Final Paper

Jessica Masri
LIT 6009
Dr. Logan
24 April 2009

“Monarch of the day”: Epistemology, Literacy, Light, and Nationalism
in Lydia Maria Child’s Hobomok

In Revolution and the Word, Cathy N. Davidson describes the novel’s ability to challenge “notions of who should and should not be literate; . . . what is or is not suitable literary subject matter . . . the term literature itself” (71). In the case of developing a national literature, we might add that the novel also has the power to define these factors. With the rise of print technologies at the beginning of the nineteenth century, young America began to call for a national literature which would aid in the construction of a national identity. Lydia Maria Child was one of the brave respondents. Her novel Hobomok is a romantic history of Puritan New England that deals with race, religion and gender. It has received much attention in the last thirty years, and is often analyzed beside Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans and Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, since all three frontier romances feature a Native American presence and predict their coming annihilation. Most critics fall into two camps: those who focus on Child’s cultural progressivism, emphasizing the novel’s attack on patriarchy and excusing or minimizing its negative racial message (Karcher, Matter-Seibel, Sederholm, Vasquez), and those who acknowledge Child’s promotion of religious, feminist, and political reformation, but cannot overlook the racist imperialism which Hobomok reinforces (Tawil, Brown, Stevens, Samuels). An element that has not been addressed specifically, however, is the role which literacy plays in the novel’s national and racial project. As Davidson notes, novels played a key role in shaping the nation, and in the case of Hobomok, the novel prescribes who is literate, the subject matter of literature, and the shape of American literature itself. Such issues could not be more important, in a time when literacy increasingly determined human and political value (Armstrong and Tennenhouse 393-94). Child concludes that while nature and culture provide sufficient knowledge of spiritual truth, only through the epistemology of Western reason and the written word can a race of people survive. She calls Americans to embrace natural, rational and written epistemology in order to outlive the fading nation of American Indians, represented by Hobomok, who only possess natural oral forms of knowledge, rather than a written, “enlightened” epistemology and literature.

In 1815, the North American Review commented on the state of American literature, or the lack thereof. The author suggested that the country’s absence of originality was due to the colonial nature of the country—a transplanted, rather than native linguistic and communal culture: “national literature seems to be . . . the legitimate product of a national language” (Channing 308). The solution, suggested the critic, was for American writers to mine the treasures of the “oral literature of its aborigines” (314). A legitimate, national, written canon, in other words, can only emerge from an oral language connected with the land it describes. Many writers took up the call to incorporate a Native American presence and oral tradition into their texts. According to Cheryl Walker, Indians became a sign of America’s difference from Britain, the Native American eventually being accepted as their national symbol (25-27).

Child incorporates the Indian oral tradition primarily through the novel’s namesake, Hobomok, a Pequod Indian who historically, with Squanto, helped Plymouth survive its first generation. In the novel, the Native American’s oral literacy and epistemology is contrasted to the written literacy and epistemology of the Puritan community. In particular, Hobomok is compared to his rival for Mary Conant’s love, Charles Brown, an Episcopalian Englishman. In the end, Mary weds first Hobomok, and then, upon his unexpected return, Brown. Hobomok releases Mary and travels west. Mary’s meditations and judgment regarding the two heroes and all that they represent provide Child’s audience with a reading of America’s imperial situation and provides a path for future action.

Child presents her readers with three primary sources of light, which we are to equate with three different forms of knowledge. The two luminaries, the sun and moon, represent sources of knowledge, and the flame represents human possession of knowledge. Each of these three lights correlates with an aspect of epistemology which may be presented orally or through writing.

