New Historicist Reading of Mary White Rowlandson’s a True History of Captivity and Restoration

In colonial America, puritan writers’ style is nearly the same as Saint Augustine’s spiritual biography. Its content is fundamentally drawn upon many references to the Bible. Mary White Rowlandson’s captivity narrative serves as the best example of a typical puritan narrative. Many scholars are used to read this autobiography in a historicist perspective in order to analyze the socio-historical context of this narrative that portrays the great puritan community, and Natives’ culture and barbarity. Nonetheless, I prefer to study this work with a New Historicist approach to underline and understand the enclosed messages that the writer wants us as readers to decipher. Because literature is not mobile, and reading it “from a universal point of view is a fantasy” as, the coiner of the term “New Historicism”, Stephen Greenblatt states. In the first part of this article, I will attempt to analyze the top of the iceberg of this novel. Then, I will deal with what is in the bottom that is the sub-text.

Being a minister’s wife, Rowlandson’s first target is to provide a set of spiritual lessons for the puritan community. As we can notice in her narrative’s first title, Sovereignty and Goodness Of God Together with the Faithfulness of his promises Displayed, the narrator focuses in her story on describing God’s providence, and his ultimate power more than anything else. Through this, she tries to convince the readers that all the horrible things that happened to her during her captivity are meant to happen. For her, God shows his goodness and mercy in every situation. The puritan woman mirrors herself as a heroine who is sent by her Lord in order to teach the whole community about his goodness, and sovereignty. The preface of this captivity narrative is mainly written by a clergyman, who is believed to be Cotton Mather. This clergyman shows his great respect to Rowlandson’s husband, and he calls the readers to believe in the truthful events that the narrator is telling them. Then, he tells them that this autobiography is written by Rowlandson herself to serve religious purpose.

Mary Rowlandson starts her narrative with a detailed description of the terrifying Indians’ attack on Lancaster. Many of puritans are horribly killed and burnt. Then, she states that “several houses were burning, and the smoke ascending to heaven”; as if Rowlandson is telling her readers that these sinless puritans are directly going to heaven without any doubt. When the Natives were about to reach the minister’s house, Rowlandson could not escape. So the only solution for her was to take her children and pray God to save her; declaring that: “The Lord hereby would make us the more acknowledge His hand, and to see that our help is always in him;” Once the “ravenous beasts” arrive to her house, they kill the majority of her family, and wound her and her youngest daughter; Most importantly, Rowlandson pictures in this passage her sister’s despair when she sees her dead children, and the fact that God answers her prayer to end her grief and let her die with them; Due to this, the narrator hopes that “she is reaping the fruits of her good labors, being faithful to the service of God in her place.” She mentions the Biblical scripture that says “And he said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee”. Additionally, she directly adds that “more than twenty years after, I have heard her tell how sweet and comfortable that place was to her.” In the light of this, Mary Rowlandson tries through these lines to convince the readers that if they are faithful enough to God like her sibling, paradise is accessible for them.

In the next paragraph the female captive asks her readers to take a look at the providence of God who instantaneously turns their happy life upside-down. In the beginning of the narrative, Rowlandson says that she prefers to die rather than to go with such merciless pagans; However, she changes her mind immediately; The puritan woman compares herself to Job who says, “And I only am escaped to tell the news” to tell the readers that God preserves her life because He wants to narrate her story as Job did before.

In the First Remove, Mary Rowlandson portrays the brutality and the barbarity of the Indians. They celebrated their victory after carelessly killing and kidnapping the settlers. She wants to show that unlike the Christians, the “pagans” are heartless, and merciless.

In the Second Remove, Rowlandson pictures her daughter’s distress, and the way she, as a mother, finds comfort only through her faithfulness. She affirms that, “[…] But the Lord renewed my strength still, and carries me along, that I might see more of His power; yea, so much that I could never have thought of, had I experienced it.”

When I started reading Rowlandson’s narrative, I understood Greenblat’s emphasis on the importance of literature in portraying history. For me, this narrative is senseless without studying its context. Due to this, the details that Rowlandson is providing in her work take us in a journey to the past. Through her narrative, we can learn many things about King Philip Indian War. The story also gives us an important description about the Indian society, and about the puritans’ beliefs and experiences in early America.

