Magawisca, whom she had made plans to meet in the cemetery at 9pm that night. On the way home from the lecture, Hope impatiently leaves her escort, Sir Philip, and takes a detour to the burial ground. Hope briefly meets Roslin, who tells her that she must not trust Sir Philip. Unknown to Hope, Sir Phillip follows her and overhears the conversation with Magawisca that night. Magawisca explains that Faith has married Oneco and tries to warn Hope that her sister is very different from the sister she remembers. Nelema managed to tell Magawisca that Hope had saved her and wanted to repay her with a visit from her sister. Magawisca also explains that her sister is now a Catholic.

Sir Philip runs into Hope on her way home, and he escorts her back to the Winthrop home. Everyone is worried because Hope was out alone at a late hour, and it had begun to rain heavily. Everell suspects that Hope and Sir Philip were out together.

To facilitate her meeting with Faith, Hope arranges for the party to stay on an island belonging to Winthrop, of which Digby is the guardian. While there, she implies to all present that Everell and Esther are going to get married, and puts their hands together. She never notices that Everell longs to be with her. Sir Philip comes, too, and she tells him that she never intends to marry him. Sir Phillip is upset by this.

Everyone else agrees to leave the island and Hope goes out to meet her sister on the shore. Hope embraces Faith and tries to talk to her only to realize that Faith no longer speaks English. Magawisca must interpret for them. Hope hugs her and tries to get her to come home with her. She even tries to bribe her sister, but to no avail. As they are meeting, a trap is sprung upon them. Magawisca and Faith are taken by English soldiers. Magawisca is imprisoned. Hope is taken captive by Oneco and meets up with Mononotto. Sir Phillip had laid the trap after overhearing Magawisca and Hope's plans in the cemetery.

Mononotto is struck by lightning as Oneco is trying to get away. He stops to take care of his father and while he does so, Hope escapes, but then runs into a group of sailors who chase her. She gets into a boat and the Italian sailor Antonio believes first that she is the Virgin Mary, and later that she is his patron saint. Hope does nothing to disabuse Antonio of this belief, and convinces him to row her to shore.

Hope arrives in town and passes out in Roslin/Rosa’s arms, who thinks of killing her out of jealousy for her closeness with Sir Philip, but doesn’t. Sir Phillip goes and visits Magawisca in jail. He gives her tools to escape with a promise that she take Rosalin with her. She refuses. Sir Phillip gets choked by Morton, whom he had claimed to be visiting. Sir Philip's true nature is momentarily revealed.

Everell attempts to save Magawisca, but fails. Hope also wants to free Magawisca, and comes up with a plan that involves Cradock, Everell, and Digby. At Magawisca's trial, Magawisca exposes Sir Phillip for the person that he really is. Sir Phillip leaves humiliated and determined to get Hope Leslie.

Jennet overhears Hope and Everell's plans to free Magawisca and communicates them to Sir Phillip. He plots to hire sailors to take her away. Hope takes Cradock with her to the jail and cleverly disguises him to look like Magawisca. She is so pleasant that the guard, Barnaby Tuttle, doesn’t notice the deception. While Hope, Cradock and Everell are gone, a sailor comes to the house, but nobody understands him. In the meantime, the generous Winthrop family has taken in a mysterious foreign sailor. The sailor turns out to be Oneco, who has returned to rescue Faith. Suddenly, they all realize that Hope is gone.

The sailors capture who they think is Hope and bring her back to the boat, which Rosa explodes by lighting a barrel of gunpowder, killing all but one sailor, who recounts the tale. Everell leads Magawisca to Digby, and she gets away safely. Antonio mistakenly reported to the house that Hope was taken and blown up, but to the family's relief, she is unharmed. The woman who was blown up on the ship was really the puritan shrew, Jennet. By the end of the novel, Esther has realized that Everell and Hope love each other and she decides to return to England for a few years and remain unmarried. As if to right the original wrong of separating William Fletcher from Alice, their children, Everell Fletcher and Hope Leslie, are finally united.

Analysis

’’Hope Leslie’’ surfaces amidst a time of conflict, rivalry, and hatred; however, the tale embodies a thematic scheme of love, honor, and trust despite the aura of negativity. The story also positively promotes the rights of women in a time when women had no rights by giving them the ability to form and state opinions without fear of unjust criticism. Normally, fiction written during this time did not have the fairytale ending which makes this story a pleasant, welcome surprise in that the ending is satisfying to readers because of the element of the unexpected. Within the realm of the unexpected, the characters are developed to represent entire nations and the beliefs of these nations despite the fact that they will all not portray the characteristics set as the "norm." For example, the first half [Magiwisca’s History of the Pequod War] reveals Digby as the Puritan population as a whole, whereas Everell can be seen as part of the outcast population. Digby, or most of the Puritans, showed no compassion towards the Native Americans solely based on the color of their skin, thus weaving the story within the story to show the problematic discrimination present during the time but with a satisfying "twist." ’’Hope Leslie’’ is definitely a story that can be seen as containing a “big picture” which revealed the author's ability to both perceive and correct an uncomfortable situation yet allow the reader to realize that the situation was a part of the lifestyles of the people of this time.

The second half [Magawisca's Farewell] of the story actually simplifies the entire evolution of the Puritan/Native-American conflict into perspective. The author, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, really presents the reader with an eye-opening experience revealing that love has the potential to conquer hatred despite the odds being stacked against it in all situations. The contradictory interactions between the two groups caused so much mayhem that it seemed that the situation was impossible; however, ’’Hope Leslie’’ is a story of reform and divulges the true power of friendship and progressive morality. ’’Hope Leslie’’ instills that "love is blind" and what it means to abide by the Golden Rule of loving one's neighbor as himself..

The willingness of Hope, Digby, and Everell to risk their own acceptance into the Puritan community by taking part in the rescue of Magiwisca, is an honorable act of its own. But, given the diction used by Sedgwick, "Everell and Hope remained immoveable, gazing on the little boat till it faded in the dim distance; for a few moments, every feeling for themselves was lost in grief of parting for ever from the admirable being [Magiwisca], who seemed to her enthusiastic young friends, one of the noblest of the works of God--a bright witness to the beauty, the independence, and the immortality of virtue," it is obvious that there is a saintliness bond between Everell, Digby, and Hope towards Magiwisca that contradicts the hatred they had once been taught to practice. The ultimate theme of this story is independence. Each character portrayed the gain of independence in his/her own way. The most obvious is Magiwisca's ability to escape and literally sail away towards her freedom. Hope, Everell, and Digby all gained independence by ultimately escaping from the ways of their people. They were all irrevocably given the chance to "escape" from their ideals and gain the knowledge to define themselves at their own discretion, thus each represented the author's opinion of how each nation should have acted under the same set of circumstances even though they did not.