Mary Rowlandson
Mary Rowlandson's survival trough the wildernessWith the arrival of the Puritans to Plymouth Colony in New England there was immediately negotiated peace with the Indians that lived nearby: the Wampanoag Indians. When Metacom, also know as Philip, became the new king of the Indians, he turned against the settlers. There are many theories why he was against the English settlement, but only when an English settler killed a Native American, in 1675 he started a war by attacking the town of Swansea. This went on for 14 months. One particular town that the Indians destroyed on February 20, 1676 was Lancaster, hometown of Mary Rowlandson, a minister's wife and a mother. The Indians took her captive and separated her from her family for eleven weeks. Mary Rowlandson wrote a book about her captivity and restoration called; A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. In this book she described what happened to her during those eleven weeks. However, there is an underlying text that deals with issues of the Puritan culture and the Indian culture. Without knowing it, Mary Rowlandson made it trough the wilderness and the experience of Indian captivity, because she altered her views regarding the wilderness, relig
"Mary Rowlandson's captivity and the 'place' of the woman subject" Early American Literature 28 (1995): 225-277). "I repaired under these thoughts to my Bible (my great comfort at that time) and that scripture came to my hand, 'cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee'" (Rowlandson, 321)1. "For Rowlandson, wilderness is a place that is not home -no walls, furnishing, hearth, food, health or comfort" (Logan, Lisa. In the book Rowlandson was a loving wife and husband, and she was everything the Puritan wife should be according to Amanda Porterfield in Female Piety in Puritan New England: humid, self-controlled, self-sacrificed and submissive. Women were allowed to be angry, as long as they turned their anger to heroism, like Rowlandson did through the language of the Bible. Moreover, she used Indians words in her book, such as powaw, sachem etc. The attitudes the Puritans had towards the Indians were not friendly. They thought of them as lawless heathens, merciless barbarians, cruel salvages who attack with causeless enmity, they are proud, wild and diabolical creatures. What Rowlandson mostly did, was, while she was feeling down, she read the bible and that calmed her down. As a result the cultural significance of the book was big. Rowlandson was disappointed when the English army did not make it over the river, while the Indians had no problems with it. "I cannot but remember how the Indians derided the slowness, and dullness of the English army, in its setting out" (335) She even states that God helped the Indians, while it was common knowledge that he only helped Christians. She also expressed her emotions though citations from the Bible, and the passages made her believe that the captivity she had to go through, was because it had a meaning and it would strengthen her faith in God. Her book was the first of a series of captivity narratives that were used to demonstrate God's rising rage at the sins of his people, according to Lisa Logan in Mary Rowlandson's captivity and the 'place' of the woman subject.
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Acceptance Essays
