Mary Rowlandson Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Christopher Castiglia

Critical Essay by Christopher Castiglia

SOURCE: “Her Tortures Were Turned into Frolick: Captivity and Liminal Critique, 1682-1862,” in Bound and Determined: Captivity, Culture-Crossing, and White Womanhood from Mary Rowlandson to Patty Hearst, The University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 41-86.

In the excerpt that follows, Castiglia argues that Rowlandson's book reveals that her experiences as a captive challenged her Puritan beliefs, changed her identity, and forced her to find the means to act on her own.

Anglo-America's first captivity narrative, published in 1682, commences a long tradition of exploration by white female captives of the relationships between racial and gender identities and hierarchies. In February 1675, Narragansett Indians attacked Lancaster, Massachusetts, and took Mary White Rowlandson, wife of the town minister and daughter of its wealthiest landowner, captive for eleven weeks. Rowlandson later related her ordeal to “Ter Amicam” who in 1682 published the text (divided into twenty sections, labeled “removes,” that measure her physical...
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