As the first romance of frontier settlement outside the Leatherstocking series, The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish (1829) offers a number of important advantages as a starting point. Cooper's portrait of Mark Heathcote is among his most balanced studies of the patriarch. By adopting a tone at once ironic and respectful, Cooper questions Heathcote's pride and inflexibility without denying his courage, decisiveness, and devotion. He persuades us that the patriarch's virtues and flaws flow from identical qualities of mind and that the migration into the wilderness is prompted by nobility and self-delusion alike. As a result of Cooper's balanced view, the form of The Wept, with its parallel examinations of Heathcote's relation to the past and future, is as nearly paradigmatic as that of any study of the American Abraham.

The sense of balance in The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish seems to reflect its poised position at a key turning point in Cooper's professional and personal development. He began work on The Wept at the height of his success, confident of his position as the nation's leading novelist (Beard xxxix). In the eight years since the publication of The Spy in 1821, Cooper had produced a second romance of the Revolution, two sea tales, three volumes of the Leatherstocking tales, and a major nonfiction account of American political and social life. His economic success had at last released him from a grinding effort to disentangle himself from debt and allowed him to take his family to Europe. His distance from the American scene in general and the obligations of his extensive family connections in particular further contributed to the equilibrium of The Wept.