The Emergence of the American Frontier Hero 1682-1826: Gender, Action, and Emotion (American Literature Readings in the 21st Century)

Series Editor: Linda Wagner-Martin American Literature Readings in the 21st Century publishes works by contemporary cri...

Author: Denise Mary MacNeil

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Series Editor: Linda Wagner-Martin American Literature Readings in the 21st Century publishes works by contemporary critics that help shape critical opinion regarding literature of the nineteenth and twentieth century in the United States. Published by Palgrave Macmillan: Freak Shows in Modern American Imagination: Constructing the Damaged Body from Willa Cather to Truman Capote By Thomas Fahy Arab American Literary Fictions, Cultures, and Politics By Steven Salaita Women & Race in Contemporary U.S. Writing: From Faulkner to Morrison By Kelly Lynch Reames American Political Poetry in the 21st Century By Michael Dowdy Science and Technology in the Age of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and James: Thinking and Writing Electricity By Sam Halliday F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Racial Angles and the Business of Literary Greatness By Michael Nowlin Sex, Race, and Family in Contemporary American Short Stories By Melissa Bostrom Democracy in Contemporary U.S. Women’s Poetry By Nicky Marsh James Merrill and W.H. Auden: Homosexuality and Poetic Influence By Piotr K. Gwiazda Contemporary U.S. Latino/a Literary Criticism Edited by Lyn Di Iorio Sandín and Richard Perez The Hero in Contemporary American Fiction: The Works of Saul Bellow and Don DeLillo By Stephanie S. Halldorson Race and Identity in Hemingway’s Fiction By Amy L. Strong Edith Wharton and the Conversations of Literary Modernism By Jennifer Haytock

10.1057/9780230103993 - The Emergence of the American Frontier Hero 1682-1826, Denise Mary MacNeil

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-14

A MERICAN LITERATURE R EADINGS IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The Anti-Hero in the American Novel: From Joseph Heller to Kurt Vonnegut By David Simmons

The American Landscape in the Poetry of Frost, Bishop, and Ashbery: The House Abandoned By Marit J. MacArthur Narrating Class in American Fiction By William Dow The Culture of Soft Work: Labor, Gender, and Race in Postmodern American Narrative By Heather J. Hicks Cormac McCarthy: American Canticles By Kenneth Lincoln Elizabeth Spencer’s Complicated Cartographies: Reimagining Home, the South, and Southern Literary Production By Catherine Seltzer The Emergence of the American Frontier Hero 1682–1826: Gender, Action, and Emotion By Denise Mary MacNeil



Indians, Environment, and Identity on the Borders of American Literature: From Faulkner and Morrison to Walker and Silko By Lindsey Claire Smith

Gender, Action, and Emotion

Denise Mary MacNeil



T E   A F H –

THE EMERGENCE OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER HERO

1682–1826

Copyright © Denise Mary MacNeil, 2009. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–62150–3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.



All rights reserved.



In memory of Anna-Louise MacNeil



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Acknowledgments

ix

1. The American Frontier Hero in Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration

1

2. Mythological Roots of the American Frontier Hero

15

3. Mary Rowlandson, Puritan Hero

39

4. Mothering the Adamic Hero

63

5. Transcending Gendered English American Social Positions: Gender and Racial Multiplicity in The Female American; or, the Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield

83

6. Dancing between Ferocity and Delicacy in Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown

101

7. Reconstituting the American Frontier Hero through James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo in The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757

133

8. Mary Rowlandson in Jeans: The John Ford/John Wayne Film The Searchers and the Mary Rowlandson Archetype

157

Notes

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Works Cited

209

Index

215

Figure 8.1 Relationship of the American Frontier Hero to the “Threshold of Adventure” and the Adventure Cycle (Campbell 245–246)

