[In the essay that follows, Neuwirth looks at Rowlandson's work in terms of gender politics, arguing that the text features multiple narrators who favor a Puritan male ideology and its construction of femininity; he notes, however, that a female voice eventually does emerge.]

The captivity narrative of Mary White Rowlandson, long a staple of American literature anthologies, has come under new scrutiny of late.¹ More than a horripilating tale of Indian captivity, Rowlandson's chronicle tells us much about New England's Puritan culture and the inferior status of women in colonial America. Rowlandson's narrative, in point of fact, is nothing less than a commentary on gender and gender politics in Puritan New England and reveals, albeit subtly, Rowlandson's quarrel with her male superiors—be they white or Indian.² Although, at almost every turn in her story, Mary presents herself as the exemplar of Puritan womanhood, at certain moments, when the mask of perfection drops, we are greeted with a different Mary Rowlandson: a woman speaking in her own voice against (not in support of) a male-constructed vision of womanhood. For this reason, I shall argue, there are two Mary Rowlandsons in the narrative, literary creations who not only represent and speak for the male-dominated Puritan culture, but who (on rare occasions) give voice to the woman who authored the narrative. In other words, while there may be only one historical Mary Rowlandson (the author of the text), she (as author) has constructed several female narrators who offer different (and sometimes opposing) insights into the author's sense of self and sense of place within white as well as Indian culture.³

Given the presence of multiple narrators, perhaps our discussion of voice and gender in Rowlandson's text would best be served by introducing the reader to the historical Mary Rowlandson first. In brief, Mary Rowlandson was born Mary White, in Somerset, England, in 1637, and came to America with her parents (Joan and John White) in 1638, settling in Salem, Massachusetts. From Salem, Mary and her parents moved to Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1653. Three years later, at the age of nineteen, Mary White wed Joseph Rowlandson (1631-1678), the town's minister. The Rowlandsons lived in Lancaster in relative peace and comfort for more than twenty years. That peace and tranquility was shattered by Indian attack, however, on the morning of February 10, 1675/76.⁴ The confederated Nipmunk and Narragansett Indians burned the town to the ground, taking Mary Rowlandson and her three children (Joseph, age fourteen; Mary, age eighteen; and Sarah, age six) hostage. Joseph Rowlandson, Mary's husband, escaped capture because he was en route to Boston at the time, raising troops for the town's protection. (Lancaster had already been raided once before, during the opening forays of King Philip's War.)⁵

In the course of her narrative, Mary Rowlandson tells us about her children: Sara, her youngest, was wounded during the Indian assault and died in captivity in her mother's arms. Her two surviving children, Joseph and Mary, were released near Boston soon after Mary's rescue, which occurred eleven weeks and five days after she was taken captive (May 2, 1676). Mary joined her husband in Boston (Lancaster was in ashes), where they lived for about a year, aided by the generosity of friends.

Then the Rowlandsons moved to Wethersfield, Connecticut, where Joseph had accepted a position as minister. Mary's remaining years in Connecticut were spent in relative anonymity. Joseph Rowlandson died in 1678, and a year later Mary married Samuel Talcott. Thirteen years later, in 1691, Sam Talcott died. Mary Rowlandson Talcott, then fifty-four, outlived her husband by twenty years, dying in Wethersfield in 1710/11 at the age of seventy-four.⁶

The narrative of the captivity of Mary Rowlandson was published in 1682, six years after her release. Of the twenty-four settlers taken hostage during the Indian raid on Lancaster, Mary Rowlandson (as far as we can tell) is the only one who left a record. The exceptionality of Mary's chronicle needs to be underscored, for our perception of the Indian raid on Lancaster, as well as Rowlandson's own captivity experience comes to us filtered through the experience of one and only one chronicler, who was the wife of the town's Puritan minister, Lancaster's highest-ranking and wealthiest citizen.⁷

Although Mary Rowlandson continues to be of interest to historians and genealogists, the historical Mary Rowlandson is less important to our study than the Mary Rowlandsons who grace the chronicle's pages. Mary Rowlandson, the woman who actually lived the experience, is external to the tale and does not exist within the text. She is not to be confused with the narrators who speak to us from within the text. And lest there be any doubt, we meet and hear from several different narrators during the course of Mary's narrative. Most interesting, each narrator adds to our knowledge of women's roles and responsibilities in Puritan culture—a culture where men not only dictated the terms of the discourse—be it religious, social, or political—but also stipulated the circumstances under which a woman could publish her narrative. In other words, the many Mary Rowlandsons whom we encounter (and who speak on behalf of the author) tend to be male constructions—speakers who identify themselves as female, but who have so internalized the Puritans' male ideology that the narrative serves to silence the woman's voice while it affirms male primacy as well as the male-centered Puritan ethos.⁸

The most conspicuous example of the masculine voice's speaking through the narrator is evidenced by Rowlandson's use of biblical quotation. Whenever Rowlandson wants us to understand the moral and spiritual significance of her captivity, she portrays herself as a latter-day Job or David or Joshua or Daniel and speaks to us in the lofty phrases of Old Testament heroes, as opposed to heroines. On these occasions (and there are many such occasions), we are in the presence of the male-constructed narrator, Mary Rowlandson qua spokesperson and apologist for the Puritan Way. Even when she is not elevating her experience to the level of sacred drama, Mary Rowlandson continues to draw on male constructions of virtuous femininity to describe and define herself, presenting us with Mary Rowlandson the submissive gentlewoman, Mary Rowlandson the virtuous female captive, Mary Rowlandson the obedient servant, Mary Rowlandson the patient helpmate, and Mary Rowlandson the sorrowful, mother.

On the other hand, we seem to be in the presence of a female-constructed narrator when we hear the narrator deploring (rather than accepting) her condition and complaining about (rather than condoning) her masters' treatment of her. On the occasions, we can hear a woman speaking, in a woman's voice, attempting to articulate a woman's vision of womanhood, a woman attempting to come to terms with male oppression. In other words, the Mary Rowlandson who takes issue with male rule and male authority, while she may also be a rhetorical figure, fights against the male construction of womanhood. Rowlandson qua termagant does have literary antecedents, to be sure; yet, in the context of the narrative, the assertive Rowlandson strikes us as a real person in real time. Indeed, when she is most independent of male authority, she strikes us as a spokesperson for oppressed women everywhere and serves to remind us what it meant to be female in male-dominated, Puritan New England.

The differences between the ameliorative, male-constructed narrators and the narrators who speak for the besieged woman are as different in kind, as they are different in degree. The narrator who challenges male domination is sui generis—unmistakable and irreplaceable; she is assertive, strident, frustrated, sarcastic, and far more critical of men who govern her life than is the male-constructed, compliant narrator who defends male-primacy and Puritan hegemony. The male-constructed narrator reminds us of Homer's Penelope (The Odyssey), Milton's Lady (Comus), Shakespeare's Miranda (The Tempest), and Bunyon's Christiana (The Pilgrim's Progress).⁹

Consciously or unconsciously, Mary Rowlandson has fashioned her narrator (at least in part) after virtuous women of classical and Christian antiquity, women rediscovered by Renaissance artists and writers. Indeed, when Rowlandson is true to the Renaissance ideal, she embodies the male vision of perfected womanhood: submissive, passive, obedient, patient, quiet, and chaste.¹⁰

When she speaks to us as suffering woman (the paragon of virtue), we are in the presence of a male construction of femininity. When she speaks to us in the indignant, outraged voice of the female captive, on the other hand, we seem to be in the presence of a more authentic, original narrator—a narrator who speaks out of a feminine sensibility—the sensibility of the oppressed, the disadvantaged, the silenced. The grumbling Mary Rowlandson may be no less a literary construct than her compliant co-narrator, but as termagant, Mary Rowlandson seems genuine. The narrator in rebellion, unlike her Bible-touting sister does not suffer in silence, nor does she approve of the men who have kept her captive and subordinate, men who have silenced her mind, body, and tongue. This figure of oppressed womanhood makes rare appearances in the course of the narrative and has relatively few lines, and not without reason. In seventeenth-century New England it was rare (and dangerous) for women to speak in public, even more to publish or critique the male establishment.¹¹

