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Hilary Floyd
Professor Connell
HumCore H1C
1 June 2011
A Self in Conflict: A Puritan Woman Engulfed by “Them”
Looking back at a house in flames, a dying child in her arms, and a fresh bullet hole in
her side, Mary Rowlandson began the trek that would just be the beginning of her captivity. The
following time spent serving her Native American masters would not only alter Rowlandson’s
own identity as a Puritan goodwife but have far reaching ramifications that would ultimately
create what is now known as the captivity narrative, a genre founded on a common woman’s
perspective. Her text, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity
and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, documents an average woman’s struggle for
survival, both physically and psychologically, while immersed in the violent truth that is nature.
She lives through her ordeal to be extolled in Puritan society for God’s divine deliverance. But
such a trial does not leave one unmarked. During captivity, Rowlandson was forced to make a
choice: to succumb and perish pure or fight and be reborn as a product of otherness. Through her
tumultuous and often violent captivity Rowlandson’s identity undergoes regeneration, inversely
passing through phases of resistance, symbolic scalping, and social rebellion. During her
identity’s transformation, Rowlandson’s Puritan upbringing collides with the new traits
necessary for her survival, ultimately giving birth to her new self. This identity has an “other”
quality in it that cannot be understood by Puritan society. She writes her memoirs as a means of
coming to terms with her new self, one who is both Puritan and human survivor.
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While it may appear that these identities can coexist peacefully in one person, it remains
that the personas of Puritan goodwife and survivor are in fact, mutually exclusive given the
confining structures of Puritan society. Being a Puritan requires a belief so dependent on God
that human agency is completely forgone. Whereas true survival requires human agency to take
command and act in accordance with any means to protect one’s life. However, Puritan doctrine
insists that whether one lives or dies is solely based on God’s wishes. The Puritans also believe
that God only chooses a select number of people, an elite group of Puritans, to reach salvation,
and while there is no way for one who is not chosen to reach paradise, if a preselected Puritan
does not live in accordance to God’s law and the church, they forfeit heaven. As a minister’s
wife, Rowlandson was one of the colony’s elite, but even she was not guaranteed a place
amongst the saved (Rowlandson 129). The story of her captivity was used as one of hope for
deliverance by ministers and public leaders, such as Increase Mathers (the likely author of the
preface to Rowlandson’s text), who saw the attacks of the “barbarous savages” as divine
punishment for the colonies waning religious fever (128-129, 133). These attacks and the
following captivity of Mary Rowlandson resulted from a much larger conflict between the
European settlers and Native Americans, now known as King Philip’s War (Rowandson 128).
The bloody interaction lasted from 1675 to 1676, and whipped out one third of the Native
American population of southern New England and one tenth of colonists (128). Once back
amongst her own people, Rowlandson’s narrative “became a best-seller overnight” and has
continued to capture audiences since (Derounian-Stodola 94).
Part of Rowlandson’s appeal lies in the tension within the text itself, which continues to
be analyzed in modern times for its unusual duality. Tara Fitzpatrick asserts that Rowlandson’s
captivity gave her the unique opportunity to step outside of strict Puritan roles and present
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“herself as defiant and calculating, resilient and self-reliant” versus presenting the typical
“Puritan spiritual rhetoric of submission and self-abasement within a congregational community”
in her text (Fitzpatrick 12). Fitzpatrick asserts that during her captivity, Rowlandson forced to
habitation outside of her societal role and as a slave makes her take on an “otherness” foreign to
the Puritans, self-reliance. During captivity Rowlandson’s life becomes centrally focused on her
survival, dependent on her agency alone. Fitzpatrick also argues that upon Rowlandson’s return,
this residual individuality comes into conflict with Puritan society and women’s role in it,
making them dependent creatures instead of the highly able and intellectualized women that
Fitzpatrick sees trying to come through in Rowlandson’s text. This conflict, according to
Fitzpatrick results in the text’s duality. On the other hand, critics like Kathryn DerounianStodola and James Levernier assert that the tension in Rowlandson’s text results from a “clash of
codes between Rowlandson’s psychological and religious interpretations of her experience”
(Derounian-Stodola 102). The idea of a “clash” presents a battle going on in Rowlandson’s
consciousness, two different cultural identities fighting for control over Rowlandson’s self. This
schism, along with several of Rowlandson’s peculiarities, Derounian-Stodola argues are the
indicators of “survivor syndrome,” a modern day psychological disorder which occurs after one
has undergone severe trauma (102). While this interpretation is plausible, Derounia-Stodola and
Levernier disregard the importance of Rowlandson’s identity change. Establishing the
importance of identity, critics have neglected to consider exactly what brings about
Rowlandson’s change, seen in the duality in her text. They overlook the possibility of her as a
dynamic individual born through the trauma and the violence of her experience. The text itself
reflects this idea in its duality, two opposing cultures living as one in Rowlandson’s writing,
mirroring her own identity and the processes of loss, battle, and acceptance.
