Mary rowlandson

• She writes A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration.

• She is a mother with children who writes for her community.

• She writes on captivity manners (after the captivate returns to her home place).

• Jeremiad: text that reminds readers of the original aim of the colony.

• She is a woman writer who writes HER story to question basic elements on her Puritan world.

• Her captivity lasted many months.

• 1675-1676: The Indian Wars: Metacom (King Philip, as the puritans called him) attacked with his tribe Lancaster (where Mary lived). She was sold into slavery to Quanopin and his 3 wives. It was a terrible moment in the relationship between Indians and whites. In May 1676 Rowlandson was released from captivity. In august Metacom was killed, so the Indian rebellion ended.

• Before being napped by Indians, she already knew how Indians were like.

• Differently from other women in the colony, or from other captive women, she was from the elites (so she was encouraged by her family to write and become a model for their community).

• (Remember: autobiographical is the most cultivated genre in America).

• She thinks that during the captivity God has been with her and has protected her.

• People who have been in captivity are heroes.

• For American people, confessing our mistakes is heroic, too. Not here > Bárcenas saying OK, I have stolen (unbelievable).

• The book has a cover of the reverend, the middle (story) from her and the end (com una contraportada o epíleg) from her husband.

• The reverend is authenticating her, proving her experience to be a memorandum of God’s dealing with her. He compares herself with all these biblical characters as a legitimation of God.

• Mary is becoming Indian (acculturation). She leaves her culture and adopts the Indian culture. > The problem is to be native and Mary GOES native (becomes too Indian).

• She was firstly interpreted as an Orthodox captivity writer, but in the last decade critics have started to see what is beyond her writing. The book is divided into removes (transllats).

• She, as a Puritan, has an idea about what the wildness was > civilization VS wildness.

• She is interested in giving us the special point (the space she was).

• She understands her captivity into an election of God (God elected her to be captured).

• People who are captive identify themselves with their capturers, so they do not want to denounce- even criticize- their captures > Stockholm (acculturation).

• The Bible is for her a Kind of Roseta Stone > thanks to the Roseta Stone, they could translate texts because this stone has the symbols. The same happens with the Bible > she finds inside the Bible everything she needs to understand the wildness that surrounds her.

Page 105: for years her book became a best-seller of orthodox narratives, but in the latest decades critics have started to read the message beyond the text.

She was not writing to tell her experience, not to enjoy us. She was writing because the only way to be published was to make an exemplary text (no matter what happened, God is with me). We can't read it realistically because she's fictionalizing about her: an innocent woman, 'happily' in her territory, and suddenly was brought into the woods with the savages.

The Book is not divided into chapters, but removes. As a puritan, she had a previous idea of what the wilderness was. The removes make us understand that she was being brought far away from the community. She was brought into the darkness and the Indian pollution. Before the 1st remove, we have an introduction about the attack: it's a terrible introduction, with shots, too much blood, people dying (an absolute Hell). It started as an action movie: with a massacre. It's providential history.

- Page 108: "It had often (...) my mind changed" it's a very human sentence where we find a contrast between what she thought before the attack and how her mind changed after the experience.

-Everybody expected her of talking about the Indians in that way: hell-hounds, merciless, wolves...

- Page 114: "I cannot but take notice of the wonderful mercy of God to me in those afflictions, in sending me a Bible". A very extraordinary fact.

- Page 110: She compares herself to king David (a well-known biblical character), so she's legitimating herself as a pure daughter of Israel (Judea capta).

-Little by little Mary Rowlandson has to face the reality of her captivity and had to use strategies to survive (the travel into the darkness is also a travel into herself).

- Pg 117: here begins her process of being native (acculturation). She changes: "filthy trash" to "sweet and savory to my taste".

- Pg 119: she asks for Indian food, which surprised them, too. The deeper she gets into the woods, the less civilized (that's the process of becoming native). Later she would have to justify it because she has to return to the community as a puritan.