The Sun

The sun is Truth itself, the source of all light and, metaphorically, knowledge. The first chapter of Hobomok refers to sunlight as the knowledge of Christianity:

Two centuries have elapsed since . . . God was here in his holy temple, and the whole earth kept silence before him! But the voice of prayer was soon to be heard in the desert. The sun, which for ages beyond the memory of man had gazed on the strange, fearful worship of the Great Spirit of the wilderness, was soon to shed its splendor upon the altars of the living God. That light, which had arisen amid the darkness of Europe, stretched its long, luminous track across the Atlantic, till the summits of the western world became tinged with its brightness. (Child 5–6)

The message of the novel, however, is broader than it at first appears.
Child is less concerned with Christianity than with what she calls “true religion.” In Salem, religiosity is displayed through verbal conflict about scriptural texts and condemnation of other sects of Christianity; but true religion is like the sun: “Spiritual light, like that of the natural sun, shines from one source, and shines alike upon all; but it is reflected and absorbed in almost infinite variety; and in the moral as well as the natural world, the diversity of the rays is occasioned by the nature of the recipients” (Child 69). The narrator seems to indicate in this passage that Truth is neither oral nor written, white nor colored, natural nor human, but rather may reflect off of any form, as sunlight does. This is why Governor Bradford says “follow the light which is given you,” and Mrs. Conant says “it appears to me that an error in judgment is nothing, if the life be right with God” (65, 75–76). Spiritual epistemology is universal and multifaceted. This has both positive and negative effects.

Because of Truth’s ability to be reflected in many forms, it is easily misappropriated by imperfect humans in its translation to language, in both oral and written forms. Mary grows weary of the constant “war of words” which exists in Salem, and Bradford instructs the colonists to “talk little about religion, and feel much of its power” and warns against “sharpen[ing] tongue against tongue, and pen against pen, and pamphlets [that] come out with more teeth to bite . . . This is but to betray the truth” (Child 57, 64–65). Even scripture itself is questioned as a perfect source of human epistemology by Mrs. Conant: “the Bible is an inspired book; but I sometimes think the Almighty suffers it to be a flaming cherubim, turning every way, and guarding the tree of life from the touch of man. But in creation, one may read to their fill. It is God’s library—the first Bible he ever wrote” (76). The ability to consider nature as God’s “first Bible” is one of the positive inferences of universal spiritual truth.

Because spiritual truth shines like the sun, the “untutored” Hobomok (Child 84) may learn of God for himself:

[T]he dark valley of the shadow of death had never been illuminated with the brightness of revealed truth. But though the intellect be darkened, there are rays from God’s own throne, which enter into the peacefulness and purity of the affections, shedding their mild luster on the ignorance of man. . . . He had never read of God, but he had heard his chariot wheels in the distant thunder and seen his drapery in the clouds. (34)

Hobomok, then, has two forms of spiritual epistemology: inner light enters into his affections from God’s throne (like the sun); and, through nature he can hear and see non-verbal reflections of God. Likewise, Mary often receives more spiritual consolation from nature than from the written word. Shortly following the above passage we are told that “nature formed a ‘sanctum sanctorum’ in the recesses of Mary’s heart,” and much later we are told that “the souls of men were not open to the influence of nature. Little thought they, amid the contests of opinion,” of the stars which she calls the apostles of heaven (91).

While Hobomok considers nature and the affections as valid epistemological sources of truth, the book by no means discounts the more European epistemology of reason and writing. It is important to note in the above quote regarding Hobomok, the words, “revealed truth.” It is implied that the “mild luster” of the ignorant Indian’s spiritual light is inferior to the Western world’s “brightness of revealed truth,” which we assume to be the Bible. However, if Mrs. Conant’s statement was true about the greater reliability of nature compared with scripture in spiritual epistemology, what makes “revealed truth” more valuable than nature? We must conclude that it is not the content of scripture, but its form—writing—which the narrator seems to privilege. This becomes clearer when we look at the context of the quote: “Philosophy had never held up her shield against the sun, and then placed her dim taper in his hand . . . but there was within him a voice loud and distinct, which spoke to him of another world, where he should think, feel, love, even as he did now” (34). Philosophy, education, and learning from the written word is what Hobomok lacks—the bright rays of literacy. His knowledge is oral/auditory—he hears a “voice” which speaks to him. He does not read of it. So, regardless of the Indians’ spiritual knowledge, it is the power of written literacy which will decide the next “monarch of the day” on the North American continent (35).

