this little light of mine

Hope Leslie is, in many ways, a response to Last of the Mohicans, and Sedgwick best demonstrates this through her portrayal of the two main characters, Hope and Magawisca. The physical similarities to Clara and Alice are striking; both novels feature a dark-skinned rebel "sister" whose delibarately adventurous actions (severing a limb to save a beloved, risking one's own life for the life of a sister) seem to coincide with the colour of their skin. They also feature the "good" sister, whose pure goodness and religious piety seem to correspond with their "fairness." This conceit is carried through consistently to the end; Alice gets her man, and her life, while Cora is denied freedom, love and her life, due to her risky manoeuver to save those that she loves.
The inherent issues between portraying someone who has darker skin as "dangerous" or "rebellious" are brought to the surface in Last of the Mohicans, but are not challenged as they are in Hope Leslie. Sedgwick attempts to subvert Cooper's portrayal of the sisters , and instead asks the reader to question what they believe to be "good" and "bad." Though Hope is portrayed as the "good one" at the beginning of the novel, it is rare that she actually does anything truly noble, especially for those other than herself. For example, Hope only allows her sister to continue wearing the traditional Indian shell necklace when she sees that there is a small cross necklace underneath. This is a telling scene, and one that calls into question my previous word choice of "good." We should perhaps be labelling Hope as pious, and Magawisca as good. It is Magawisca who severs her arm, it is Magawisca who puts herself in great peril to reunite Hope and Faith. We can also see the satire in Sedgwick's writing; whereas Hope and Faith are, quite literally, named and therefore obliged to serve their God, it is Magawisca who is offering up a near biblical sacrifice ––– her own flesh ––– therefore, the more "holy," at least in biblical terms. The imprisonment of Magawisca also draws a comparaison between herself and Cora; both characters are offered a chance to escape (through marriage and through willful endangerment of another's life). Though they both refuse, Cora's refusal seems to come more from repulsion, whereas Magawisca refuses because she does not want to have a "black heart" like those of her captors. Here, we are again demonstrated Magawisca's connection to the spirit and to the heart, the foundations of the Christian faith.
Therefore, one could say that both Cooper and Sedgwick are grappling with the same thesis; the tension between spirituality and Christianity. However, whereas Cooper details it stoically and by using the archetypes of light/dark, Sedgwick asks the reader to question where true spirituality comes from, that it is not from a name or from a country.