Mary White Rowlandson

English-born colonial American writer

• Born: c. 1637
• Birthplace: England
• Died: January 5, 1711
• Place of death: Wethersfield, Connecticut

Rowlandson’s narrative of her captivity by American Indians during Metacom’s War became a colonial best-seller. Her book was the first example of the captivity tale literary genre; it remained in print over three hundred years later.

Early Life

In 1639, the parents of Mary White Rowlandson (ROH-luhn-suhn), John and Joan White, joined the Puritan migration to the New World. The family lived in Salem, Massachusetts, prior to moving to the newly established frontier village of Lancaster, where John White was the wealthiest landowner. Mary married Joseph Rowlandson in 1656. He was ordained in 1660, became the first regular minister in Lancaster, and established a reputation as a leading Puritan clergyman. The couple had four children, the first of whom died in infancy.

Until the outbreak of Metacom’s War (also known as King Philip’s War) in 1675, Rowlandson lived the normal life of a New England housewife, raising her children and running the minister’s household. A good Puritan, she read her Bible, attended church services several times a week, and anxiously examined her conscience and behavior for evidence of the state of her soul.

When a coalition of Algonquian Indian tribes, rebelling against English pressure to acquire their land, began to devastate the New England frontier, Lancaster was an obvious target. For protection, the fifty or so families in the village gathered in six garrisons—semifortified houses built with thick timbers, which were pierced with loopholes through which the defenders could safely fire at attackers.

One such garrison was the minister’s house. On February 10, 1676, the Rowlandson garrison held thirty-seven people, including Mrs. Rowlandson and her three children (her husband had gone to Boston seeking reinforcements for the endangered town), her two sisters with their families, and several neighbors. The Algonquians attacked. After destroying most of the central village, the Indians attacked the Rowlandson garrison. The house was situated on the side of a hill, down which the Indians rolled combustibles, setting the entire building aflame and forcing the defenders into the open. Of the thirty-seven occupants, only one escaped; twelve were killed, and twenty-four, including Mrs. Rowlandson and her three children, were taken captive.

Life’s Work

For the next eleven weeks and five days, Rowlandson traveled as a captive of the Algonquians, walking as far north as Chesterfield, New Hampshire, before retracing her steps back to Princeton, Massachusetts, where she was ransomed. Rowlandson carefully studied the behavior of her captors as she agonized over the meaning of her captivity. Once she was released, she set about recording her observations in clear, precise prose. She published her story under the title The Soveraignty and Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682; commonly known as The Soveraignty and Goodness of God ).

Rowlandson’s only literary work, the book was an immediate and lasting success. Three other editions appeared in England and New England the same year, and her book has been reprinted more than thirty times since then. The first edition was literally read to death: Only four pages of it survived into the twentieth century. Rowlandson’s account continues to be the most widely anthologized Indian captivity narrative.

Rowlandson’s book can be read as a straightforward adventure story, as the publisher of the tenth edition implied when he titled his reprint A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings, and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1770). Rowlandson began with a brief, graphic description of the successful Indian attack on Lancaster. As she left the burning garrison house, she was shot in the side, and the child she was carrying was wounded in the intestines and hand. Her eldest sister, a brother-in-law, and a nephew were killed, while her son and older daughter were taken away.

Rowlandson structured her captivity narrative into twenty sections she called “removes.” The first remove took her only a few miles from Lancaster, where the Indians celebrated their victory with roaring and singing that she compared to a scene in hell. Few can read her third remove, in which her six-year-old daughter, unable to eat for nine days, died in her arms, without feeling deep sympathy for Rowlandson. She described the Indians as inhuman, their evil behavior inspired by Satan; her opinion did not change, even when she recorded friendly actions. According to Rowlandson, when the Indians killed a pregnant woman who kept asking to go home, when they laughed at seeing Rowlandson fall down, or when they refused to give her food, they were simply expressing their nature. On the other hand, when an Indian gave her a Bible, or helped her find shelter, or offered her food, as many did, she claimed that it was because God had intervened on her behalf and overruled the Indians’ natural state.