The Moon

The moon, in turn, is a “planet” or object of nature which reflects the light of the sun, shining more dimly, but beautifully, in the darkness. Child consistently correlates the moon with human imagination, especially as it is embodied in cultural knowledge/epistemology—this includes everything from mythology and folklore, to art and poetry. As the sun denotes reason, so the moon denotes fancy.

Most especially, the moon is associated with the pre-Christian mythology of both European and American people. This is seen clearly in the first chapter’s famous mystic circle scene, in which Mary goes into the woods and, after drawing a circle in the sand and writing with her blood on white cloth, recites a charm which calls upon her future husband:

A shadow was one moment cast across the bright moonlight;. . . . The rays of the full moon rested on her face, . . she stept into the magic ring, walked round three times with measure tread . . . Whoever’s to claim a husband’s power,/ come to me in the moonlight hour. . . . Whoe’er my bridegroom is to be,/ Step in the circle after me. (13)

The ritual Mary practices resembles many traditional British husband-hunting spells which were especially popular in the middle ages. The circle which she draws by a stream recalls the Anglo belief in fairy circles. The fact that Hobomok enters the circle after her, offering prayers and a timber sacrifice to one of his demon gods in petition for a wife, connects the Anglo and Indian pagan beliefs.

Fairy imagery is used throughout the novel in reference to Mary, England’s past spiritualism, and the British court. The moon is repeatedly referred to as a “bright circle,” as is the court of King Charles, where Mary and Brown used to dance, just as the fairies in their mushroom circles. The narrator calls Mary “the youngest little blooming fairy” of the court, which she remembers as “that fairy spot in her existence” (Child 8, 47). Both Briton and its past paganism associated with fairy lore are despised by the Puritan people, who compare King Charles’s Catholic queen to a snake, and his court to ancient Egypt and the courts of Baal. Even Governor Bradford condemns those who “had rather dance round the May-pole . . . bedecked with ribbons and lascivious verses” than follow Puritan piety (65).

Like the sun, the moon shines on the world universally. The light of mythology, folklore and fancy does not shine on England alone. Mary notices and meditates on the “Fair planet,” which has shined upon cloisters, King Charles’s “courtly circle . . . turrets of the Catholic, . . . proud spires of the Episcopalian . . . distant mosques and temples, and now [is] shedding the same light on the sacrifice heap of the Indian and the rude dwellings of the Calvinist” (Child 48). The passage focuses upon places of worship, in one sense, but architecture in another—a creative cultural production of human spiritual and religious devotion. What is universal is not the form, but the source of light itself—the mysticism of the human imagination.
As with the sun, the moon’s imaginative, cultural knowledge can be embodied in oral form—mythology and legend—but, according to the narrator, is more perfectly incarnated in written form—poetry and prose literature. In the opening passage of Hobomok, we see a reference to moonlight as the unreliable epistemology of oral tradition: “In most nations the path of antiquity is shrouded in darkness, rendered more visible by the wild, fantastic light of fable” (5). This “wild, fantastic light” of darkness is compared with the “luminous” view of American time, rendered to us by the country’s youth, and more specifically, by its written record. After all, it is an ancestral written document which the narrator claims is the source of her New England novel, “an old, worn-out manuscript” which gives details of years, geography and names which may be verified by other written manuscripts. In this way, written epistemology is depicted as more valuable than oral when it comes to understanding cultural history, and by extension, identity and destiny.
Mary’s husband ceremony also reveals to us the importance of writing cultural knowledge. The incantation by itself is not enough; Mary must write unknown words upon white cloth in her own blood. These symbols have great meaning. The blood, as Carl H. Sederholm and Shirley Samuels both point out, represents the physical identity of Mary. By writing with it, she is creating a “living language” which involves both her body and mind (Sederholm 559). Her sacrifice of blood-writing is also symbolic of the procreative contract she will sign in marriage of procreation and, by extension, land (Samuels). Significantly, this contract must be signed on white cloth—ultimately, the Nation is contracted to white imperialists through the female body. Mary will be able to break the laws society by entering into an oral contract of marriage with Hobomok, even mixing their blood to produce a child, but she will only enter into a legal, written contract of marriage with the Anglican Brown.