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From the very instance of the attack on her home, captivity begins skinning Rowlandson
of her identity, leaving her raw and naked from the loss. Nothing disheartens Rowlandson more
than the death of her child, shot during the initial attack. Rowlandson describes how for “nine
days I sat upon my knees, with my babe in my lap, till my flesh was raw” (Rowlandson 142).
The idea of the wearing down of her flesh is analogous to her character being worn down, a
painful process that ultimately leads to the re-growth of thicker skin. But more specifically than
just her self rubbing away, her role as “minister’s wife, mother, sister, friend, housekeeper… her
captors strip her” of these separate entities that make up the essence of Mary Rowlandson
(Logan 266). When she loses her child, Rowlandson also loses her place in society; “the loss of
these connections and the position they furnish is equivalent to the loss of self” (266). The
former Rowlandson created and “furnished” her life through roles, in that her identity remains
dependent on remaining in society for without it, identity ebbs away like her child’s life. By
doing this Puritans were able to manipulate social norms, for example they used “clothing as a
litmus test for identity,” an exact process in their eyes with no room for exception (Castro 112).
Any cross cultural dressing will lead to degeneration because of the Puritan’s belief in the
“transformative power of clothes” (119). Being originally part of this mentality Rowlandson
justifies herself in her interaction with her master’s maid. She asserts herself, refusing the maid’s
demand when she asks Rowlandson to give up a piece of her apron (Rowlandson 156).
Rowlandson rejects. It is not until her mistress started beating her that she yields to their will and
gives up the apron (156). Only in the midst of violence does Rowlandson surrender her
remaining Puritan identity symbolized in the apron. This violent transaction shows
Rowlandson’s transition from Puritan mother to fighter. The apron itself is symbolic of
domesticity, and the thought of tearing it or losing it completely drives her wild, inducing her
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rebellion. With it gone she is then left “bereft… lost in a spiritual wilderness” (Logan 266). With
the apron and its ties to her place in the family’s house gone, Rowlandson has no anchor to
civilization. A more willful, self-reliant character surfaces within her, a character willing to do
what it takes to survive.
Despite her seemingly humble manner there are times when Rowlandson actively rebels
against her Native American masters, demonstrating the process of violence creating her newly
forming agency. While Rowlandson primarily keeps her sufferings to herself during captivity,
during a few instances she seems to snap. For example, after being reprimanded for begging,
Rowlandson describes her masters telling her that “if I did so any more, they would knock me in
the head: I told them, they had as good knock me in the head as starve me to death” (Rowlandson
162). This presents a drastic change from Rowlandson’s normal peaceful compliance and
directly violates her Puritan upbringing which heralds its practitioners to demonstrate “passivity,
humility, dependence, and obedience” during a trial from “affliction to providential restoration”
(Toulouse 38). In fact, Rowlandson not only disrespects her Native American masters by talking
back; in doing so, she also breaks from Puritan societal norms. In the example aforementioned,
one can see how new resistance is for Rowlandson; her attitude is similar to a modern day
teenager who is just beginning to rebel against authoritative parents. While this may seem trivial,
it is an important step for Rowlandson as she fractures herself away from the Puritan collective
and begins establishing an individualized identity. Once this singular form is created, it does not
completely re-immerse itself once Rowlandson returns to Puritan society. The very act of writing
for a public audience is viewed as morally questionable for a Puritan woman, which makes
Rowlandson’s narrative an abnormality (Logan 259, Derounian-Stodola 94). She rebels against
stereotypes, showing the lasting effects of her rebirth in captivity. The structure too, hints to the
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creation of Rowlandson’s new persona. She views identity as in relation to location (Logan 256).
