1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910826776803321

Autore

Toulouse Teresa

Titolo

The captive's position : female narrative, male identity, and royal authority in colonial New England / / Teresa A. Toulouse

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2007

ISBN

0-8122-0367-4

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (234 p.)

Disciplina

305.40974090

Soggetti

Indian captivities - New England - History

Women - New England - History - 17th century

Women in literature

Indians in literature

Sex role in literature

Indians of North America - History - Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775

New England History Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-214) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- 1. Female Captivity, Royal Authority, and Male Identity in Colonial New England, 1682-1707 -- 2. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God in 1682: Mary Rowlandson's Narrative and the "Fathers' " Defense -- 3. Deference and Difference: Female Captivity and Male Ambivalence -- 4. The Uses of Female Humiliation: Judea Capta, Hannah Dustan, and Hannah Swarton in the 1690's -- 5. Hannah Dustan's Bodies: Domestic Violence and Third-Generation Male Identity in Cotton Mather's Decennium Luctuosum -- 6. Returning to Zion: Cultural Competition and John Williams's The Redeemed Captive -- 7. The Seduction of the ''Father( s)" -- Coda Dux Faemina Facta/Dux Faemina Facti -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

Why do narratives of Indian captivity emerge in New England between 1682 and 1707 and why are these texts, so centrally concerned with women's experience, supported and even written by a powerful group of Puritan ministers? In The Captive's Position, Teresa Toulouse argues for a new interpretation of the captivity narrative-one that takes into



account the profound shifts in political and social authority and legitimacy that occurred in New England at the end of the seventeenth century. While North American narratives of Indian captivity had been written before this period by French priests and other European adventurers, those stories had focused largely on Catholic conversions and martyrdoms or male strategies for survival among the Indians. In contrast, the New England texts represented a colonial Protestant woman who was separated brutally from her family but who demonstrated qualities of religious acceptance, humility, and obedience until she was eventually returned to her own community. Toulouse explores how the female captive's position came to resonate so powerfully for traditional male elites in the second and third generation of the Massachusetts colony. Threatened by ongoing wars with Indians and French as well as by a range of royal English interventions in New England political and cultural life, figures such as Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, and John Williams perceived themselves to be equally challenged by religious and social conflicts within New England. By responding to and employing popular representations of female captivity, they were enabled to express their ambivalence toward the world of their fathers and toward imperial expansion and thereby to negotiate their own complicated sense of personal and cultural identity. Examining the captivity narratives of Mary Rowlandson, Hannah Dustan, Hannah Swarton, and John Williams (who comes to stand in for the female captive), Toulouse asserts the need to read these gendered texts as cultural products that variably engage, shape, and confound colonial attitudes toward both Europe and the local scene in Massachusetts. In doing so, The Captive's Position offers a new story of the rise and breakdown of orthodox Puritan captivities and a meditation on the relationship between dreams of authority and historical change.