The perfection of moonlight epistemology and written literacy is presented to us in the form of Spencer’s Fairy Queen. During one of Mary and Brown’s moonlit rendezvous, the couple quotes Spencer’s versus, and later, Mary’s grandfather sends her a copy of the complete text. The epic poem was written for the purpose of venerating a new national identity formed under Queen Elizabeth and the Anglican Church. The reason this piece is associated with moonlight, however, is because of its appropriation of ancient oral tradition and mythology: that of the fairies. Yet, in its use of mythic, oral tradition, the book is as passionately Protestant as the Puritans who despise both British politics and religion. The Fairy Queen acts as a hybrid of the novel’s warring factions--Of Puritan and Anglican, Christian and pagan, written and oral traditions. It is a nationalist British text which can serve as a model for the national American literacy.

Although the moonlight epistemology holds positive potential, it also has negative characteristics in Hobomok. While moonlight is associated with the human imagination and culture, it is also juxtaposed against the sunlight of philosophy and reason, to represent the dim and unreliable light of madness. It is under the light of the moon that Child’s novel takes its drastic turn toward promoting white racial supremacy. After receiving word that Brown is dead, Mary, reeling on the brink of sanity, tells Hobomok she will run away with him as his wife. The novel portrays this choice as one of desperation, spitefulness (toward her father), and irrationality. Mary’s “blind belief in fatality” causes her to act, believing that the appearance of Hobomok in the mystic circle had already determined her fate (123). As they paddle away on the river, Hobomok sings to the moon. Mary is described as the pitiable victim of a mind full of chaos. Harry Brown fantastically summarizes the scene when he says that “national” literature turns miscegenation “into a nightmare world of the ’gothic,’ where racial hybridity is manifested . . . as madness, [and] degeneracy” (137). Thus, without the brighter, empirical and spiritual light from the sun, which is only fully possessed by the white race, moonlight and the shadows it produces may lead to madness. Even the mystic circle ritual, which many scholars consider the symbolic crux of Child’s spiritual and political reform in the novel, is portrayed in a negative light when it is viewed by Mary with eyes of spiritual determinism rather than with a rational, empirical confidence in autonomy.

Although loved and cared for by her Indian husband, who is shunned by his own people as she is by hers for their marriage, Mary comes to regret her choice in husband: “. . . rich as she found his uncultivated mind in native imagination, still the contrast between him and [Brown] would often be remembered with sufficient bitterness. . . . her own nation looked upon her as lost and degraded; and, . . . her own heart echoed back the charge” (Child 135). Thus, the spiritual enlightenment and oral epistemology of the Indians, though beautiful, is not enough for Mary, nor for the future of the nation. Only the epistemology of reason and its written literacy will suffice for the future leadership of the North American continent, which is why Mary must, in the end of the novel, wed Brown after all.

In time, Mary Hobomok has a child who is called by his father’s name, and Mary is happier, loving her Indian husband more each day. However, Brown returns alive to New England and Hobomok, in an act of savage nobility, aware of Mary’s preference, chooses to remove to the West, leaving Mary and his son to Brown’s possession. Mary sees her first marriage as a sin, for which “all the punishment has fallen upon” Hobomok. He is never seen again, and his son forgets his true father, who is “seldom spoken of” (150). But Mary always remembers Hobomok as the protector of the “tender skip” which “has since become a mighty tree, and the nations of the earth seek refuge beneath its branches.” The final phrase of the book consciously conflates the service which Hobomok did for Mary with that which he did for the future empire of America.

The Flame

The third form of light which plays a key role in the novel is the flame, or fire-light. The flame appears continually in the narrative as a symbol for human life and the possession of knowledge. That it represents both of these things is crucial. Those who sustain a flame are those who survive. The flame is equated with life, bloodline, reason, cultural knowledge, and religious knowledge. If the flame is preserved, then all of the these things are preserved as well.

