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Studies in Religion and Culture
Captured by Texts: Puritan to Postmodern Images of Indian Captivity
How has the American Indian captivity narrative been used to explain the human condition? How does it serve to interpret the meaning of pain and suffering, gender, and the primitive-civilized dichotomy? In Captured by Texts, Gary L. Ebersole explores these questions, showing that our fictional interpretation of captivity can construct a world of meaning that liberates us in the face of adversity, pain, and loss of identity.
- GenresNonfiction
322 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1995
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February 15, 2016This was a very readable yet deeply scholarly analysis of captivity narratives and the way they functioned in American literature over hundreds of years.
Citing Mary Rowlandson's foundational narrative, Ebersole shows how Rowlandson interpreted her experience-in-the-moment through the lens of Biblical texts (others have argued that these were inserted as later interpretive frames). He cites this as an example of how Puritans understood the world. Cotton Mather re-told the story of a captive who recalled one of Mather's sermons on the value of prayer, asked leave to pray just before his captors killed him, and was then spared, which the captive attributed to the correctness of Mathers' injunction to pray. In relating this, Ebersole argues, Mather shows that "every remarkable instance of God's working in New England was taken to be a part of an unfolding text that he and the community of Saints were under a covenantal obligation to read and spell" (77).
Ebersole also shows how Puritans read very differently from the way we do today: "Puritans demonstrated an understanding that all such texts -- and the potential meanings they carried -- were woven from relations drawn with other texts and finally to the Bible as the definitive metatext. As a result, Puritans often read at a much slower pace than we do today, as readers were 'enjoyned' to pause over every scene in a narrative -- to observe, to ponder, to mentally 'compose the place,' then to enter imaginatively into the scene in order to be instructed. In devotional reading, every scene was to be read in relation to one's own life and spiritual condition," so that, when the reader experienced trials in future, s/he could call on the examples provided in the narrative.
By the mid-1750s, when John Norton's Redeemed Captive was published, reading practices had changed. While the title page contains scriptural references, there is no reference to divine providence at work. The title page promises the tale will be "entertaining and affecting," appealing to sentimental reading practices and expectations, and promises to provide historical information, military preparation and tactics, and spiritual improvement (95).
By the mid-1800s captivity narratives had become part of standard fare, such that captivity experiences were often shaped by expectations narrated in factual or fictionalized narratives. Fictional stories often borrowed scenes or entire plots from earlier stories. Often, these were in the form of "penny dreadfuls" that scholars have disdained for their cardboard characters and well-worn plots. However, as Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty has noted, "People listen to the stories not merely to learn something new (communication), but to relive, together, the stories that they already know, stories about themselves (communion). Where communication is effective, communion is evocative" (101).
By the mid-1700s, the sentimental novel and its conventions were becoming prominent. "Physiological sensibility and moral sensibility were intertwined . . . the sensorium or the human faculties . . . had been created by God precisely so that humans might be morally responsible for their behavior." (106). While the Puritans had assumed human beings are evil, this new view stressed that humans were naturally benevolent and inclined to virtue, although such moral/sensible thought had to be cultivated through reading, self-discipline, and education (107). Thus, the quality of a person's character could be understood by means of how they reacted to a given situation.
Feeling was seen as superior to reason as a guide to virtuous and moral decisions and behavior. Sympathy could be activated by imagining oneself in the situation of a character in a book, and also by contrasting one's own "happier" situation with that of the protagonist.
Such sentiment extended to the ability to respond to the "beautiful and sublime" in nature, which heroines often do even under the duress of captivity, not thinking of escape not because they have become acculturated, but because "she was so moved and taken by the remarkable sights and extraordinary experiences of captivity" (173).
John Dixon "the hero-narrator, found . . . his own condition as a captive mirrored the human condition in important ways, while his response to captivity was a model of and for living with life's vicissitudes" (174).
Captivity narratives often made use of a trope popular in 19th century literature, the innocent victim (female) or suffering child (the purity of whose death illustrated the truth that the meek will inherit the earth).
From 1750-1900, "the captive's body is not the site of divine affliction, calling the errant back to a proper covenantal relationship with God [as it had been in Puritan captivity narratives]; rather, it is a tremulous, acutely sensitive locus of feeling. This sentimental body, both male and female, is textualized; it resembles a title page that can be read by sensitive observers to disclose the outlines of a person's sad history. The [captives] . . . evoked boundless sympathy and righteous anger. Many were represented as models of perfect Christian resignation. Female captives, figures of virtue-in-distress, came to epitomize the ideal of perfect Christian resignation as they bore terrible suffering and pain without complaint, looking toward heaven" (188).
