What's in a name?

In the previous texts we have read this semester, the characters and plot have been heavily influenced by religion as well as religious overtones. With Southworth’s “The Hidden Hand”, the imagery of God is surprisingly lacking for a novel that was published four years after “The Wide, Wide World” which had strong Christian themes. Now there has been some speculation that the title of the book has to do with Capitola’s mother’s right hand being covered during child birth (p.167) or Capitola’s distinct birthmark of a crimson hand on her palm (p.173), but I believe that the title “The Hidden Hand” is an indicator that the hand of God is hidden through out the text.
To validate my point, I’d like to address a couple of passages in the text that really stuck out because they were easy to over look while reading. The first instance of religion being introduced into the novel was when Old Hurricane said, “For she is but a bit of a poor, friendless, motherless, fatherless child, lost and wandering in your great Babylon! No more hard words to her, sir-or by the everlasting-” (p.179). We know Babylon to possibly be one of the first major cities in the world, located along the Euphrates River. It is also talked about in the Bible. When I think of Babylon, what comes to mind is a massive city very much like the city Capitola lived in while she was struggling to live life as a girl in boy’s clothing. A city caught between new advances in technology with a large population of individuals fighting day-to-day to survive. There is also the comment about “No more hard words to her, sir-or by the everlasting-”. Everlasting God maybe? Who knows, but it is awfully suspicious that Southworth selected that word in particular.

Lastly, after Herbert delivers the letter that Marah Rocke and her son will not be living with Major Warfield, Southworth paints this image of a woman who was completely full of hope and abruptly had her optimism ripped out from under her, to which she follows with “Now, indeed, this poor modern Hagar looked up and smiled at the oddity of her Ishmael’s far-reaching thought” (p. 215). The characters she is referring to, Hagar and Ishmael, are two biblical characters that can be found in Genesis. Due to their old age, Sarah and Abraham were unable to have a child and so Sarah, being a desperate woman, asked her husband Abraham to sleep with their servant Hagar so that they might have a child. To everyone’s surprise (not really), Hagar did bare a son whom she named Ishmael. But after the birth of Ishmael, Sarah discovered that she was in fact pregnant herself (Karma much?). Out of anger, Sarah drove Hagar and her son Ishmael out into the desert. This biblical example seems to make since in the context because Marah and her son Traverse disappeared in the night, away from Major Warfield and he later goes on to essentially banish them from Hurricane Hall. The biblical story of Hagar and Ishmael ends well though because Ishmael and his family become very prosperous which is a pretty good indicator that Traverse and his mother will go on to become very wealthy and build a home for orphans and widows (p.215).