《藿普‧萊斯里》一書描述美國拓荒者和印第安人在領地與文化上衝突的故事。作者將時代背景提前至十七世紀，重塑美國歷史的起源。此一鋪陳方式使十九世紀的美國讀者得以重新建構對於自身國家的認同。
本論文探討三位白人女性角色，分別為藿普‧萊斯里(Hope Leslie)、艾絲‧彤寧(Esther Downing)、菲絲‧萊斯里(Faith Leslie)，以及一位印地安女性角色瑪伽葳絲卡(Magawisca)，呈現塞奇威克所建構的美國國家認同中多元的女性角色。成長於美國獨立建國之初且正在建構自身國家認同之際，不難發現塞奇威克著作之間的矛盾之處。這些矛盾之處是由於作者身處英、美新舊文化過渡環境下所形成。因此，本論文使用比較的方法來探討四位女性角色如何於自我和他者之間擺盪。筆者針對尼娜‧貝姆(Nina Baym)所提出的精粹文化概念中的行為和品味，探討四位女性角色如何成為十九世紀美國女性讀者的楷模。第一章探討藿普‧萊斯里同時傳承英國貴族的精粹文化，以及美國的民主行為。第二章討論作者藉由種族的他者─印地安人瑪伽葳絲卡─來改變美國和印地安人的歷史關係，以及印地安人的野蠻形象。第三章探討艾絲‧彤寧和菲絲‧萊斯里作為文化上的他者，分別提供美國女性在社會上較前衛的概念以及挑戰「白人」美國認同。塞奇威克藉由重新追溯美國歷史的起源，以及呈現多元的女性角色，使十九世紀的美國大眾重新建構對於自身國家的認同。

Hope Leslie describes the whites and the Indians’ territorial and cultural conflicts in seventeenth-century America, short after the Pequot War. By situating the background of the story in seventeenth-century America, Sedgwick intends to re-establish the origin of American history so as to facilitate Americans to construct the national identity in the nineteenth century.
This thesis explores a diversity of women’s roles in the construction of national identity displayed by three white women, Hope Leslie, Esther Downing and Faith Leslie and an Indian woman, Magawisca. Growing up in a time during the early construction of American national identity, Sedgwick’s ambivalences about women’ roles exhibit in her works. These ambivalences derived from the conflicts when the old English culture and new American culture encountered in the transitional era. In this way, I observe that these four women characters vacillate between the self-other position in terms of nation, race, class and gender. I employ Nina Baym’s definition of the cultural refinement of America, especially manners and taste to examine how these four women characters represent various models for the nineteenth-century women readers in America. Chapter One argues that Hope Leslie possesses both English aristocratic refinement and American democratic manners. Chapter Two discusses how Sedgwick makes the racial other, Magawisca change the infancy of the white-Indian relation and humanize the images of the Indians. In Chapter Three, Esther Downing and Faith Leslie as the cultural others respectively offer an alternative choice for American women and challenge the “white” American identity. By situating the novel in colonial America, Sedgwick reinvents the beginning of American history and demonstrates a diversity of women’s roles for middle-class women to reconstruct American national identity in nineteenth-century America.

Barnes, Elizabeth. State of Sympathy: Seduction and Sympathy in the American Novel. NY: Columbia UP, 1997. Print.
Baym, Nina. American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1995. Print.
---, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6th ed. Vol. B. New York: Norton, 2003. Print.
Bell, Michael Davitt. “Beginnings of Professionalism.” The Cambridge History of American Literature: 1820-1865. Eds. Bercovitch, Sacvan, and Cyrus R. K. Patell. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. 11-73. Print.
Bradford, William. “The Pequot War.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Eds. Nina Baym et al. 6th ed. Vol. A. New York: Norton, 2003. 187-90 Print.
Deng, Chiou-Rung. “Sentimental Killing: Truth, Sympathy, and Translation in Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie.” NTU Studies in Language and Literature 22 (Dec 2009): 133-68. Print.
Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, and James Arthur Levernier. “Images of Indians.” The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550-1900. New York: Twayne, 1993. 51-93. Print.
Earle, Alice Morse. Home Life in Colonial Days. New York: Macmillan, 1957. Print.
Fetterley, Judith. ‘“My Sister! My Sister!’: The Rhetoric of Catharine Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie.” Catharine Maria Sedgwick: Critical Perspectives. Eds. Lucinda L. Damon-Bach and Victoria Clements. Boston: Northeastern UP, 2002. 78-99. Print.
Garvey, T. Gregory. “Risking Reprisal: Catharine Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie and the Legitimation of Public Action by Women.” American Transcendental Quarterly 8.4 (1994): 287-98. Print.
