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Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Motifs
Explanation and Analysis—Flashbacks:
As the plot grows more complicated in Volume 2, the narrator uses flashbacks as a motif, every so often filling in the reader on events that happened prior to or during the previous chapter. Each time a flashback occurs, it resolves some suspense while also creating more intrigue. For instance, in Volume 2, Chapter 1, Hope is missing long enough to worry everyone before showing up wet and bedraggled to Governor Winthrop's house. She won't say much and is extremely vague even with Esther about why she seems upset. Volume 2, Chapter 2, makes everything clear to the reader: through a flashback, it reveals that Hope met with Magawisca at the cemetery and found out that Faith is still alive. This helps Hope's strange behavior in the previous chapter make sense, and it creates satisfying dramatic irony because the reader is now in on Hope's secret from the other characters. However, it also introduces new conflict to the novel. Faith is now married to Oneco and is happy with her life. Even coming face to face with her will require clandestine operations Hope must coordinate with Magawisca. The reader now sits in suspense over whether Hope will pull off a meeting.
Flashbacks don't always fill in Hope's perspective. For instance, Volume 2, Chapter 7 flashes back to the same night when Hope met Magawisca in the cemetery, but it focuses on Sir Philip's perspective. As it turns out, Sir Philip was spying on the meeting. The flashback lays out how he hatched a self-serving plan to kidnap Faith so that Hope will be pleased with him. Meanwhile, he planned to gain favor with Governor Winthrop by telling him that valuable information could be obtained by kidnapping Magawisca and her family. This flashback not only adds to the suspense by proving that there is still more the reader does not know, but it also contributes to the aim the preface lays out. The novel is called Hope Leslie, but it aims to represent "the character of the times," not just Hope herself. Sir Philip is Sedgwick's caricature of a power-hungry Catholic aristocrat. This flashback is unflattering by design, allowing Sedgwick to flesh out an aspect of "the times" she finds unsavory.
Yet another flashback occurs in Volume 2, Chapter 13, when the narrator describes an emotional exchange between Oneco and Mononotto after Faith has been kidnapped and Hope Leslie has fled with Antonio. In contrast with Sir Philip's flashback, this one helps the reader empathize more with Oneco and Mononotto. In both flashbacks not focused on Hope, the narrator offers the reader a kind of omniscience that is unavailable to any of the characters within the novel. Through the flashbacks, the narrator holds up the events like a diorama that the reader is able to examine from multiple angles, whereas the characters can only see what is happening from their position within the events. Looking back at "the character of the times" only seems to be possible from the vantage point of a reader or narrator who is able to piece together a narrative complete with flashbacks that represent different perspectives.
Related Themes:
Motifs
Explanation and Analysis—Kidnapping and Adoption:
Kidnapping and adoption run throughout the novel as a motif. In particular, many characters are kidnapped or adopted by families across religious and political divides. For example, at their mother's wishes, Hope and Faith Leslie are taken in by the Fletchers after their parents die. Alice Fletcher's father, Sir William Fletcher, forced her to marry Charles Leslie specifically because he was loyal to the English crown. Mr. William Fletcher, on the other hand, loses his chance to marry Alice because he is a Puritan. Puritans held stricter religious views than the Anglican church, and they set off for North America because they did not want to be subjects to an Anglican king. When little Alice and Mary Leslie are adopted by the Fletchers and renamed Hope and Faith according to Puritan customs, they become symbols of a future in which young people can more easily cross cultural divides.
Sedgwick is especially interested in this kind of future, but it is not because she is invested in the divide between Anglicans and Puritans. By the 19th century, when she was writing, that divide was no longer very relevant. But Hope and Faith's adoption happens at the same time as another "adoption" that opens up the kidnapping and adoption motif to apply to cultural divides more generally. Along with the two white girls come Magawisca and Oneco, Pequot children. Everyone glosses over the fact that these children were kidnapped and are being kept as prisoners of war. They will now be forced to work as servants in the Fletcher house. Magawisca and Oneco bond with certain members of the family, to the point that it almost seems that they would naturally belong there if not for the violent political rift between the settlers and their family of origin.
