Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 2005 C. M. Sedgwick's 'Patient Investigation' of America's Past: An Intertextual Study of Hope Leslie Ellen Adrienne Foster Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Foster, E. (2005). C. M. Sedgwick's 'Patient Investigation' of America's Past: An Intertextual Study of Hope Leslie (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/550 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. C. M. Sedgwick's 'Patient Investigation' of America's Past: An Intertextual Study of Hope Leslie A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Department of English McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Ellen Adrienne Foster 15 November 2005 Copyright 2005 by Ellen Adrienne Foster All rights reserved. iii Name: Ellen Adrienne Foster Title: C. M. Sedgwick's 'Patient Investigation' of America's Past: An Intertextual Study of Hope Leslie Degree: Doctor of Philosophy in English Date: 15 November 2005 APPROVED _______________________________________________________ Frederick Newberry, Ph.D., Professor of English APPROVED _______________________________________________________ Linda Arbaugh Kinnahan, Ph.D., Professor of English APPROVED _______________________________________________________ Jean E. Hunter, Ph.D., Professor of History APPROVED _______________________________________________________ Linda Arbaugh Kinnahan, Ph.D., Chair, Department of English APPROVED _______________________________________________________ Francesco C. Cesareo, Ph.D., Dean McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts iv Acknowledgements Many colleagues, friends, and mentors contributed to the development and completion of this project. Professor Frederick Newberry, my advisor, encouraged my interest in archival research and provided important guidance to this project from its inception. Professors Linda Kinnahan and Jean Hunter, members of my dissertation committee, offered crucial support in their readings of my work. Ann Romanczyk, Elizabeth R. Curry, Danette DiMarco, Jenifer Elmore, Anita Gorman, Marie Konzman Risboskin, Carolyn Steglich, and Donna Waldron enriched this work with their advice and expertise. The faculty and my fellow graduate students in the English Department and the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts provided an engaging intellectual environment, one that has deeply influenced my scholarship, my teaching, and my service to the profession. The Massachusetts Historical Society's 2001-2002 Ruth R. Miller Research Fellowship supported my dissertation research. I am indebted to the Society for affording me the opportunity to spend extended periods of time in Boston, reading deeply in their collections and exploring the intersections of literature and history, past and present. Quite literally, without the support of the Massachusetts Historical Society and its extensive collections, this study would not exist. v Abstract Since the 1987 republication of Catharine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie; or, Early Times in the Massachusetts (1827), literary-historical interpretations have most often explored its proto-feminist impulses, revisionary history of the Pequod War, and models of American citizenship. Inquiries into Sedgwick's historical research for Hope Leslie have largely been limited to internal textual references. This dissertation answers questions regarding Sedgwick's research and also provides a foundation for a number of future studies. That foundation derives from extensive archival research conducted at and supported by the Massachusetts Historical Society, involving the examination of several layers of textual evidence (the unpublished correspondence of Sedgwick and others, Sedgwick's unpublished notebooks, published historical documents, and Hope Leslie). This dissertation reviews the conditions of Sedgwick's authorship, provides a timeline of the development of Hope Leslie, offers detailed evidence of Sedgwick's research, and discusses the literary-historical significance of Sedgwick's historical research. In addition, the archival evidence points to Sedgwick's religious faith and her concern for tolerance as strong influences on her authorship and Hope Leslie. This study finds that, through Hope Leslie, Sedgwick explores the historical tensions within the Puritan settlement in order to suggest a future America that could embrace religious tolerance yet also claim its Puritan past. Chapter one reviews the late twentieth-century scholarship that led to renewed interest in Sedgwick's fiction and authorial reputation. Chapter two reconsiders influential perceptions of Sedgwick's authorship and contextualizes the examination of vi Hope Leslie. Chapter three provides the first documentary history of the development and completion of Hope Leslie. Chapters four and five consider Sedgwick's use of history to represent the federal covenant theology of the Puritan past and to explore the potential for religious tolerance. Chapter four focuses on the fictional characters while chapter five examines Sedgwick's use of historical persons and events in Hope Leslie. Chapter six suggests avenues for future scholarship. The appendix provides the documentary evidence of Sedgwick's considerable research in American history. The layers of textual analysis in the appendix support the literary-historical interpretations of chapters four and five. vii Table of Contents Chapter One: Overview 1 Chapter Two: Sedgwick's Authorship 29 Chapter Three: Sedgwick's Hope Leslie: The Writing of a Romance 51 Chapter Four: Writing the Puritan Character 78 Chapter Five: Sedgwick's Use of History in Hope Leslie 111 Chapter Six: Conclusions and Future Considerations 143 Appendix: Sedgwick's Sources 152 Notes 210 Works Cited 223 Works Consulted 235 1 Chapter One: Overview This study has developed out of my interest in American authorship and history from the colonial period through the nineteenth century, and in particular from my interests in historical fiction and women's fiction. The work of Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867), an early nineteenth-century American writer of six novels as well as numerous short fiction sketches, works for children, and a travelogue, is an ideal subject for the exploration of American fiction and history. Further, Sedgwick's and her family's unpublished correspondence and Sedgwick's unpublished notebooks, held at the Massachusetts Historical Society, provide the resources for an in-depth examination of Sedgwick's authorship and her historical romance, Hope Leslie; or, Early Times in the Massachusetts (1827). My findings within these collections, the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers I-III and the Sedgwick Family Papers II-V, support my re-consideration of Sedgwick as author, my documentation of the writing of Hope Leslie, and my identification of her primary sources in the historical records of colonial New England. Further, I examine the re-appearance of Sedgwick's research in Hope Leslie in order to arrive at a better understanding of the tensions in the romance between the Puritans' legacy of covenant theology and the nation's claims for religious tolerance; the centrality of this conflict is not only part of the romance's representation of American history, but also part of a liberal Unitarian literary project. Readers have recognized, from her earliest publications, Sedgwick's interest in exploring national or social issues; the importance of her family in establishing this direction for her authorship is common knowledge among Sedgwick scholars. Concerns 2 about the course of the American nation were simply a part of Sedgwick's life because of her father Theodore's and her brothers' (and then her own) involvement in public service. Theodore Sedgwick held a number of important political positions during Sedgwick's childhood. Mary Kelley neatly summarizes his political career: An ardent supporter of the Revolution, he also briefly held two military positions during the war, first as a military secretary with the rank of major to Major General John Thomas and then as commissioner of supply for the northern department of the Continental Forces from 1775 to 1778. Sedgwick was elected a representative to the Massachusetts General Court in 1780 and again in 1782 and became a state senator in 1784 and 1785. In 1789 he began a twelve-year period in the national legislature as a congressman and a senator, ending as Speaker of the House. From 1802 to the end of his life he served as a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. (Private Woman 51) Sedgwick's elder brothers Theodore II, Robert, and Henry Dwight (Harry), all lawyers as their father was, were involved in various political and social reforms in western Massachusetts and New York, including abolition, Greek independence, education, and railroad expansion. Theodore II was a Massachusetts state legislator and author of such works as Hints to My Countrymen (1826) and Public and Private Economy (1836). Sedgwick's younger brother Charles, a less public figure than his siblings, was a clerk of the courts in Berkshire County; his wife