Mary Rowlandson was a woman rooted in her time and place, in seventeenth-century Puritan Massachusetts. She was the wife of a Puritan minister who was the principle magistrate of the town. Mary derived her sense of Self (wife, mother, sister, neighbor, and Indian captive) from the men and male institutions that framed her life: God, husband, colonial magistrates, Puritan ministers, and Quinnapin (Indian master).¹² The point is worth emphasizing: Mary Rowlandson could not have published her narrative in Puritan New England without permission from the Puritan governors: it just wasn't possible.¹³ The consequences of nonconformity effectively silenced most women, at least in public venues.¹⁴ Conversely, women, especially Puritan women, readily accepted their subordinate status as established by Scripture, by custom, and by local law. If the Puritan elders were going to allow Mrs. Rowlandson to step out of character and publish her narrative, assuredly they would have to defend her (and themselves) against the charge of immodesty that was sure to follow. To avoid public ignominy—theirs and hers—Increase Mather (the Bay Colony's foremost preacher and personal friend of the Rowlandsons) provided a “Preface” to the narrative (signing it Ter Amicam,¹⁵ “thy threefold friend”):

though this gentlewoman's modesty would not thrust it into the press, yet her gratitude unto God made her not hardly persuadable to let it pass, that God might have his due glory, and others benefit by it as well as herself. I hope by this time none will cast any reflection [i.e., aspersions] upon this gentlewoman, on the score of this publication of her affliction and deliverance. … No serious spirit then (especially knowing anything of this gentlewoman's piety) can imagine but that the vows of God are upon her. Excuse her then if she come thus into public, to pay those vows, come and hear what she hath to say.¹⁶

Part introduction and part apology, the author of the preface defends Mary's publication on the grounds that it affords her the opportunity to fulfill promises she made to God while she was in captivity.¹⁷ Of course, Mary did not have to publish her account to keep her vows. Daily private prayer would have fulfilled her holy obligations. Sensing a flaw in his argument, perhaps, Increase Mather offers a second explanation: Mary's husband. Mary's text warrants a public audience, Mather tells us, because she is married to a prominent Puritan minister, and his grief has made Mary somewhat famous, drawing attention to her captivity, making it “of public note and universal concernment.”¹⁸ In other words, the husband's status in the community is what legitimates his wife's transgression into print.

Given the rules prohibiting women from speaking in public, one can appreciate the need for a prefatory note. But the preface, interestingly, is Mary's (as well as Mather's) second line of defense. The wording of the title deemphasizes the gender of the author because it places her name in a subordinate position:

The Soveraignty & Goodness of God, Together With the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed; Being a Narrative Of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. Commended by her to all that Desire to Know the Lord's Doings to, and Dealings with Her. Especially to Her Dear Children and Relations.

Written by Her Own Hand for Her Private Use, and Now Made Public at the Earnest Desire of Some Friends, and for the Benefit of the Afflicted.

Deut. 32.[3]9. See Now that I, Even I am He, and There Is No God with Me; I Kill and I Make Alive, I Wound and I Heal, Neither Is There Any [who] Can Deliver Out of My Hand.

From the opening phrase of the title to its closing Biblical epithet, we are meant to know that Mary's narrative has more to do with Mary's God than it has to do with Mary. The syntax of the opening sentence speaks to the point. Note how the second half of the sentence, the half that contains the author's name—Being a Narrative Of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson—is a dependent, adverbial clause modifying the introductory phrase that contains the sentence's true subject: The Soveraignty & Goodness of God, Together With the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed. Mary's narrative, we are to understand, tells the story of God's dealings with His people, particularly with God's commitment to the covenant He has made with Mary Rowlandson: as long as Mary is faithful to Him, He will remain faithful to her, keep her safe in His care. The phrase, Captivity and Restauration, as her friends, family, and neighbors knew, refers to her spiritual as well as physical condition. And since the title omits any reference to her Indian captors, an anagogical reading is surely encouraged. Mary's wilderness ordeal refers to the captivity and restoration of Mary's soul, not just of Mary's body.¹⁹ Read anagogically, the opening section places Mary's secular experience in the context of sacred drama: the Christian soul first bound in, and then freed from, the Devil's snares.

Of course, the title's opening section does more than contextualize Mary's wilderness drama in the framework of sacred experience. It also focuses our attention on Mary's sex and her various roles in her community.²⁰ The name Mary, the use of the possessive pronoun “Her,” the appellation “Mrs.,” and the reference to her “Children and Relations” identify Mary as female and place the captive in a sociocultural construct. The secular and social dimensions of the narrative are featured in the title's second section:

Written by Her Own Hand for Her Private Use, and Now Made Public at the Earnest Desire of Some Friends, and for the Benefit of the Afflicted.

The scope of the title has narrowed from the divine to the human, and the rhetoric has taken on a personal rather than a sermonic tone. In place of God's divine attributes, moreover, we are introduced to Mary's gifts and virtues. She is a literate, modest, and community-minded woman. With regard to her literacy, we are to understand that Mary and no one else authored her text. With regard to her modesty, we are informed that the author intended her chronicle for her “Private Use,” not for public consumption. Indeed, had it not been for the “Earnest Desire of Some Friends,” Mary never would have ventured into the public arena and so draw unwanted attention to herself. Finally, Mary's narrative is meant to bring comfort to fellow sufferers: the narrative was written for the “Benefit of the Afflicted.”

But if the second section of the title focuses on secular matters, the title's third and concluding section, returns us to the realm of the sacred:

Deut. 32.[3]9. See Now that I, Even I am He, and There Is No God with Me; I Kill and I Make Alive, I Wound and I Heal, Neither Is There Any [who] Can Deliver Out of My Hand.

God is the speaker in the title page's closing epigram, but the God of Deuteronomy is not the mild, beneficent God of the title. The “Good” Sovereign of the title was the God who restored Mary to family and friends. The punishing God of Deuteronomy then, is the same God who afflicts Mary Rowlandson. And, in fact, the Deutoronomic citation does not serve to elevate Mary Rowlandson in her readers' eyes, inviting us to see Mary as the object of God's divine attention. It is Mary Rowlandson whom God has wounded, as it is Mary whom he has healed.

The closing quotation from Deuteronomy, then, serves multiple purposes: it not only presents Mary Rowlandson's Indian captivity as sacred drama but also elevates Mary to symbol: from humble, female citizen of Lancaster to sacred antitype. She stands for God's chosen people. Her history, in fact, is Israel's history: when Mary, like Israel, was faithful to her God, He blessed her house. However, when Mary requited God's love with forgetfulness and unfaithfulness, He chastened her, as He chastened Israel, by setting her enemies over her. In the context of sacred history, Mary's captivity is a constant reminder that she is totally dependent on God, that there is no one who “Can Deliver [her] Out of [His] Hand.”

The experience of captivity, then, affords Mary an opportunity to mend her ways, but also to celebrate her election; for affliction, as every Puritan knew, is the sign of salvation: “How evident is it that the Lord hath made this gentlewoman a gainer by all this affliction, that she can say, 'tis good for her[,] yea better that she hath been, than that she should not have been thus afflicted” (emphasis mine).²¹ God has inscribed his message to Mary on her body, and Mary presents her body to us in the body of her narrative. Indeed, we are reading text within text. And when read rightly, both texts teach the same lesson: “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth” (Hebrews 12:6).²² But providential affliction was also a sign of God's displeasure. The attack on Lancaster (like the war with King Philip of which it was a part) was meant as a rebuke to Mary (and to the Puritans), reminding them that they had fallen away from the path of righteousness.²³

Though the Bay Puritans co-opted Mary's story to serve their own ideological ends, her publication had the potential to embarrass them, as well as bring shame upon herself. After all, it was decidedly inappropriate for women to enter the arena of public discourse. How could the author present her uniquely female experience without offending her readership who, assuredly, would have been offended by her impertinent act of authorship? One solution was to mute (as much as possible) the narrator's female voice and female nature. Toward that end, Rowlandson invokes the stories of Old Testament heroes whenever she wants to emphasize the sacred nature of her captivity experience. The effect is quite dramatic. In lieu of a woman's voice intoning a woman's sorrow, Mary defers to the male experience: “I hope it is not too much to say with Job, Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, for the hand of the Lord has touched me” (Job 19:21). Or Mary will pose as the contrite prodigal son: “Father I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight [and am no more worthy to be called thy son]” (Luke 15:21). Stated conversely, neither the names nor the stories of Sarah, Ruth, Rachel, Leah, Esther, Rebeccah, Hannah, Dinah, Deborah, Mary, Martha, and Elizabeth are invoked. In their stead, the reader is invited to reflect upon the sufferings of Joshua, Daniel, Samson, David, Jesus, and, of course, Job.²⁴ What Mary has learned—the lesson that her narrative teaches—is that men are more closely aligned with the sacred than are women, that male suffering is holier than female suffering: “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Hebrews 12:6; emphasis mine).”²⁵

To appreciate the devalued status of women in Rowlandson's world, one has but to consider Mary's reference to Lot's wife, the woman with whom she can best identify: “I went along that day mourning and lamenting, leaving farther my own country, and travelling into the vast and howling wilderness, and I understood something of Lot's wife's temptation, when she looked back.”²⁶ At the very least, Mary's reference to Lot's wife is self-condemning, for Lot's wife, as we know, was turned into a pillar of salt for disobeying God's command, for turning around and looking upon His destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:26). Mary's readers—especially her Puritan readers—would have approved the narrator's self-effacing gesture, for they, too, saw Mary Rowlandson, and all women, as aligned with the world, the flesh, and the devil.²⁷ Like Lot's wife, Rowlandson presents herself as spiritually weak, preferring to cling to the things of the world.