All of this leads up to the main kidnapping and adoption at the heart of the novel, that of Faith Leslie. Taken prisoner by Mononotto, she stays with him and his people for so long that she forgets English and the cultural customs she grew up with. She becomes culturally Pequot and eventually marries Oneco. Although she is racially white, her cultural conversion and their marriage offers the possibility of a new generation of Pequot people, something that the novel suggests is nearly impossible after the Mystic massacre left most of them dead.
Kidnapping and cross-cultural adoption were historical realities for people living in North America during the period when the novel is set. Some American Indian nations would kidnap members of other nations if, for instance, that nation had killed someone in a similar social position. Someone who was kidnapped might be treated as a prisoner of war, but they might also be adopted as a community member. European settlers escalated violence, mostly treating kidnapped individuals as prisoners of war. There was an entire genre of women's Indian captivity narratives, written mainly by white women about their time in captivity by American Indian nations. Many of these narratives were based in fact, but they were usually sensationalized and edited to stir up white people's fear of American Indian nations and their political power. Sedgwick is fascinated by the idea of adoption and imagines how it might help people cross cultural divides and resolve ongoing political conflicts in North America. The novel was comparatively progressive in its advocacy for multiculturalism, but its optimistic view of cross-cultural adoption glossed over the violent power the United States continued to exercise over American Indian nations even as Sedgwick was writing.
Related Themes:
Volume 2, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Birds in Captivity:
A motif in the novel is a comparison between women and birds in captivity. For instance, in Volume 2, Chapter 8, after Faith has been taken back to Governor Winthrop's house, Mr. Fletcher describes her behavior as bird-like:
“All day, and all night, they tell me, she goes from window to window, like an imprisoned bird fluttering against the bars of its cage; and so wistfully she looks abroad, as if her heart went forth with the glance of her eye.”
Faith seems to think she is trapped in the governor's house, and she is "fluttering" against all the windows as if she knows she belongs out in the forest. It makes sense that Faith would behave like a bird if she feels like she belongs with Oneco; the eagle is the emblem of Magawsica and Oneco's people. Magawisca has repeatedly taken eagle feathers as a sign that her father passed through a place, and she makes Hope swear on a carving of an eagle that she will tell no one about their clandestine meeting in the cemetery. Faith's birdlike behavior represents her assimilation to Oneco's culture.
When Hope and Magawisca's plan backfires, leading to Faith and Magawisca's arrests in Volume 2, Chapter 5, Magawisca says of Hope that
She was the decoy bird, [...] and she too is caught in the net.
Magawisca's comparison between Hope and a "decoy bird" expands the symbolism of the bird. Hope does not yearn to live in the wilderness, and yet she too is a trapped bird. The idea that she is a "decoy bird" suggests that, either knowingly or unknowingly, Hope has been exploited by the system that wants to capture Faith and Magawisca. All three women have been made unfree by Puritan systems of power.
Later, when Magawisca is on trial, she asks to be executed rather than kept in captivity. Magawisca's desire to be free or die once again echoes the motif of these women as trapped birds, but it also reinforces the idea of Puritan hypocrisy. Puritans, such as Mr. Fletcher, are supposedly willing to go to any lengths to defend their commitment to freedom. Mr. Fletcher unmistakably sacrifices his first love and his intended fortune for religious "freedom." Magawisca's ultimatum illuminates the fact that the Puritans have not made most of their community very free at all.
Related Themes:
Volume 2, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Birds in Captivity:
A motif in the novel is a comparison between women and birds in captivity. For instance, in Volume 2, Chapter 8, after Faith has been taken back to Governor Winthrop's house, Mr. Fletcher describes her behavior as bird-like:
“All day, and all night, they tell me, she goes from window to window, like an imprisoned bird fluttering against the bars of its cage; and so wistfully she looks abroad, as if her heart went forth with the glance of her eye.”
