puritan god is a giant, giant dick

A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson by Mary White Rowlandson

Mary Rowlandson was captured by the Algonkian during King Phillip’s War (1675-1678). It was the first American best-seller and has ben invoked throughout American history as a point to rally around, exemplifying national rights and God’s challenges to America. It’s used for propaganda purposes in order to remind Americans of the struggles their forefathers faced in settling the country. And it’s a handy one if you really hate Aboriginal people. King Phillip’s War ended 40 years of peace between the settler and native communities, and it was based on the encroachment of colonists onto Algonkian lands. The colonists had somewhat shadily gained the right to buy lands from Aboriginal people, but that wasn’t enough — they wanted to steal them instead. The was wasn’t so much a war as a series of retributive acts that in three years managed to destroy the Algonkian people.

Rowlandson was taken captive with her three children. One died and she was separated from the others. She was captive for three months (though her children were captive longer). This writing was her only commentary on the capture, and she wrote it in the two years between her release and her husband’s death. The account is marked by its use of graphic realism, and we should note the exceptionality of a puritan woman publishing anything at all in the time period. Because she frames her experience as a means of God testing her faith, the church leadership leant support to her publication, hoping it would shore up the declining numbers. Her work was useful, too, in that it supported the colonist’s negative portrayal of Aboriginals as savages who worked for Satan. As such, her writing supports the supposed need to excise the native population, because she depicts natives a barbarians. She shows an interior struggle, though, moving from seeing the native population as alien to feeling alienated within her own society. It is, in spite all of its faults, a powerful account of endurance and survival, especially intriguing considering her gender and the time period.

She opens by describing the invasion and capture, and discusses the horrors of being inside the experience. She refers to the Algonkians as “murtherous wretches” and calls the destruction of her homestead as the “butchery of merciless heathens.” The “infidels,” as she calls them [and isn't it interesting how the rhetoric against the other hasn't changed from King Phillip's War to Gulf War II?] separate the women from the children and dispatch with the men using hatches and guns. In the midst of the turmoil, Rowlandson’s eldest sister asks God to kill her and she is immediately struck down by a bullet — the Puritan God is a serious em-effer, I tell you what. The Algonkian tell Rowlandson that they will not kill her if she is willing to go with them, and that her safety is promised in exchange for her cooperation. In the end, of the 37 family members and employed labourers on her farm, only five people survived (though she didn’t know that her children had also survived — at this point, she thinks the survivors are herself and a single labourer). She refers to the murdered Christians as “a company of sheep torn by wolves.”

Rowlandson muses on her decision to cooperate with the Algonkian, noting that she had always told herself that if the Aboriginal people attacked, she would prefer death over being taken alive — in the moment, she says, her mind changed. She knows her husband is in Boston but is told by the Algonkian that they will kill him en route; between this and the fact that she thinks her children have been killed, she comments on the amazement she feels at her ability to bear up, and she thanks God for the preservation of her spirit; God’s grace, she says, has kept her from retreating into despair. In her gratitude for God, she is learning to be a better Puritan (she believes), and becomes desperate to observe the Sabbath where she had previously been lazy with it. Even though her own Christianity had been previously lax, she is furious and disgusted when the Algonkian do not allow her to observe the Sabbath — this is interesting considering the trampling European settlers did to Aboriginal cultural traditions and faith practices. Who is being disrespectful, again?

She refers to God wounding her with one hand and healing her with the other, which I think is a really good metaphor for Puritanism as a whole. They are constantly being tested and tried by God, with very little reassurance beyond a blind faith that they are right and everyone else is wrong. It’s kind of a bizarre way to go through life. Furthermore, the things she labels as gifts from God are somewhat troubling. One of God’s blessings, supposedly, is the oaken leaves she uses to bandage her wounds — which she wouldn’t have known about without the wisdom of those people she calls “infidels.”

When Rowlandson’s youngest daughter, Sarah, dies, she doesn’t want to leave her side. When she is ordered to, they bury the child and she must leave it in the wilderness. It’s an important scene for Rowlandson because it marks the first time she has had to actually connect with the land itself. We know from Canadian Literature (especially Susannah Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill) that a country becomes a home for an immigrant when she ha to bury a child in its land. Rowlandson is tied by blood to the land and by experience to the Aboriginal people. It is this experience that makes her reintegration so difficult.

Rowlandson has an idea, by now, that her other children (the aptly named Mary and Joseph) are nearby. She asks God for a sign that he is with her in her time of mourning over Sarah, and it is at that time that she is reunited with Joseph. She, Joseph and Mary had all been sold as slaves to friends of the Algonkian Chief Metacomet (who all the English call King Philip, hence the name of the war).