159



C   




Many people have helped and encouraged me in the writing of this book. Although most are unnamed here, my thanks go to all of them, including the many colleagues who read versions of this manuscript, or parts of it. I thank Luciana Cabral Pereira for her meticulous, rigorous, and thoughtful reading of the final manuscript and her comments on the same. I am grateful for Bob Hudspeth’s compassionate mentoring and cheerful, academically rigorous guidance through the many years it took me to develop this project. I am grateful to the University of Redlands for supporting me in this undertaking. I thank Linda Wagner-Martin for seeing value in my work and the many people working for and with Palgrave MacMillan for making the publication of this book possible. I thank my large and wonderful family for their continuous support and encouragement, especially my aunt Mary Catherine MacNeil for her unfailingly steadfast confidence in my ability to complete this task. My deepest thanks go to my husband Gene Peters, my son Winfred MacNeil, and my parents Louise Faria and Norman MacNeil—who make my work possible. Line editing of the book was performed by Luciana Cabral Pereira. The cover image is from “The Life and Adventures of a Female Soldier,” Thomas’s New-England almanack; or, The Massachusetts calendar, for the year of our Lord Christ, 1775 (Massachusetts-Bay: Boston: Printed and sold by Isaiah Thomas, at his printing-office, the south-corner of Marshall’s-Lane, near the Mill-Bridge) and is used here courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. Some material in this book appeared in a different version in “Mary Rowlandson and the Foundational Mythology of the American Frontier Hero,” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 34(8): 625–653 (December 2005). Some material in chapter 5 appeared in a different version in “Developing an Early American Representation of the Heroic in The Female American; or, the Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield,” in Success and Failure, edited by Anthony Barker, David Callahan, and Maria Aline Ferreira (Aveiro, Portugal: University of Aveiro, 2009). The author photograph is by Gene L. Peters.



A      




1

The American Frontier Hero in Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration

T W W  C M “Standing amazed, with the blood running down to our heels . . .” (Rowlandson 4). Thus Mary Rowlandson describes her emotional state in the opening scene of The Soveraignty & Goodness of God, Together, with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed; Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, relating the February 1676 battle between Algonquians and Puritans in Lancaster, Massachusetts.1 While we may no longer be familiar with her text outside of academic circles, Rowlandson’s Narrative was once the most popular and compelling story in the Americas, one that riveted the populace’s attention. Copies of her book were passed from person to person and literally read to shreds. Rowlandson’s tale was so popular that her story quickly entered the body of common knowledge of her contemporaries. Even those who hadn’t read her Narrative (or had it read to them, as was a common practice) knew her adventures by hearsay. The mention of her name was all it took to evoke her tale. And, this name-recognition persisted for approximately one hundred and fifty years, even as the population increased to approximately ten times its levels in 1682, when the first edition of the Narrative was published.2 Although we no longer instantly recognize her name or recall her tale, Rowlandson and her Narrative still affect us, our literature, and our culture today. Rowlandson’s Narrative chronicles her experiences as a prisoner of war in 1676, when she was held by Algonquian forces, as part of Metacom’s (King Philip’s) War between English3 settlers in southern New England and Native Americans of that region. During approximately



