Steele1 Jessica Steele English 552: Literature of the Atlantic Empire 9.27.

.2010 Class Discussion Piece Mary Rowlandson: Authority in Penmanship and Cloth

As Oroonoko and Robinson Crusoe invite questions of parental authority, A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson continues this colonial sentiment when questioning the popularity and uniqueness of women authorship. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodolas Captivity, Liberty, and Early American Consciousness observes this as trope in several canonical Puritan captivity narratives published in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (719). DerounianStodola points out the significance behind the fact, these stories were sponsored, supported, published, edited, or even actually written by such powerful ministers while transcribed in the pen of a female author in a subservient position(719). Throughout the narrative, this position is reinforced, not only in Rowlandsons position as a captive, however, her dependency on her husband and God as her savoir is continuously pulled into the readers frame of mind as she requests for word of her husband. Edited and sponsored by theological traditionalists including Joseph Rowlandson, Rowlandsons first husband, critic Derounian-Stodola argues her editors favored a particular kind of colonial sovereignty representing a cultural identification crisis for certain second- and third-generation New England elite ministers following the Restoration in 1660 (721). In other words, certain critics asserted Rowlandson attempts to gain literal and authorial control represented an unstable sociopolitical authority and legitimacy between Old England and New England and within New England itself( Derounian-Stodola 720). Derounian-Stodola continues, the very ambivalence of Rowlandsons text towards male (fatherly) authority reflects the ministers simultaneous desire for, and anxiety about, separating from first-generation New England powerbrokers (720). While the grasp for authority over and unstable environment is evident in Rownlandsons authorship, C a p t i v i t y , L i b e r t y , a n d E a r l y A m e r i c a n C o n s c i o u s n e s s s examination of authority behind the voice of female authorship is perhaps not solely a New England theme as the piece asserts. Instead, I agree with the critical trend in viewing Rowlandson as a representative of the loyalty to the fathers in the face of physical, spiritual, and cultural dislocations( Derounian-Stodola 720-21). As a stratagem for overcoming fears of the wilderness and reinforcing faith, Rowlandsons subservience symbolizes a general colonial consciousness (Rowlandson ix). Rowlandson sets herself as an example by positioning God as a standard outside of

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herself and as a Puritan captive is able to resist forces that she sees as Satanic(Rowlandson ix). Perhaps even more so then the previous texts of Oroonoko and Robinson Crusoe, Rowlandsons preoccupation with clothing is evident. Throughout the narrative, the author relates the nakedness or dress of both colonists and her captors a precarious, yet, according to critics, common theme, for colonial captives in survival mode. While her narrative is brief in descriptive language, it is telling in what it reveals outside of a religious context. Departing from the normal context of the malicious and revengeful spirit of the Barbarian Heathen, Rowlandson strays to relate Indian clothing customs and trade in complex detail (Rowlandson 5). Wendy Lucas Castro examines the transformative power of clothing as a commonality in the early American captivity narrative in Clothing and Identity in Colonial Captivity Narratives. Castro suggests clothing acted as a method of civilizing "savages" and more frighteningly as a way to degenerate the already "civilized" (122). Describing the moment of capture and acts of de-clothing, Castros universal account is chilling similar to Rowlandsons: It happened quite quickly, often in the early morning hours Some colonists were killed right away, usually adult men; others were bound and made to watch as their houses were looted and often set on fire. The bound captives were then loaded with their own belongings, now Indian booty, and marched to an Indian encampment. This was most often the first "remove," with many more to follow, and slow-moving or injured captives were killed along the way. Despite the chaos, violence, and fear surrounding these initial moments of contact, many captivity narrative writers made a point of giving a physical description of their captors, including their appearance, which was most often "naked". (Castro 109) As several Houses were burning, and the smoke ascending to Heaven, Rowlandson similarly watches the natives ascend upon her town and one by one observes as they chopped into the Head of a man and is then strippd naked(Rowlandson 11). The reader observes the scene enacted repeatedly, as the first, the natives have not only taken a colonist and stripped him naked but split open his Bowels physically rendering the mans innermost being naked (Rowlandson 10). While one could relate the fear of nakedness to the awareness of Adam and Eves sinfulness, as Castro relates, clothing held a deeper connection to their identity of a civilized society (Castro 116). For Rowlandson, and the colonial perspective as a whole, the act of being undressed represented a removal from society as well as defenselessness from the elements and their captors (Castro 114). Therefore, nakedness came to symbolize a a precursor to adoption or death (Castro 107).