Rowlandson separates her captivity into twenty separate “removes,” in which she is forced
farther and farther from her home and the safety of Puritan society and deeper into the
wilderness. This process of continuous movement slowly strips Rowlandson of her obligations to
social norms, removing her from the safety of the society she knows. Literally stranded in the
wild, Rowlandson must fight for survival in an environment without rules. Every such “remove”
is yet another reminder of her capture, of the instance of violence that tore her world apart
including her former self. She carries some part of the “savage” back with her in her return that
comes through in the very act of her public testimony. She describes the violence that she will
never forget because it has forged itself on her soul in the admission that “It is good for me that I
have been afflicted” (Rowlandson 176).
Throughout her narrative, Rowlandson both gives testimony to events and acts as an
interpreter to them, creating a duality within the text itself between the descriptive voice and the
judgmental one. This multiplicity in Rowlandson’s narrative shows how she “retroactively
attempts to collate and comprehend the meaning of her unprecedented cultural circulation as a
commodified captive” (Burnham 13). Through the writing process Rowlandson tries to make
sense of her tumultuous captivity. By distancing herself from the actual events, she can
categorize them and then find meaning to this senseless ordeal. Yet in doing this, Rowlandson
becomes a free thinking woman and steps outside her typical role of the subservient wife,
demonstrating a character trait gained through her captivity when survival demanded her to think
for herself. Puritan custom dictates that one quietly accepts their ordeal as a test from God, but
Rowlandson acts as her own judge. She seamlessly transitions between observer and interpreter
through her Biblical citations. She writes, “I cannot express to man the sorrow that lay upon my
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spirit… Yet that comfortable scripture would often come to my mind, For a small moment have I
forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee” (Rowlandson 159). Here Rowlandson
describes her corporeal feelings but then switches to interpretation, using God’s will to give
meaning to her suffering. She employs scripture as a rhetorical device, persuading both her
reader and herself of divinity’s responsibility for her trial, while ironically displaying her own
agency in that interpretation. This agency would not have manifested itself in her “had she stayed
safely within the bounds of the hedge; indeed, her captivity had begun when the hedge fail to
hold” (Fitzpatrick 11). This metaphor of the hedge symbolizes the boundaries between societies
and cultures. In a sense these boundaries naturally arise yet humans give them shape and
strengthen their walls. In her captivity, Rowlandson is forced to break through this boundary
triggering her process of rebirth. The quote above emphasis that Rowlandson’s captivity did not
start with her physical capture but with the crumbling of the social walls separating the Native
American and Puritan societies. From this point on the societies begin to bleed into each other,
producing Rowlandson as a cross cultural agent capable of Puritan spirituality and individualistic
action. However these two identities cannot exist without conflict. One can see this reproduced
when Rowlandson describes “I took my Bible to read, but I found no comfort here,” for her
agency also results in a difficulty and sometimes an inability to find comfort in the idea of
Providence (Rowlandson 155). Her character duality extends beyond the dimensions of observer
and interpreter into her personage; inside Rowlandson the influences of two distinct cultural
identities collide and that violence then gives birth to her dual voice in the text.
From loss to rebellion, Rowlandson experiences the death of one life and the birth of
another; however, Rowlandson is conscious of this change. Captivity “introduces you to the
knowledge that you can commit acts that you had judged yourself utterly incapable of
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committing,” and because Rowlandson realizes that these unimaginable possibilities are now a
reality of her life, as a person in transition she fights against her perceived “degeneration” (Arsić
156, Castro 119). This can be seen in Rowlandson’s hatred of the others reborn in the violence
between Native Americans and settlers, the “praying Indians” (Rowlandson 140). Her deep
dislike most significantly stems from her own self reflected in them. They are both dressed in the
opposing clothes, muddling clear identification, they both are forced to live amongst a society
alien to them, and they both share the violent history that brought them their respective positions
in the world. Because of her experience she can no longer see herself as a Puritan goodwife;
instead she knows the immoral capabilities she possesses, in her identification with the wildness
associated with the “savages.” As Arsić describes, “once a wolf, always a wolf, not because she
is one, but because she knows she is capable of becoming one” (156). Rowlandson’s captivity in
the wild made her capable of acts of violence, such as those which lead her to becoming a
“wolf.” So Rowlandson is reborn as this character known for its treachery. Its canine features
reflect its place in the natural world while still maintaining a link to domesticity. Yet this image
of the “wolf” also introduces the negative aspects of Rowlandson’s duality. She is now capable
of becoming a wolf in sheep’s clothing, deception being the ultimate betrayal. Looking back on
her experience Rowlandson must have realized how close she come to becoming one of her
hated “savages.” Yet it is exactly that hate which ignited the violence that created Rowlandson’s
new identity.