CH A P T ER

EMERGENCE OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER HERO

three months of captivity in the late winter and early spring, Rowlandson lived with a small band of Algonquians as they fled from British troops. Her Narrative presents many details of her imprisonment by the Algonquians, describing her travels with them through the forests of Massachusetts, as well as her social and economic interactions with her captors. With them, she experiences pursuit by the British, forced marches, river fordings, the preparations for and aftermaths of battles, near starvation, and freezing cold. She relates her changing thoughts and feelings, including her confusion about her captors, who repeatedly do her kindnesses, show her respect, ask her advice, and engage with her in bargains and barters. Eventually, she negotiates her own ransom and release. Once free, she and her husband immediately set out to locate and retrieve their two remaining children, twelve-year-old Joseph and nine-year-old Mary, who had also been captured. Many scholars have read, analyzed, and discussed Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative, both identifying and responding to its cultural and literary importance. It is the first prose bestseller written in the Americas. In addition, Rowlandson’s work has been identified as the founding text in the first American literary genre: the captivity narrative. This study takes part in that discussion by looking at the nature and traits of the hero as it is depicted by Rowlandson. This analysis identifies another first in Rowlandson’s Narrative, demonstrating that it is the foundational text in the evolution of an additional American cultural and literary tradition: that of the frontier hero. This character type has been seen as a hyper-male icon that emerged from literary and cultural traditions of male characters in the early nineteenth century (such as James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking or Natty Bumppo).4 However, a combination of qualities in Rowlandson’s Narrative, along with its popularity, makes it a primary source of this uniquely American frontier hero. Rowlandson originates this figure as a seventeenth-century heroine. This heroine shifts gender in later literary works, becoming the frontier hero familiar to us in the works of Cooper, Zane Grey, and many others.5 The evolution of this hero can be traced through the course of American literature by identifying character elements that have become attributes of the stereotypically American frontier hero, as he appears in later fictional works. Still, aspects of the original heroine persist, even as the hero appears to take on an independent life of his own. Within the realm of gender-regulated frontier, the inability of the hero to maintain the integration of traits inherited from the feminine prototype is expressed as dissonance within the hero himself. This sets up challenges for the hero, reflected both in his external environment and in the social and cultural worlds around him. While some of these later works contest the feminine source of these characteristics, the over10.1057/9780230103993 - The Emergence of the American Frontier Hero 1682-1826, Denise Mary MacNeil


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all result of the evolutionary process is the reaffirmation of the character elements presented by Rowlandson (and embraced by her culture) as a source of the figure of the American frontier hero. Rowlandson serves as the primary source of this highly masculine stereotype through a series of steps that fuse the Puritan, female theocratic subject with that which is seen as “Indian” by her seventeenth-century cultural community. Although she is surprised and sometimes even appalled by it, the Rowlandson heroine integrates Native American perspectives, traits, and skills into her persona and actions. For example, she talks about her adjustment to the Algonquian diet, even to the point of enjoying eating a deer fetus. She reports that “As we went along they killed a Deer, with a young one in her, they gave me a piece of the Fawn, and it was so young and tender, that one might eat the bones as well as the flesh, and yet I thought it very good” (41).6 Still, Rowlandson’s relinquishing English behavior under captivity was not unusual. In order to survive, adaptive behavior was necessary for many, if not all, captives during this period.7 The difference for Rowlandson is her handling of her experiences once she has “come in” (as the Puritans called it) from the wilderness and is reestablished within the Puritan social-political-religious world. When she returns to the Puritan theocracy, she does not apologize, make excuses, or atone for her a-Puritan behavior and actions. Instead, she contextualizes her captivity as an extension of biblical scriptures and her behavior as biblically authorized. This imbeds culturally Indian actions and solutions to difficulties within the religiously feminine, in a context of feminine submission to Puritan, masculinized, theocratic political power. This process creates the route for these elements into the Puritan cultural mainstream. The result is development of a paradigm for integration of wilderness survival traits, specific to the requirements of the American continent, into the developing European American culture. Because the resulting frontier hero is specific to the American wilderness experience, in this book I refer to it as the American frontier hero. Cultural influence of this magnitude is only possible if the work in question is able to penetrate and saturate its cultural world. So before we look at how Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative achieves this Native American-feminine-Puritan fusion, we’ll take a look at the reception that publication of the Narrative received.