In the Third Remove, we understand that Mary Rowlandson tells her readers that even though she fails in completing her duties toward God, He still helping and guiding her. She mentions that the christian captive from Roxbury gives her oaken leaves to heal her wounds. In fact, this plant has a very deep meaning in the puritan community. First, it has a religious value. It symbolizes Abraham’s unbelievable faith, forbearance, and strength. Second, the oak tree typifies England’s vigor and power. Third, it is a fundamental plant in the colonial settlements’ trade; especially, Roxbury. Consequently, Rowlandson wants us through this symbol to understand that the Lord is the one who sends the Christian chosen man to cure her wounds, and to reanimate her strength. In addition, she points at her country’s power, meaning that the English army will for sure save her from the “pagans”.

After that, Mary Rowlandson, informs her readers that her daughter Sarah is dead in very miserable circumstances. Nonetheless, she doesn’t describe her grief in details. Instead of this, she thanks the Supreme God for his goodness. Later on, she declares that she wants to see her son and daughter, Mary and Joseph, after losing her beloved young daughter. This irony, shows Rowlandson’s anxiety about mourning. This anxiety is also shown in the sixth remove, when Rowlandson cites Lot’s wife temptation. She writes “I went along that day mourning and lamenting , leaving farther my own county, and traveling into a vast and howling wilderness, and I understood something of Lot’s wife’s temptation, when she looked back.”. through these lines, we can understand that Rowlandson is referring to the outcomes of mourning. She clarifies that because of Lot’s wife mourning about her people, she disobeys God by turning back, and seeing what was happening to them. Rowlandson here puts herself in Lot’s wife’s shoes because the Lord judges her in the same way. On the one hand, her dead daughter is behind her, and on the other hand, her duty is calling her to accept God’s plans for her. As a Puritan woman, Mary Rowlandson is not free to reveal her melancholy because the puritans did always consider grieving as a quibbling about God’s sovereignty and potency. Death in the puritan society is considered as “the absolute master”. Therefore, puritan writers do not talk directly about this antagonism toward sorrowing, but it is shown in some way. Even though mourning is forbidden in the puritan society, the minister’s wife doesn’t succeed in hiding her sorrow, especially, in the Third Remove. Mary White Rowlandson tries to concentrate more on her reason. Yet, she finds herself emotionally narrating her story. Though Rowlandson is maybe expressing her sorrow unconsciously, this failure could be also understood as a sort of challenge to the puritans’ beliefs.

In the last part of the Third Remove, Rowlandson thanks God for sending her an Indian to give her a Bible. When she starts reading the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, all the negative thoughts are gone; especially, when she reads the seven first verses of the 30th chapter. She asserts that she figures out that “there was mercy promised again, if we would return to him by repentance; and though were scattered from one end of the earth to the other, the Lord would gather us, and turn all those curses upon our enemies” . The minister’s wife tries to convince herself and her readers that it is only through returning to God, that all their wishes will come true. Then, she gives a very shrewd example of the puritan captive, goodwife Joslin, who could not endure her captivity. Rowlandson tries to persuade Mrs. Joslin not to run away through reading with her the Psalm 27 that says, 'Wait on the Lord, Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine Heart, wait I say on the Lord”. However, the impatient white woman cannot bear it anymore. As a result, the goodwife Joslin tells her captors to set her free. So, they “gathered a great company together about her and stripped her naked, and set her in the midst of them, and when they had sung and danced about her (in their hellish manner) as long as they pleased they knocked her on the head, and the child in her arms with her. When they had done that they made fire and put them both into it”. Through this scene, Rowlandson tries to clarify that only God can help his people, and that those who doubt his sovereignty would probably face the same fate as Joslin.

