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So writes the colonial American Puritan Hope Leslie to her beloved Everell Fletcher in Catharine Maria Sedgwick's novel Hope Leslie (1827). When the young woman writes of what she sees as the vain work of "philosophers," who might cut open the drum without realizing they have destroyed the source of the music, she is writing off those also known as "men of science."(1) Thus the paragraph introduces a topic central to the novel -- science and its relationship to literature. Not insignificant, the letter addressed to Everell Fletcher also includes Hope's narration of her tutor Cradock's snakebite and Cradock's healing by a native woman, Nelema; and it is immediately followed by another letter to Everell Fletcher, this one from Hope's aunt Bertha Grafton, who expostulates upon her philosophies and daily practice of medicine. Contained in a single chapter, these letters encapsulate attitudes toward science Sedgwick promotes through the writing (and reading) of the novel. Rather than simply the anti-science stance Hope inscribes in her letter to Everell, the novel exposes the complexities of "science" and the discovery and dissemination of scientific "truths." In spite of what institutions, scientists, society or culture promote and believe to be scientific truths -- about medicine, race, or gender, for example -- Sedgwick suggests individuals may accept or reject those truths and may come to discover new ones. Science is meaningful as a field or method of study meant to improve culture, but it, like the arena of history, must be seen as one in which truths are in part created and presented through persuasive narratives. This attitude toward the individual and science upholds novels and novel reading as a viable means of coming to truth and effecting cultural change.
SNAKEBITES, RECIPES, AND SCIENTIFIC TRUTHS
Among the many native American characters Sedgwick presents in the novel is Nelema, a female healer who successfully treats an Englishman, Cradock, for snakebite. As a result of the native's practice -- employing methods unfamiliar to the English but successful nonetheless -- Nelema is accused and convicted of witchcraft and forced to leave the colonial Massachusetts community. The narrator makes clear that Nelema's humanistic action is favored by the novel's title heroine, Hope Leslie; thus, the scene may be read as one in which Sedgwick...