Article Review for Hope Leslie

A detailed Summary of Article Review for Hope Leslie

Bell, Michael Davitt. "History and Romance Convention in Catharine Sedgwick's Hope

Leslie." American Quarterly, Volume 22, Issue 2, Part I (Summer, 1970). 213-221

Michael Davitt Bell is a renowned literary researcher whose scholarly work has been mostly focused on nineteenth-century American fiction. He received his BA in 1963, from Yale, and my Ph.D. in English, from Harvard, in 1969. He taught English at Princeton from 1968 to 1975, and later moved to Williams College, where he taught until his death in 1997. In his article, "History and Romance Convention in Catharine Sedgwick's Hope Leslie," Bell approaches the novel from a historical perspective, examining Hope Leslie as pertaining to its historical accuracy, and how the style of the novel fits into the template of the "conventional American historical romancer" (221). He introduces the story through a brief yet thorough summary, in order to go into detailed analysis of the characters,

Bell makes comparisons between Magawisca's self-sacrifice to save Everell with the story of Pocahontas and John Smith. He also relates the story of the Indian attack "to have been inspired by the account on the Deerfield Massacre in John Williams' The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion" (217). Although these accounts are not identical to the actual historical occurrences, Bell maintains that they are very similar and most definitely based on these true stories.

These references to historical fact, however, play a subtler role than it may first appear, according to Bell. He states that Sedgwick uses these characters as tools to make political commentary on her views of that particular period in history. "Magawisca, for example, serves several symbolic functions in the romance. She serves as a foil to the intolerance and hypocrisy of the Puritans. . . . She also functions as a "dark heroine" -as a rival to the fair heroine, Hope Leslie, for the love of Everell. Magawisca represent

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Approximate Word count = 669
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels

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