T F A B S The Narrative was first published in1682 in Boston. It was an instant sensation. Second and third editions quickly followed, published in the 10.1057/9780230103993 - The Emergence of the American Frontier Hero 1682-1826, Denise Mary MacNeil


THE AMERICAN FRONTIER HERO


same year in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then a fourth edition was released, published in London, England, also in 1682. While we might be used to reprintings and republications of this sort for twentiethfirst-century best sellers, where commodification, sophisticated marketing, and engineered distribution systems make flash-saturation possible, what happened with Rowlandson’s Narrative was unusual in the seventeenth century. Not only was marketing as we think of it nonexistent, the printing process was cumbersome, slow, and labor intensive; supplies were not always available; and disposable income and leisure for pleasure reading were in short supply. In addition, each of these four reprintings of Rowlandson’s text represents a complete republication of the text in a new edition—that is, a completely new setting of type for each page of her Narrative, each letter, punctuation mark, and word space, arranged individually in printing trays by hand. A variety of different standards for measuring a text’s popularity attest to the strong early publication performance of Rowlandson’s Narrative. Mott identifies Rowlandson as “the first American author to write a prose best seller,” with sales of her work exceeding 1,000 copies (Mott 20, 303). To identify a work as a best seller, Mott posits a sale equivalent to 1 percent of the colonial or U.S. population in the decade of initial publication of the work (7).8 Derounian elaborates on the early publishing history of Rowlandson’s text, delineating the first six editions of the Narrative, appearing in 1682 (four editions), 1720, and 1770. The four editions appearing in 1682, the year of initial publication, likely had total sales between 1,200 and 8,000 copies, in line with Mott’s definition of sales equivalent to at least 1 percent of the population (Derounian, “The Publication,” 247–249).9 Hall identifies “steady sellers” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as “books that went through five or more editions in New England in a period of at least fifty years” (29 fn. 80). Rowlandson’s work also fits this definition, demonstrating strong cultural infiltration: “A late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century reader could see Rowlandson’s name and fill in the substance of her testimony without actually having to read the words in which she told it” (Armstrong and Tennenhouse 392). In assessing Rowlandson’s popularity, we need to take into account that during the colonial period one copy of a book would be passed from person to person until it was literally read to shreds. Thus the numbers of readers of a book far exceeded the number of copies printed. Several critics suggest that Rowlandson’s text experienced this type of reading practice. Burnham calls Rowlandson’s text “one of the most fascinating and popular works of Puritan culture” and states that “[t]he extraordinary popularity of Mary Rowlandson’s



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narrative, and the fact that no first edition survives simply because it was literally read into decay and oblivion, points to a link between her experience and a cultural fascination with it” (“The Journey” 65, 72). Armstrong and Tennenhouse observe: “If first editions of many of these accounts [of captivity] are extremely rare or even nonexistent (as in the case of Rowlandson’s), it is no doubt because they passed through so many hands; one can assume that the readership was much larger than publication history indicates” (393). VanDerBeets states, “First editions [of captivity narratives] are rare today because they were quite literally read to pieces” (548). This means that publication numbers seriously underestimate the actual reading public of the popular seventeenth-century book. Popularity of this sort attests to robust community and cultural response, especially in the sparsely populated colonies. In addition, this response included all social strata. Derounian notes that “in New England the worthies John Cotton, Samuel Sewall, and Thomas Prince owned copies of Rowlandson’s work.” The Narrative was also enjoyed by “scores of more humble owners, readers, borrowers, stealers, and listeners (much reading at this time was out loud) [,] . . . establish[ing] and maintain[ing] its popularity in the literate and less literate marketplace where oral and printed material converged. The likely American readership of Rowlandson’s captivity was therefore large” (“The Publication” 255). Derounian also states that “the majority of [Rowlandson’s readers] would have been male” (252). This is important because it shows that Rowlandson’s text was accepted by men as well as women and that her story crossed both class and gender boundaries. Such ability to penetrate these boundaries and to percolate through Puritan—and later American—cultural and gender systems is a fundamental aspect of the cultural force that the Narrative wielded, which is crucial to its capability to launch the cultural icon of the American frontier hero. In addition to its immediate popularity, Rowlandson’s work also enjoys enduring popularity. Derounian points out that the publication pattern of the first six editions of the Narrative reveals both the immediate popularity of the novel and the new, as well as the enduring, popularity of the reliable “steady sellers with unchanging formulas.” Derounian states that the combination of these two forms of popularity results in the work’s “reach[ing] many social strata over a period of time” (“The Publication” 255). Mott states that both short-term, intense popularity and long-term, moderate popularity are equally valid measures of a work’s publishing success (9–10). Fliegelman compares the impact of Rowlandson’s Narrative on American literature