In the Fifth Remove, Rowlandson also shows her great faith when the English army fails in getting her back to her husband. She writes that it is not the English who fail, but God doesn’t decide to free her yet. In the next Removes Mary Rowlandson quotes a lot of scriptures from the book of the Psalm. The narrator and the majority of puritans believe in the stories, and the set of principles that are treated in the Psalms because they consider themselves God’s chosen people. The real reasons behind this inter-textuality between Rowlandson’s narrative and the book of Psalms are various. First of all, the narrator considers herself as the puritan heroine woman who experiences not only the same trails as the Old Testament’s prophets, Job, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, and Micah, but also as the psalmist David. She glorifies herself through this textuality, and in the same way she finds hope through the Psalms. The minister’s wife wants to prove that she is the a chosen woman as Cotton Mather clarifies it in the introduction. Second, Rowlandson quotes verses from the Old Testament, and the Psalms in order to elevate her style, and to make her narrative more attractable. Most importantly, Rowlandson finds a shrewd way to express her real emotions, and feelings through the Book of the Psalm. Dawn Henwood writes in this context that she “turns often to this first book of the New England puritans to reliance her anguish”. Therefore, we understand that the Psalms is Rowlandson’s voice to express her anger, grief, and sorrow in an indirect way. This puritan captive spends her most time in reading it since it is the only thing that gives her hope and determination.

After reading Mary Rowlandson’s work, I conclude that her narrative is a product of her own status and society. The minister’s wife is obliged to write, and publish her narrative according to the puritan beliefs and standards. In the very first chapters, Rowlandson describes the Indians as monsters, as she puts it, “and saw nothing but wilderness, and woods, and a company of barbarous heathens” . Then, she writes in the Sixth Remove that, “there was a vast difference between the lovely faces of Christians, and foul looks of those heathens, which much damped my spirit again.” (21). Paradoxically, she narrates how good they are with her. contradiction is for me a clear hypocrisy of this narrative. For me, Rowlandson’s first and foremost goal is to portray the indigenous inhabitants of America as worst as possible. She wants to show to the whole world that unlike the puritans who are highly civilized and humane, the Indians are pagan and beasts. The puritan writer is telling a big lie in her narrative in order to mislead people’s view.

Rowlandson’s interpretation of the Old Testament is a representation of the puritans’ beliefs. she tries her utmost to glorify herself and the white Christians through portraying her captors as savages and inhumane. Whenever we read Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, we find confusion. On the one hand, the narrator mirrors her captors badly; on the other hand we understand from her narrative that the majority of them are extremely kind with her.

We can also notice Rowlandson’s hypocrisy in the Eighteenth Remove when she steals the Christian child’s food. As a puritan captive, she did always criticize her captors for not sharing food with her. However, once she becomes starved, she as a heathen Indian. Rowlandson tells her readers about this incident without any feeling of guilt.

In the first chapters, Mary White expresses her anger toward the “pagans” who kill her daughter remorselessly. However, when an Indian child dies, she shows satisfaction and joy as she puts it, “My mistress's papoose (baby) was sick, and it died that night, and there was one benefit in it--that there was more room” . Moreover, the puritans believe that women are cursed by their bodies and beauty. Rowlandson insists in her narrative on proving to her readers that she is still pure. She says that God helps her in preserving her chastity and purity in the wilderness. Yet, the captive woman’s weird relationship with her Indian master poses many questions in the readers’ minds. Rowlandson expresses in the Twentieth Remove her happiness when her drunken master invites her to go to him. She says, “Then he called for me. I trembled to hear him, yet I was fain to go to him, and he drank to me.” . In another scene in the Nineteenth Remove, Rowlandson states that, “After many weary steps we came to Wachusett, where he [her master] was: and glad I was to see him. He asked me, when I washed me? I told him not this month. Then he fetched me some water himself, and bid me wash, and gave me the glass to see how I looked” . As a result, we can clearly notice that Rowlandson’s master is not only a friend of her as she claims. He is far more than that. In addition, I think that Rowlandson’s mistress’s jealousy has for sure her reasons.

In a nutshell, Mary Rowlandson’s Sovereignty and Goodness of God Together with the Faithfulness of his Promises Displayed is one of the earliest narratives in the American Literature. This work mirrors in details the puritan beliefs and the Indian community. From the analysis it becomes clear that the minister’s wife, Rowlandson is not free in expressing her true feelings. However, scriptures from the Old Testament and the psalms helped her in conveying encrypted codes to her readers. A True History of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a reflection of Early Americans’ life during King Philip’s War. In this narrative, Mary Rowlandson represents the puritan society that was in conflict with Native Americans. It is true that she uses a lot of typological scriptures in her autobiography. Nonetheless, I think that her account serves a good example of the white puritans’ hypocrisy too. As I have explained before, we can figure out that the narrator tells lies to prove that the puritans are really the chosen people of God and justify their deeds in America.