Rhetorical Analysis--Initial Reading of Chapter 1

This piece still needs quite a bit of work, but I'm posting it here now, and I'll come back and continue to work on it.

A Rhetorical Analysis of Lydia Maria Child’s Hobomok, Chapter 1

The title page of Hobomok alone provides much material for rhetorical analysis. The subtitle of the work is A Tale of Early Times, immediately indicates the historical focus of the work. The quote from William Cullen Bryant is a quintessentially Romantic as well as American. Bryant was a Romantic poet particularly noted for his excellence as an American writer. The passage from Bryant’s “The Ages” (stanza XXIX) is speaking of the young country in all its Edenic glory. The quotation announces Hobomok as a Romantic American history. The title page tells us that the book is written, “By an American,” stressing primarily the nationality of the author, rather than the gender, title, or name. Like the subtitle and the quotation, this attribution heralds the book’s contribution to a national literature.

The short preface, which is the novel’s only front material, explains the origins and purpose of the novel. It is written by the implied author’s friend, who encouraged “him” to send the MS to the printer. It is explained that the supposed author wrote the book as an experimental attempt to follow in the footsteps of Sir. Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper, who were writing extremely popular Romantic historical-fictions at the time. While the author realizes that his “wildest wishes, [do not place] me even within sight of the proud summit which has been gained” by either of the aforementioned authors, he still desires to try to write a “New England novel” (Child 3). Since the preface is purportedly written by the author’s friend, many compliments may be made about the author’s resolve, authority, imagination, and modesty, suggesting himself to the reader.

The preface makes several interesting assertions. The first is that the author is male. We may assume that this gives the implied author more credibility. While women wrote domestic or sentimental novels, a man was supposedly more likely to write a history during the beginning of the 19th century. At the least, constructing the author as male places “him” in the same gender-set as Cooper and Scott, and therefore makes the comparison more likely in the minds of the readers. It may even be safe to assume that Child expected more male readers to be interested in her book if they believed it to be written by a man.

Secondly, the preface suggests that the author is a novice, just as Cooper himself was when he began to write. The amateur factor may appeal to the Emersonian ethic of the self-made-man who succeeds in the world, not because of birth or privilege, but by his own talents and labor. The author’s inexperience may also serve as a cover for the shortcomings that the public will no doubt find inherent in a first work—which Hobomok is for Child.

Finally, the preface mentions that the author obtained “as many old, historical pamphlets as possible,” to consult in writing the novel, implying the research-based veracity of the tale: “You, and every one acquainted with our earliest history, will perceive that I owe many a quaint expression and pithy sentence, to the old and forgotten manuscripts of those times” (4), the author tells his friend. Here we find that Child assumes that her audience will be, to some extent, educated or at least aware of early American history, and skeptical of her work. We know that this is a fair assumption by looking at contemporary reviews of Cooper’s works, which minutely criticized his historical accuracy.

The opening of the book in chapter one bravely affirms the intentions set forth by the title and preface. In the first sentence, Child speaks of “the glow of national pride” for the “native land”; in the second, we hear of the “picturesque . . . perfect Eden” which is America. The third sentence begins, “[t]he remembrance of what we have been” and progresses to “the vista of time” (5). These expressions reference the Romantic, as well as historical-fiction genre of the work. The author argues that it is easier to write a historical account of America than of England, due to America’s youth: “Each succeeding year has left its footsteps distinct . . . the chilling dawn is still visible beneath the mid-day sun” (5). Because the country is only “two centuries” old, accurate description of its early history is both possible and probable.
Having established the novel’s generic alignment and defended its cause, chapter one moves to introduce the topic of the narrative: the cultural transformation from America’s Native American religious dominance, to Puritanical colonization:

God was here in his holy temple . . . 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. (5–6)

The early dissenting pilgrims are described from a neo-classical point of view as bigots, but bigots who should be sympathized with because of their harsh situation and determined zeal for survival, which blazed the way to future freedom.

The author explains that her narrative is based on an old manuscript “which accidentally came in my way” (6), and after briefly introducing it, only breaks into the “quotation” once, later in the chapter, to explain that she is omitting some less-important material. This framed narrative continues throughout the book and, although a well known convention of the novel (a “history” which is really a fiction), still lends an imaginary feeling of truth to the tale.

The new narrator who has just emigrated from England to the new world, describes the novel’s primary characters. Mrs. Conant is a gentle and sickly ex-courtier, and Mr. Conant is an extremely stern Calvinist. He disapproves of their daughter Mary, who has recently come from the English court and maintains Anglican inclinations. She goes to the woods at night and performs a pagan ritual, drawing a circle on the ground in the moonlight and invoking her future husband. Hobomok, an American Indian, jumps into the circle. After Mary retreats with her beau, Brown, Hobomok indicates that he desires to win Mary as his “squaw”, imploring the help of his gods (14). We become aware, therefore, that the book addresses religious dissention, both between sects of Christianity as well as between Christianity and Native American spiritualism; this conflict will be represented and addressed through the theme of miscegenation.


Works Cited
Child, Lydia Maria. Hobomok and Other writings on Indians. Ed. Carolyn L. Karcher. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers UP, 1986. 1–14.
Bryant, William Cullen. “The Ages.” PoetryX. 2009. 16 Feb. 2009 .