That Mary Rowlandson never alludes to another biblical woman in the course of her narrative speaks volumes about her perception of herself as a woman. Because of her sex, Mary Rowlandson must present herself as inferior, unworthy, as the weaker vessel, subject to the onslaughts of temptation. Nowhere is the male/female, sacred/profane, spirit/flesh dichotomy more in evidence than in Mary's celebration of her chastity, the preservation of which she attributes to God's goodness:

And I cannot but admire at the wonderful power and goodness of God to me, in that, though I was gone from home, and met with all sorts of Indians, and those I had no knowledge of, and there being no Christian soul near me; yet not one of them offered the least imaginable miscarriage to me.²⁸

The word miscarriage according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means “misconduct” or “misbehavior.”²⁹ But clearly the semantic yield of “miscarriage,” as Mary uses it, extends beyond mild censure. Mary's readers would have understood “miscarriage” to be a polite term for “sexual misconduct”—and for obvious reasons. First, Mary's captivity narrative is a chronicle of native abuses during King Philip's War, from their slaughter of pregnant women to their cannibalism.³⁰

In fact, rape is the only offense which the Indians do not commit. Since Mary is not squeamish about detailing all other native “miscarriages,” her vagueness here suggests that the offense is greater than she, speaking as a woman, can name—a crime great enough, in fact, to require God's protection. Only the crime of rape carries such weight.³¹

And Mary's readers would have read “rape” for “miscarriage” because Increase Mather had invoked the figure of the sex-crazed savage in his preface to the narrative, using it to underscore God's sovereignty and goodness to Mary. Nowhere is God's glory made more manifest, Mather would have us believe, than in his ability to control the Indians' “savage” lust:

God is indeed the supreme Lord of the world, ruling the most unruly, weakening the most cruel and savage, granting His people mercy in the sight of the unmerciful, curbing the lusts of the most filthy, holding the hands of the violent, delivering the prey from the mighty, and gathering together the outcasts of Israel.³²

Of course, Mary's readers did not need Mather's say-so to think the worst of the Indians. The Indian-qua-savage stereotype, after all, had been in vogue for centuries. That stereotype, in its most horrific form, depicted indigenous people of America as a subhuman species, brute beasts ruled by appetite rather than human beings governed by reason.³³

Mary's polite euphemisms for rape and the defense of her chastity may also be her way of responding to charges that she had “gone savage,” for one of her contemporaries reported that she had been forced to marry “one-eyed” John Monoco, a Nashaway chief who had been one of the leaders of the raid on Lancaster.³⁴ Even if rumor proved false, Mary Rowlandson's claims of sexual purity, placed in a Freudian context, can be read as a projection of her desire to commit sexual “miscarriages” with her Indian master.³⁵ Whether Mary was repulsed or attracted by her male captors is moot. The fact that Mary was a woman, “cursed” with a woman's body, made her suspect:

Puritans believed that Satan attacked the soul by assaulting the body, and that because women's bodies were weaker, the devil could reach women's souls more easily, breaching these “weaker vessels” with greater frequency. … A woman's feminine soul, jeopardized in a woman's feminine body, was frail, submissive, and passive—qualities that most New Englanders thought would allow her to become either a wife to Christ or a drudge to Satan.³⁶

Mary's celebration of her chastity is warranted, if only because her readers expect her to succumb to the chaos of the wilderness. Given the misogyny of her age, one can certainly understand why the narrator takes such pains to portray herself as sexually inviolate.

A Freudian critic, on the other hand, might link Mary's claim of chastity (which might be read as repressed sexual appetite) to her unsuppressed appetite for nourishment. The link between engaging in illicit sex and eating forbidden food is a staple of Freudian psychology and certainly plausible given the connection between illicit sex and the ingestion of forbidden food that we can infer from Mary's text.

Mary takes great pains to remind us that she was forced to eat foodstuffs that she considered inedible, “filthy trash”: the intestines and feet of a horse, the flesh and bones of an unborn fawn, rotten corn, moldy bread crumbs, blood of deer, frozen, raw wheat.³⁷ Notwithstanding her revulsion at her diet, starvation ultimately prevailed over palate and preference, for Mary makes a complete about-face later in her narrative and openly admits to liking that which she claimed “was enough to turn the stomach of a brute creature”:

There came an Indian … with a basket of horse liver. I asked him to give me a piece: what, says he, can you eat horse liver? I told him, I would try, if he would give a piece, which he did, and I laid it on the coals to roast; but before it was half ready they got half of it away from me, so that I was fain to take the rest and eat it as it was, with the blood about my mouth, and yet a savory bit it was to me: for the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet.³⁸

The invocation of Proverbs 27:7 (“for the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet”) certainly allows Mary to explain why she was able to eat “savage” fare. Only God, we are led to believe, could have converted Indian “swill” into edible food. But how does Mary explain the “savage” gusto with which she attacks her food or her delight in turning “savage” herself? She doesn't. She can't.

What she can do—and tries to do further on in the narrative—is to present herself as a woman who has conquered her body's appetite; hence her claim of chastity. Mary's claim to chastity (denial of sexual appetite) may actually be Rowlandson's attempt to expiate her guilt for eating foods that were an abomination. Mary's reference to her receptive mouth smeared with blood, I would argue, charges the scene with sexual energy. Keeping this passage (and other references to her ravenous appetite) in mind, one can appreciate her sense of guilt and why she would claim sexual purity. Clearly, Mary feels impure.

Had the issue of Mary's chastity been limited to her veiled reference, our reading of “miscarriage” as “rape” or as “inappropriate sexual conduct” could certainly be challenged. But Mary returns to the issue later in her chronicle, suggesting her deep-seated need to allay her readers' suspicions:

O the wonderful power of God that I have seen, and the experience that I have had: I have been in the midst of those roaring lions, and savage bears, that feared neither God, nor man, nor the devil, by night and day, alone and in company: sleeping all sorts together, and yet not one of them ever offered me the least abuse of unchastity to me in word or action.

(Emphasis mine)³⁹

If we did not see the Indians as promiscuous before, we surely see them as promiscuous now, for “unchastity” means exactly what we think it means: “sexual impurity, lasciviousness.”⁴⁰ Once again, God intervenes on Mary's behalf, protecting her from sexual assault.

Mary's insistence on her chastity quite obviously—and quite deliberately—draws attention to her sexuality, highlighting for us the narrator's concern with her readers' perception of her sexual conduct. Given the time, the place, the circumstance of Indian captivity, and given her Puritan readership, one can certainly appreciate Rowlandson's desire to present her body as chaste. Mary may have been of God's elect, one of the chosen, but her election cannot dispel the seductive charms her readers have come to associate with the female body. Mary, after all, has inherited Eve's curse. It is Mary's female body that has put her in harm's way. And since no Christian men were present to check native lechery, Mary was bound to be ravished by her male captors—unless a miracle occurred, something that would curb the natives' savage lust. And a miracle did occur; at least, Mary would have us believe so. So Mary is glorified—glorifies herself, actually. And yet, given the sexual taboos associated with her body, she can only elevate herself by self-denigration, by admitting that her body is the agent of her potential ruin, by acknowledging that it would take an act of God to protect her from her body's seductive charms. Indeed, Mary has all but admitted that she, qua woman, is slave to the sinful powers of her own body, that because she is female, she (em)bodies, literally and figuratively, that which all Puritan men and women are taught to despise, the “sins” of the flesh.

Did Mary believe what she wrote? Did she really see herself as a temptress needing God's intervention to protect her body from the rape it seemed to provoke? We don't really know. What we do know is that Mary and her readership—Puritan and non-Puritan alike—had come to associate women with the sins of the body, especially sex, and to see women as provocateurs. That Mary sees herself from the male perspective, that she adopts the male view of her own body, is not so surprising. Mary Rowlandson, after all, is a product of her time and her place. Then, too, Mary's primary readers are the male Puritans who have endorsed her publication—who have given her permission to speak. Not only must Mary affirm the Puritan view of the captive woman, she must assure her fellow Puritans (as well as her husband) that their worst fears are not warranted: she has remained inviolate despite her sojourn in the wilderness among the beasts of the wilderness.

