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Narrative Of The Captivity Mary Rowlandson Analysis

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In February 1676, an army of Indians attacked the Puritan settlement of Lancaster in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They took numerous captives as prisoners, including Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan housewife. Following her eleven week captivity with the Indian people, Rowlandson wrote A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, a memoir describing her interactions with her hardships that she believes were only endured thanks to her unceasing devotion to her Christian faith. Despite originally referring to the natives as “savages” and “heathens,” a shifting tone towards her captors over the course of her experience, exemplified by her attitude towards their food, begins to suggest a change in her understanding of her captors. Rowlandson begins demonstrating behaviors she previously would only have …show more content…

Rowlandson’s lack of criticism or ability to see any wrong in Puritan society and truthfully portray her experience due to fear of persecution is a vivid demonstration of the danger of cultivating societies that promote the devout following of harmful, narrow-minded ideologies. As evident in the case of Rowlandson’s memoir, confinement to a set body of beliefs prevents any flexibility in knowledge, perspective, or beliefs, which leads to lack of respect and willingness to relate or understand those with differences. Rowlandson’s inability to understand the Indians allowed her to maintain her prejudice and continue to submit to Puritan society’s expectations. Rowlandson’s experiences with the food, people, and overall culture of the Native Americans should have demonstrated that the distance between she and the Indians is actually not so great. Rather, she only takes away an affirmation of what Puritan society wants her to

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In the midst of the war, the Wampanoag employed a shrewd strategy. They raided settlements and took captives, which they could then trade for money, weapons, or provisions. The town of Lancaster, Massachusetts was on the frontier and very close to Indian land. Mary Rowlandson's husband, Reverend Joseph Rowlandson, traveled with some other men to ask the governor of the colony to send protection to keep the town from being raided by the Wampanoag and their allies. Life in early America was fraught with peril.

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Rowlandson obviously carries her Puritan beliefs into her view of herself and fellow Puritans. The Puritans sought to 'purify ' the corrupted church; thus, looking upon themselves as pure. Rowlandson refers to the Puritans as "Christians" whose homes are being

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The narrative offers an account which can be used to describe the particularly puritan society based on the ideals of Christianity and the European culture. It offers a female perspective of the Native Americans who showed no respect to the other religious groups. The narrator makes serious observation about her captors noting the cultural differences as well as expectations from one another in the society. However, prejudice is evident throughout the text which makes the narratives unreliable in their details besides being written after the event had already happened which means that the narrator had was free to alter the events to create an account that favored her. Nonetheless, the narrative remains factually and historically useful in providing the insights into the tactics used by the Native Americans

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A woman’s place in Puritan society was very limited during these times. A preface was added to her narrative by a puritan pastor as approval for her to publish her prose. Before her captivity Rowlandson didn’t know what a struggle consisted of. She was the typical housewife in a Puritan society. She never went without food, shelter, or clothing before her captivity.

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Food is an essential thing needed to survive. In A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; Rowlandson faced many challenges that she had to overcome. During her captivity, her biggest challenge was finding food every day. Her captors’ food was different compared to the food she was used to in her Puritan society in Europe. This forced her to adapt to her captors’ eating habits if she wanted any food.

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“A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson”: The Influence of Intercultural Contact on Puritan Beliefs “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” by Mary Rowlandson gives a first person perspective into the circumstances of captivity and cultural interaction and an insight to Rowlandson 's attitude towards the Indians, both before and after she was held captive. Rowlandson displays a change in her perception of "civilized" and "savage", in spite of the fact that her overall world view does not alter. It should be covered below that in the following Essay, since the author and the narrator are the same person, will not be individually distinguished. For one thing, Mary Rowlandson provides all the conventions typical of a Puritan perspective.

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