In her novel Hope Leslie, Catharine Maria Sedgwick explores the influence that laws derived from religion, nature, and society have on the development of a new nation . Specifically, his historical novel analyzes the culture created by seventeenth-century Puritans who left England to settle the Massachusetts Bay Colony. When the Puritans left England, they escaped the restrictions placed on their religion and had the opportunity to write new laws for the American social order. The traditional laws of England did not apply to America, because the two countries faced completely different challenges. Sedgwick embodies the laws that need to be reevaluated in the characters of Esther, Magawisca, and Hope. Esther, the pious woman, represents the law of religion; Magawisca, the proud Indian, represents the law of nature; and Hope, the independent woman, represents the law of society. Sedgwick recognized that the Puritans would be more willing to change some laws than others and points to the different capacities for change in each woman's relationship with Everell. Esther's weak emotional connection is contrasted with Magawisca's stronger union with Everell. Hope, however, develops the closest relationship with Everell, suggesting that society's law contains the greatest potential for modification. By analyzing each woman's ability to rewrite her own law and subsequent relationship with Everell, it is evident that Sedgwick asserts that survival in America requires society to accept women's contributions and continually create flexible legal codes that govern American culture . Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay By choosing Esther, Magawisca, and Hope to symbolize the evolving order, Sedgwick highlights how each law reinforces a patriarchal hierarchy that establishes women as inferior. Specifically, it challenges the traditional structure of social femininity constructed in Barbara Welter's essay "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860." Welter explains that while the American economy was constantly changing, "a real woman was a real woman, wherever she was found" and that real women followed the "four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, submission, and domesticity" (44). Welter reveals that the laws of religion (piety), nature (purity and submission), and society (domesticity) each place women in an inferior gender role. In the novel's preface, however, Sedgwick's audience learns that "elements of virtue and intellect are not denied to any branch of the human family" (Sedgwick 6). Furthermore, in “History, Memory, and Echoes of Equivalence in Catharine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie,” Amanda Emerson points out that Sedgwick's novel establishes “the equivalence of the intelligence and moral capacity of women and men” (25). Sedgwick encourages a progressive perception of women that denies their inferiority to men in the areas of religion, nature, and society. As Mrs. Grafton, Hope's aunt, states, "'There is nothing but the wind so changeable as a woman's mind'" (Sedgwick 218). Since Mrs. Grafton refers to Hope's strong character, the comment, which seems to emphasize the fickle behavior of women, actually alludes to the fact that female flexibility is a strength and not a weakness. Sedgwick symbolically presents the laws that need to be rewritten for life on the frontier and uses women to highlight the importance of any change in law regarding gender roles. Although the three laws reinforce a common vision of women's social roles, eachhas different characteristics. ability to shape a new national order. Since Esther, Magawisca, and Hope each embody a distinct law, their potential relationships with Everell represent how altering their law will affect the Puritans' success on the frontier. Everell Fletcher exemplifies the first generation born in America. His father, William Fletcher, emigrated from England, and still has blood ties to the laws of the old country. Because he was born on the frontier, however, Everell represents a blank slate for creating order, and his romantic relationships become the fundamental fulcrum for the evolution of the laws that shape America. Everell describes the open-mindedness necessary to create American order when he listens to Magawisca's account of the Pequod War and states, "I can honor the noble deeds done by our enemies, and see that cruelty is cruelty, though inflicted by our friends " (Sedwick 46). Gustavus Stadler, author of “Magawisca's Body of Knowledge: Nation-Building in Hope Leslie,” describes the transformative relationships between Everell and the three female protagonists: “The adolescent spirit that characterized each character must now find meaning through the terms that dictate life private adult. Simply put, the question of who should marry whom must be resolved” (49). Essentially, Everell represents the new America, and as each woman makes more progress in rewriting her own individual laws, she develops deeper emotional relationships with Everell. Likewise, Emerson concludes that each woman represents “the intellectual, moral, and religious self-culture of women” to symbolize how any changed law “could be revived as a vital sign of American identity” (27). The three reports compare the extent to which religious, natural, and social laws can be changed to establish the American order. Ultimately, the woman who has been most successful in redefining her role is able to marry Everell, thus emphasizing the law with the greatest potential to construct the new American rules of behavior. Sedgwick chooses Esther to fully represent religious law, because “no one excelled her in the practical part of her religion” (135). In fact, throughout Esther's life, she had not strayed “beyond the narrow limits of domestic duties and religious exercises” (Sedgwick 136). Sedgwick accentuates spiritual law's narrow capacity for change by constructing an inflexible Puritan structure. Throughout the novel, he highlights the notion of Puritan rigidity in defining general behavioral roles. For example, when