Though Rowlandson affirms the Puritan ethos, promotes the culture's male ideology, adopts male standards to evaluate her conduct, the narrator does not accept, wholesale, men's claims to superiority. In fact, at discrete moments in her chronicle, men come in for their share of criticism. Granted, Mary usually subscribes to the male perception of women and writes a phallologic discourse. And yet, now and then, particularly near the end of her narrative, the speaker does seem to adopt a woman's point of view and seems to speak in a woman's voice. It is as if Mary Rowlandson, female author, grew weary of her male-constructed narrator, grew weary of inscribing the male script and promoting the Puritan ethos. On such occasions, when Mary views her world from a woman's perspective, documenting a woman's experience in a woman's idiom, we encounter a social critic and a burgeoning frontier feminist. On such occasions, Mary Rowlandson becomes the true subject (as opposed to the true object) of her narrative. Moreover, when Mary surveys the phallocentric world she inhabits, her captivity narrative becomes a feminist manifesto of sorts, wherein she rails against the men and male institutions that have held (and continue to hold) her hostage. Her Indian master, Quinnapin, the colonial militia, her husband, her Puritan friends, even the Old Testament Jehovah, are scrutinized and found wanting.

To appreciate the narrator's ability to break free of male paradigms and phallologic discourse, one need but recall Mary's description of her master and mistress preparing for their evening's entertainment:

He was dressed in his holland shirt, with great laces sewed at the tail of it, he had his silver buttons, his white stockings, his garters were hung round with shillings, and he had girdles of wampum upon his head and shoulders. She had a kersey coat, and [was] covered with girdles of wampum from the loins upward: her arms from her elbows to her hands were covered with bracelets; there were handfuls of necklaces about her neck, and several sorts of jewels in her ears. She had fine red stockings, and white shoes, her hair powdered and face painted red, that was always before black. And all the dancers were after the same manner.⁴¹

The shift in focus and tone is as radical as it is unorthodox. No longer are we listening to Mary Rowlandson, the submissive, self-effacing Puritan spokesperson, the pious narrator bearing witness to God's sacred truths. Rather, we are invited to read social satire and to watch Mary's captors make a spectacle of themselves. The radical nature of the shift in focus cannot be overstated. Bear in mind, the Indian dancers are the enemy—enemy of the Puritans and of the Puritans' God. Satan's emissaries on earth, these natives have been portrayed in the course of Mary's narrative as the wilderness's savage spirit incarnate. And the narrator has taken great pains to show them at their savage worst: stripping dead and dying Lancastrians (men, women, and children) of their clothes, leaving them naked and bleeding to death. Given the visual imprint of these earlier, violent scenes, the image of Mary's master and mistress donning English attire is not only unconventional but calculated to offend.⁴² More to our purposes, however, is the way in which Mary has her master and mistress occupy the middle ground between wildness and sophistication. They are savages, true, but they seem to have an understanding of propriety and a degree of civility about them—albeit misplaced. They are, in essence, liminal characters, not unlike their captive, Mary Rowlandson. Indeed, Mary Rowlandson, captive and narrator, has presented herself in similar terms, occupying the middle ground between savagery and civility.⁴³ The above scene, in fact, is the twin to an earlier scene, where Rowlandson and her Indian mistress rejoin their master after several days of traveling by themselves. We come upon the two women when they enter camp. Mary appears before Quinnapin. Mary, quite clearly, is offensive to his eye, if not his nose. “After many weary steps we came to Wachusett, where he 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 and bid his squaw give me something to eat.”⁴⁴

How interesting that Mary Rowlandson would cast herself in the role of squaw and spouse, attending to her toilette in order to “please her man.” Will Quinnapin find her attractive and keep her, or will he sell her at a bargain price to a less civil Indian? The woman looking at the woman in the “glass” sees herself through her master's eyes—as property.⁴⁵

Notwithstanding the cleaned-up face, Mary, like her master and mistress, has made accommodations to her captivity and has to some degree assimilated to Algonquian culture, and consequently may be more “savage” than she appears (or than her readers realize). Alternatively, Rowlandson, for all her savage appearance, may be more civilized than she looks. It's impossible to opt for one reading over the other, for both are equally plausible. Rowlandson has placed herself in the middle ground where there are no clear-cut distinctions between savagism and civilization.

While Mary Rowlandson will reassume her role as spokesperson for male rule and Puritan hegemony at the close of her narrative, she does occupy the middle ground and does sustain the liminal persona for longer than we might realize. For example, following the comic vignette about the natives' “dance,” Mary Rowlandson introduces the topic of sexuality—male sexuality versus female sexuality; Indian licentiousness versus Puritan restraint; Quinnapins's lechery versus her own chastity. Ostensibly, the subject of Mary's chastity is prompted by Quinnapin's untoward (but perhaps not unwanted) sexual advances toward his female captive. Mr. John Hoar, agent for the New England Council (and sent by the council to negotiate Mary's release) has arrived in camp with liquor, cloth, and other goods, hoping to effect a trade.

Hoar enters the narrative immediately following the comic description of Mary's Indian master and mistress, Quinnapin and Weetamoo, dressing for their victory celebration.⁴⁶ Quinnapin, having exhausted himself in revel, hears of Hoar's arrival and offers to sell Mary back to him for a pint of liquor. Hoar agrees to the sale, but not trusting Quinnapin, the English emissary “called his own Indians, Tom and Peter, and bid them go and see whether he [Quinnapin] would promise before them three: and if he would, he [Quinnapin] should have it [the liquor]; which he did, and he had it.”⁴⁷ Quinnapin downs the pint of liquor, and its effects are immediate and predictable: his savage nature manifests itself in all its lasciviousness:

My master after he had his drink, quickly came ranting into the wigwam … and called for Mr. Hoar, drinking to him, and saying, He was a good man: and then again he would say, Hang him [Mr. Hoar] rogue: being almost drunk, he would drink to him, and yet presently [my master would] say he [Hoar] should be hanged. Then he [my master] called for me. I trembled to hear him, yet I was fain to go to him, and [so] he drank to me, showing no incivility. … At last his squaw ran out [of the wigwam], and he after her, [chasing her] around the wigwam, with his money jingling at his knees: but she escaped him: but having an old squaw he ran to her: and so through the Lord's mercy, we were no more troubled that night.⁴⁸

The image of the drunken, lascivious male lunging for the “girl” (with his pants around his ankles) is such a familiar trope we are likely to ignore Rowlandson's subtext: that women (be they Indian or white) are victims of male oppression.

Once again, Mary introduces the subject of her chastity. Only now the captive is in real danger of being raped. But if the narrator's outrage seems genuine, we should realize that her author (the flesh and blood Mary Rowlandson) places the captive in a liminal position. The liminal position here, however, is not bracketed by wildness and sophistication. In the above episode, the middle ground is the difficult and destabilizing world of sexual attraction. Mary teeters on the edge of sexual misconduct. Will she (or won't she) succumb to her captor's sexual overtures?

As noted, the figure of the besotted male in breeches or loincloth in pursuit of the hapless maiden is a familiar trope in literature. But what makes Mary's version of the trope so interesting is the subtle (and perhaps unconscious) pleasure she, as narrator, takes in being a sex object—the unwilling recipient of Quinnapin's untoward advances. (The narrator, of course, would deny any such feeling. Indeed, she would rebuke us soundly for mistaking her words.) And yet, her text is somewhat ambiguous and makes us wonder if she really is as offended as she says she is.

The key to reading Mary's reactions rests on her use of the word “fain,” as in her sentence, “I was fain to go with him.” The first meaning of the word fain is “glad, well pleased, disposed, inclined, willing or eager.” So, if we read Mary's statement with the first definition in mind, she sounds pleased and willing to go to Quinnapin when he calls for her: “I trembled to hear him, yet I was fain to go to him.” Mary, of course, would deny she was pleased or eager to go to Quinnapin. She wants us to understand the exact opposite was true: she was most reluctant to go to him, especially since he was drunk. And the dictionary supports her denial, for the second definition of fain is “glad under the circumstances; glad or content to take a course [of action] in default of opportunity for anything better, or as the lesser of two evils.” Given the narrative context, the second definition of fain certainly seems more applicable. As the second definition implies, Mary chooses the lesser of two evils. She can step forward and suffer verbal abuse (and risk being raped), or she can refuse to step forward and be chased around the wigwam. But that course of action doesn't bode well either. First, she has no place to run except out of the wigwam and into the night and wilderness. Second, she is thirty-nine years old, weak, and exhausted from her three-month ordeal. She is not [in any] condition to run away. Besides, if Rowlandson is caught, and being caught is a likely scenario, she will be raped: witness the fate of Quinnapin's older, slower squaw. The second meaning of “fain” is assuredly the more applicable and obvious meaning.

