The Courage of Sarah Noble

As Sarah stays with “Tall John’s” family, her growing familiarity with them illuminates two important themes: that apparently distinct groups are More Similar Than Different and that Experience Leads to Understanding. In Chapter 8, especially, Sarah reckons with the familiar and unfamiliar aspects of life in an Indigenous home compared to her own English family’s practices. Table manners, for example, are different: “Tall John’s” family uses neither dishes nor utensils. However, Sarah is grateful not to have to cook, and “the meat tasted good” (39), and everyone sits down together to enjoy the meal like her family does. She and the children have also developed ways to understand each other. Moreover, as “Tall John” explains to his children, when Sarah prays, she addresses her “Great Spirit […] as [they] speak with [their] Great Spirit” (41). Sarah, of course, is still aware of their differences—she is unsure if God “take[s] care of the Indians, too” (41), probably because they are not Christian—but the familiar practices and love within Sarah’s white family and “Tall John’s” Schaghticoke family show that they are More Similar Than Different. In addition, the narrator’s assertion that “friends have ways of speaking without words” (39) underscores how Sarah’s experience with “Tall John’s” family leads to her greater understanding and inclusion of them in her prayers. Though she is unsure if her Christian God takes care of Schaghticoke persons, she asks her God to bless them anyway; this is a big step for a young girl who has only recently been introduced to a group of people her mother refers to as “savages.” The fact that “Tall John” refers to Sarah as his “daughter” when returning her to her own family suggests that caring for her has affected him deeply, too. Sharing a home has led to a greater understanding of one another, leading to a level of inclusion that approaches belonging. Thus, their Experience Leads to Understanding that benefits everyone.

Even more significant is the fact that Sarah’s experiences actually do change her. Though her layers of clothes used to make her feel “secure,” after wearing the deerskin garments, her old English clothes feel “stiff.” The buttons are “tiresome,” and the narrator suggests that Sarah’s petticoats feel even worse. These descriptions highlight  Sarah’s entirely new discomfort and irritation with the clothes that once felt so comfortable. Though she puts her clothing back on, “her feet refused to go into those heavy leather shoes” (46), and she keeps her moccasins on. Her feet are personified as having a will to “refuse” to go back into her old shoes, depicting them as disobedient rather than Sarah. Obedience is central to Sarah’s role within her family, religion, and culture, and yet having been exposed to something different, Sarah’s own body revolts against the cultural confinement symbolized by her stiff and heavy clothing. Wearing the moccasins, “Sarah’s feet felt light and free” (46), and when she returns to her family, there is a part of her that longs for this freedom to continue.

When Sarah claims that she has not outgrown her doll and that it is her “child,” the statement embodies her new, changed position in relation to English culture. She obviously still longs for the love and acceptance of her mother, who has not had Sarah’s culturally broadened experiences, but she also wants to maintain the sense of independence she developed when she was the lone white person within the Schaghticoke community. On the one hand, Sarah claims that she has not outgrown Arabella, intimating that she is still her mother’s daughter; on the other hand, her insistence that Arabella is her “child”—and her assertion that she is “not a little girl now […, but rather] tall, and almost nine years old, nearly a woman” (52)—reflects her sense that she has changed as a result of her experiences.

The character of Mrs. Noble, whom Sarah has always thought of as loving and affectionate, now seems very limited by her lack of experience with Indigenous groups. During the journey, Sarah’s mother existed in Sarah’s memory in stark contrast to the sharp-tongued, fussy, and judgmental Mistress Robinson. However, when Mrs. Noble first sees Sarah after many months, she remarks on how “brown” Sarah is and the “outlandish things” (50) on her feet. These comments, the narrator says, are how “Sarah knew that she was home!” (50). Thus, her mother’s conviction that white skin is preferable to brown and that Indigenous items are peculiar—rather than being, perhaps, simply unfamiliar or different—is connected to the idea of “home” in the English colonial identity, to which cultural and racial hegemony was fundamental. Mrs. Noble’s language, which was likely once normalized in the Noble family, becomes the subject of dispute now, such as when she calls “Tall John’s” family “savages,” and Sarah corrects her. Mr. Noble, evidently more conscious of his wife’s narrowness and the reasons for it, says, “Tall John’s wife is almost as careful as you, Mary” (51), a statement that shocks Mrs. Noble, who thinks that “no Indian mother could be as good a mother as she was. And certainly not as good a housekeeper” (52). Mary Noble believes herself to be superior to Schaghticoke women, and though her racism and ethnocentrism were typical of white colonizers, Sarah’s responses imply that she no longer agrees with her mother.

Sarah’s words while putting Arabella to bed, along with her response to hearing her mother tell her it’s time for her to go to bed, show how Sarah’s identity now ranges between what was before her experiences with “Tall John’s” family and what is. Now, rather than argue with her mother, Sarah adopts and revises the role of English motherhood for herself, telling Arabella that they are “safe here” and that “the Indians are our friends” (52), suggesting that Sarah’s version of this role will be more inclusive and less narrow than her mother’s. She even promises to have 12 children, more than her mother’s eight, and to become a teacher, which hints that she hopes to influence many English colonists to think as she does. However, she is still a child, on many levels, and a product of her white, English culture, and so Sarah “loved the sound of her mother’s voice” (54) when Mrs. Noble tells her daughter it’s bedtime. Finally, though Sarah is happy for a door that can be “securely fastened,” she no longer needs to clutch her cloak to fall asleep, and it hangs on a peg. Her familiar sense of culture and home provides a security that she relishes, but her belief that she no longer needs the cloak to give her courage hints that her broader cultural experience has resulted in the lessening of her fear.