As the sun prepared to rise on the tenth day of February in the year 1675, life for the settlers of the town of Lancaster, Massachusetts was about to change forever. One of those settlers was a wife and mother by the name of Mary Rowlandson, soon to be taken prisoner by the aggressors, who would spend the next eleven weeks as a captive. Her story, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, is the harsh tale of struggle, loss, and hunger. Mary Rowlandson, like many of the settlers of the Puritan colony of Lancaster, was a devout Christian. Mary Rowlandson’s recollection of captivity is a story of the sovereignty of God, faith based hope, and the strength in perseverance.
Violence is at the forefront of Rowlandson’s account as the reader is immediately walked through the brutal attack on the town of Lancaster. The smoke of the fires rise to the heavens, and as she witnesses her neighbors cut down cries can be heard from mothers and children “Lord, what shall we do?” (Rowlandson 73). Sovereignty is the supreme power or authority, in this case God over his people. Rowlandson saw her brother-in-law die, heard of the death of one of her sons, from another son who was wounded before she was grabbed and told that no harm would come to her if she
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She was fed scraps of food here and there that were few and far between. While still carrying her wounded child, starving and struggling Rowlandson states “I thought we should here have ended our days, as overcome with so many difficulties. But the Lord renewed my strength still, and carried me along” (Rowlandson 76). She persevered to carry on in the face of adversity, she constantly searched for fellow Christians, and would push the boundaries of her captors. She was eventually afforded the opportunity to make things and trade them for coin and food. Her strength to carry on is directly responsible for her eventual