Having proven the case for the second definition, how do we defend our assertion that the first definition of “fain” is also a possibility? The answer lies in the ambiguity of the word. Notwithstanding Mary's intention, the positive connotation of fain is attached to both the first and second definitions. Mary may have been trembling in fear, but she uses a word that says she was glad or delighted. The second definition only qualifies the first definition; it doesn't mean its opposite: loath, disgusted, or outraged. Also worth noting is the narrators's use of the word “yet” to link her independent clauses: “Then he called for me. I trembled to hear him, yet I was fain to go to him.”

The word “yet,” like the word “but,” is a coordinating conjunction, the function of which is to reverse the direction of the introductory clause or sentence. These words tell us to get ready for a qualification or an outright denial of the previous thought. Mary's placement of “yet” is most curious, for it suggests Mary was pleased to go to Quinnapin: “Then he [Quinnapin] called for me. I trembled to hear him, yet I was fain to go to him.” She trembled in fear, yet she was delighted to be called. Grammatically speaking, the word “yet” qualifies her fear and reverses the negative flow of the sentence. Mary's sentence says the exact opposite of what she means, or does it? The word “yet” pulls the narrator (at least grammatically) toward the beckoning Quinnapin. Had Mary wanted to be unambiguous, or at least less ambiguous, she would have omitted the second phrase and written: “Then he called for me … yet I was fain to go to him.” Here the words “yet” and “fain” convey reluctance and work together to give us a sense of the captive's discomfort. But Mary does not write this grammatically correct sentence; she qualifies her negative reaction, allowing us to “misread” her intentions and actions. In other words, Mary is in a liminal place, occupying the middle ground between chastity and sexual adventure.

But if the female narrator is torn between the sexual freedom of the Indians and the sexual restraints of the Puritans, she is not torn for long. The narrator knows her readership, and thus, closes her vignette with Mary's remaining inviolate. Rowlandson stands her ground. As for Quinnapin, he seems vanquished. Mary has him play the gentleman to her role as “lady virtue”: [Quinnapin] drank to me, showing me no incivility.” It's as if Quinnapin's savage lust were subdued by the power of Mary's chastity—a popular and conventional outcome of Christian allegory. But lust is still lust, and a savage is still a savage, so Mary wants her readers to know. And in Mary's mind, male sexual aggression must spend itself, and spend itself it does, not on Mary (symbol of staunch Christian virtue), but on Quinnapin's own Indian squaw.

Though thwarted by Rowlandson's virtue, Quinnapin needs to vent his sexual appetite. He turns to his youngest squaw for satisfaction. But the young woman will have none of him and evades his lunges with relative ease. Foiled a second time, Quinnapin turns his attention to his old squaw; she chooses not to escape. His “savage” appetite sated, Rowlandson and the other women are safe from harm.

What are we to make of this scene, and how does it illuminate Mary's attempts to fashion a feminine character who tells a woman's story in a woman's voice? Surely there is nothing remarkable in Mary's portrayal of a debauched Indian, for the figure of the lecherous “savage” was a stock character in colonial belles lettres. Surely Mary's readers would not have been surprised by the episode. They might even have expected it. Its true significance lies in the manner of the telling more than the matter of the tale. By focusing our attention on her master's sexual appetite, Mary not only reverses the conventional male:head::female:body association but also effectively reverses the sexual dynamics of her discourse, making Quinnapin (and all men by extension) the object of the female gaze rather than vice versa. This is no minor shift in stylistics. Renaissance scholar Patricia Simons offers us this insight into the dynamics of the male gaze and its relation to the social construction of gender:

To be a woman in the world was/is to be the object of the male gaze: to “appear in public” is “to be looked upon” wrote Giovanni Boccaccio. The Dominican nun Clare Gambacorta (d. 1419) wished to avoid such scrutiny and establish[ed] a convent “beyond the gaze of men and free from worldly distractions.” The gaze, then, a metaphor for worldliness and virility, made of Renaissance woman an object of public discourse, exposed to scrutiny and framed by the parameters of propriety, display and “impression management.” Put simply, why else paint a woman except as an object of display within male discourse?⁴⁹

Though Simons's comments refer, specifically, to the pictorial representation of women in Quattrocento Tuscany, her insight into the power of the male gaze is applicable to our discussion of sexual politics in Puritan New England and to Mary Rowlandson's attempts to fashion a feminine Self independent of the female Self fashioned for her by a male-dominated society.

As the Quattrocento artists of Tuscany placed their female clients on display, so the Puritan leaders of the Bay Colony have placed Mary Rowlandson on display, exposing her to the male gaze. It is this exploitation that may have inspired Mary's vilification of her Indian master. She wants to be free of Quinnapin's (and all men's) gazing. Toward that end, Rowlandson rethinks her narrative voice and changes it on the spot. In lieu of the pious, Bible-spouting Puritan spokeswoman, Rowlandson ushers in a female narrator, a symbol of insulted womanhood. It is she, the outraged woman, who steps forward and casts her (and our) eyes upon Quinnapin, subjecting his body to her gaze, making him the unwilling captive of her (and her readers') eyes.

But the virtue of the passage extends beyond Mary's denigrating portrayal of Quinnapin. By standing her ground and by refusing to respond to her master's voice, Mary Rowlandson, symbolically at least, openly rejects her assigned role as the passive, compliant female servant. Her body may be held in bondage, but she assuredly will not surrender her virtue to a “savage.” And the risk of rape is a real possibility given Quinnapin's aroused state: witness Quinnapin's sexual advances toward his two wives. Mary's decision to stand her ground, however, has symbolic, as well as pragmatic value. Her refusal to yield to Quinnapin's supremacy can be read symbolically as a definitive “no” to male power and male rule in general. In other words, Quinnapin is a stand-in for all the masters in Mary's life: God, the Puritan ministry, as well as her preacher husband. Of course, Mary is on safe ground when she refuses to go to Quinnapin. After all, he epitomizes the drunken lecherous, “savage.” Mary's readers would want her to refuse male authority in this situation, especially since Mary presents herself as the model of chastity. Her role as the chaste wife means she must protect her sex from the onslaught of the lecherous male. What makes the scene interesting, of course, is that Quinnapin is not just an Indian. He is Mary's legal master for as long as she is his captive. Indeed, Mary calls Quinnapin “Master” throughout her narrative. Thus, her refusal of her Indian master, drunk or sober, can be read symbolically as a refusal of all men who presume to lord over her.

Mary's denial of Quinnapin's authority has startling consequences. It is as if the female narrator had discovered a latent self—a female self—that finds fault with men and their presumptive right to rule and decide the fate of women. The Mary at the narrative's close is a critical Mary, critical of her Indian master for being drunk and disorderly, and critical of the colonial militia for being tardy in their pursuit of the enemy and for missing several opportunities to rescue her when they had the chance:

But before I go any further, I would take leave to mention a few remarkable passages of providence, which I took special notice of in my afflicted time.

1. Of the fair opportunity lost in the [militia's] long march, a little after the fort fight, when our English army was so numerous, and in pursuit of the enemy, and so near as to take several and destroy them: and the enemy in such distress for food, that our men might track them by their [the Indians'] rooting in the earth for ground nuts whilst they were flying for their lives.

2. I cannot but remember how the Indians derided the slowness, and dullness of the English army, in its setting out. For after the desolations at Lancaster and Medfield … they asked me when I thought the English army would come after them? I told them I could not tell: It may be they will come in May, said they. Thus did they scoff at us, as if the English would be a quarter of a year getting ready.

3. … I can but admire to see the wonderful providence of God in preserving the heathen for further affliction to our poor country. They could go in great numbers over [rivers] but the English must stop: God had an overruling hand in all those things.⁵⁰

Though seemingly a separate issue, Mary's rebuke of the colonial militia is closely connected to her censure of her Indian master, Quinnapin: both symbolize male inadequacy of the first rank. Quinnapin, we may recall, was too drunk to seize upon either Mary Rowlandson or his young wife and had to settle for his old squaw. The militia's failure to capture the enemy when they had the chance is also a sign of male impotence. The English army, like the Indian warrior, was too slow and too dull to wreak havoc on a bedraggled, fleeing enemy. True, Mary's rebuke of the militia is couched in the language of Christian deference: their tardiness was God's will. And yet, one can hear an edge in Mary's voice as she wonders at God's “preserving the heathen for further affliction to our poor country.” Mary herself is that “poor country,” laid waste and bare by Indians—or so she sees herself. Having been held hostage by Indians for three months, Mary is ready to be rescued, but her God fails her. Of course, Mary dare not presume to question God's actions. Nevertheless, her perfunctory “God's will be done” suggests resignation born of disappointment.⁵¹

Though delightfully iconoclastic, refreshingly unorthodox, and seemingly invincible, Mary's heroic pose proves to be short-lived. Having had her say, Mary Rowlandson, self-authorizing writer, retreats into her text and resumes the role and voice her Puritan authors have assigned her: defender of the Puritan faith, champion of the male prerogative.