describing the religious tradition of the Sabbath, Sedgwick explains that individuals practice with “an almost Judaic (sic) severity” (157). The harsh diction suggests that the members zealously allow religious law to dictate their lives and prevent them from seeing beyond a Puritan order. Although Sedgwick criticizes the entire structure of Puritan law, Esther Downing is used to "further highlight Sedgwick's rejection of Puritan expectations for female behavior" (Kelly xxiv). Esther's Puritan upbringing completely constrains her actions and she embodies all the attributes expected of women at the time. Emerson points out that Esther illustrates the "thoughts and emotions that begin circumscribed by both Puritan orthodoxy and the mandates of true nineteenth-century womanhood" (29). Although Esther follows both religious law and the law of true womanhood, Sedgwick indicates that for Esther, religion means a higher authority for behavior. Specifically, Winthrop reinforces that “'passivity, which, next to piety, is a woman's best virtue'” (Sedgwick 153). Esther's faithfulness is seen as a virtuesuperior, therefore indicating that it is more influenced by Puritan law. Esther's devotion to God frames her relationship with Everell and points to the effect religious law has on the creation of the new American order. For example, when Everell feels an emotional obligation to save Magawisca, he turns to Esther for assistance. Unfortunately, Esther refuses, implying instead that "no earthly considerations could induce her to waver from the strictest letter of her religious duty" (Sedgwick 277). Esther's rigid piety prevents her from being with the man she loves demonstrating that “she is governed by dictates external to herself” (Kelly xxv). It is the same puritanical devotion that prevents Everell from loving her. hinting at the difficulty of rewriting religious law. Sedgwick explains, “To an ardent youth, there is something distasteful, if not revolting, in the severest virtues” (278). Esther resists any impulse to create a more flexible spiritual order, thus symbolizing her small capacity to organize American rules of behavior. Although Esther's die-hard Puritanism prevents her from developing a strong emotional relationship with Everell, toward the end she begins to reevaluate the role of religion in her life. of the novel. This late transformation of character indicates Sedgwick's belief that laws must be constantly assessed for revision. In her letter to Hope and Everell, Esther admits, “'My mistake was exceedingly humiliating to the woman's pride” (Sedgwick 346). Esther recognizes that she is too humble or too submissive in her gender role and in fact perpetuates the inferiority of women in society. He slowly reinterprets his piety when he practices a life of celibacy. Sedgwick reveals that “marriage is not essential to women's contentment, dignity, or happiness” (350). He ends his novel with these worlds to point out that, although religious law shows the least potential for change in the seventeenth century, he hopes it will become more flexible in the future. Emerson makes a similar observation regarding the function of the spiritual order: “Esther's revelation to women might be generalized into a proposition about the nonessential nature not only of marriage, but of each of the narrowly defined roles considered by the traditional discourse of the nineteenth century as necessary to the 'contentment, dignity, or happiness of women'” (30). Sedgwick prevents Esther from marrying Everell because she recognizes that seventeenth-century Puritans could not agree to alter their religious structure. Furthermore, by barring Esther from any marriage, Sedgwick hints at the possibility of his nineteenth-century audience accepting a more liberal interpretation of the Puritan structure. Magawisca, on the other hand, describes the law of nature and demonstrates Sedgwick's belief that the natural order has a greater possibility of influencing frontier life. While Esther gets purpose from the law of religion, written in the Bible, Magawisca, the proud native Pequod Indian, gets direction from the law of nature, written in her heart. During the trial, Magawisca exclaims that she is bound to a different order when Sir Philip states that the Bible defines the rules of life. She responds, “'The Great Spirit has written his laws in the hearts of his original children'” (Sedgwick 287). Magawisca is bound by the laws of the Great Spirit, which is not a conventionally written law, but rather an understood law that comes from the natural man. Eliot, an apostle who pleads Magawisca's cause at trial, reinforces the Indian's devotion to the natural order when he comments that the natives were a people “who having no law, were a law unto themselves” (283). Traditional stereotypesthey depicted natives as inferior beings who succumbed to man's primitive and natural state. However, Eliot recognizes that even though they did not have conventional law like the Puritans, they were bound by rules that created order in their Indian societies. Stadler makes clear that Magawica is “an important indicator of the limits of the new white nation” (42). Magawisca is bound by the law of nature, but her ongoing interactions with Puritan society imply that all Puritans are influenced by the natural state of man. The natural law that binds Magawisca must be rewritten because it promotes an order built on revenge. When Sir Philip Gardiner misled the magistrates at Magawisca's trial, he “awakened his spirit and stimulated that principle of retaliation, deeply rooted in the nature of every human being, and made a virtue by a savage education” (Sedgwick 289). Sedgwick not only points out that Magawisca is confined by an internal law that valorizes revenge, but that all men have a tendency to succumb to the natural order. Stadler discusses the relationship between Magawisca's trial and nation-building when he states, “His dramatic appearance in court in a sense instigates the system of privacy, of individuality that these fictional settlers will need to become