COOPER'S PROBLEMATIC PILOT: "UNRIGHTEOUS AMBITION" IN A PATRIOTIC CAUSE

Abstract

In the sixth chapter of James Fenimore Cooper's The Redskins, the protagonist-narrator Hugh Littlepage records his amusement at Opportunity Newcome's translation of the inscriptions beneath some engravings of female figures intended to represent the cardinal virtues. La Virtue, La Solitude, La Charité are rendered aloud by the girl as "The Virtue," "The Solitude," The Charity." This display of erudition brings a smile to Hugh and the genteel heroine of the novel, Mary Warren who, Hugh informs the reader, comprehended perfectly the difference between La Solitude and The Solitude} The intent of the scene is clear; Hugh wishes to make invidious comparisons between Opportunity, the sister of the Snopes-like Seneca Newcome, and Mary Warren, the girl he will later marry. The achieved effect of the scene notwithstanding, there is something troubling about the creator of Natty Bumppo, the world's greatest marksman, shooting fish in a barrel. Opportunity is ridiculous in her own right, and the reader does not need a genteel commentator to remark on her commanding ignorance. The reader of the earlier Cooper novels is further troubled by a protagonist who would descend to concern himself with such observations. Cooper's romantic heroes, lower class to a man, lack the knowledge for such commentary, and his gentlemen heroes deign not to criticize the manners of women socially beneath them.