The Puritan imagination was central to the nature of American writing and the captivity narratives. The captivity narratives were very popular and dominated publications towards the end of the 17c. in America. The essential Puritan myth asserts itself in these captivity narratives as the narrative serves as a sermon, a moral lesson, and a revelatory history concerning Calvinist determinism and Puritan exclusions of nature and the "savage" native. John Smith first established the captivity narrative in The General/ Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624} and his accounts of early settlements. General/ Historie narrates Smith's own adventures and exploits with the native indigenous tribes and attempts to justify his actions. …show more content…
In A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson (1892), Mary Rowlandson's narrative is a fast paced first-person POV tale . Rowlandson states that God had brought about her captivity by the Narragansett Indians in order to test her faith and her moral courage. This testing of faith and the concept of God's will were standard features in the captivity narratives. The testing of faith and God's pal for the elect was a common theme in Puritan doctrine and in sermons: that the elect must go through trials and ordeals to test faith, and that events that happen to the elect were ordained by God. Rowlandson's suffering allows her to test ify of God's intervention and His plan, but also casts God as the hero of her story and her redemption. She transforms her perilous tale of captivity and individual suffering (the death of her children) into a parable of the redemption by the Puritan God . The other standard features in captivity narratives ar e the rendering of nature (Canaan) as hostile and the need of deliverance from nature, and her escape from the native Americans who are portrayed as the "other," outside of civilized society, lacking culture, and viewed at times as heathens or the "Noble Savage." The Captivity narrat ive form was dominated by women's experiences. The narratives often described deat h, fear, powerlessness, and sexual threat in connection with women as victims. The captivity narratives also provide a text to analyze race and inter-marriage and native relationships which was not uncommon with settlements on the frontier . Rowlandson's narrative, a type of personal confession , illustrated (white) women's abilit ies to survive and endure through religious faith and resourcefulness. The Puritan captivity narrative became the model story in fiction about women and the confrontation between races and cultures in the New World . The
Mary Rowlandson experienced a kidnapping however she survived that horrific incident. After that occurrence in her life, that led her to renew her faith in Puritanism. After surviving, the kidnapping Mary returned home to begin writing the account. When Mary was being held captive, that inspired her to write about the
White, Ed. "Captaine Smith, Colonial Novelist." American Literature 75.3 (2003): 487. Academic Search Elite. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano both had many obstacles in a certain period of life. From the different narratives, trials and tribulations were brought upon both. Taken from the life of which accustomed to and put in sometimes very harsh conditions had an antagonistic effect. Despite it all, Rowlandson and Equiano were able to get through by keep faith in God, the word of the bible, and spiritualism in itself. After all of the trials and tribulations Rowlandson and Equiano were able to escape and look back on all the things they went through. Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano can be compared and contrasted by family life, conditions while captured, and moment of rescue.
Mary Rowlandson was captured from her home in Lancaster, Massachusetts by Wampanoag Indians during King Phillip’s War. She was held captive for several months. When she was released she penned her story, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. During much of her story she refers to the Indians as savage beasts and heathens but at times seems admire them and appreciate their treatment of her. Mary Rowlandson has a varying view of her Indian captors because she experienced their culture and realized it was not that different from Puritan culture.
Some years earlier, John Smith related his experience of being captured in his personal account of the settlement of Jamestown. Their contributions ultimately made a great historical impact on Native American Literature. The captivity narratives authored by Mary Rowlandson and John Smith portrayed the Native Americans as devilish creatures that were simply evil, but the stories also reveal that the natives were frightened of white people and at times treated them with benevolence. According to "Puritan Family Life: The Diary of Samuel Sewall," in the 16th century there was a religious group, the Puritans, that believed only in Christian faith and in God’s intervention in everyday life. Furthermore, their core values and beliefs were in original sin, predestination, and grace.
The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles by John Smith, portrays the enormous troubles the settlers were faced with by the Native Americans. He explains how he was captured by Indians and also saved by a young Native American girl, Pocahontas. He vividly describes the ceremonies and rituals of the Natives performed before his execution. However, the execution never occurred due to the tremendous mercy showed by the king’s daughter who blanketed John Smith’s body her own. Pocahontas went on to persuade the Native Americans to help the settlers by giving them food and other necessities. Despite her efforts to reach peaceful grounds, her people were still bitter and planned an attacks on the colony. Nevertheless, Pocahontas saved them once again by warning the settlers of attacks. Pocahontas went on to marry an Englishman and traveled to England. She resembled the prosperity and good that was to be found in an untamed land.