When first describing the Puritans, the narrator uses this flame imagery to describe the protestant’s imperial mission: “the pure flame of religion was every where quenched in blood;—but the watchful vestal had kept the sacred flame still burning deeply and fervently. . . . Without doubt, there were many broad, deep shadows in their characters, but there was likewise bold and powerful light” (Child 6). The narrator explains that although the Puritans were proud and bigoted, they had the power of mind and firm resolve that was needed for the construction and survival of the American nation. It is said that Mr. Conant’s “unyielding pride . . . was at once the source of his greatest virtues and his greatest faults” (95). Because of this flawed but rigorous people then, the flame which traveled from Europe to America, a religious and imperial flame based in written knowledge, is kept alive.
In comparison, the Indians are struggling to keep their lantern lit. In chapter four, the narrator introduces the great Indian Corbitant, whose “prophetic eye foresaw the destruction of his countrymen” (Child 31). Angry with Hobomok for making peace with the white men he proclaims: “are not the red men like the stars in the sky. . . let Owanux suck the blood of the Indian, where be the red man then? Look for the flame that has died away, . . . as the song of the bird flown by” (31). Corbitant sees that Hobomok’s flame is given in love to Mary Conant, and she rather than Corbitant’s kinswoman, would also continue Hobomok’s bloodline. Corbitant’s assertion is reinforced in the next chapter, in which Hobomok “sat before the fire, the flickering and uncertain light of a few decaying embers falling upon his face . . . his dark, expressive eye rested on Conant’s daughter” (36). Thus the flame, in this manner, represents survival through primogeniture and bloodline, which is weakening, particularly in this novel, through the Indian’s devotion and attraction to the white people.

The Indian’s flame is also intellectually weaker than the Puritans. The narrator notes that while the Indians were indeed strong enough to crush the young white settlements, the intellect of the Europeans triumphed over the Native’s brute force. Thanks to the guns provided to them by Morton, the Indians can “speak thunder and spit fire as well as the white man” (29), but the English can speak words of fire which are charged with the thunder of persuasion and western rhetoric. Even Hobomok’s epic eloquence is silenced when Mr. Conant’s voice enters the room: trying to describe the Indian tradition of hunting by torch light, Hobomok is “unable to think of the English word” and must “pointeto the candle” (87). His illiteracy in comparison to the white patriarch leaves him speechless, without a flame.
The two races do possesses many cultural similarities. Just as the Puritans have their warring factions (Plymoth vs. Salem for example), that are nevertheless brought together in homes and at weddings through their shared linguistic tradition, so the Indians who war tribally are brought together by the linguistic tradition of stories which their elders tell (chapter 4). The difference, however is that the Indians share an oral tradition, while the Puritans share a written tradition—that of the Bible. While the Narrator throws serious doubt on humans’ ability to interpret or appropriate biblical word through the “ever-varying light of human doctrine” (58), the fact that it is written, alone, privileges the religion. It is a part of the European tradition of reason and enlightenment—enlightened not for its “inner light” but for the light of learning and letters. We may conclude that while Child sees the Indians and Puritan’s as equally enlightened spiritually by the sunlight of “true religion,” that there is significant inequality between the two races’ intellectual light, which is reflected in a difference of epistemology and literacy. It is the superiority of intellectual enlightenment and epistemology, then, which gives the white people the ability to conquer the “poor, unlettered Indians” (29).

The Future of a Nation

In light of Child’s efforts toward reforming society, many scholars have sought out the positive racial views which Hobomok presents. The value which she places on the spiritual and natural epistemology of the Indians is especially emphasized by these critics, and they point to Child’s future advocacy of Indian rights in defense of her just motives. In an article which evaluates both Sedgwick and Child’s novels, Mark G. Vesquez argues that by converging Native American and Euroamerican cultures, Hobomok privileges the “inductive, ‘natural’ method of understanding represented by Native American culture” and the “language of women and Native Americans” over the “failed language of white patriarchy” (174). While his evaluation may be true when applied to Child’s epistemology of religion, it cannot be so in her promotion of a national language or literacy. Vesquez’s a reading, does not take into adequate account the last third of Child’s novel, nor her consistent privileging of reason and written education over “natural” understanding, nor the implication which this has on national identity and imperialism.