However, Rowlandson is not completely lost within the collision that created her new
self, the simplest object connects her back to the warmth of humanity. After weeks of starving,
Rowlandson describes Native American food, how formerly “I could starve and die before I
could eat such things, yet they were sweet and savory to my taste” (Rowlandson 147). This
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change is not just a result of Rowlandson’s new appreciation for food, it signals a conversion to
Native American custom and so a positive step towards cross culturalism. She derives pleasure
from eating; it is “sweet” to her and it nourishes her physically while comforting her. Yet
Rowlandson still hungers for the end to her isolation and longs for her Christian community.
Shortly after her capture she remarks that “The Indians were as thick as the trees… nothing but
Indians… I myself in the midst, and no Christian soul near me.” (Rowlandson 148). She uses
food to remind herself that she is a human amongst “savages,” and interprets her hunger as
another trial given specifically for her by God. Yet the consequential obsession with that trial and
link to her society deteriorates her interpretation, and is the cause for her own savage behavior.
At one point during her captivity Rowlandson describes an episode in which she takes food from
an English child also taken captive by Native Americans, saying how “ I took it of the child, and
ate it myself, and savory it was to my taste” (Rowlandson 162). Here, Rowlandson violates taboo
by eating from another’s mouth and even more seriously taking food from an innocent child. The
association of such selfishness and Christian moral wrongness, she reserves for the “savages.”
Yet here she is, taking on these base qualities without chagrin signaling assimilation to the selfreliance in her captor’s society. When starvation begins to set in and Rowlandson cannot acquire
food, she experiences hunger as the “dual trials of body and spirit… as interrelated” (Phillips
26). In her narrative Rowlandson links spiritual hunger with the physical need, an analogous
comparison that links the physical with the spiritual. But she uses food, not her Bible for this
medium, choosing a symbol with universal applications, not the Bible which remains exclusive
and unattainable to the illiterate, as means to a spiritual truth. This idea contradicts the Puritan
notion of an elite salvation and implies a positive cross cultural interaction. Rowlandson
experiences a human collectivity founded on something as simple as nourishment, with the real
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shock not being her new ability to stomach horse liver but the awareness of a universal humanity
through sustenance.
With this foundation, Rowlandson’s identity is not lost to the violence but reborn through
it. Her old self is stripped down to her barest core, which then rises up to fight for its survival.
This process transforms Rowlandson’s identity into a person her old self could hardly recognize.
The Puritan society too can no longer relate to Rowlandson. The “otherness” she assimilated in
the wilderness is a force outside of their social identifications. But through the universal violence
of hunting and partaking in food and meat, Rowlandson identifies with her new self, a devout
agent. It is only through nature and the indigenous, wild violence that Rowlandson could have
made this transformation, showing the inert power in natural forces. Yet Puritan society
vehemently opposes such forces, showing the constant battle between society and nature; each
doomed to remain as the “other.”
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Works Cited
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_____SUFFERING." Common Knowledge 16.2 (2010): 247-275. Academic Search Complete.
_____EBSCO. Web. 4 May 2011.
Burnham, Michelle. Captivity and Sentiment: Cultural Exchange in American Literature.
_____Hanover, N.H: Dartmouth College, 1999. Print.
Castro, Wendy Lucas. "Stripped: Clothing and Identity in Colonial Captivity Narratives." Early
_____American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6.1 (2008): 104-36. Project MUSE. Web.
_____3 May 2011.
Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle., and James Levernier. The Indian Captivity Narrative,
_____1550-1900. New York: Twayne, 1993. Print.
Fitzpatrick, Tara. "The Figure of Captivity: The Cultural Work of the Puritan Captivity
_____Narrative."American Literary History 3.1 (1991): 1-26. Print.
Logan, Lisa. "Mary Rowlandson's Captivity and the "Place" of the Woman Subject." Early
_____American Literature 28.3 (1993): 255-77. Print.
Phillips, James Henry IV; Dr. Carmine Prioli, Committee Chair; Dr. Allen Stein, Committee
_____Member; Dr. Jon Thompson, Committee Member. “The Lessons of Hunger: Food, Drink,
_____and the Concept of Corrective Affliction in Three Puritan Captivity Narratives.” Diss.
Rowlandson, Mary. "The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity
_____and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson." American Captivity Narratives. Ed. Gordon
_____M. Sayre. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. 127-176.
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Toulouse, Teresa. The Captive's Position: Female Narrative, Male Identity, and Royal Authority
_____in Colonial New England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2007. Print.