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Particularly interesting is the passage in which Rowlandson describes the natives dress in English attire before their dance. She describes her captor, dressed in his Holland Shirt, with great Laces sewed at the tail of it; he had his silver Buttons, his white Stockings(Rowlandson 39). Castor provides the historical uncertainty which transcended the colonists upon seeing natives in English dress when the English had a difficult time distinguishing who was an enemy Indian, who was a Christian Indian disguised in Indian dress to fight more effectively for the English, and who was an Indian ally (Castor 113). Rowlandson herself, her "heart skipped within [her] thinking [the Indians] had been English men at the first sight of them, for they were dressed in English apparel, with hats, white neckclothes, and sashes about their waists, and ribbons upon their shoulders(Cast 125). Mary Rowlandson, however, appears to associate the act of dress more with an act of cultural identity than an act of warfare, as she immediate questions their humanity upon observing their dress, as she asks If I should go home?(Rowlandson 39). As Rowlandson is removed further and further from society, the reader observes complexities in her observance of the customs of the natives and, in relation, her own identity. After observing the natives in English attire, as well as observing other moments of humanity, Rowlandson has trouble reconciling [the natives] civilized and humane behavior with her construction of them as brutes(Rowlandson xi). Castro observes this struggle to retain separate identity in cultural difference of clothing and customs: Could Englishmen and -women retain their civilized identity while living as captives among the Indians stripped of their homes and their clothing, or would dress (or lack thereof) prove too powerful an agent in the forests of North America? In the darkness of night, bound, alongside their captors and uncertain of their fate, the captives must have asked themselves the same question. (Castro 123-24) Therefore, in Rowlandson and other captivity narratives, there was not only a preoccupation with nakedness, but also a preoccupation with adoption native clothing, and, therefore, adoption of identity. Castro relates the danger in native dress as, the potential for degeneration the mutability of identity and the transformative power of clothes as an agent as well as a badge (Castro 119). Clearly, clothing stood as a signifier of the self for Rowlandson and for the American perspective.
Points of Discussion: Critic Derounian-Stodola describes an evolving theoretical approach based on the inclusion of any and all narratives of captivity and confinement in a field called Captivity Narrative Studies (Derounian-Stodola 715-24). She relates, Such accounts of captors and captives consist not only of Indian captivity narratives but also slave narratives, spiritual autobiographies, Barbary captivity narratives, hostage accounts, POW stories, Indian boarding school autobiographies, convent captivity narratives, and even UFO abduction stories(Derounian-Stodola 715-24). How would we look at Rowlandson

Steele4 from this approach and what might be lost/gained? Specifically in terms of authority and clothing? Critic Jane Tompkins states, Beyond the question of how Rowlandson interprets events is the questions of what she saw in the first place and what she considered worth reporting (Tompkins 111). Explain the significance of this in moments of the narrative perhaps in relation to clothing. Tompkins asserts, Captivity narratives made a poor source of evidence for the nature of European-Indian relations in early New England because they were so relentlessly pietistic (Tompkins 113). Would you agree? Nan Goodman writes on the captivity narrative as a paradigm of exchange in which the captives engage in a lively cultural exchange with what has come to be known as the ethnographic other(Goodman 1). How does this relate to Rowlandson and her depiction of clothing in the narrative? See attached for two pictures Castro includes in Clothing and Identity in Colonial Captivity Narratives what representations were drawn from the artists?

Works Cited
Castro, Wendy Lucas. "Clothing and Identity in Colonial Captivity Narratives." Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6.1 (2008): 104-136. Web. 28 Sep 2010. <http://0muse.jhu.edu.library.lausys.georgetown.edu/journals/early_american_studies_an_interdisciplinary_journal/v006/6.1 castro.html>. Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle. "Captivity, Liberty, and Early American Consciousness." Early American Literature 43.3 (2008): 715-24. Web. 25 Sep 2010. Goodman, Nan. "Money Answers All Things: Rethinking Economic and Cultural Exchange in the Captivity Narrative of Mary Rowlandson."American Literary History 22.1 (2010): 1-25. Web. 28 Sep 2010. <http://0alh.oxfordjournals.org.library.lausys.georgetown.edu/content/22/1/1.full> Rowlandson, Mary. "A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson." Colonial American Travel Narratives. 1994. Wendy Martin. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Print. Rowlandson, Mary. "A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson." Colonial American Travel Narratives. 1994. Wendy Martin. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Print. Tompkins, Jane. "Indians." Critical Inquiry 13.1 (1986): 101-19. Web. 25 Sep 2010. <http://0www.jstor.org.library.lausys.georgetown.edu/stable/1343557>.