Abstract of Serholm Article

Jessica Masri
LIT 6009
Dr. Logan
24 April 2009

Abstract

In his article “Dividing Religion from Theology in Lydia Maria Child’s Hobomok”, Carl H. Sederholm seeks to approach the novel from a new direction. Rather than discussing Child’s aims at patriarchal or political reform, as many others have done, Sederholm discusses Child’s spiritual and theological vision in Hobomok. He quotes her 1855 The Progress of Religious Ideas, in which Child says that “theology is not religion” (553). The same sentiments, argues Sederholm, dominate Child’s early novel. Her interest in religion is displayed in her work, The Progress of Religious Ideas, Though Successive Age, which explores world religions. She was seeking a system which “would respond to her spiritual interests and needs on a more individual level” (555), one, as she said in a letter to her brother, Convers Francis, in which her “heart and understanding could unite” (qtd. on 555). This search led her to investigate, but ultimately reject, liberal Unitarianism and the teachings of Swedenborg.

Swedenborg taught that the spiritual realm was tied to the natural, a doctrine which Child also ascribed to. In Hobomok, Sederholm points out Child’s analogy of the light of the sun for the light of the (human) spirit. Moonlight, in turn, represents even more universal spirituality, “because of its unique ability to highlight the shapes within the shadows. Whereas the sun tends to divide light from the dark and the good from the evil, the moonlight tends to blur such differences” (556). This belief refutes the Calvinist theology of both Child and her character Mary’s fathers. She argues for universal, fluid spirituality which bring both light and dark to everyone, rather than light to a remnant elect.
Child believed that organized religion, or theology, diminished true religious experience and feelings. While most have interpreted Mary’s husband ceremony as a symbol of Child’s rebellion against patriarchy and Puritanism (Maddox, Person, Karcher), Sederholm looks at the scene as a description of a literal religious ceremony which seeks to divide theology from spirituality. The ceremony meets Mary’s spiritual needs, and Sederholm argues against Karcher’s assertion that the ritual is witchcraft, through the (problematic) premise that witchcraft is not religion. Mary uses natural objects such as sticks, feathers and blood to connect with nature. Her circle (citing Mark G. Vasquez) represents individuality and personal expression, as well as universal inclusivity. The circle also links Mary to Hobomok, and his pantheism (560).

Sederholm’s argument about Mary’s writing is the most interesting part of the article. Mary’s use of her own blood as a “living language” to write in the religious ceremony symbolizes the connection between human spirit, nature and the act of writing (559). Sederholm references D.H. Lawrence’s theory that Americans operate according to the mind and nerves, to the exclusion of the blood and the body. Mary rejects this view, involving her body in her religious acts. The act of writing, both on the cloth and in the sand, suggests a new religion which is based on, not an inspired text, but on the writing of each individual. In this way Child is “dividing the signifiers of spiritual practice from the signifieds of theological dogma . . . writing plays a key role in creating [Mary’s] own place within the realm of the spirit” (561). In Child’s sketch “Spirit and Matter” she herself calls writing a means for the spirit to “communicate in a world of matter.” In this sense, writing is both self-expressive and universally spiritual. Sederholm ends by saying that Hobomok is the beginning of Child’s literary development of spiritual ideas, which promote an anti-Calvinistic religion of sentiments rather than doctrines that is more racially and politically tolerant.
Sederholm’s piece is well researched and presents a fresh look at Child’s text. His most compelling claim is the one regarding the significance of writing to spirituality in Child’s work. This section of the article will be very useful in my examination of literacy in Hobomok, as will Sederholm’s comments on sun and moon light in my discussion of epistemology. Sederholm’s argument, however, is weekend by his lack of definition for “religion” and his exclusion of passages in the text which challenge his reading of the first chapter. For example, he does not acknowledge the fact that, although Mary’s husband ceremony is painted as metephysical in the beginning, Child openly states in the end of the book that Mary’s foolish decision to marry Hobomok was guided by the same superstition and blind fatalism which motivated her to perform the husband ceremony and then to trust in it. Child clearly depicts Mary’s mindset as ill-educated, and incorrect. This fact weakens the argument that Child is attempting to suggest a valid form of religion in the beginning. At the least, she throws doubt onto the genuineness of such spiritual experiences.

Sederholm, Carl H. “Dividing Religion from Theology in Lydia Maria Child’s Hobomok.” American Transcendental Quarterly 20.3(2006): 553-64.