But if we feel sorry for the author, be assured our sympathy would be misplaced. Mary Rowlandson is not the least bit sad or sorry for herself. Quite the contrary, her concluding remarks reveal a woman who is perfectly content with her prescribed narrative pose and expresses unfeigned joy in representing the ideal Puritan female, the pious, dutiful, submissive, dependent, self-effacing, obedient, servant of man and God, she who revels in pain and sorrow:

Affliction I wanted, and affliction I had, full measure … yet I see, when God calls a person to anything, and through never so many difficulties, yet He is fully able to carry them through and make them see, and say they have been gainers thereby. And I hope I can say in some measure, as David did, It is good for me that I have been afflicted (Psalm 119:71). … I have learned to look beyond present and smaller troubles, and to be quieted under them, as Moses said, Exodus 14.13 Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.⁵²

Mary's reference to Exodus 14:13, we need to point out, is a partial quotation and, in its biblical context, is spoken as a rebuke, not as a joyous outburst. The Israelites, having just followed Moses out of Egypt and through the Red Sea (which God had parted for their easy passage), are now camped on the Red Sea's far shore. Though free, the Israelites can see the Egyptians making their way through the very breach in the water God had cut for his chosen people. Their faith in Moses begins to falter: “It had been better for us to serve the Egyptians,” they complain, “than that we should die in the wilderness” (Exodus 14:12). In response to their short-sightedness, their unfounded doubts, and fears, Moses utters his injunction: “Fear ye not, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever.” Here, at the close of her text, Mary chooses a passage from Scripture that resolves the issues of voice, gender, and power that have been at the center of her captivity narrative and postcaptivity life.

Extrapolating from biblical drama to her life in Puritan New England, Rowlandson aligns herself with the complaining Israelites, which means her Puritan sponsors are stand-ins for Moshe Rabbenu (“Moses our Master”). Moses' rebuke of the Israelites, then, translates into the Puritans' rebuke of Mary—if not Mary's rebuke of herself (chastising herself with the “inner voice” of her Puritan masters). As Moses stood in relation to the Israelites—their leader and lawgiver—so the Puritan patriarchs stand in relation to Mary Rowlandson, synecdoche for all New Englanders.

Mary's invocation of Exodus 14:13, moreover, seems to be an iteration of the feminine virtues of patience, obedience, passivity, submission, silence, and stillness that Mary's narrator has espoused from the very beginning of her narrative. To appreciate the extent of Mary's commitment to the male construction of the ideal woman, one has but to recall the sad fate of Goodwife Joslin, a woman who refused to “stand still” and suffered God's wrath for her impatience.⁵³

Goodwife Joslin, who was taken captive with Mary Rowlandson, was so overwhelmed by her predicament that she suggested to Mary that they run away. But escape, Mary knew, was a foolish idea. First, it was winter and they were thirty miles from any English town. With no roads to follow and no way to navigate home, they would die. Second, Mrs. Joslin was in no condition to make the journey. As Mary notes, Mrs. Joslin was “very big with child, and had but one week to reckon: and [was carrying] another child in her arms, two years old.”⁵⁴ Backing up her arguments with sacred text, Rowlandson opens her Bible and reads to Joslin from Psalm 2:14: “Wait on the Lord, Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart, wait I say on the Lord.”⁵⁵ The lesson is clear: be patient, be still; let God provide. But Goodwife Joslin could not be consoled and importuned her Indian captors over and over again to take her home. The Indians, impatient with Joslin's constant complaining, decided to kill her and her unborn child.

The lesson of Joslin's impatience obviously imprinted itself on Mary's memory and allowed her to wait out a time of extreme stress. One Sabbath morning, Mary asks her master, Quinnapin, if he is going to sell her back to her husband. Quinnapin says, “Yes.” Mary was delighted, and Quinnapin's “Yes,” is, in fact, confirmed by the natives' new line of march—back toward Lancaster. But just when things seem to be getting better, Mary's mistress, Weetamoo (Quinnapin's squaw), refuses to go any further and says Mary must go to camp with her.⁵⁶ Mary's disappointment and frustration is almost too much to bear:

My spirit was upon this, I confess, very impatient and almost outrageous. I thought I could as well have died as went back: I cannot declare the trouble that I was in about it; but yet back again I must go. As soon as I had an opportunity, I took my Bible to read, and that quieting scripture came to my hand, Psalms 46.10. Be still, and know that I am God. Which stilled my spirit for the present.

[Emphasis mine]⁵⁷

Mary perseveres, and God has the natives spare her life, unlike the fate that befell Goodwife Joslin. Since Joslin was impatient (restless) and outspoken (complaining), God—according to Mary—allowed the Indians to destroy her. That Mary would return to these particular female virtues at the end of her chronicle is significant. Most significant is the fact that Rowlandson finds three different biblical passages that teach very much the same lesson.

Clearly, Mary wants her readers to see her as the exemplary woman, patient, quiet, and obedient, the woman of virtue par excellence. True, we cannot lose sight of the religious thrust of her narrative. But Mary's chronicle, for all its religiosity, is more than an exercise in piety, more than an argument for the Puritan view of the world. The Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a domestic novel of sorts and tells us much about what it meant to be female in a world dominated by men. Read as a domestic tale (as opposed to a religious tract), Rowlandson's chronicle offers us true insight into gender roles and the prescribed dynamics of male and female sexuality in colonial New England.

Mary's celebration of feminine virtues, moreover, allows the speaker to reclaim her known self and to place it before her readers. Or, as the post-modernist would say, Mary Rowlandson, at the end of her narrative, attempts to (re)construct herself in accordance with the male vision of the ideal Puritan woman. And she succeeds. Indeed, author as well as narrator succeed, for the real Mary Rowlandson disappeared from public view after she published her chronicle, living out her life in relative obscurity (she wrote no more), exemplifying—one might assume—the virtues of patience, silence, stillness that she promoted in her chronicle.

Notes

1. For recent examinations of Rowlandson's captivity narrative, see Gary L. Ebersole, Captured by Texts: Puritan to Postmodern Images of Indian Captivity (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995); Michelle Burnham, “The Journey Between: Liminality and Dialogism in Mary White Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative,” Early American Literature 28.1 (1993): 60-75; Lisa Logan, “Mary Rowlandson's Captivity and the ‘Place’ of the Woman Subject,” Early American Literature 28.3 (1993): 255-77; Margaret H. Davis, “Mary White Rowlandson's Self-Fashioning as Puritan Goodwife,” Early American Literature 27.1 (1992): 49-60; Teresa A. Toulouse, “‘My Own Credit’: Strategies of (E)Valuation in Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative,” American Literature 64.4 (1992): 655-76; Tara Fitzpatrick, “The Figure of Captivity: The Cultural Work of the Puritan Captivity Narrative,” American Literary History 3 (1991): 1-26; Mitchell R. Breitwieser, American Puritanism and the Defense of Mourning: Religion, Grief, and Ethnology in Mary White Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1990); Capt. Greg Sieminski, “The Puritan Captivity Narrative and the Politics of the American Revolution,” American Quarterly 42 (1990): 35-56; Kathryn Zabelle Derounian, “Puritan Orthodoxy and the ‘Survivor Syndrome’ in Mary Rowlandson's Indian Captivity Narrative,” Early American Literature 22.1 (1987): 82-93.

2. For earlier (but equally valid) studies of Rowlandson's text, readers might consider Edward M. Griffin, “Women in Trouble: The Predicament of Captivity and the Narratives of Mary Rowlandson, Mary Jemison, and Hannah Dustan,” in Für eine offene Literaturwissenschaft: Erkundungen und Erprobungen am Beispiel US-Amerikanischer Texte (Opening Up Literary Criticism: Essays on American Prose and Poetry), ed. Leo Truchlar (Salzburg: Wolfgang Neugebauer, 1986), 41-51; Susan Howe, “The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson,” Temblor 2 (1985): 113-21; Annette Kolodny, The Land before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers 1630-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 17-34; David Downing, “‘Streams of Scripture Comfort’: Mary Rowlandson's Typological Use of the Bible,” Early American Literature 15.3 (1981): 252-59; Alden Vaughan and Edward W. Clark, “Cups of Common Calamity: Puritan Captivity Narratives as Literature and History,” in Puritans among the Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption, 1676-1724, ed. Alden T. Vaughan and Edward W. Clark (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981), 1-28; Ann Stanford, “Mary Rowlandson's Journey to Redemption,” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 7.3 (1976): 27-37; David Minter, “By Dens of Lions: Notes on Stylization in Early Puritan Captivity Narratives,” American Literature 45.3 (November 1973): 335-47; Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 101-14; Douglas Edward Leach, “The ‘Whens’ of Mary Rowlandson's Captivity,” New England Quarterly 34.3 (1961): 352-63; Henry Nourse, “Mrs. Mary Rowlandson's Removes,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 2d ser., 12 (1898): 401-9.

