When reading Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, I thought that it would be interesting to analyze and focus on the connection that links humans and the environment. There were many connections that played a part between the two topics, one in particular stuck out to me. I noticed that Mary Rowlandson used “leaving farther my own country, and traveling into a vast and howling wilderness” (318, Rowlandson) to describe the unknown territory that the Wampanoag people were taking her to. I found this interesting because it showed that Mary considered the wilderness and unknown to be a negative thing and that she was not willing to leave the comfort and familiarity of her old town, Lancaster. She wanted to return to her town even thought she knew that it was not the same place anymore and that she had no choice but to move on, she even relates this emotion to a biblical story, “…I understood something of Lot’s wife’s temptation, when she looked back” (318, Rowlandson). Like in the Lot’s wife, Rowlandson was leaving her familiar environment and going the new wilderness that she was not familiar with and to her this was a negative and dangerous thing. Rowlandson did not think of the new territory as a good and healthy environment but rather the wilderness as dangerous and scary, especially since she was being forced to go against her own will like Lot’s wife.
Another part in Rowlandson’s narrative where she talks about the wilderness and unknown environment in a negative way was during the second remove when they Indians moved them out again and she referred to the land as “the vast and desolate wilderness” (312, Rowlandson) again. During this particular part of her story she seemed to have given up for a moment when being taken from her familiar environment. There was a point where she quotes herself, “I shall die, I shall die” (312, Rowlandson). She clearly did not think that she was going to survive the new territory and that she was going to die like the rest of her family and town. These connections stand out to me because they display the clear sense of fear and negativity that the environment plays with Mary.
You do a great job identifying several moments in her Narrative of Captivity in which Rowlandson depicts the “wilderness” in a negative light; however, do you think there are any positive attributes to the wilderness for Rowlandson, or, more specifically, are there any ways that the wilderness functions in the text besides being fearful, new, and unfamiliar territory? You might want to consider the specific genre conventions of captivity narratives as well as Rowlandson’s use of biblical typology to tell her story when thinking about the role of wilderness in her narrative.
I think that Rowlandson sees her trials through the lens of the divine, as if everything which had happened was because of God’s plan. I notice in Fifth Remove that that the English pursuers of Rowlandson’s band of Native Americans were stopped by a river from crossing to their camp. She states that this was because “we were not ready for so great a mercy as victory…” With that in mind, her suffering at the hands of the environment, whether wading though cold river water or trudging through thick swamp mud, was a necessary hardship to test her religious resolve. While it may not be much of a positive connotation, it does suggest a purpose for the environment besides negative surroundings.