Mary Rowlandson’s journey of
captivity reads through her eyes as a challenge to remain devoted to God, even
when driven to the limits of her faith. Rowlandson’s home, the Massachusets Bay
Colony, was itself established on the Puritans’ religious quest to distance
themselves from the wickedness which they believed existed in the wilderness.
Its inhabitants, the Amerindians, were to Rowlandson and her community the
incarnations of evil itself.
Early in
her capture, Rowlandson makes clear her judgments on the practices of her
captors. During the First Remove, Rowlandson remarks, “Oh the roaring, and
singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which
made the place a lively resemblance of hell.” As a prisoner of these devils in
her hellish environment, Rowlandson engages herself by preserving her religious
conviction. As a Puritan, Rowlandson must come to terms with her belief that
God determines whose lives to save, and in the Third Remove, she contemplates
the weight of her past sins:
“I then remembered how careless I had
been of God's holy time; how many Sabbaths I had lost and misspent, and how
evilly I had walked in God's sight; which lay so close unto my spirit, that it
was easy for me to see how righteous it was with God to cut off the thread of
my life and cast me out of His presence forever. Yet the Lord still showed
mercy to me, and upheld me; and as He wounded me with one hand, so he healed me
with the other.”'
Though she believes God has chosen
to save her, Rowlandson struggles with accepting the death of her daughter,
Sarah. For her, this means coming to terms with her belief that God chose not
to save her child. Buried by the Amerindians deep in the woods, Rowlandson
laments her daughters ruined fate in the Third Remove, though she is unable to
change the will that God has made apparent. “There I left that child in the
wilderness, and must commit it, and myself also in this wilderness condition,
to Him who is above all.” The predetermined will of God often troubles
Rowlandson, though ultimately she must come to accept the events in her life as
such.
Rowlandson’s most difficult struggle is enduring
the life in captivity which she believes God has chosen for her. Though
occasionally the Amerindians show her small gestures of kindness, Rowlandson
attributes these blessings to God’s grace and not to the nature of her captors,
who she sees as savages.
“I have been in the midst of those roaring
lions, and savage bears, that feared neither God, nor man, nor the devil, by
night and day, alone and in company, sleeping all sorts together, and yet not
one of them ever offered me the least abuse of unchastity to me, in word or
action. Though some are ready to say I speak it for my own credit; but I speak
it in the presence of God, and to His Glory. God's power is as great now, and
as sufficient to save, as when He preserved Daniel in the lion's den; or the
three children in the fiery furnace.”
As her period in captivity continues, Rowlandson
begins to hope that God has a plan formulated for her, even if the severe
conditions are a part of it. Through her faith, Rowlandson is able to survive
in the belief that her God chooses to save her.
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