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.
The

plot of A Huguenot Family engages readers and offers fascinating insight into the perils of religious reformation. As suggested by the title, the story centers around a small family in Poitou, France, in the seventeenth century. In summary, Arnauld d’Argile (a Protestant) meets and falls in love with a lady named Emilie de Villette (a Catholic). The two marry, and Emilie converts to Protestantism, much to the chagrin of her Catholic priest. The years pass in peace, and the d’Argile’s have a son named Eugene. A young girl called Marie is beloved by the d’Argile’s and eventually marries into the family. This small household faces persecution in the forms of prohibited real estate, church decimation, withheld medical attention, involuntary abjuration, and more.
The characters in this story are given minimal description, but still exhibit depth which contributes to the overall relatability. Readers are automatically emphatic towards the characters’ plight, because Sedgwick has created such personable figures. Arnauld d’Argile is a caring, protective man, who seems to have no qualms about defending his beliefs and rights. His wife, Emilie, is arguably the central character and displays immense courage and resolve in trading her familiar Catholic practices for the disapproved Protestant ones. It can be argued that Sedgwick has infused the character Emilie d’Argile with reflections of Sedgwick’s current American society where there is a transition from old to new. As Emilie casts off the way in which she was brought up, so are Sedgwick’s contemporaries seeking to cast off established regimes in exchange for independent action and original thought.
The description of Arnauld’s standards for a wife is relayed in detail and with an underlying tone of sarcasm. This is seen in the line, “He had the notion, sufficiently prevalent now, but then universal, that the wife’s duty was limited to providing for the physical comfort of her husband, and that she is exempted by Providence from participation in his intellectual pursuits, and sympathy in his higher pleasures” (Sedgwick 3). Sarcasm can be inferred in the subsequent line which reads, “Of course, at any time, he might find some pretty rustic adequate to these moderate demands” (3). It appears the author is making a sardonic remark about the perceptions of how a wife must conduct herself. Such ideas were still popular in Sedgwick’s society, and it is as though she is indicating that not much has changed. It is interesting that Arnauld is initially of this mindset regarding women, yet he chooses to marry Emilie de Villette. She is completely opposite of those standards. While she cares for her own family and even for others like Marie, she equals Arnauld in intelligence, religious determination, and social diplomacy.
Sedgwick utilizes a distinct style in A Huguenot Family.

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

HERE).
A few literary themes are evident throughout the text, though some are more left to the reader’s interpretation than others.

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

narrative.
Catharine Sedgwick creates this piece of French historical fiction in a time when other authors are much more fixated on American ideals and politics. Perhaps she chooses this particular period of French Revolution to emphasize the various aspects of the 1776 American Ideal. The French government in this story is a tyrannical, oppressive system that revokes the rights of its citizens based on religious affiliations. In the year Sedgwick publishes this story, antigovernment thoughts are also being propagated. The American Ideal, as proposed by the Founding Fathers, includes equality in the sight of both God and man. It includes separation of church and state and life and liberty in the pursuit of happiness. These are all standards unavailable to the fictitious d’Argile’s. However, Sedgwick may also have been condoning the desire for societal adjustment by comparing the circumstances of the American people with those of the persecuted French Huguenots. Each group wants reform and the freedom to do so without political interference.