As the removes continued, Rowlandson became more effective in managing her relations with the Indians. Although physically weak and fearful of her captors, she learned to use her skills at knitting and sewing clothing to barter for food and shelter. Her descriptions of Indian behavior became more detailed, especially in a striking account of the elaborate ritual performed before attacking Sudbury. Throughout her ordeal, Rowlandson pondered her past life and consulted her Bible, trying to find a meaning for her afflictions. There are more than sixty-five biblical references in the text, mainly from the Old Testament, which was most directly relevant to Rowlandson’s experience. She found comfort in God’s promises to redeem Israel from captivity and interpreted all favorable events as evidence that God forgave her past transgressions and, through the action of divine providence, used the Indians to prepare her spiritual and physical redemption in this life and the next.

On May 2, 1676, the Indians freed Rowlandson for a ransom of œ20 in trade goods raised by her husband and friends. Her children were released soon after. Lancaster had been abandoned, and the Rowlandson family lived for a year in Boston before relocating, in 1677, to Wethersfield, Connecticut, where Joseph Rowlandson was installed as the new minister. He died suddenly on November 24, 1678, aged forty-seven. Rowlandson’s manuscript was apparently completed before then, although it was not printed until 1682, for it contains no hint that her husband was no longer alive. On August 6, 1679, Rowlandson married Captain Samuel Talcott. She lived for nineteen years after his death in 1691, before dying herself at the age of about seventy-three.

Significance

Rowlandson had no model for her book. There were no existing captivity narratives that she might emulate. She therefore created the genre as she wrote. Rowlandson would have been familiar with an existing Puritan literary form, in which the authors examined their relations with God, seeking assurance that they were indeed members of the elect, destined for eternal life in heaven. Such books were read by devout Puritans to inspire their own spiritual reflections. Rowlandson’s emotional need to confront her horrifying experience provided the impetus to create the manuscript she wrote for the religious edification of her children and relations. Many early readers would have understood her work as she intended.

Over the centuries, her narrative has had many varying interpretations. Scholars valued the book for its firsthand descriptions of seventeenth century Indian life, ignoring her intensely negative opinion of the natives. Students of religion interpreted it as demonstrating the impact of Puritan theology on everyday life in early New England. Twentieth century feminists hailed her work as the first North American book written by a woman. Secular feminists, repulsed by the deep religiousness in which the book is steeped, have argued that the text was heavily edited, either by her husband or another minister, to stifle Rowlandson’s authentically female voice and to force her to conform to Puritan ideology. Some were surprised that a seventeenth century woman could supply such apt biblical references, precisely appropriate to her immediate experiences—a reaction caused by greatly underestimating the biblical fluency and religious intensity of Puritan women.

The variety of these interpretations of The Soveraignty and Goodness of God and the passion with which some are advanced testify to the continuing relevance in the twenty-first century of Rowlandson’s narrative of the most difficult and doleful twelve weeks of her life.

Bibliography

Breitwieser, Mitchell Robert. American Puritanism and the Defense of Mourning: Religion, Grief, and Ethnology in Mary White Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrative. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. The only full-length study of Rowlandson’s narrative. Breitwieser reads her prose as revealing a significant conflict between her acceptance of Puritan cultural ideology and her actual experience of Indian life.

Ebersole, Gary L. Captured by Texts: Puritan to Postmodern Images of Indian Captivity. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. Stresses how Rowlandson’s understanding of Puritan covenantal theology enabled her to comprehend and survive the reality of her captivity.

Henwood, Dawn. “Mary Rowlandson and the Psalms: The Textuality of Survival.” Early American Literature 32 (1997): 169-186. Analyzes how Rowlandson’s reading of the Psalms during her captivity provided spiritual comfort while also permitting her to express her fury at her situation.

LePore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Prize-winning study of the wartime experiences of Indians and Englishmen offers valuable contrasts to Rowlandson’s reactions.

Schultz, Eric B., and Michael J. Tougias. King Philip’s War: The History and the Legacy of America’s Forgotten Conflict. Woodstock, Vt.: The Countryman Press, 1999. Detailed examination of the war provides a useful context for Rowlandson’s narrative.