Child, while sympathetic to the Indians’ “natural” epistemology, clearly cannot value Native American literacy on the same plane as the Western. Many scholars, such as Judith Fetterley, argue that, like Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, Hobomok’s ending must be seen as an attempt to satisfy its audience’s expectations about race and romance, in order to promote the more pertinent message about gender reform (qtd. in Matter-Seibel 412). Similarly, Sabina Matter-Seibel believes that the conventional sentimental ending of Hobomok should be ignored in the overall analysis of the work’s reformative material (413). However neither theorist takes seriously enough Lydia Maria Child’s racial supremacy, which is clearly present, even in her heroic, 1868, An Appeal for the Indians which says that the Native Americans are “[s]imply . . . younger members of the same great human family, who need to be protected, instructed and encouraged . . .” (220). In other words, while Child promotes the common humanity of the Indians, she still views them as savage and in need of education, a new epistemology of written literacy. To her credit, Child was openly honest about this racial preference, confesing in a letter that she struggled “with considerable repugnance toward [the Indians]” (Stevens 46). She continues, “But though my efforts for the Indians are mere duty-work, I do it as earnestly. . . ” and in another letter, “I have no partiality for the Indians, as a race, but the injustice of our course toward them excites my indignation to irrepressible degree.” These ambivalent feelings explain her choice to both separate Mary from Hobomok at the end of the novel, while also allowing their son to grow up happily, under the tutelage of civilized, white parents.

The fate of Hobomok and his son, indeed, is the strongest evidence to support Child’s promotion of literacy as a qualifier for national identity and imperial land-ownership. Mary and Hobomok’s son grows up to attend a Cambridge University, becoming completely integrated not only into the Western social culture, but academic and literary culture specifically. In “The American Origins of the English Novel,” Armstrong and Tennenhouse explain how the development of England’s print technologies displaced certain speech communities in the American colonies and aided the governance of imperial rule (386). In a similar manner, the written literacy of the New Republic which adopted the Native American presence, served to promote the extinction of the Indian’s oral tradition. This transformation is represented when Mary’s child drops the middle name of his father, and goes only by his first and last name “Charles Conant,” symbolizing the erasure of the oral and elements of the Native American linguistic tradition from his identity. By forming a written national literature which defines national identity as Hobomok does, the early American Republic colonized the epistemological and oral linguistic identities of the Native Americans, establishing empirical control through written text.

Conclusion

While Child’s literary efforts to reform the patriarchal and racist views of her day should not be minimized, in regard to her construction of a national literature, her Eurocentrism must be acknowledged. The first two thirds of Hobomok focus on showing the similarities between written and oral, European and Indian cultures, and the shared humanity of the Indians and Puritans. child even goes so far as to argue that, unlike the Indians, Europeans ignore one of the most perfect sources of knowledge: Nature. But the last third of her tale argues that reason and literacy are essential for survival in the new American Empire. Natural epistemology is not enough—education, cultivation, civilization, and reason are necessary for an enlightened understanding and imperial growth. While the native Indians played a brief role in protecting/guarding the seedlings of greatness, they themselves cannot take part in this greatness, due to their ignorance. There might exist noble savages such as Hobomok . . . but they are still savages. Their children should be raised and lovingly inculcated into the American empire, but their origins, the name of their father, must be silenced forever. The oral must be overcome by the written.


Works Cited

Armstrong, Nancy and Leonard Tennenhouse. “The American Origins of the English Novel.” American Literary History 4.3 (1992): 386-410.

Brown, Harry. "'The Horrid Alternative': Miscegenation and Madness in the Frontier Romance." Journal of American & Comparative Cultures 24 (2001): 137-151.

[Channing, W.]. “Essays on American Language and Literature.” North American Review 1 (1815): 307–14.

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Samuels, Shirley. "Women, Blood, and Contract." American Literary History 20.1-2 (2008): 57-75.

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

Vásquez, Mark G. "'Your Sister Cannot Speak to You and Understand You As I Do': Native American Culture and Female Subjectivity in Lydia Maria Child and Catharine Maria Sedgwick." American Transcendental Quarterly 15.3(2001): 173-90.

Walker, Cheryl. Indian Nation: Native American Literature and Nineteenth Century Nationalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1997.