Beginning to 1820: Short Answer Quiz

Mary Rowlandson, From A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson


  1. Throughout her narrative, Rowlandson uses the word “redeemed” in at least three different ways. Discuss the different definitions and meanings for this word in terms of religion, slavery, and commerce.

  1. The fact that Rowlandson proceeds from initial grief and despair to eventually being able to earn money for herself through industry and thrift shows a tremendous amount of versatility and self-reliance. Give an account of Rowlandson’s adaptation to Native life, captivity, and near-starvation that also describes her successes for herself and her family.

  1. [This question refers to sections of the Narrative that are in the full edition only.] Rowlandson is sometimes willing to treat the Indians as people, but often hostile to the idea that God’s providence should apply to them: “And here I cannot but take notice of the strange providence of God in preserving the heathen… on that very day came the English army after them to this river, and saw the smoke of their wigwams, and yet this river put a stop to them. God did not give them courage or activity to go over after us. We were not ready for so great a mercy as victory and deliverance” (244 [full ed.]). Describe Rowlandson’s mixed feelings about this missed chance at early freedom and the “strange” quality of providence as it applies to the “heathen.”

  1. [This question refers to sections of the Narrative that are in the full edition only.] Rowlandson’s narrative constantly refers to biblical passages to illustrate the events of her captivity. But she shows no distinction between references that apply to New Englanders and those that describe events that happen to the Indians. For example: “And then, like Jehu, they marched on furiously, with their old and with their young: some carried their old decrepit mothers, some carried one, and some another” (243 [full ed.]). Why do you think Rowlandson refers to the Bible so often, and what effect does her indiscriminate use of these references for the actions of friend and foe alike have on that use?

  1. Rowlandson experiences true hunger for the first time during her captivity; at one point, she steals a softened horse hoof from an Indian child in her desperation. Often, she describes her wonder at the sumptuous taste of the basest materials, and her details are most elaborate concerning food in an otherwise sparsely detailed narrative. Once she has been delivered, she looks back on the Indians and comments that “Though many times they would eat that, that a hog or a dog would hardly touch; yet by that God strengthened them to be a scourge to his people” (262 [full ed.] 129 [shorter ed.]). Consider that King Philip’s War was fought largely because the Wampanoags were starving, having been driven out of fertile farmland by the Puritan settlers, and then describe Rowlandson’s fascination with food: has her hunger driven her to sympathize with the starving Indians? What kind of perspective has it allowed her?



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