Closely related to other themes, especially themes of duty and religion, is the theme of freedom: what it means, what it costs, and how to create and maintain it. This is quite literally debated throughout the novel, largely by the male characters. If their debates are a bit stiff, it is because they are stumbling toward something new. Kit is part of these debates, though on a more emotional and reactive level. She knows that she wants to escape an unwanted marriage back in Barbados and that she wants to escape the life of ceaseless toil she encounters in New England, but what she wants in its place is unclear. Kit finds her way to her freedom in stumbling fits and starts, and, to be frank, at times she is simply lucky. For Kit to have talked to John Holbrook about reading and for him to have mentioned it to those making decisions about teachers, for Hannah Tucker to live by the meadows and to be walking in them when Kit has such emotional distress, or for the Dolphin to emerge on the river when Kit is trying to help Hannah escape the mob, all of these are lucky coincidences indeed. However, in Kit’s actions we see the personal and emotional components needed for freedom: one needs to be born free, to be educated, to have a loving upbringing, and to meet up with good people. The men, by contrast, pull and tug at one another as the colonists try to articulate the conceptual and political nature of freedom. The Puritan vigilance about the state of their sins can be bent to this end: as every word and action can be inspected for the scent of sin, so can every word and action be sniffed for traces of disloyalty. Though hotheaded and at times amateurish, the men of the community do take part in communal negotiations, creating democracy in their own company rooms and worship houses. The back and forth between the emotional investment of blood spilled for land, the obligations preached by the Bible, and the rights articulated in the charter put into place a set of ideas and practices that will lead directly to the American Revolution. Like that revolution, though, all freedoms in this novel have a price. For Hannah to be able to not attend Puritan worship services, she has to pay a fine; for Kit to not be convicted of witchcraft, a heroic man must risk his life to bring her a witness. The final elements of freedom, then, are personal risk and bold, dramatic gestures that crystallize communities and symbolize ideals.