to that of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress on British literature, stating that “[t]he former narrative stands in relation to the major tradition of American Protestant fiction as the latter does to the comparable British tradition” (145). These claims are supported by the recurrent republication of Rowlandson’s text that continues to the present without significant chronological lapses. In The Voice of the Old Frontier, R.W.G. Vail catalogues editions of Rowlandson’s text from 1682 to 1934, listing thirty editions of the Narrative, appearing with great regularity during this period.10 All of these editions were published in America, with the exception of the fourth edition published in London in 1682 (Vail 169). However, it is likely that even this 1682 London edition was widely distributed in the colonies because, “since colonists . . . preferred the prestige of imported books . . ., the English quarto edition was almost certainly reimported to the Colonies” (Derounian, “The Publication” 251). Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, reprintings of Rowlandson’s Narrative have continued to be regular, indicating sustained interest in her text throughout the course of our nation’s history.11 Recent publications have also included the release of electronic media editions.12 This publication history demonstrates steady and substantial attention to Rowlandson’s Narrative, integration of her work into our culture, and the persistence of the relevance of her work to, and thus the influence of her work on, readers throughout our history.

O  S-C C B  M R The cultural influence of Rowlandson’s Narrative has been well analyzed in terms of the Narrative’s position as the founding work in the American literary genre of the captivity narrative. While Native Americans made up the majority of the captives in the American colonies (Strong 44), the emphasis of captivity narratives was on white captives. For the most part, these texts tell the story of a European or European American who is taken captive by Native Americans.13 Scholars have looked at Rowlandson’s behavior and that of later captives, usually women, appearing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels and films, exploring the helplessness of the captives. Many of these studies examine gender dynamics at work in the literary depictions or in the actual captivities themselves. Rowlandson herself demonstrates helplessness in various instances, presenting as well the gendered nature of some of her experiences and her responses to them.



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At the same time, certain qualities Rowlandson demonstrates in the context of this highly gendered experience are the very same qualities that underlie the persona of the male American frontier hero. Rowlandson demonstrates the individualism, rugged ingenuity, and resilience in the face of adversity that would become stereotypical elements of the American frontier hero. She also demonstrates three other traits that have become almost emblematic of this hero. The first of these is the willingness to engage with the American wilderness and the native peoples of America at an intimate level and in isolation from European American culture. The second is the ability to integrate aspects of Native American culture and attitudes into her personality and value system, despite dissonance between Native American elements and elements of her own culture and its value systems. The third trait is the first-person quality of the American hero, the assertion of the “I” as an authority in the face of social/ cultural authority, such that the hero remains simultaneously autonomous from and valuable to the surrounding frontier culture. These traits emerge from the altered relationship between the individual Puritan and the Puritan community expressed in the Narrative. This alteration provides the framework for the American frontier hero in specific ways: The stature of the individual vis-à-vis the community is restructured, redefining and increasing the amount of psychological distance possible between the individual and Puritan society. Gender considerations with respect to the emerging European American identity are blurred and diminished, resulting in fluctuation in gender definitions of the colonists’ experience of the New World. Finally, assertion of the authority of the individual against collective cultural authority becomes broader and more viable.14 As extensions of these changes, Rowlandson both domesticates the wilderness and makes it a home for herself, and then also returns to Puritan society as an individual with enough force (gained in part through her utilization of scripture to contextualize her story) to become reestablished within the Puritan world, despite her unrepented experiences, actions, and perspective. The first of these elements is the increase in value of the individual within Puritan society, accomplished through Rowlandson’s handling of her individualistic dealings with and attitudes toward her Algonquian captors. Although presented as an authorized spiritual text on the trials of an elect individual within the Puritan community, Rowlandson’s Narrative also presumed the individual as a distinct, identifiable person within the larger group of the Puritan community, rather than as the relatively anonymous person subservient to