Citing Mary Rowlandson's foundational narrative, Ebersole shows how Rowlandson interpreted her experience-in-the-moment through the lens of Biblical texts (others have argued that these were inserted as later interpretive frames). He cites this as an example of how Puritans understood the world. Cotton Mather re-told the story of a captive who recalled one of Mather's sermons on the value of prayer, asked leave to pray just before his captors killed him, and was then spared, which the captive attributed to the correctness of Mathers' injunction to pray. In relating this, Ebersole argues, Mather shows that "every remarkable instance of God's working in New England was taken to be a part of an unfolding text that he and the community of Saints were under a covenantal obligation to read and spell" (77).
Ebersole also shows how Puritans read very differently from the way we do today: "Puritans demonstrated an understanding that all such texts -- and the potential meanings they carried -- were woven from relations drawn with other texts and finally to the Bible as the definitive metatext. As a result, Puritans often read at a much slower pace than we do today, as readers were 'enjoyned' to pause over every scene in a narrative -- to observe, to ponder, to mentally 'compose the place,' then to enter imaginatively into the scene in order to be instructed. In devotional reading, every scene was to be read in relation to one's own life and spiritual condition," so that, when the reader experienced trials in future, s/he could call on the examples provided in the narrative.
By the mid-1750s, when John Norton's Redeemed Captive was published, reading practices had changed. While the title page contains scriptural references, there is no reference to divine providence at work. The title page promises the tale will be "entertaining and affecting," appealing to sentimental reading practices and expectations, and promises to provide historical information, military preparation and tactics, and spiritual improvement (95).
By the mid-1800s captivity narratives had become part of standard fare, such that captivity experiences were often shaped by expectations narrated in factual or fictionalized narratives. Fictional stories often borrowed scenes or entire plots from earlier stories. Often, these were in the form of "penny dreadfuls" that scholars have disdained for their cardboard characters and well-worn plots. However, as Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty has noted, "People listen to the stories not merely to learn something new (communication), but to relive, together, the stories that they already know, stories about themselves (communion). Where communication is effective, communion is evocative" (101).
By the mid-1700s, the sentimental novel and its conventions were becoming prominent. "Physiological sensibility and moral sensibility were intertwined . . . the sensorium or the human faculties . . . had been created by God precisely so that humans might be morally responsible for their behavior." (106). While the Puritans had assumed human beings are evil, this new view stressed that humans were naturally benevolent and inclined to virtue, although such moral/sensible thought had to be cultivated through reading, self-discipline, and education (107). Thus, the quality of a person's character could be understood by means of how they reacted to a given situation.
Feeling was seen as superior to reason as a guide to virtuous and moral decisions and behavior. Sympathy could be activated by imagining oneself in the situation of a character in a book, and also by contrasting one's own "happier" situation with that of the protagonist.
Such sentiment extended to the ability to respond to the "beautiful and sublime" in nature, which heroines often do even under the duress of captivity, not thinking of escape not because they have become acculturated, but because "she was so moved and taken by the remarkable sights and extraordinary experiences of captivity" (173).
John Dixon "the hero-narrator, found . . . his own condition as a captive mirrored the human condition in important ways, while his response to captivity was a model of and for living with life's vicissitudes" (174).
Captivity narratives often made use of a trope popular in 19th century literature, the innocent victim (female) or suffering child (the purity of whose death illustrated the truth that the meek will inherit the earth).
From 1750-1900, "the captive's body is not the site of divine affliction, calling the errant back to a proper covenantal relationship with God [as it had been in Puritan captivity narratives]; rather, it is a tremulous, acutely sensitive locus of feeling. This sentimental body, both male and female, is textualized; it resembles a title page that can be read by sensitive observers to disclose the outlines of a person's sad history. The [captives] . . . evoked boundless sympathy and righteous anger. Many were represented as models of perfect Christian resignation. Female captives, figures of virtue-in-distress, came to epitomize the ideal of perfect Christian resignation as they bore terrible suffering and pain without complaint, looking toward heaven" (188).
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