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The Columbia History of the American NovelOn the basis of five years' residence, she vividly contrasted the newly victorious English and the just defeated French, the Christian settlers and the "savage" Indians, the European paradigms whereby her main characters perceive the new (to them) country and the different reality of the land itself. Moreover, the author's marriage plot (another metaphor for "settling") is effectively at odds with her most intriguing character, Arabella, who capably coquettes her way through the work and who, at one point, can even contemplate that she might "marry a savage, and turn squaw" because of the liberty Indians allow their wives but who just as precipitously decides not to because of the liberty they do not allow their daughters. The juxtaposition of such balances and imbalances anticipates more the Canadian national myth of the mosaic than the American myth of the melting pot, even though America too, as the thirteen colonies with their own political and social problems, is also present in the discourse of the novel ...» |
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