3. My reading of Rowlandson has been especially influenced by Lisa Logan's insightful essay “Mary Rowlandson's Captivity and the ‘Place’ of the Woman Subject,” Early American Literature 28.3 (1993): 255-77. Like Logan, I am interested in the issue of gender and Rowlandson's perception of herself as woman in a male-dominated culture. Where Logan focuses on literal and figurative spaces (body, text, home, wilderness) and how the narrative is about the physical, ideological, social, and discursive places Rowlandson occupies, I focus on narrative voice and the disjunction between masculine and feminine voices (and the masculine and feminine ideologies they express) within the narrative.

4. Until the eighteenth century, the new year began on March 25, that celebrates the feast of the Annunciation, when Christ was conceived. Dates preceding March 25 are conventionally noted in both years as, in this case, 1675/76.

5. For book-length studies regarding the causes and consequences of King Philip's War, see Alden T. Vaughan, New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675 (Boston: Little Brown, 1965); Douglas Edward Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip's War (New York: Norton, 1966); Charles T. Burke, Puritans at Bay: The War against King Philip and the Squaw Sachems (New York: Exposition Press, 1967); Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); Russell Bourne, The Red King's Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675-1678 (New York: Atheneum, 1990). In her narrative, Rowlandson reports Lancaster's casualties as twelve killed and twenty-four taken captive.

6. Mary Rowlandson gave birth to a daughter in 1660, but that daughter (also named Mary) died in 1661 before she was a year old. Biographical information on Mary Rowlandson has been gleaned from various sources. See, in particular, Robert K. Diebold, “Mary Rowlandson,” in American Writers before 1800: A Biographical and Critical Dictionary, ed. James A. Levernier and Douglas R. Wilmes (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press); Robert K. Diebold, “A Critical Edition of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1972).

7. Rowlandson's chronicle is the first captivity narrative published in North America and the first such narrative written by a woman. It has appeared in over thirty editions since its initial publication. For history of the publication of Rowlandson's narrative and explanations for its wide appeal, see Kathryn Zabelle Derounian, “The Publication, Promotion, and Distribution of Mary Rowlandson's Indian Captivity Narrative in the Seventeenth-Century,” Early American Literature 23.3 (1988): 239-61; David L. Greene, “New Light on Mary Rowlandson,” Early American Literature 20 (Spring 1985): 24-38.

8. In his study of documents generated by the trials of Anne Hutchinson, Lad Tobin applies the theories of the French feminists (most notably Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray) to his analysis of the debate between Anne Hutchinson and her Puritan judges. Summing up the French feminists, Tobin notes that “speech layered with multiple meanings, speech intended to disrupt institutional discourse, speech which seeks to open up rather than to resolve, is more female, while rules-conscious, ‘sense of an ending’ speech, is more clearly male.” I have applied Tobin's examination of masculine and feminine discourse to Rowlandson's text. See Lad Tobin, “A Radically Different Voice: Gender and Language in the Trials of Anne Hutchinson,” Early American Literature 25.3 (1990): 263-64.

9. The image of women in Renaissance literature has received much critical attention in the past decade. Some of the works that I found useful include Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vikers, eds., Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Margaret Olofson Thickstun, Fictions of the Feminine: Puritan Doctrine and the Representation of Women (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 1-53; Caroline Walker Bynum, “‘… And Woman His Humanity’: Female Imagery in the Religious Writing of the Later Middle Ages,” in Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. Caroline Walker Bynum, Stevan Harrel, and Paula Richman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 257-88; Margaret L. King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Marie B. Rowlands, “Recusant Women 1540-1640,” in Women in English Society 1500-1800, ed. Margaret Prior (London: Methuen, 1985), 149-80; Philippa Berry, Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen (London: Routledge, 1989); Flora Alexander, “Women as Lovers in Early English Romance,” in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 24-40; Doris Mary Stenton, The Englishwoman in History (New York: Schocken Books, 1957); Philip Mirabelli, “Silence, Wit, and Wisdom in The Silent Woman,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 29.2 (1989): 309-36; Patricia Simons, “Women in Frames: The Gaze, the Eye, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture,” History Workshop Journal 25 (1988): 4-30.

10. Peter Stallybrass discusses the feminine virtues celebrated during the Renaissance in “Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed,” in Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, ed. Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 123-42. According to Stallybrass, “Silence, the closed mouth, is made a sign of chastity. And silence and chastity are, in turn, homologous to woman's enclosure within the house” (127). Using Stallybrass's paradigm, Rowlandson's journey into the wilderness (outside the house) and her decision to write about that experience (externalizing internal thought) are, by definition, violations of the female virtues of chastity and silence.

11. Margaret H. Davis notes that for the entire seventeenth century, only four examples of women's writing are listed in Charles Evans's American Bibliography: Anne Bradstreet's Several Poems (1678); Sarah Goodhue's A Valedictory and Monitory Writing (1681); Rowlandson's The Soveraignty and Goodness of God … ; Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682); and M. Hooper's “Lamentations for Her Sons Poisoned by Eating Mushrooms” (1694), cited in Davis, “Mary White Rowlandson's Self-Fashioning,” 59. The social construction of gender in Puritan New England placed the pen in men's hands, thereby effectively denying women an opportunity to develop an authorial and self-authorizing feminine voice. Notwithstanding their subordinate status, however, women were integral to social, political, and religious life in colonial New England. For discussion of women's roles in male-dominated Puritan New England, see Emory Elliott, Power and the Pulpit in Puritan New England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Ivy Schweitzer, The Work of Self-Representation: Lyric Poetry in Colonial New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974); Elizabeth Abel, ed., Writing and Sexual Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650-1750 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1982); Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).

12. Quinnapin (Quinapin) was a Narraganset sachem allied with King Philip during King Philip's War. He was married to Weetamoo, sachem (chief) of Pocasset village of the Wampanoag confederacy. See Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Gretchen M. Bataille (New York: Garland Publishing), 275-76. See separate entry under Weetamoo for more information.

13. Women rarely spoke in public in colonial New England, not even to confess their sins. Indeed, the history of women's silence is a familiar one. For studies on the subject, see Davis, “Mary White Rowlandson's Self-Fashioning,” 49-60; Ivy Schweitzer, “Anne Bradstreet Wrestles with the Renaissance,” Early American Literature 23.3 (1988): 291-312; Frank Shuffelton, “In Different Voices: Gender in the American Republic of Letters,” Early American Literature 25.3 (1990): 289-303; Lad Tobin, “A Radically Different Voice: Gender and Language in the Trials of Anne Hutchinson,” Early American Literature 25.3 (1990): 253-70. As Lyle Koehler reminds us, “From parent, husband, and pulpit, Puritan women learned that they were supposed to submit to male rule. If a wife tried to exercise much self-government, she had to confront the fact that her own expression of freedom threatened to destroy the God-created hierarchy of her own family and Puritan society.” Lyle Koehler, A Search for Power: The “Weaker Sex” in Seventeenth-Century New England (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1080), 22.

14. Since no copies of the first edition of Rowlandson's captivity narrative are extant, scholars assume the chronicle had a wide circulation and was an immediate best-seller. The first edition may have been read to shreds, but I would argue for a small first printing, distributed to family, friends, and intimates. The chronicle's popularity and wider distribution began, I would argue, after it was advertised in the first American edition of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1681). For discussion of the history of the narrative and its growing popularity over time, readers should see Derounian, “The Publication, Promotion, and Distribution of Mary Rowlandson's … Narrative,” 239-61; and Richard Slotkin and James K. Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip's War, 1676-1677 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1978), 301-14.

15. That “Ter Amicam” (identified as Increase Mather) finds it necessary to defend Mrs. Rowlandson against charges of immodesty speaks to this point particularly well. Of the many works treating the subject of men silencing women in colonial New England, the essay that best bears upon my discussion is Davis's, “Mary White Rowlandson's Self-Fashioning,” 49-60. See also, Koehler, A Search for Power, 54.

16. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 320. All subsequent citations from Rowlandson's captivity narrative refer to the Slotkin-Folsom edition.

17. The author of the preface, Ter Amicam, has been variously identified as Increase Mather, Nathaniel Saltonstall, and Joseph Rowlandson. I follow Slotkin and Folsom's lead and attribute the preface to Increase Mather.

18. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 320. This point is also made by Davis in “Mary White Rowlandson's Self-Fashioning,” 58.

