Primary Work

The sovereignty and goodness of God, together with the faithfulness of his promises displayed, being a narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, commended by her, to all that desires to know the Lord's doings to, and dealings with her. ..., 1682 (known as the Narrative).

Narrative. reprint of 1953 edition. Sandwich, MA: Chapman Billies, Inc. ISBN 0-939218-20-8.

Selected Bibliography - Books

Van Der Beets, Richard. Held Captive By the Indians: Selected Narratives 1642-1836. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973.

Burke, Charles. Puritans at Bay. New York: Exposition Press, 1967.

Drimmer, Frederick, ed. Captured By the Indians. New York: Dover, 1961.

Slotkin, Richard, and James Folsom. So Dreadful a Judgment. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1978.

| Top | Selected Bibliography - Articles

Burnham, Michelle. "The Journey Between: Liminality and Dialogism in Mary White Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative." Early American Literature 28 (1993): 60-75.

Davis, Margaret H. "Mary White Rowlandson's Self-Fashioning as a Puritan Goodwife." Early American Literature 27 (1992): 49-60.

Derounian, Kathryn Zabelle. "The Publication, Promotion, and Distribution of Mary Rowlandson's Indian Captivity Narrative in the Seventeenth Century." Early American Literature 23 (1988): 239-261.

--- "The Indian Captivity Narratives of Mary Rowlandson and Olive Oatman: Continuity, Evolution, and Exploitation of a Literary Discourse" Studies in Literary Imagination 27 (1994): 33-46.

Dietrich, Deborah J. "Mary Rowlandson's Great Declension." Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 24 (1995): 427-439.

Faery, Rebecca Blevins. "Mary Rowlandson (1637-1711)." Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 12 (1995): 121-132.

Greene, David L. "New Light on Mary Rowlandson." Early American Literature 20 (1985): 24-38.

Henwood, Dawn. "Mary Rowlandson and the Psalms: The Textuality of Survival." Early American Literature 32 (1997): 169-186.

Howe, Susan. The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History. Hanover: UP of New England,

Hwang, Hoon Sung. "The Puritan Ideology of Wilderness Projected on American Nature" The Journal of English Language and Literature 42 (1996): 179-196.

Kestler, Frances Roe. "Mary White Rowlandson: The Significance of Her Narrative in American Literature" Dissertation Abstracts International 43 (1983): 3318A-3319A.

Lamb, Catherine E. "A White Bird Flying Straight Down." Private Voices, Public Lives: Women Speak on the Literary Life Ed. Nancy Owen Nelson. Denton: U of North Texas P, (1995): 86-98.

Logan, Lisa. "Mary Rowlandson's Captivity and the 'Place' of the Woman Subject" Early American Literature 28 (1993): 255-277.

Salisbury, Neal. "Introduction." The Sovereignty and Goodness of God By Mary Rowlandson. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997. 1-60.

Schultz, Nancy Lusignan. "'A Severe and Proud Dame She Was': Weetamoo and the Mother Superior as Female Antagonists in Captivity Narratives by Mary Rowlandson and Rebecca Reed." Literary Calvinism and Nineteenth-Century American Women Authors. Ed. Michael Schuldiner. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1997. 71-99.

Toulouse, Teresa A. "My Own Credit: Strategies of (E)Valuation in Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative." American Literature 64 (1992): 655-676.

Wesley, Marilyn C. "Moving Targets: The Travel Text in Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson." Essays in Literature 23 (1996): 42-57.

Woodard, Maureen L. "Female Captivity and the Development of Race in Three Early American Texts." Papers on Language and Literature 32 (1996): 115-146.

Zanger, Jules. "Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative as Confessional Literature: 'After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?'" American Studies in Scandinavia, Copenhagen, Denmark (1995): 142-152.

| Top | Study Questions

1. How does the Narrative demonstrate Puritan theology and thinking at work?

2. In what ways does Rowlandson use her experience to reaffirm Puritan beliefs? How does she view herself and her fellow Christians? How does she see the Indians? What do her dehumanizing descriptions of the Indians accomplish?

3. Are there any instances where she seems to waver in her faith?

4. Why does Rowlandson distrust the "praying Indians"?

5. How does she use the Bible and varied scriptural allusions in her analysis of her captivity and restoration?

6. Does her world view change at all during her eleven weeks of captivity? Why or why not?

MLA Style Citation of this Web Page:

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 1: Early American Literature to1700 - Mary Rowlandson." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. WWW URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap1/rowlandson.html (provide page date or your date of logon).