English 251: American Lit. (1600-1865)

Assignment 4:
MARY ROWLANDSON

In The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, we have a text that demonstrates, with extraordinary power, the workings of Puritan theology in ordinary lives. Certainly Rowlandson was a person of uncommon qualities. Still, had it not been for the events of King Philip's War of 1676, and her 1682 book about them, History would never have noted her existence.

As you read the chapters of her Narrative, detailing each of the "Removes," or marches of the Wampanoag band under Metacomet (King Philip), notice the depth and breadth of its references to scripture. Constantly seeking to match lived experience with Biblical precepts, Rowlandson's writing well illustrates the Puritans' typological way of thinking. Especially after she's given a Bible by one of the Indians, Rowlandson sees each stage of her captivity and ransom demonstrating the truths of Biblical stories and teachings.

Her Narrative well illustrates the application in daily life of other Puritan beliefs. For example, the Puritan believer held that divine Providence operates in an absolutely arbitrary manner. This means that both the timing as well as the magnitude of God's punishments for sin were unknowable; seemingly minor transgressions might provoke, at any moment, God's greatest wrath. To the Puritan believer, this God was like a stern parent who punished most severely those whom he most loved, including (of course) his chosen people of New England. A second tenet of Puritan belief held that God's children always fell because of their own weight; their innate depravity, whether they are Elect or Preterite, would cause them to stumble and thus to provoke God's wrath. Rowlandson put it this way: "It is no new thing for God's precious ones to drink as deep as others, of the Cup of common Calamity." Finally, the Puritan theology always pointed up the vanity of worldly things. As in Anne Bradstreet's poem on the burning of her house, so in Rowlandson's Narrative the writer repeatedly asserts that "outward things" are "the vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit, that they are but a shadow, a blast, a buble, and things of no continuance" (page 329).

Beyond these themes, which you should carefully note, the Rowlandson captivity narrative is notable for its glimpses of Native American life. For the Warnpanoags, it was a way of life in dissolution and transition, pushed to the brink by English westward expansion. The presence among them of firearms and alcohol, captured from or obtained in trade with the English, as well as the presence of "praying indians" (Christian converts who served as emissaries between the English and Metacomet), and the absence of any foodstuffs except what could be gleaned by scavenging the forest, were symptomatic of both their precarious position and the reasons for Metacomet's attacks.

Finally, Rowlandson's Narrative inaugurated a new and uniquely American literary form. Captivity narratives became immensely popular. In a culture without fictions, in which drama was forbidden, tales of Indian captivity offered the real-life drama of violent raids, forced marches, life amidst those who were culturally alien and sometimes (to English readers) lascivious. Like Rowlandson, subsequent authors of captivity stories wove them from several existing forms. One of those, certainly, was the spiritual autobiography, of which Bradstreet's is a good instance. In captivity narratives, though, the ideal of "redemption" takes on a double meaning: both religious, as in the spiritual autobiography, as well as secular, because captives were almost always "redeemed" (that is, ransomed) by family and friends. Captivity stories thus combined both personal confession and an emphasis on communal values. A second form influencing the captivity narrative was the sermon, well illustrated by Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity." Particularly in her appropriations and applications of scripture, Rowlandson, a minister's wife, borrowed liberally from the language and the strategies of sermonizing. The third and final influence on captivity narratives was the Puritan Jeremiad, a form of sermonic or poetic lament over the backsliding of God's chosen in New England. Wigglesworth's "The Day of Doom" (upcoming in Assignment #6) is a model Jeremiad. In it the cataloguing of sins, the warning about God's absolute and wrathful judgment of the sinner, and the need for immediate reformation, are the main themes; Rowlandson's Narrative adapts them to her own story. It is a remarkable achievement: one of the first American bestsellers and probably also the first instance of a uniquely American literary output.

Reading Assignment

Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (pages 297-330).

Writing Assignment

To what specific sins does Rowlandson attribute her being forced by Providence to drink from this "Cup of common Calamity"?
Rowlandson's consistent references to Biblical scripture are worth studying. Briefly answer the following:
1. Using an example of each, what are the two ways by which she finds passages? Is it important that she use both ways?
2. Pick any one passage where Rowlandson makes extended or significant use of a scriptural quotation, look up its broader context in the Bible, and say how and why she uses it.
Reading the text, note the consistently condemnatory terms Rowlandson uses to describe the Indians: they are "barbarous savages," or "mercilous heathen" and so forth. But when and how do they break out of that mold; and, do you think Rowlandson recognizes those moments? Discuss in several paragraphs.
Throughout the Narrative, Rowlandson attributes every natural event and human action to the workings of Divine Providence. Are there moments when she begins to doubt the providential plan? That is, does she ever begin to suspect that randomness (rather than God's plan) rules events, or (still worse) that God is working as well for the "mercilous heathen" as for the English? How does she resolve those tendencies towards doubt? Discuss these questions in a brief essay response of about 500 words.

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