19. Images of captivity and redemption were central to the Puritans' self-definition. Drawing on Old Testament types, especially bondage of the Jews in Egypt and the Babylonian Captivity, the Puritans of New England read their wilderness experience through the lens of historical typology. On the Puritans' use of historical typology, see Sacvan Bercovitch, Typology and Early American Literature (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1972); Mason I. Lowance, Jr., The Language of Canaan: Metaphor and Symbol in New England from the Puritans to the Transcendentalists (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980); Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 94-115; Downing, “‘Streams of Scripture Comfort,’” 252-59; Ursula Brumm, American Thought and Religious Typology (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1970).

20. By “sex,” I mean Mary's genetic makeup, and the fact that she is anatomically female. By “gender,” I mean the various roles she plays within her community (spouse, mother, sister, etc.).

21. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 322.

22. Ibid., 365.

23. She enjoyed tobacco, and failed to keep the Sabbath on occasion. She had even been jealous of those who suffered, believing they had been favored by God: “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth” (Hebrews 12:6).

24. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 342, 346, 365. Rowlandson's preference for male (rather than female) examples of suffering may seem a small point. After all, references to Job, Hezekiah, Jonah, David, and the Prodigal Son would have been appreciated for their symbolic value. These biblical heroes, after all, are recognized as types of suffering. Besides, Mary's allusions to Job, Daniel, Joshua, and David do not conjure up images of actual men undergoing actual suffering. Since they are rhetorical figures, one might argue that gender is irrelevant here. But such is not the case. Mary avoids any and all allusions to women's suffering because such references would only have elevated her status as author. Mary might have written, “I hope it is not too much to say with Sarah,” or “I have suffered as Ruth suffered.” Such comparisons, however, would have made more of her sex than was meet: it would have violated the decorum of female silence and diffidence. For a complete listing of Rowlandson's scriptural references, see Downing, “‘Streams of Scripture Comfort,’” 257-59.

25. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 365. Though contemporary readers might assume that Mary uses “he” as the generic pronoun reference for all humanity, the “son” cited in Hebrews 12:6 refers, specifically, to Jesus Christ; thus, “he” refers to Christ, specifically. Rowlandson may consider herself a true daughter of Zion, but she clearly wants her readers to think of her in masculine terms and to see her relationship with God as a father-son, rather than a father-daughter, relationship.

26. Ibid., 334. Mary is recollecting the events of Monday, November 16, 1675. The Indians break camp, set fire to their makeshift wigwams, and head deeper into the woods.

27. For discussion of the male/female, spirit/flesh dichotomy and the Puritan “logic” that associated womanhood with evil and sin, see Elizabeth Reis, “The Devil, the Body, and the Feminine Soul in Puritan New England,” Journal of American History, June 1995, 16.

28. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 338-39.

29. Oxford English Dictionary, compact ed., vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 1809.

30. Mary not only refers to the Indians as liars, thieves, and cheats but she labels them “wild beasts,” “ravenous wolves,” “inhuman creatures,” savages prone to “devilish cruelty.” See Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 332, 358, 327, 360, passim.

31. Mary's fear of being raped by an Indian is a rhetorical pose. Northeastern woodland Indians, Rowlandson and her readers knew, did not rape women, white or Indian—ever. In fact, more than one of Mary's contemporaries, conscious of the pernicious effects of the Old World stereotype, attempted to clear the Indians of the charge. See, for example, Daniel Gookin, A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New England, From the First Planting thereof to the present Time, 2 vols. (Roxbury, Mass.: S. G. Drake, 1865), passim.

32. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 321.

33. The image of the lascivious Indian, though fraudulent, served to justify—albeit after the fact—the settlers' war against the Algonquian people. Since warring natives were perceived as unredeemable “savages,” their complete annihilation was sanctioned. The literature on the ignoble savage stereotype and his/her appetites is legion. See Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952); W. Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); and Margaret Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964); Louise K. Barnett, The Ignoble Savage: American Literary Racism, 1790-1890 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975). These seminal studies trace the persistence of the negative stereotype throughout the Renaissance and into the modern era. In his preface to Rowlandson's chronicle, Increase Mather provides his own list of epithets. Mary's captors are “atheistical, proud, wild, cruel, barbarous, brutish (in one word) diabolical creatures … the worst of the heathens” (Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 321). See also Diebold, A Critical Edition of … Rowlandson's Narrative, cxxi-cxlii.

34. Diebold, A Critical Edition of … Rowlandson's Narrative, viii.

35. As critics have long recognized, sexual “misconduct” is a familiar trope in women's captivity narratives and may very well reflect the chronicler's own sexual longings. The sexual lure of the wilderness and the female captive's desire for sexual contact with her Indian captors is the focus of June Namias's study White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).

36. Reis, “The Devil, the Body, and the Feminine Soul,” 15-16.

37. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 333, 347, 349.

38. Ibid., 335.

39. Ibid., 360-61.

40. Oxford English Dictionary, compact ed., vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 3477.

41. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 356-57.

42. And the offense goes deeper. By donning English finery (as opposed to “everyday” English attire), Mary portrays her Indian captors as criminals in violation of the colony's sumptuary laws. Excesses in attire (including the wearing of powdered wigs) was commonly pointed to as one of the reasons why God had set the Indians upon New England. See Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954), 463-91.

43. Liminality, I would argue, not only speaks to Mary's difficulty in maintaining her cultural identity (civilized, Christian, Puritan, female) during her captivity in the Indian wilderness, but also reveals her difficulty in speaking a prescribed male discourse. As she pens her narrative, Mary reflects on her experience. And as she reflects, she seems to appreciate the validity of her grievance against male hegemony. Her liminality, then, refers to the shift in her tone of voice (from compliant to outraged) as well as the shift in her image of herself. For an interesting discussion of liminality in Rowlandson's captivity narrative, see Burnham, “The Journey Between,” 60-75. Liminality, for Burnham, refers to Mary's ability to cross the metaphysical border of Puritan theology, thus enabling her to recognize the Indians as a people in their own right rather than as abstract types. Mary's liminal position as captive, Burnham correctly notes, is reflected in the chronicle's conflicting narrative styles.

44. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 351.

45. Mary Rowlandson was redeemed by the English for twenty pounds. The conditions of her return are presented in Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 352.

46. Weetamoo (also known as Namumpam, Tatatanum, Tatapanum, Squaw sachem of the Pocasset, Wetamoo, Wetemoo, Wetamou, Wetamoe, Weetamou, Weetamoe, Weetammo, Weetamore, Queen Wetamoo) (1635? 1650?-1676) was born near the Fall River in present-day Rhode Island and was an Algonquian leader during King Philip's War. Weetamoo was married several times, most notably to Alexander (Wamsutta), grand sachem of the Wampanoag confederacy and brother of King Philip (Metacom). When Alexander died, Weetamoo married Quequequamanchet, whom she left because he sided with the colonists at the beginning of King Philip's War. She then married Quinnapin, a Narraganset. See Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, 275-76. No one knows how Weetamoo died. According to Increase Mather, Indians allied with the English found Weetamoo's dead body in the woods surrounding Taunton, Rhode Island, sometime between August 6 and August 10, 1676. These Indians decapitated her body and brought the head to the English (in Taunton) who set it upon a pole. See Increase Mather, A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New-England (Boston: John Foster, 1676), cited in Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 138-39.

47. Ibid., 357.

48. Ibid., 357. Definitions of “fain” are from the Oxford English Dictionary, compact ed., 950.

49. Patricia Simons, “Women in Frames,” 8.

50. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 358.

51. Mary rebukes the colonial militia on two occasions. Here is the earlier incident:

    And here I cannot but take notice of the strange providence of God in preserving the heathen. … Monday they set their wigwams on fire, and away they went: on that very day came the English army after them … and saw the smoke of their wigwams, and yet this river [i.e. the Baquag river], put a stop to them. God did not give them courage or activity to go over after us; we were not ready for so great a mercy as victory and deliverance.

    (333-34)

    In this earlier account, Mary tempers her criticism of the militia by focusing on the captives. In a later episode, the continued enslavement of the captives becomes the fault of the colonial militia. Had the colonial militia been alert and swift, Mary could have been restored to civilization sooner—so she would have us believe.

52. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 366-67.

53. My reading of the Joslin episode follows Mitchell Breitwieser's. See Breitwieser, American Puritanism and the Defense of Mourning 111-12.

54. Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 331.

55. Ibid., 331.

56. Ibid., 341.

57. Ibid., 341.

I am most pleased to acknowledge the scholarly contributions of my colleague Professor Ingrid Pruss and the editorial assistance of my wife, Dr. Margaret Solomon. This chapter bears witness to their intelligence, encouragement, and support.