Mary Rolwandson

1
Mary Rolwandson

• The Captivity Narrative America as Text

2
Exceptionalism

• Winthrop
• American exceptionalismthe idea that America
  sets a moral example for the rest of the world
  (we shall be as a city on a hill)
• (exceptionalism can be seized by the
  rightspreading democracyor the leftcontesting
  torture/controversial interrogation techniques)
• -Ronald Reagan often used the term city on a
  hill to refer to America during the Cold War
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vgIouq2u9kUo

3
Covenant

• Covenant theologyorganization of the church
  based on covenants or contracts
• For the Puritans, covenants leak out into the
  social order
• Acc. to Winthrop, Puritans enter into a covenant
  with God they will serve as an example of
  Christian community and God will protect them
• -Bradford includes the Mayflower Compact in his
  historylays the groundwork for Americas
  founding documents

4
(No Transcript)
5
Text-Based Faith

• Calvinism places authority in the text of the
  Bible
• exegesisclose study of the Bible
• typologya form of reading that figured out how
  stories in the Old Testament explain or
  foreshadow concepts in the New Testament (Jonah 3
  days in the fish?Christ 3 days in tomb
• Abrahams sacrifice of Isaac ? Christs
  crucifiction)

6
Puritan Typology

• Puritans expand the idea of typology so that they
  read events in their own lives as having been
  prefigured in the Bible.
• Voyage across Atlantic ?Exodus from Egypt
• Puritans ? New Israelites

7
What is America?

• A tabula rasa (blank slate) a place where
  people can start over, where they can rewrite
  their histories, make a new life, etc
• A wilderness where the chosen people must
  create a New Israel
• What do these two visions of America suggest
  about Indians?

8
Tabula Rasa

• Bradford The place they had thoughts on was
  some of those vast and unpeopled countries of
  America, which are fruitful and fit for
  habitation, being devoid of all civil
  inhabitants, where there are only savage and
  brutish men which range up and down, little
  otherwise than the wild beasts of the same (33,
  left column)

9
Rowlandson

• Burke a way of seeing is also a way of not
  seeing
• Mary Rowlandson reads everything through the
  typology of the Bible
• She sees herself as a child of Israel captured by
  manifestations of the devil

10
Worksheet work in groups but write down your
own answers

• How does the Narrative demonstrate Puritan
  theology and thinking at work?
• Why do you think this work by a woman was allowed
  to be published?
• How does the Narrative combine/demonstrate/refute
  what Of Plymouth Plantation and A Modell of
  Christian Charity had to say about the Puritans
  mission in the New World?
• Are there any moments where Rowlandson seems to
  be self-contradictory? Does she evolve or change
  her worldview at all?

11
Richard Slotkin (in Regeneration Through Violence)

• "In a captivity narrative a single individual,
  usually a woman, stands passively under the
  strokes of evil, awaiting rescue by the grace of
  God. The sufferer represents the whole, chastened
  body of Puritan society and the temporary
  bondage of the captive to the Indian is dual
  paradigm-- of the bondage of the soul to the
  flesh and the temptations arising from original
  sin, and of the self-exile of the English Israel
  from England. In the Indian's devilish clutches,
  the captive had to meet and reject the temptation
  of Indian marriage and/or the Indian's "cannibal"
  Eucharist. To partake of the Indian's love or of
  his equivalent of bread and wine was to debase,
  to un-English the very soul. The captive's
  ultimate redemption by the grace of Christ and
  the efforts of the Puritan magistrates is likened
  to the regeneration of the soul in conversion.
  The ordeal is at once threatful of pain and evil
  and promising of ultimate salvation. Through the
  captive's proxy, the promise of a similar
  salvation could be offered to the faithful among
  the reading public, while the captive's torments
  remained to harrow the hearts of those not yet
  awakened to their fallen nature."

12
King Philips War, 1675-1676

• Uprising of Wampanoag Indians
• Caused by colonists expansionincursion into
  Indian territory and destruction of Land
• Kind Philip (Metacom) distrustful of colonists
  b/c his brother, whom he succeeded, died
  mysteriously in Plymouth

13
Breaking the Covenant

• For Mary Rowlandson, the war is a punishment from
  God for breaking the covenant and living
  sinfully.
• Come, behold the works of the Lord what
  dissolations he had made in the Earth.

14
Captivity Narrative

• The captivity narrative becomes an important
  genre in American literature and film. It has a
  3-part structure.
• Act of separation
• Liminal phase (in between/no-mans land)
• Restoration