Mary Rowlandson

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Historical marker in Princeton, Massachusetts commemorating Mary Rowlandson's release

Mary White Rowlandson (c. 1635-7 – c. 1678) was a colonial American woman, who wrote a vivid description of the seven weeks and five days she spent living with Native Americans. Her short book, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, is considered a seminal work in the American literary genre of captivity narratives. Surprisingly enough, there is no surviving record of her death or burial and she most likely died before her narrative was published (Vaughan 1981, 32.)

1 Biography
2 Literary significance
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Born Mary White in England, she lived in the frontier village of Lancaster, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of one of the towns founding fathers (Vaughan 1981, 32) and she married Joseph Rowlandson in 1656. Her husband was ordained a Puritan minister in 1660. At sunrise, on February 10, 1676, during King Philip's War, the bloodiest war in American colonial history, Lancaster came under attack by a band of Nashaway Indians. She was the mother of three, Joseph, Mary, and Sarah , and was among the hostages taken that day. For eleven weeks and five days (Neubauer 2001, 70), she was forced to accompany her captors as they fled through the wilderness to elude the colonial militia, under what she describes as horrible conditions. In simple, artless prose she recounts the stages of the odyssey in twenty distinct "Removes" or journeys. She witnessed the murder of her friends, the death of one of her children, and suffered starvation and depression, until she was finally reunited with her husband. On May 2, 1676, she was ransomed for twenty pounds, raised by the women of Boston in a public subscription, and paid by John Hoar of Concord at Redemption Rock in Princeton.

During her captivity, Mary's youngest child, Sarah, died, while the remaining two were separated from her; nevertheless, Rowlandson continued to seek guidance from the Bible --the text of her narrative is replete with verses and references describing conditions similar to her own. She saw her trial as a test of faith and considered the "Indians" to be "instruments of Satan". Her final escape, she tells us, taught her "the more to acknowledge His hand and to see that our help is always in Him."

[edit] Literary significance

Mary Rowlandson was the first American Woman to successfully publish her work (Neubauer 2001, 72.) Her book was published in 1682 and was among the first of a genre that was to become immensely popular in the seventeenth century: the Indian Captivity Narrative. It provided the readers with a satisfying drama which they could relate to their own lives, that had previously never existed. It also set the tone for many subsequent captivity narratives in which the emerging American community developed a sense of "us against the other" (in this case, the Native American Indian population), who often came into violent confrontation. According to these accounts, it is the strength of character of the Americans, bolstered by religion and destiny, that helps them to survive in the "Wilderness" (a term Rowlandson frequently uses). At the same time, it protects them when they are forced to accommodate themselves to the conditions of North America through a process of acculturation with Native culture and knowledge. By laying the groundwork for these in her account, Rowlandson effectively helped create the first uniquely American literary genre, and set the stage for the immensely popular American cowboy tales and the pioneer epics we today call the Western. Along with her significance to the literary world, shedding light on the colonists captivity experiences, it was a way to learn about New England during this era, specifically Puritan New England. Her captivity narrative is also a window onto Puritan religion and her quest to be redeemed by God and purified for her sins helps readers today to understand Puritan theology and the tense society they lived in (Vaughan 1981, 3.)

[edit] See also

Mount Grace State Forest

[edit] References

Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola, Women's Indian Captivity Narratives. Penguin Classics Series, 1998. ISBN 0-14-043671-5.
Anthology of American Literature, (4th edition) ed. George McMichael. Macmillan, 1989. ISBN 0-02-379621-9(v. 1)
Mary White Rowlandson - URL retrieved October 11, 2006
Philbrick, Nathaniel, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Viking Penguin, 2006. ISBN 0-670-03760-5
Paul Neubauer, “Indian Captivity in American Children's Literature: A Pre-Civil War Set of Stereotypes,” The Lion and the Unicorn, Vol. 25, No. 1, (January 2001), 70-80
Alden T.Vaughn, Edward W. Clark, eds. Puritans among the Indians: accounts of captivity and Redemption 1676-1724 (Cambridge, MA and London, England: Belknap, 1981), 269 pages