Mary Rowlandson

The Captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson has been one of my favorite pieces thus far in the class. I enjoyed many aspects of her narrative and thought that it had many intriguing qualities. Not that I necessarily thought liked everything about the narrator, I just found enjoyment in analyzing the text.
It is certainly a somewhat doleful (a word that Rowlandson uses MANY times) text to read, mainly due to the amount of detail she uses. I wonder when reading it what the purpose of some of the detail is. Could she really have remembered everything so well, including somewhat ridiculous specifics? The overbearing detail, maybe simply for today’s audience, displays lack of skill and control in writing. Some of the experiences of each remove can be redundant and other data just feels unimportant. Why does Mary Rowlandson have to give a personal story for every discomfort she faced, why can’t she just explain in the text what was prohibited, or what she encountered, without describing a whole experience? It could be because she is an untrained writer. Perhaps the detail is meant to satisfy British and American audiences who at the time viewed this tale as an adventure, and craved knowledge about these exotic people? In the end I believe that she is just telling her story, dealing with all of the post-traumatic stress and getting every detail out is the most cleansing way of doing so.
One of the main amusements I found with the piece is how removed I feel from the puritan woman’s experience. Rowlandson is nothing like any of the women I have met in my life and it tickles me to think that women today are even related to a woman like this. She shows great physical strength throughout the piece, especially initially, but is awfully whiny about having to do anything strenuous. I understand that due to the amount an American wife would have to do (hours and hours of housework and childrearing) that she must have been incredibly strong, but still she portrays her self as very insulted when she has to do anything physically active. By the second remove, she has already been taken from her husband, seen her nephew beaten to death, lost her own children, her house ha been burned, she is starving while the Indians eat great meals in front of her and she is watching her one surviving child die. Still the entire eleventh remove is Rowlandson complaining about having to climb a hill.
She also is extremely faithful during this story. She constantly is angry that she has “no Christian friend near me, either to comfort of help me.(page 239)” I think that it is funny in some ways that she equates helpfulness, goodness and comfort with Christianity, though I suppose that is all she is accustomed to. Also, she frequently calls the Indians “heathens”, which belittles them on the basis of their unchristian religious beliefs. She must think that their cruelty stems from paganism.
At times I found her persistence in faith to be inspiring, as it absolutely does keep her going. Although I do understand that this would have been terrifying, I giggled to myself many times in the story, because of her world-view. She constantly pulls out bible verses that she doesn’t discuss, but that may relate to a word or thought that she has in the story. Some of these passages just feel forced into her text. I like the part in the Twelfth Remove when her mistress takes her bible away from her and throws it outside. Rowlandson runs after it and continues to hide it with her and pray secretly. This shows that Rowlandson, in the midst of the chaos of the attack by the Indians ran to retrieve her bible, or that, more likely she had one in her pocket anyway. I don’t know any women today who cling so tightly to their bibles as Rowlandson. Also, the fact that the native American woman throws it outside, showing that she either associates the Bible with pleasure, which she doesn’t want Rowlandson to experience in captivity, or that she may perhaps have a personal issue, possibly stemming from the forced conversion of the Native Americans.
The reason I both enjoyed and had trouble taking the text seriously was not that I didn’t feel sorry for Mary Rowlandson, but reading from today’s perspective, it almost seems like a satire. I was impressed with her strength in a traumatic situation, and amused with her voice and opinions, all of which felt completely antique to me.