Mary Rowlandson and Anne Bradstreet were two different women both having strong religious beliefs. Their strong Puritan values allowed them to survive the rigorous struggles that they endured in their lives. Mary Rowlandson's struggles include her captivity by the Indians where she was removed from her family except from her ailing daughter. Anne struggled with her faith and her acceptance as a writer, since colonial women were generally not allowed to be scholars. Although their struggles were unique to their situations, both women expressed themselves and overcame their difficulties through their similar faiths.
             Mary Rowlandson strongly relied on her faith of God to survive her ordeal during her period of captivity by the Indians. Rowlandson, the wife of a minister, was one of twenty-four townspeople taken captive when the Indians ransacked the town of Lancaster in 1675. During her captivity she depended upon a Bible that she had found that an Indian had left behind. Her eventual redemption and reunification with her surviving children and husband affirmed her faith in the providence of her God.
             Rowlandson believed that God was punishing his people for breaking their special covenant as his chosen people. She described the relationship between the Indians and the colonists as one orchestrated by God. As she looked upon her home after the attack by the Indians, she credited the destruction not to them, but to God. When pondering the escape of the Indians, weighed down with the burden of their wounded captives, from the English army, Rowlandson concluded, "God strengthened the Indians to be a scourge to His people." Rowlandson believed that "our perverse and evil carriages in the sight of the Lord have so offended Him that, instead of turning his hand against the Indians, the Lord feeds and nourishes them." In her narrative she reinforced her assurance that God punished her people through the Ind...