Geertz, Clifford. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973. 3-32. Print.
Gordon, Jean and Jan McArthur. “American Women and Domestic Consumption, 1800-1920: Four Interpretive Themes.” Making the American Home: Middle-Class Women and Domestic Material Culture 1840-1940. Eds. Marilyn Ferris Motz and Pat Browne. Browling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988. Print.
Gussman, Deborah. “‘Equal to Either Fortune’: Sedgwick’s Married or Single? and Feminism.” Catharine Maria Sedgwick: Critical Perspectives. Eds. Lucinda L. Damon-Bach and Victoria Clements. Boston: Northeastern UP, 2002. 252-67. Print.
Harris, Sharon M. Introduction. Selected Writings of Judith Sargent Murray. Ed. Harris. New York: Oxford University P, 1995. xv-xliv. Print.
Hart, Hilary. “Sentimental Spectacles: The Sentimental Novel, Natural Language, and Early Film Performance.” Diss. University of Oregon, 2004. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
Hemphill, C. Dallett. “Middle Class Rising in Revolutionary America: The Evidence from Manners.” Journal of Social History 30.2 (Winter, 1996): 317-44. Print.
Karafilis, Maria. “Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie: The Crisis between Ethical Political Action and US Literary Nationalism in the New Republic.” American Transcendental Quarterly 12.4 (1998): 327-44. Print.
Karcher, Carolyn L. Introduction. Hope Leslie; or early Times in the Massachusetts. By Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Ed. Karcher. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.
Kleinberg, S. J. Women in the United States, 1830-1945. Basingstoke: Macmillan P, 1999. Print.
Lowe, Brigid. Victorian Fiction and the Insights of Sympathy: An Alternative to the Hermeneutics of Suspicion. London: Anthem, 2007. Print.
McWilliams, John P. “More Than a Woman’s Enterprise: Cooper’s Revolutionary Heroines and the Source of Liberty.” The Historical Guide to James Fenimore Cooper. Ed. Leland S. Person. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. 61-90. Print.
Merish, Lori. Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2000. Print.
Miller, Quentin. “‘A Tyrannically Democratic Force’: The Symbolic and Cultural Function of Clothing in Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie.” Legacy 19.2 (2003): 121-36. Print.
Nelson, Dana. “Sympathy as Strategy in Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie.” The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America. Ed. Shirley Samuels. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. 191-202. Print.
Opfermann, Susanne. “Lydia Maria Child, James Fenimore Cooper, and Catharine Maria Sedgwick: A Dialogue on Race, Culture, and Gender.” Soft Canons: American Women Writers and Masculine Tradition. Ed. Karen L. Kilcup. Lowa: U of Lowa P, 1999. 27-47. Print.
Peel, Sylvia Roach Terrill. “Images of Men: Male Characters in Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, Caroline Kirkland’s A New Home, Who’ll follow?, Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ The Story of Avis.” Diss. Texas Tech University, 1998. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
Persons, Stow. The Decline of American Gentility. New York and London: Columbia UP, 1973. Print.
Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. Print.
Riley, Glenda. Inventing the American Woman: An Inclusive History. 4th ed. Vol. 1. Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, 2007. Print.
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. Hope Leslie or Early Times in the Massachusetts. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.
---. Morals of Manners: Or Hints for Our Young People. rev. ed. New York: G.P. Putnam, 2009. Print.
Soper, Kate. “Dress Needs: Reflections on the Clothed Body, Selfhood and Consumption.” Entwistle, Joanne, and Elizabeth Wilson, eds. Body Dressing. Oxford: Berg, 2001. 13-31. Print.
Stadler, Gustavus. “Magawisca’s Body of Knowledge: Nation Building in Hope Leslie.” Yale Journal of Criticism 12.1 (1999): 41-56. Print.
Theriot, Nancy M. Mothers and Daughters in Nineteenth-Century America: The Biosocial Construction of Femininity. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1996. Print.
Wayne, K Tiffany. Women’s Roles in Nineteenth-Century America. Westpoit: Greenwood P, 2007. Print.
Wouters, Cas. Informalization: Manners and Emotions since 1890. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2007. Print.
Young, James P. “American Political Thought from Jeffersonian Republicanism to Progressivism.” The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought. Eds. Careth Stedman Jones, and Gregory Claeys. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. 374-408. Print.
Young, Shaun Patrick. “The Viability of the Concept of Political Liberalism.” Diss. University of South Africa, 2002. Web. 16 Feb. 2013.
Zagarri, Rosenmarie. “Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother.” American Quarterly 44.2 (Jun. 1992): 192-215. Academic Search Complete. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.