Hope Leslie, or Early Times in the Massachusetts

Everell’s father is a dour presence in the novel. He represents the overall spiritual mood of the early Puritanical colonists. Uncomplaining and stoic, he works hard and believes that God’s will must always be done, for better or worse. His faith is tested when the Indians slaughter his family, but he comes to the end of the novel with his faith in providence and his unwillingness to seek revenge, vindicated. 

Hope is the daughter of Alice, the early love interest (and a distant relative) of Mr. Fletcher. After her parents die, Hope comes to New England to live with the Fletchers. She is baptized and her name is changed from Alice to Hope. Hope is the white counterpart to the Indian woman, Magawisca. Although she is bound by the patriarchal society in which she lives, Hope refuses to be influenced or dominated. She follows her own heart, keeps her own counsel, and scorns the advances of men she considers beneath her, such as Sir Philip Gardiner.

Faith is taken from her home as a child after the attack at Bethel. When she next encounters her sister Hope, it is many years later. At that point, Faith speaks almost no English and has married Oneco, an Indian brave. She is at peace with the tribe and has no wish to return to white society. 

Magawisca is supplied to the Fletcher household as a servant stolen from the nearby Pequod tribe. When her father attacks Bethel to retrieve her and her brother, she returns to the tribe. However, her love for Everell Fletcher causes her to make a great sacrifice. Before he can be executed as part of her father’s vengeance, Magawisca appears and shoves him out of the way, accidentally exposing her arm, which is then severed by her father’s axe. She later returns to speak with Hope as part of a plan to free an old Indian woman named Nelema. Magawisca is taken prisoner and tried for her life. Throughout the novel, she best personifies the trope of the serene native who communes with nature. She refuses to betray her morals and shares none of white society’s existential fears. 

Winthrop is a Solomon-like character who personifies white, judicial, and Protestant wisdom. His judgments are always sound, rarely based on emotion, and are final. However, he is also a devoted father and husband, and a man of great charity. He always tries to help whomever he can help, as long as it does not compromise his beliefs and his perception of God’s will.