Redwood: A Tale by Catharine Maria Sedgwick

Abstract

Reviewed by: Redwood: A Tale by Catharine Maria Sedgwick Rachel B. Griffis Redwood: A Tale. By Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Edited by Jenifer B. Elmore. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021. vii + 320 pp. $120 hardback/$120 e-book. Originally published in 1824, Redwood: A Tale is the last of Catharine Maria Sedgwick's major novels to be reprinted in a modern scholarly edition. Since Mary Kelley edited Hope Leslie; or, Early Times in the Massachusetts (1827) for publication by Rutgers University Press in 1987, new editions of Sedgwick's novels have been released steadily, with the most recent being Married or Single? (1857), edited by Deborah Gussman and published by University of Nebraska Press in 2015. Jenifer B. Elmore's new edition of Redwood is therefore a milestone for scholars of Sedgwick and nineteenth-century American women writers, who now have all six of Sedgwick's major novels available in a format conducive to teaching and research. Redwood follows the orphan Ellen Bruce as she grapples with her identity, navigates both sincere and disingenuous friendships, meets and falls in love with Charles Westall, helps save her friend Emily Allen from the Shakers, and eventually discovers the mystery of her parentage. The titular character, Henry Redwood, is Ellen's long-lost father, a Virginia planter who abandoned his first wife, Ellen's mother, a virtuous woman who died shortly after giving birth. Henry does not learn that he fathered a child with his first wife until the end of the novel, after he has become acquainted with Ellen and developed a parental fondness for her. Both Henry and Ellen are delighted to learn that they are father and daughter, and Ellen facilitates Henry's repentance and religious conversion before he dies. Though Sedgwick does not specify the date of the novel's events, Elmore speculates that Redwood's historical setting could be as early as the years following the American Revolution or as late as the 1820s. Most of the events of the novel take place in Vermont and Massachusetts, though characters travel from Virginia, South Carolina, Boston, Philadelphia, and England. Through the [End Page 115] geographical diversity of her characters, Sedgwick explores regional differences and tensions, particularly between the North and South and between England and the United States. Redwood is a work of sentimentalism deeply engaged with political, social, moral, and religious questions, especially as these topics pertain to the lives of American women. Sedgwick challenges the institution of slavery through her portrayal of Lilly, an enslaved woman who works as a maid for Ellen's manipulative half sister Caroline. Lilly self-liberates and elopes with a West Indian man when the Redwood family visits New York, a plot twist that highlights political tensions between North and South. The subplot featuring Ellen's rescue of her friend Emily from the exploitative Shaker leader Reuben Harrington invites readers' reflection on the meaning of freedom and how harmful ideologies limit and confine individuals and communities in multiple aspects of life—morally, intellectually, and physically. Sedgwick also complicates the ideal of feminine domestic fulfillment through Ellen's mentor Debby Lenox, who defies conventional performances of gender and affirms the benefits of singlehood amid a flurry of marriages at the novel's conclusion. Elmore's edition of Redwood contains a substantive introduction, a bibliography of recent scholarly work on Sedgwick, a chronology of Sedgwick's life and literary output, a character list, appendices, and the prefaces Sedgwick wrote for the book in 1824 and 1850. This scholarly edition of Redwood reproduces the original 1824 version, while incorporating the changes in spellings and punctuation Sedgwick made for the 1850 edition. The 1824 preface, located at the beginning of the book, contains Sedgwick's reflections on the role of the novel in her time and her own aspirations for Redwood, which she hopes will convey "the great truths of our common religion" (7). In the 1850 preface (Appendix A), Sedgwick expresses remorse for offending the Shakers through her negative portrayal of them, and in the 1850 edition she significantly revised many of her descriptions of this religious community, which, Elmore asserts, "soften[s] her criticism of the doctrines and practices of the Shakers" (317). In Appendix...