Religion was the foundation of the early Colonial American Puritan writings. Many of the early settlements were comprised of men and women who fled Europe in the face of persecution to come to a new land and worship according to their own will. Their beliefs were stalwartly rooted in the fact that God should be involved with all facets of their lives and constantly worshiped. These Puritans writings focused on their religious foundations related to their exodus from Europe and religions role in their life on the new continent. Their literature helped to proselytize the message of God and focused on hard work and strict adherence to religious principles, thus avoiding eternal damnation. These main themes are evident in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mathers, and John Winthrop. This paper will explore the writings of these three men and how their religious views shaped their literary works, styles, and their historical and political views.
During the 17th century, many Puritans set sail for New England in order to escape religious persecution and re-create an English society that was accepting of the Puritan faith. John Winthrop, an educated lawyer from England who later became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was one of the first in North America to advocate Puritan ideals and lifestyle. Winthrop delivered his sermon A Model of Christian Charity, in hopes of encouraging his shipmates to establish a truly spiritual community abroad. Almost fifty years later, a Puritan named Mary Rowlandson, daughter of a wealthy landowner and wife of a minister, wrote A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, describing her 11-week captivity by native Indians after an attack on Lancaster. Rowlandson recounts her story with heroism and appreciation for God. Although John Winthrop and Mary Rowlandson were in entirely different situations when composing their literary works, both writings reflect many of the same ideals that characterize the Puritan mind, such as the belief in God's mercy, the acceptance of one's condition in life, and the importance of a strong community.
As a typical Puritan writer would, Rowlandson chose to write about God, religious beliefs, and her hardships. After the death of her child Rowlandson thanked God for, "preserving me". This statement clearly reveals her faith in fate and God's will. In the narrative she also describes her daily life as a capture. Rowlandson writes that she was "calling for my pay," after she made a shirt for one of the Indians. After that, she was called again to perform the same task and was paid a knife.
Interestingly although she feared and reviled the Indians she states that not one of them offered the least abuse of unchastity to her. Her captors never sexually molested or violated her. Rowlandson learned to adapt and strove to make it thought her captivity alive. She learned how to gather food for herself. Tolerate the ways of the Indians, and make clothes for the tribe. She even decided to stay with the Indians when given the chance to escape. “Rowlandson refused them choosing to stay put and let God choose when she was fully redeemed and ready to be released”
A Narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. The story was a description of the experiences of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson when she was a captive of the Native Americans in 1676 in the war of King Philips. This is a diary where she accounted for experiences she went through from the time she was captured until the time she was released. The time period of her capture went for a period of about 11 weeks. The recounting of the diary was twenty removes. In more specificity, she accounted for her experiences in relation to the Bible and God. In the diary, she described her capture as God’s will, and therefore she has to go through it with faith. She believed that by enduring, she was capable of remaining
Fichtelberg, J. (2004). The Colonial Stage: Risk and Promise in John Smith's Virginia. Early American Literature, 39(1), 11.
In “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson,” Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan mother from Lancaster, Massachusetts, recounts the invasion of her town by Indians in 1676 during “King Philip’s War,” when the Indians attempted to regain their tribal lands. She describes the period of time where she is held under captivity by the Indians, and the dire circumstances under which she lives. During these terrible weeks, Mary Rowlandson deals with the death of her youngest child, the absence of her Christian family and friends, the terrible conditions that she must survive, and her struggle to maintain her faith in God. She also learns how to cope with the Indians amongst whom she lives, which causes her attitude towards them to undergo several changes. At first, she is utterly appalled by their lifestyle and actions, but as time passes she grows dependent upon them, and by the end of her captivity, she almost admires their ability to survive the harshest times with a very minimal amount of possessions and resources. Despite her growing awe of the Indian lifestyle, her attitude towards them always maintains a view that they are the “enemy.”
All the records about the American captivity indicate and give suggestions about what the captives felt towards the Native Americans. To begin, Mary Rowlandson encounter with the Native Americans was not negative who burned her village and captured the villagers when they attacked her village. She was among those who were caught. Mary being one of them took some of the villagers. Mary often tells mistreatment that her fellow captives were subjected, and some of them killed while being mangled and slain by the natives. She wrote that seeing many Christians lying here and there like a sheep company torn by wolves (Rowlandson 14). She quite often referred to their captors as savage and inhuman, and therefore
The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a personal account, written by Mary Rowlandson in 1682, of what life in captivity was like. Her narrative of her captivity by Indians became popular in both American and English literature. Mary Rowlandson basically lost everything by an Indian attack on her town Lancaster, Massachusetts in 1675; where she is then held prisoner and spends eleven weeks with the Wampanoag Indians as they travel to safety. What made this piece so popular in both England and America was not only because of the great narrative skill used be Mary Rowlandson, but also the intriguing personality shown by the complicated character who has a struggle in recognizing her identity. The reoccurring idea of food and the word remove, used as metaphors throughout the narrative, could be observed to lead to Mary Rowlandson’s repression of anger, depression, and realization of change throughout her journey and more so at the end of it.