Appearance vs. Reality in Sedgwick's Hope Leslie Essay

Both Hope Leslie and Hester Prynne defy the Puritan authority to do what they feel is morally right in the face of judgment and opposition. In Hope Leslie,

People in society live in a masquerade. Everyone wears a decoratively adorned mask that displays beauty, purity, and service. However, behind the mask lies on the inside of all society. One will stop at nothing in order to be well liked, thus becoming hypocrites. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The House of the Seven Gables, the narrator uses intense diction, a vivid selection of detail, and a shocking tone to reveal that the character of Judge Pyncheon resembles perfection on the outside, yet “darker traits” sit latent on the inside.

Characterizing Catharine Sedgwick's novel Hope Leslie as a romantic novel is accurate as far as it goes, but it also reflects the author's views of the role of religion in New England two hundred years ago as intolerant and constricting. In the beginning of the novel, the character William Fletcher is forbidden to marry his distant cousin Alice because he is a Puritan. In England at the time, Anglicans loathed Puritans and vice versa. After William is forbidden to marry the love of his life, he chooses to move to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where at first the Church of England was tolerated but was eventually forbidden by the Puritans. The Puritans became as intolerant of theological disagreement as the Anglicans had been in England.

American Puritans in the 17th century were known for their fervor for personal godliness and doctrinal correctness. In addition to believing in the absolute sovereignty of God, the total depravity of man, and the complete dependence of human beings on divine grace for salvation, they stressed the importance of personal religious experience. In her novel Hope Leslie, Catharine Maria Sedgwick critiques the idea of Puritanism and shows its deficiencies through the characters of Everell Fletcher, Hope Leslie, and Magawisca.

And it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to the Indian village in King’s Phillip war’’ (611). Here is where Hawthorn started to point out the hypocrisy of the puritan religion and the sinful nature of all man. Later, Hawthorn continued to point out the hypocrisy of puritans at its outmost. “If it be as thou sayest,’replied Goodman Brown, I marvel they never spoke of these matters. Or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the last rumor of the sort would have driven them from New-England’’ (612). Here Hawthorn tries to show how puritans kept their most dark sins hidden from even their most beloved, making them hypocrites towards God, society and their religious beliefs. As the story continues Goodman has an internal battle, he is trying not to continue through the dark forest, the only think that is giving him the strength to get out from there is the memory of his wife Faith. When he lifted his hands to pray, a cloud appeared upon his head, then he heard a voice uttering lamentations, it came from a woman, it was Faith’s voice. Then he heard a new scream from the same voice that drowned immediately into a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away. Those other voices were the voices of the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners which encourage Brown’s faith to disappear. “My Faith is gone!’ cried he,

In the time of Britain’s early settlements in the colonies, Puritans dominated a region known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Individuals under puritanic law were held to very strict social and religious standards— especially those honorable few who had chosen to be holy men. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter characterizes Arthur Dimmesdale, a reverend pastor living in Boston, as a lost soul, struggling to find his purpose. The reverend remains on a dim, unclear path of life with a guilty conscience of his sinful past weighing him down for the vast majority of the novel. It is not until the end, when he freely confesses his fatherhood to Pearl, “The sin-born child,” that the author conveys Dimmesdale as a man at peace with his decisions,

In The Scarlet Letter Hypocrisy is evident everywhere. The characters of Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and the very society that the characters lived in, were steeped in hypocrisy. Hawthorne was not subtle in his portrayal of the terrible sin of hypocrisy; he made sure it was easy to see the sin at work , at the same time however, parallels can be drawn between the characters of The Scarlet Letter and of today’s society.

Anne Bronte makes a bold statement of rebellion against the typically accepted yet deplorable behavior of Victorian males in her book “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.” In her novel, Helen Huntingdon breaks the rules of Victorian society with punishable offenses; such as, scandalously escaping from her abusive and philandering husband, refusing his demands for custody and fleeing with their only child, and absconding with much of her personal property. Helen’s imprudent decision to marry Arthur Huntingdon is uncharacteristic of Bronte’s heroine; however, rectitude and integrity eventually lead her to happiness. The domestic and social criticism of Helen’s husband, Arthur Huntingdon and his perfidious ways, is pitted against the ideals of loyalty and integrity found in Helen’s honorable neighbor, Gilbert Markham, when she flees to Wildfell Hall. Bronte, utilizes these characters to incite the need for social reformation with fresh inclusion of the redeeming values of biblical virtues.

