Review Of Catharine Sedgwick's A Huguenot Family

Catharine Sedgwick wrote numerous stories that have received very little recognition in the realm of American Renaissance literature. This essay serves to focus on and analyze one of such unknown stories—A Huguenot Family. This tale of the trials of a French Protestant family was first published in 1842 in the September and October edition of Godey’s Lady’s Book, volume XXV. Godey’s Lady’s Book was a wildly-popular American women’s magazine that originated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the pre-Civil War time period. Sedgwick was fifty-three years old when A Huguenot Family was first published. This particular work was reprinted again in 1844 in the second series of New York’s Tales and Sketches, another prominent literary magazine.
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The language is clear, yet powerful, as she describes the hardships and persecutions of the Huguenots. Sedgwick includes enhanced word choice to combine with the perfect blend of formal and informal narration. This is seen in such lines as, “The rustic little housekeeper had vanished from [Arnauld’s] perspective, and a woman whom he could honor as well as love filled her place” (Sedgwick 4). This is a rather informal and modernized sentence, as contrasted with, “He added sundry scurvy jests relating to the multiplying heretics through her ministrations unfit to be copied from the mouldering paper on which they were recorded” (Sedgwick 14). Sedgwick clearly shows a strong command of language through such creative, vivid words. The style of Sedgwick’s writing also includes a strategic mixture of historical facts with fabrications. She begins the tale with true historical accounts and figures to provide a contextual foundation that helps develop the rest of the story. Sedgwick spends a good length of text creating background and exhibiting for readers the attitudes of those at court. Perhaps this is done so that readers will transfer the truth and merit of these opening paragraphs to the remainder of the story. (ONE MORE SENTENCE

For example, the motif of change versus tradition is apparent in the overall persecution of the Huguenots. France was predominantly Catholic and considered any other religion heretical. Because Catholicism had been the central religion for so long, the government and religious authorities are unwilling to allow any change in philosophy. The Huguenots are forced to rebel against traditional customs as they establish their own practices. Another theme perceived in the text is convention versus rebellion. This is a slightly more abstract idea, though still arguably present. Rather than submit to the demand for abjuration, little Marie rebels against the Catholic priest. When asked to pen her signature, Marie quotes Matthew 10:33, writing, “‘He who denieth me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in Heaven’” (Sedgwick 9). Similarly, the midwife also portrays the convention versus rebellion theme. Initially, she has given over to convention due to the forbiddance of practice nailed to her door. However, she has a change in attitude and outright defies the state to aid Madame Emilie d’Argile. These themes all contribute to the underlying message of the