Hinds’ Feet on High Places

The key to the allegory is the personification of the various passions that inhabit the world in which Much-Afraid lives. Craven Fear, Mrs. Dismal Forebodings, Pride, Bitterness, Self-Pity—all of these characters at various times make Much-Afraid’s life miserable and difficult to endure. It is these passions that drive Much-Afraid to seek out the comfort of the Shepherd and desire to spend her time in his presence, ultimately driving her from the Valley of Humiliation and the Village of Much Trembling into the mountains and up to the High Places. Much-Afraid must gain victory over her Fearing relations and all that are sent to waylay her just as the individual soul must banish fear and all disordered passions in the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Cementing the novel’s representation of a Christian devotional life are the Biblical allusions that fill the book. Both the world of the allegory and the language that characters use draw heavily from passages in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The title of the text is taken from the prayer of the Old Testament: “The Lord God maketh my feet like hinds’ feet, and setteth me upon mine High Places” (1). The text also frequently refers to the Song of Songs, the Old Testament book of Hebrew poetry devoted to the love between a shepherd and his beloved; throughout the book, sections from the Song of Songs are sung and recited by all the major characters. In Chapter 16, Much-Afraid jumps into a chasm to find herself in a kind of grave, where she must sacrifice her entire self upon an altar. In a clear allusion to the passion, death, and burial of Christ, Much-Afraid is bound hand and foot and placed upon the altar in the depths of the grave with a wound in her heart. That altar itself, and especially the many altars Much-Afraid builds herself, parallel the altars that Abraham builds on his journey the land promised to him by God.