After accepting guardianship of Miss Milner, Dorriforth’s apprehensions towards his new position as protectorate manifest the conflicting models of masculinity available for him to emulate. Although he lives in the city, Dorriforth’s Catholic vocation granted his character a degree of separation from society and the vices associated with a life of fashion. This estrangement quickly dissolves once he assumes charge of Miss Milner; consequently, Dorriforth “feared he had undertaken a task he was too weak to execute—the protection of a young woman of fashion.” (6) Dorriforth becomes “forcibly possessed” by his concerns leading up to his meeting with the orphaned ward, resulting in his enquiries into her manner and disposition from acquaintances.

Fowles presents Sarah and other characters, such as Charles Smithson and his fiancée Ernestina Freeman, in this novel as living in an ambiguous world of Victorian atmosphere. That is, nevertheless, overwhelmed by postmodern interpretations. In fact, Fowles gives his heroine, Sarah Woodruff, a Victorian world view different from other Victorian heroines. In this sense, his heroine “employs the power of tradition and stereotypes for her own benefit while projecting herself into a characteristic Victorian conflict she simultaneously amends the nature and character of the predictable medium as well” (Toth 70). To put it differently, knowing the norms of her society and how fallen women are cast as transgressors of social laws, Sarah disguises herself

Nelly represents not only the power and wisdom of women, but also her compliance to dominance of men. ‘Nelly Dean is a manipulative creature who will go to considerable lengths to maintain the status quo of male authority.’ (Whitley, 2000: xi) By adding this trait to Nelly’s character Brontë reminds the reader of the order of the world. Even though the characters are fighting and representing women’s rights, they still do live in a man’s world – that is the novel’s connection with the reality. The character of Nelly is a great support to the statement of de Beauvoir (1949: 324):

Pride and Prejudice is a novel which follows the fine, beautiful, and single Bennett daughters and in more particular, Elizabeth Bennett, who copes with trials and tribulations of life, morals, and marriage. Throughout the novel, most of the issues that Elizabeth must deal with have to do with her and her family’s social ranking. Since the novel takes place in a society of the landed gentry of the British regency, social class/status is among the utmost importance of a person during this time. Jane Austen uses her satirical and witty writing style to depict certain characters in this novel to represent the various class rankings and the differences they cause between people who are not of the same class. In more detail, Austen portrays the effects of different statuses and income among the lives of women, especially single women. She also uses family income, property, consumer items, and language to differentiate different social rankings. One of the most important rankings for Austen in this novel is the status of a ‘gentleman’. She portrays many of her characters in this way and on the contrary characterizes some characters as snobbish and superficial (Stafford 302).

On the one hand, it was quite unusual for a man who lived in the Victorian era to be so sensitive to female’s feelings, to offer her his unconditionally love and compassion, and to be so open-minded that he is seen as a poor fish by narrow-minded people. The model of gentleman is, thus, brought back to its literary meaning, in the sense that William is gentle in thought and action. It may seem that he founds the balance between reason and emotion by keeping a journal: “He had always kept a journal. When he was a young man, in a village outside Rotherham in Yorkshire, he had written a daily examination of his conscience” (15), “The journals had changed

Jane Austen’s novels are known for not only being enthralling but also as characteristic of British society in the nineteenth century. Her novels present a compelling view on the historical, psychological, and sociological issues woven into the plots that are ironic and, farce, and versatile characters. One of Jane Austen’s most appreciated novels Pride and Prejudice illustrates the topic that I will explore in my extended essay, which is the male domain versus the female one. In order to address my question- How does social status and gender bias influence life decisions and perceptions of the world in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice?- I will investigate and reveal the specific views of both gender’s worlds as offered by Austen in comparison to the established ones from Nineteenth Century England. The social status and genders of the characters influence their lives in all aspects, from determining their perceptions of the world to limiting their potentials in life decisions.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is one of the most widely read and studied English novels of the 19th century. Austen’s characters, in Pride and Prejudice in particular seem to think and act like real people, and the worlds Austen creates around her characters seem logical and realistic. The novel gives an idea about how human psychology and gender relations looked like during the 19th century in England. “The novel is regularly interpreted from a feminist theory perspective, with theorists arguing that Elizabeth Bennet resists patriarchal authority and refuses to subject herself to the will and power of men.” (Chapman, R.W.55)