The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson 909she is allowed to keep the profits of her labor rather
than having to turn them over to her master. The
author recognizes her importance to her master and
asserts that his wives were concerned over whose
household she would be a part of, given the fact that
the wife who “owned” her would benefit the most
from the ransom when they released her.
Rowlandson’s return to the Puritan world and its
acceptance of her depend upon her ability to reas-
sure her family, friends, and readers of her continued
chastity during her captivity; as a woman, her worth
relates to her faithfulness to her husband. Several
times, she mentions sleeping in the tents of vari-
ous tribespeople who have supplied her with food,
raising questions in some scholars’ minds about the
truthfulness of her claims to chastity. Regardless of
what the truth is, Rowlandson must assert that she
remained faithful to her husband in order to main-
tain her position as a respectable Puritan woman, a
step male authors of captivity narratives do not have
to take.
Robin Gray Nicks
IdentIty in The Narrative of the Captivity
and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
Identity plays an important role in Mary Row-
landson’s narrative, shaping the way in which she
interacts with others and the way that she writes
about that experience. Rowlandson writes from the
perspective of a white, English, Puritan identity and
contrasts that with the identity of her captors, who
are, in her words, “heathens” and “savages.”
Her identity as a white, English, Puritan woman
informs Rowlandson’s text to a great degree. Within
the first two paragraphs of the text, Rowlandson
refers to the enemy attackers as “Indians” seven
times. Her descriptions of the attackers’ actions fail
to take into account the many factors that led the
Narragansett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag to attack
her village of Lancaster, Massachusetts, that day. In
the midst of King Philip’s War, the Narragansett,
Nipmuc, and Wampanoag faced violence from the
English, as well as starvation and disease. Neglect-
ing these events, Rowlandson describes her eventual
captors as “murtherous wretches” and “hell-hounds,
roaring, singing, ranting, and insulting, as if they
would have torn our very hearts out.” She contrasts
herself, her family, and the other English as “Chris-
tians” against the Narragansett, Nipmuc, and Wam-
panoag as “Barbarous Creatures.”
Unfortunately, Rowlandson’s identity and sepa-
ration from her captors causes her to repeatedly
misunderstand her captors’ statements and actions.
For instance, after complaining nonstop for 12
“removes,” Rowlandson asks a visiting Indian if he
has seen her son or knows about his condition. She
receives the following answer: “He answered me,
that such a time his master roasted him [Rowland-
son’s son], and that himself did eat a piece of him
as big as his two fingers, and that he was very good
meat.” At first shocked, Rowlandson later attributes
this story to the natives’ “horrible addictedness to
lying” without stopping to consider that the infor-
mant might have been having a bit of fun at her
expense. It would be hard to imagine that Rowland-
son’s captors would not have tired of her ceaseless
complaints of tiredness, hunger, and pain when they
were experiencing the same. She was too valuable for
Metacom (King Philip) to allow any harm to come
to her. She went across the river in the fifth remove
without getting wet in spite of the fact that many
of her captors did. She was given food and shelter
on numerous occasions, and Metacom allowed her
to earn money by making clothing for her other
captors. While Rowlandson does endure a small
amount of physical abuse at the hands of Metacom’s
second wife, throughout the narrative, Metacom and
his wives treat her with a degree of respect that other
captives and captors did not enjoy. Occasionally
poking fun at her and her beliefs about their culture
must have been an outlet for their frustrations when
they were unable to seriously harm her.
Of course, the separation between a white Puri-
tan identity and a “heathen,” “savage” identity breaks
down throughout the narrative. This occurs early in
the text, when Rowlandson explains her change of
heart about what she could and could not eat:The first week of my being among them,
I hardly ate any thing; the second week, I
found my stomach grow very faint for want
of something; and yet it was very hard to
get down their filthy trash; but the third
week, though I could think how formerly my