Dippel 1

Sydney Dippel
Professor Kendra Parker
English 113-03 The Wonderful World of Disney?
17 February 2015
Rowlett Critical Summary
In Disneys Pocahontas and Joshuas Rahab In Postcolonial Perspective, Lori L.
Rowlett compares the similarities between how Pocahontas and Rahab react to their people being
colonized. She examines how these two female characters act in relation to the situation they are
put in and how they treat the people who are oppressing their own people. The author starts the
piece of writing off by describing how in most stories of colonization, the conquering society is
given masculine adjectives and the conquered society is given feminine adjectives. She unpacks
this by stating that this leads to indigenous people as being perceived as more sexual than the
other society involved. Next, Rowlett examines the main similarities she sees between how
Rahab and Pocahontas handle the situation of their people being colonized. She states that both
of the women fall in love with, have sex with, or marry one of the members of the conquering
society. Next she says that both the indigenous women help the conquerors take over her own
people because she saves his life at one point. Thirdly, Rowlett argues that both women take the
conquerors culture wholeheartedly and that they basically convert to the other culture because
they think it is somehow above their own. Lastly, and most importantly Rowlett argues, the
bodies, more specifically the reproductive systems of both women, are taken over by the
conquering culture. Because both women end up having sexual relations with their conquerors
and, in Pocahontas case, bearing a son to a conqueror, Rowlett argues that they gave their
bodies to the conquering culture. She also argues that both stories depict the women voluntarily
committing their actions against her people and for the conquering society. Both of the women
converted to the conquerors religion before she married into this other culture. This conversion
can be seen as aspect of domestication by the conqueror. Furthermore, when Pocahontas was
baptized, she was christened Rebecca, even giving up her original name from her own culture.
Rowlett argues that she seen as better because she no longer possessed her name from her
original culture that the conquering culture deemed lower. One last points of Rowletts argument
in this essay is that the bodies of the two women were colonized because their wombs were
colonized. When a child was born to these women, it belonged to the conquering culture, which
meant that the mothers ethnicity and identity had been lost in the process.
I thought that Rowletts argument of the similarities between the two women in these
stories brings up a good point. It is interesting to see how indigenous women act in the face of a
conquering group of people. Although all the facts in Disneys Pocahontas may not be 100%
accurate, her general attitude and feelings seem to be on point. I have grown up watching Disney
movies and it is eye-opening to see the faults in some of the stories I remember from my
childhood. One aspect of Rowletts argument that did not seem well thought out to me was at the
very end of the piece, she threw in some random claims about Disney over fantasizing romance
between a helpless woman and a strong man. I am not saying I disagree with this claim I just
thought it was not well thought out, which in a way seemed to discredit the strong claims that
make up the rest of the piece.

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Work Cited
Rowlett, Lori L. Disneys Pocahontas and Joshuas Rahab in Postcolonial Perspective.
Culture, Entertainment, and the Bible. Aichele, George, ed. Sheffield Academic Press:
Sheffield, 2000. 66-75. Print.