God, in his mercy, sends Rowlandson a bible — apparently, though it comes by way of an “infidel” who is just trying to offer an act of kindness to the depressed Rowlandson. She compares the Aboriginals, though, to the King of Israel, Jehu, who committed many bloody coup d’etat in a bid for the favour of God — all of which was mostly misguided. (Tell me if I’m wrong on this, by the way. That’s my history of Israel cole’s note.)

She complains about not being sufficiently fed and watered by her masters, but really it seems to be a problem more on her end than on theirs. She calls their food “filthy trash” and refuses to eat it. Eventually, she says, she learns to enjoy it in time, but her tone with reference to it (as with reference to all the cultural traditions of these people) is one of disgust, and with a sense of looking down upon them.

Rowlandson begins to be troubled by the fact that God doesn’t seem to be helping her team, but eventually determines it is not the time for the Puritans to be victorious. He son tells her that they should be grateful to God for ensuring their survival in the hands of the enemy. She cries in front of the Algonkian people and is treated with kindness — which she returns with self-righteousness, as always (telling them she quit tobacco through God’s empowerment, which is interesting given her demands for their tolerance of her culture without any understanding of what is sacred to them). She goes to work for King Philip in a non-slave relationship (indeed, she is allowed to keep her wages), and she is told that she will be sold to her husband once a suitable arrangement can be reached. Instead of being happy about this, she is outraged that they lied to her previously. I don’t know, I get that she’s in emotional turmoil, but by this point she’s also kind of a pill.

When she leaved King Philip and returns to her master, she realizes that he is really rather kind but it is her mistress who is horrible to her. She tries to steal and destroy her bible, and kicks her out of the wigwam (we don’t find out until later, however, that the mistress is coping with the illness of her baby). What Rowlandson leaves out, however, is the kindness with which the community treats her — and she is hateful to them in her narrative, but they do feed her and give her a place to sleep when she needs it. She doesn’t dwell on this positive, though. She instead focuses on the “squaw” who throws ash at her, in what she claims to be an attempted blinding. Rowlandson’s desire to make the Algonkian people as hateful as possible impedes her ability to see that, for what is essentially a prisoner of war, her treatment is not all that horrific.

When a captured white man tells her her husband is still alive, she finds her footing and starts to stand up for herself. She stands between the community and the destruction of her only apron (though she eventually gives in) and she determines to assist the English youth whom the community has cast out to fend for himself. When her son gets a new master and leaves the community, she is again weakened — but it becomes clear that she has changed fundamentally. When her mistress’ baby dies, she comments that it’s a good thing. After all, not there will be more room. Contrast this to her feelings about her own children those of her friends and neighbours. She is hard, and heartless, when it comes to the Algonkian because she refuses to believe that they are human beings.

Rowlandson is deeply troubled by the idea that she hasn’t been a good Christian before her capture. This thought repeats itself to her over and over again, and she seems in a way to be recommitting to her Puritan faith.

The “praying Indians” are an interesting phenomenon in this text. They are Christianized natives who can cross communities and communicate with both the Algonkian and the whites. Though Rowlandson sees them as slightly better than regular Aboriginal people (because they have embraced Christianity), there is still a sense of disgust, there, which is problematic especially since the “praying Indians,” with their cross-community ability, are the only people who can negotiate for Rowlandson’s ransom with her husband. In the end, she is released (though is denied her last meeting with her daughter). Her release comes in time for her to celebrate Thanksgiving on June 29th, 1676 (ironic!) in Boston with people she considers to be of “good Christian company.” She is reunited with both her son and daughter in time — her son is returned for a £7 ransom that is paid by the townspeople for whom her husband preaches, and her daughter is eventually found in Rhode Island and returned for free.

Rowlandson claims her capture was the Lord’s doing, and is therefore marvelous. God, she tells us, strengthened the Algonkian in order that they be a “scourge” on the Puritans, and he supplied them with their ability to find food and evade the English. God is forcing the Christians, she reasons, to depend on him for salvation. Rowlandson herself is returned to Christian society, and the Puritan neighbours ever rent a home for her, but she still feels quite displaced. She can no longer sleep through the night and is no longer 100% comfortable in her own skin. But it’s all worth it, Rowlandson claims, because God only sends a scourge to those he loves, and she had in her former life been desirous of such calamity. She is grateful that this experience has broken her reliance upon what she terms vanities and luxuries, and she is able to finally determine that her captivity was a blessing.