Mary Rowlandson and the Removes of Writing

Abstract

The significance of a text unfolds differently as it removes across time. This difference seems particularly noticeable in Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, 1 a work that has long been considered a core text in American literary studies. Its status firml y established, Rowlandson 's text has evoked a range of critical responses. In a 1973 article, David Minter comments on how Rowlandson 's captivity account successfully synthesizes private emotions and Puritan ideology. In the 1990s, however, critical analyses informed by gender studies and cultural theory generated another kind of interpretation of Rowlandson's narrative. For example, Mitchell Robert Breitwieser examines Rowlandson 's break with Puritan doctrine and the discrepancy between her religious beliefs and her traumatized condition. Tara Fitzpatrick explores the contradiction between Rowlandson's sense of Puritan election and her cultural adaptation to Indian ways during captivity. Michelle Burnham pays particular attention to the rhetoric of American exceptionalism and how Rowlandson's text offers an intercultural account that reveals the mascu-