Faith seems to think she is trapped in the governor's house, and she is "fluttering" against all the windows as if she knows she belongs out in the forest. It makes sense that Faith would behave like a bird if she feels like she belongs with Oneco; the eagle is the emblem of Magawsica and Oneco's people. Magawisca has repeatedly taken eagle feathers as a sign that her father passed through a place, and she makes Hope swear on a carving of an eagle that she will tell no one about their clandestine meeting in the cemetery. Faith's birdlike behavior represents her assimilation to Oneco's culture.
When Hope and Magawisca's plan backfires, leading to Faith and Magawisca's arrests in Volume 2, Chapter 5, Magawisca says of Hope that
She was the decoy bird, [...] and she too is caught in the net.
Magawisca's comparison between Hope and a "decoy bird" expands the symbolism of the bird. Hope does not yearn to live in the wilderness, and yet she too is a trapped bird. The idea that she is a "decoy bird" suggests that, either knowingly or unknowingly, Hope has been exploited by the system that wants to capture Faith and Magawisca. All three women have been made unfree by Puritan systems of power.
Later, when Magawisca is on trial, she asks to be executed rather than kept in captivity. Magawisca's desire to be free or die once again echoes the motif of these women as trapped birds, but it also reinforces the idea of Puritan hypocrisy. Puritans, such as Mr. Fletcher, are supposedly willing to go to any lengths to defend their commitment to freedom. Mr. Fletcher unmistakably sacrifices his first love and his intended fortune for religious "freedom." Magawisca's ultimatum illuminates the fact that the Puritans have not made most of their community very free at all.
Related Themes:
Volume 2, Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—Spiritual Corruption:
One motif in the novel is the possibility for characters to be corrupted, starting out pure of heart and becoming less so. In Volume 2, Chapter 14, Hope is overcome with sadness for what Magawisca's spirit will lose when she goes back to the forest:
"Those beautiful lights,” and [Magawisca] pointed upward, “that shine alike on your stately domes and our forest homes, speak to me of his love to all,—think you I go to a solitude, Hope Leslie?”
“No, Magawisca; there is no solitude, nor privation, nor sorrow, to a soul that thus feels the presence of God,” replied Hope. She paused—[...] the thought that a mind so disposed to religious impressions and affections, might enjoy the brighter light of Christian revelation—a revelation so much higher, nobler, and fuller, than that which proceeds from the voice of nature—made Hope [...] desire [...] to retain Magawisca[.]
Hope believes Magawisca will always have the company of God with her, but she can't help but think that the heavenly light Magawisca describes is "brighter" in the Christian world than it is in nature. She worries that by failing to "retain" Magawisca—that is, by letting her embrace "nature" rather than Christianity as her spiritual framework—she is letting her embrace a baser, less noble, and spiritually weaker existence than she would have as a Christian.
Hope's vision of what makes a full spiritual life is extremely narrow. One of the things she fails to understand is that Magawisca's chance at such a life alongside Puritans has been (to use her own word) "spoiled" by colonial violence. The novel has already offered up several examples of characters who are spiritually corrupted by violence that is inflicted on them within the bounds of Christian society. Mononotto, for instance, turns vengeful only after his people are murdered by violent settlers at Mystic. Rosa, too, endures mistreatment at the hands of a string of guardians, including Sir Philip. This mistreatment seems to "spoil" her as well and leave her feeling that she has no choice besides violence against her tormentor and herself. These prior examples of characters who are corrupted by violence and mistreatment come together to show that Magawisca is in fact saving herself from a similar fate. A sentimental Christian reading of the ending might hold that Magawisca is a tragic figure because saving herself means stepping away from that "brighter light of Christian revelation." Sedgwick may even have intended such a reading. Another reading is that Hope is wrong, and that her devotion to Puritan rules limits her ability to understand Magawisca's situation.
Related Themes:
