The Courage of Sarah Noble

The reason John Noble needs one of his daughters to accompany him into Connecticut is that someone must cook for him while his wife stays home with their infant. Sarah is a “born cook,” according to her father, and he is grateful for Sarah’s willingness to come with him. Because she is a girl, Sarah’s English community expects her to get married, have and raise children, and keep house for her family, so her father’s suggestion that she has a natural capacity for cooking hints that she represents a kind of ideal within their culture. After all, at just eight years old, she sacrifices her comfort to care for her father. As soon as they arrive, she declares that they “do not need to eat that dry johnny-cake” (20) tonight, and she prepares a hot meal. When the Schaghticoke children show her where to find wild strawberries, Sarah is pleased that when her father comes home with meat for their supper, “he would find ripe berries waiting, too” (30), and she makes corn cakes with the corn they get from the Schaghticoke. In this way, cooking comes to symbolize Sarah’s maturity and proximity to adulthood as well as her desire to fulfill her culturally-appointed role as a female.

Sarah is happy not to have to cook when she lives with “Tall John’s” family, a reminder that she is still a young child in spite of her adult responsibilities. As the text notes, “Sarah liked cooking, but there were times when she tired of it” (39). Though their meal is somewhat different from what she is used to, she eats heartily and appreciates the fact that she does not have to prepare the meal.

Though Sarah has striven to emulate her mother, when Mary Noble does arrive, Sarah’s relationship to adulthood—symbolized by the act of cooking—shows just how much she has changed as a result of her experiences. Mary says that Sarah can now be “a little girl again. She has had, in these months to be too much of a woman” (52). Mary thinks that Sarah can simply return to being a child, but she cannot, and just as Sarah cannot resume the innocence of childhood, she cannot return to her former wrong ideas about the Schaghticoke. Sarah’s assertion that she is “nearly a woman” (52) and no longer a little girl hints at the sense of agency and independence she’s gained. She has proven to herself, at least, that she has—or should have—the same right to her opinions as her mother. Despite the fact that Sarah has idealized Mary and tried to follow her mother’s example throughout the text, Sarah disagrees with Mary’s claims about the Schaghticoke; then, the confidence she has gained in herself—the result, in part, of her ability to keep house for her father—prompts her to take a stand against her mother in a more culturally-acceptable way than chastising Mary for her xenophobia.

Sarah’s English clothing is a motif that highlights how Experience Leads to Understanding. When the Schaghticoke children first approach her, she notices their relative nakedness and how they wear only “one small piece of cloth” (26). She believes that it would be inappropriate to describe such a tiny bit of cloth as “clothing.” Sarah feels well-dressed and “secure in dress and cloak and petticoats” (26) despite the mild June weather described by the narrator and the warm temperatures suggested by the Schaghticoke children’s much lighter attire. Sarah’s clothing represents her sense of identity and belonging to English culture, and thus, it makes her feel safe when she is presented with individuals from another culture. In her dress and petticoats, she is “secure” in who she is and, for now, in her sense of cultural superiority.

However, after Sarah’s time with “Tall John’s” family, her relationship to her English clothing is different, symbolizing a change in her identity and her relationship to English culture. When she puts on the deerskin moccasins, her “feet felt light and free” (42), a feeling that is so wonderful to her that she is unable to put her old shoes back on when her mother arrives. Her feet “refuse” to go back into those “heavy leather shoes” (46), having been forever changed by their experience in the far more comfortable moccasins. This change mirrors the way in which Sarah’s identity has changed; she now sees herself as mature and worldly, no longer a little girl, but she also doesn’t simply strive to emulate her mother anymore. She seems at least partially aware of the way her experiences have revised her ideas about the Schaghticoke, the world, and her place in it. Her old English identity, including the belief in English cultural superiority, is no longer comfortable, just as her English clothes now feel “stiff” and “tiresome.” Sarah’s experiences provide her with a greater awareness of her own culture and understanding of an Indigenous culture, changing her irrevocably so that her old identity no longer fits.