The Puritan Heritage Theme Analysis

Throughout Hope Leslie, Sedgwick offers a nuanced portrayal of 17th-century Puritan (or pilgrim) society. Like other 19th-century writers, Sedgwick doesn’t refrain from critiquing perceived excesses in that society—hypocrisy being a chief complaint. However, she offers a more positive characterization of the Puritans than some of her contemporaries did, as she tries to fairly portray even their faulty motivations and she assesses their overall mission as a laudable one. Ultimately, she sees the pilgrims’ idealized godly society as a failure, but one that nevertheless laid an enduring foundation for the best of contemporary America. By characterizing Puritan society as both a failure and a foundation, Sedgwick argues that the Puritans’ courageous pursuit of liberty should be emulated in her own day, albeit toward more progressive ends.

The colonial Puritan emphasis on observing strict rules, for the sake of creating a model “city on a hill,” lent itself to self-undermining hypocrisy. Magawisca observes this when she tells Everell about the pitiless murder of her brother by white men: “You English tell us, Everell, that the book of your law is better than that written on our hearts, for ye say it teaches mercy, compassion, forgiveness—if ye had such a law and believed it, would ye thus have treated a captive boy?” In other words, Magawisca sees the hypocrisy of some white colonists who assert the superiority of the Bible’s teachings to Indian beliefs yet fail to follow those very laws themselves—and who even flagrantly violate them before people they’ve sought to convert.

On a more mundane level, the careful observance of rules sometimes leads to a harmful fixation on externalities. The Fletcher family’s servant, the peevish and critical Jennet, is a good example: “To employ none but godly servants was a rule of the pilgrims; and there were certain set phrases and modes of dress, which produced no slight impression upon the minds of the credulous […] [Jennet’s] religion was of the ritual order[.]” While the narrator suggests that hiring “godly” servants might be a good motivation, this can also lead to the acceptance of “ritual” (i.e., outward) holiness through certain ways of speaking and dressing in lieu of genuine, internal holiness. This suggests a broader weakness in pilgrim society’s ability to make valid distinctions between outward and inward character—they are susceptible to hypocrisy.

This weakness also manifests itself in a preoccupation with trifling concerns, as when Governor Winthrop and Mr. Fletcher deliberate about marrying off Hope Leslie to a sufficiently religious man. “Thus did these good men […] involve themselves in superfluous trials. Whatever gratified the natural desires of the heart was questionable, and almost every thing that was difficult and painful, assumed the form of duty […] But we would fix our eyes on the bright halo that encircled the pilgrim’s head; and not mark the dust that sometimes sullied his garments.” In other words, in their quest for an ideal society, even genuinely good leaders focused too much on minor issues and suppression of “natural desires”—yet Sedgwick’s conflicted attitude is clear in that she wants to maintain a saintly image (“the bright halo”) for the pilgrims, even as she criticizes their perceived flaws.

Even though pilgrim society had genuine, even fatal faults, it also contained the seeds of a society rightly focused on greater liberty. After Pequot warriors massacre most of the Fletcher family, the narrator pauses to offer observations about the Puritan character: “We forget that the noble pilgrims lived and endured for us […] they came not for themselves […] they came forth in the dignity of the chosen servants of the Lord, to open the forests to […] religious and civil liberty, and equal rights[.]” In other words, even though Sedgwick doesn’t hesitate to criticize what she sees as Puritan weaknesses and hypocrisies, that does not mean she fundamentally challenges the traditional narrative of the pilgrims’ courageous and consequential mission—in fact, she still celebrates it.

When Hope and Digby, the Fletchers’ faithful household servant, talk about Hope’s headstrong nature, Digby remarks that most people in pilgrim society actually share the desire to have their own way, which is what motivated them to migrate to the wilderness in the first place: “I know which way the wind blows. Thought and will are set free […] there is a new spirit in the world […] and the liberty set forth in the blessed word [the Bible], is now felt to be every man’s birth-right.” Digby’s reflection suggests that colonial society, inspired by biblical ideals, is on a trajectory toward ever greater freedom of thought, liberty, and human rights. With these words—which, significantly, are uttered by a common man rather than a community leader—Sedgwick suggests that, for all its shortcomings, the pilgrims’ society was on the right track, already progressing toward the greater liberties of her own day.

As in her portrayals of religious tolerance and women’s roles, Sedgwick’s overall appraisal of the Puritan heritage sees that history as consistent with her personal ideals. That is, like Digby, she believes there is a “new spirit in the world” which inspires Americans to ever greater liberties for minority views and historically oppressed groups, and this allows her to read that “spirit” backward into the motives of her historical characters, too. Sedgwick’s own perspective should be kept in mind when considering her fictionalization of history—it’s one among many 19th-century attempts to wrestle with both the past and the future in light of the struggles of the author’s own day.