a modern American nation” ( 52). His case, however, goes beyond the question of individuality and represents the need for more substantive changes within evolving American society. Courts are traditionally associated with order, but it is the place where Magawisca surrenders to the law of nature that binds her. Magawisca's inherent tendencies accentuate Sedgwick's impression that the law of nature must be rewritten before true order can be seen on the frontier. Sedgwick indicates that the law of nature exhibits a greater capacity for change when Martha, writing on Magawisca, reports: "'It seems impossible for her to clip the wings of her soaring thoughts, and to restrain them in household affairs'" (32). Thoughts soaring convey that Magawisca continually sees herself beyond the limits of natural law until she is torn between her duty of vengeance and her love for Everell Sedgwick states, “Her mind was tormented by conflicting apprehensions and duties, the cruellest torment for an honorable mind" (55). Because she recognizes that her law is not perfect, Magawisca makes more progress than Esther in creating new rules of behavior. Stadler agrees that Magawisca is “at the center of the making of the American nation” (43 ) Sedgwick recognizes that constantly reevaluating the law of nature could have a significant impact on the new American order, so he often alludes to Magawisca's potential to escape its structured law. For example, Magawisca saves Everell because he is a “superior being, guided and supported by a supernatural power” (Sedgwick 93). Magawisca steps outside the vengeful law, which arises from man's state of nature, and acts according to a higher "supernatural power" to protect the man who represents the new America. Magawisca's deviation from revenge indicates that seventeenth-century Puritans would be more willing to reevaluate the law of nature to create the new American civilization. While the potential exists, Magawisca doesn't reinterpret natural law enough for a new society, so her emotional connection to A Everell is prevented from progressing. Magawisca understands the flaws of her order and comes closer to creating a more flexible law of nature, but continually chooses to be confined by the vengeful state of man. For example, at the cemetery, when Hope gives Magawisca the chance to see Everell again, she reveals her loyalty and states, "'I promised tomy father, I repeated the vow here at my mother's grave'" (Sedgwick 190). Magawisca's duty to her father and her dedication to revenge influence her decision to walk away from Everell. Furthermore, when Hope and Everell ask Magawisca to stay with them after helping the Indian escape, she denies the possibility of drastically altering her law. Ultimately, Magawisca cannot completely free herself from her innate bonds and responds that “'the law of vengeance is written in the books. our hearts'” (330). Her heart desires to be with Everell, a man who represents the new America, but she denies those desires and instead chooses to return to her father, thus highlighting that natural law cannot be completely rewritten for a new social order. Sedgwick envisions Hope as a strong, independent character with “lack of self-control” to emphasize the American success that will result from a more flexible social law (Sedgwick 106 drew on her experience as a nineteenth-century woman). define the most strictly binding rules regarding women. Specifically, Welter explains that society created order by narrowly defining separate spheres for men and women; men focused on politics and economics, while women supported the values ​​of piety, purity, submission and domesticity. Unfortunately, Welter makes it clear that this extremely rigid law of society was ubiquitous and perpetuated an inferior gender structure in America. She states, “Women, in the cult of true femininity presented by women's magazines, gift yearbooks, and nineteenth-century religious literature, were held hostage in the home” (Welter 41). Welter argues that women were oppressed by the authority of men and held captive by the law of society. To challenge this constructed role for women, Sedgwick portrays Hope as a character who “exhibits her sense of the possibility of self-determination inherent in religious conversion and self-culture when she experiences a crisis of character that she succeeds or fails to overcome through acts of self -transformation” (Emerson 29). The other two female protagonists have not managed to completely transform her rigid laws, but Speranza represents the woman who manages to reinterpret her own self-culture, or law of society. Hope does not manifest the qualities of the real woman, so her characteristics embody the social needs and changes that Sedgwick believes are necessary for a new order in America. Furthermore, Hope is the only female protagonist who verbally acknowledges that her law must be different from traditional English rules. When Aunt Grafton, a loyalist to the throne, observes that Hope's actions are "'very unladylike,'" Hope responds, "'Our new country develops faculties which young women in England were not conscious of possessing.'" (Sedgwick 98). Mrs. Grafton highlights the heroine's deviance from true womanhood, but Hope attributes her transformation to the creation of frontier civilization. Her response indicates that the difficult life in America cultivates a new social law, and Hope embraces the shift to a more flexible and equitable role for women. Hope particularly reinterprets the influence that religion and submission have on the law of society. Hope's religious upbringing is divided between her Puritan mother and Anglican father, but Kelly explains that Hope "transcends their sectarianism, embracing instead a religion based solely on the 'law of virtue written in her heart by the finger of God'" ( xxxv ). Furthermore, Sedgwick describes Hope as a character who is “superior to some of the prejudices of the time” and “allowed her mind to expand beyond the contracted confines of sectarian faith” (123). While Esther is bound by law, 1999.