the group as a whole, which had been the norm: “When the Indians invade Rowlandson’s New England household, . . . [o]ne cannot tell individual families apart, much less individual bodies.” But when the narrator is reabsorbed into her community at the end of her text, she has been “transform[ed] . . . into a separate individual.” This causes a shift in Puritan society from an “old-world community,” in which individuals are of little importance, to a “new-world community, in which the individual counts” (Armstrong and Tennenhouse 400).15 Puritan society shifted from being a society focused on the group to a society made up of individuals. The resulting increased stature of the individual becomes an important foundational characteristic of the American frontier hero. Combined with Puritan culture’s incomplete responses to important and idiosyncratic survival issues in the New World, this increased stature of the individual ultimately expresses itself in the individual who successfully defies cultural authority. In addition to the increased stature of the individual, this change also makes possible an increase in the distance between the individual and society. This increased distance allows the individual more perspective to critique society. As Fitzpatrick states, “[i]llumination in the wilderness necessarily separated the individual from her congregation and community and yielded a stark understanding of humanity’s plight not shared by ordinary people” (2).16 Burnham describes Rowlandson’s “altered subjectivity,” which Burnham asserts was “produced by the extent and duration of contact with her Algonquian captors” (“The Journey” 61), rather than by trauma or grief, as suggested by Derounian (trauma, see “Puritan Orthodoxy”) and Breitwieser (grief). Burnham examines “the fact of her [Rowlandson’s] functional adaptation–however partial–to Indian life,” and states that, “[a]s a captive, Mary Rowlandson occupies a hinge that divides one cultural subjectivity from another, for during her captivity she belongs wholly neither to the Puritan nor to the Indian cultural system” (“The Journey” 64). This position as a “hinge” between “cultural subjectivit[ies]” provides the opportunity for the American individual to stand at a distance from his/her own culture, another necessary requirement for the emergence of the American frontier hero. At the same time, this altered subjectivity defines the hero as American to all foreign observers, further accentuating the hero’s distance from her/his original European roots. These two elements, increased stature and increased distance, are combined with an important third element: Rowlandson genders the English experience in the American colonies as feminine, figuring



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that experience as one of captivity in the wilderness, isolated from English culture and social interaction. Smith-Rosenberg comments on this inversion of the original European iconography, stating that “[o]ne of the most striking aspects of Rowlandson’s narrative is that it reverses the traditional engendering of the British imperial body making that body female[, which until that time] had been an aggressive, penetrating male body” (183). This gendering is important because Rowlandson’s preservation of her feminine identity while she is among the Indians enables her identity to define the English experience in America. In addition, a large part of her identity among the Indians depends upon her conceptualization of her gender. Rowlandson defines herself as feminine, as having a fixed, orthodox position within Puritan culture, and as remaining true to the constraints of that position while in captivity. At the same time, however, her Narrative demonstrates that she is changed as a result of her experience in ways that compromise her orthodoxy and her supposedly fixed, feminine position. The influence of Rowlandson’s text stems from her insights into and solutions to problems of central concern to her community that seventeenth-century American Puritan culture did not address in a satisfactory way. Puritan society did not offer an effective alternative to Rowlandson’s actions. In addition, Rowlandson writes from within the stance of a devout Puritan woman of relatively high status within colonial Puritan society. This stance protects from censure both her critique of Puritan culture, and her relative independence from that culture. In addition, the “rupture of the internalized self into the orthodox and authorized narratives fails to mar its ‘pious scope’ in the minds of seventeenth-century readers because Rowlandson effectively masks her unorthodoxy even to herself” (Davis 59; quoted phrase is from Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 4). However, the heterodoxy is there, presenting the individuated feminine English self, successfully surviving among the Indians by using self-reliance and ingenuity, and most importantly by disregarding Puritan moral authority when necessary.17 Rowlandson further challenges gender boundaries by conquering and domesticating a wilderness that earlier male writers and adventurers had characterized as threatening and dangerous. Rowlandson succeeds in making of the wilderness itself a home. Her successful negotiation of her captivity is thus an answer to a problem of English in the wilderness that transcends gendered English social positions. Her performance of domestic chores, such as sewing, as part of her management of her wilderness experience, provides a blueprint for





