Catharine Sedgwick's “Recital” of the Pequot War

Novel Identities: Catharine Maria Sedgwick's <em>Hope Leslie</em> as a Mentoring Framework for Curriculum Studies and Life Journeys

“…In addition to incorporating the metaphorical palimpsest into our investigative lens, our views were also informed by a large body of literary theory pointing to both women fiction writers' common use of this "double voiced" narrative strategy and to the ways, in which their cultural perceptions tended to differ from their male counterparts (Dobson, 1986;Gould, 1994;Kalayjian, 1993;Madison, 1993;Pratt, 1981;Warren, 1984). Merging ethnographic approaches with reader response theory (Rosenblatt, 1978;Holland, 1975), we gathered clues to Sedgwick's educational viewpoints through several close readings of Hope Leslie.…”

“…Hope Leslie not only provides a record of Sedgwick's resistance to the dominant cultural and historical understandings of her day, but it is also credited by current scholars as containing one of the United States' earliest pieces of revisionist history (Gould, 1994;Kelley, 1995). Written during a time when 19 th century America was demanding more and more of indigenous peoples' land, Sedgwick's portrayal of the Pequod Wars as a massacre led by Puritans, was a "direct challenge to the morality of [her] nation" (Kelley, 1995).…”