A Narrative of the Captivity, Suffering, and Removes, of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson Essay
Mary Rowlandson’s tale sheds much light on how Puritans not only viewed the Native American, but also how they viewed themselves: God’s chosen people. Through her grueling trials and tribulations, she uses everything at her disposal to frame it all as the work and providence of God. Even the most trivial thing contributes to her epic self-comparison of the Biblical figure Job as she strives to remain pious and in good faith with the Lord. Her piece of literature would go on to not only demonstrate the piety of a ‘true’ Puritan woman, but also the violent acts of the Native Americans ‘heathens’.
Rowlandson does an amazing, if not a bit gratuitous, job of integrating a quote from the Bible after every breath. She constantly refers her struggles to those of Biblical importance; especially that of the Biblical figure Job. This is integral to how not only Rowlandson sees herself, but how Puritans see themselves compared to others, in this case the Natives. In the Bible, Job is shown to be a good, family man that is well off only to be attacked by Satan. He experiences terrible things that include losing his offspring, failing health, all that which he owns, and essentially anything he holds dear. This greatly mirrors the events that Rowlandson and the other colonists faced during and after the attack by the Natives; Rowlandson narrates that “[a]ll was gone, [her] husband gone,[her] children gone, [her] relations and friends gone, [her] house and home, and all [of her] comforts within door and without” (p. 12). Not only does this solidify their personal view of themselves and the religious and righteous, but also framed the Natives as Satan, or being sent by Satan, to torment them as he had Job with the permission from God.
Rather than praying exclusively for God to save them, Rowlandson, and many other Puritans, seemed to understand that t...