homemaking in the wilderness that is a distinctive element of the American frontier hero, who stereotypically demonstrates mastery of an eclectic collection of basic domestic arts. In addition to the practical nature of her domesticity, Rowlandson displays a comfort with Indian and wilderness home life that is also a trait of the American frontier hero. Rowlandson states that often while she was with the Indians she forgot that she was not at home. She recalls her experience during the thirteenth remove, stating “I cannot but remember how many times sitting in their Wigwams, and musing on things past, I should suddenly leap and run out, as if I had been at home, forgetting where I was, and what my condition was” (34). Despite the dislocation, damage, and discomfort of her captivity, Rowlandson has made a comfortable, acceptable place for herself in the wilderness and among the Indians. She can, at least at times, relax her vigilance and enjoy the feeling of being at home with her captors.18 Finally, she asserts the authority of the individual as a challenge to Puritan culture through the rhetorical structuring of the Narrative. Although Rowlandson claims that her actions are in accordance with Puritan mores, much of her behavior with and attitudes toward her captors runs counter to Puritan cultural norms. Because of the demands of Indian captivity and the limitations of Puritan culture, which did not adequately address the captivity experience, Rowlandson, like most, if not all, captives in this period, had to be unorthodox in order to survive. At times her behavior even deviates quite obviously from Puritan standards. Yet, Rowlandson provides no apologia for her behavior. Instead, the structure of her descriptions presumes an acceptance of the events described. In this way, Rowlandson claims cultural power for the individual voice, which asserts its own analysis of events without needing to justify her conclusions by aligning her perspective with that of Puritan culture, other than in an only partially convincing and somewhat incomplete way through her scriptural references, which do not subvert (and sometimes even seem to support19) her challenge to cultural authority. The result is that Rowlandson achieves a culturally acceptable outcome, that is, the return of a pious member of the Puritan community who still defends Puritan belief, through implementation of processes that would be unacceptable to Puritan dogma and values. Yet at the same time, this alters the relationship of the individual to society in Puritan New England.20 Thus, in her Narrative Rowlandson incorporates qualities designated by her culture as the brute force and savagery of the Native American within the context of a feminine character who negotiates



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a place for herself within the spiritualized, theocratic political power of the Massachusetts Bay Puritan world. She accomplishes this through the following progression. First, she wanders the woods, surviving however she can. Then, she returns to the theocracy and does not atone for actions at odds with Puritan norms (not even for such egregious behaviors as the taking of food from the mouth of a young, white, captive child to eat herself, for example). At the same time, she explicates not only her captivity but also her actions and motivations as extensions and fulfillments of biblical scripture, contextualizing her experience within Puritan culture and effecting her reacceptance by the Puritan world. In this manner, she elaborates and articulates new insights into, and solutions to, unresolved problems of central concern to the Puritan community: how to survive Native American captivity both physically and spiritually.

S  U The immense, contemporaneous popularity of Rowlandson’s Narrative demonstrates tacit acceptance of Rowlandson’s vision. This intense, immediate popularity of Rowlandson’s text also suggests that it had cultural influence contemporaneous with its publication. The Narrative’s substantial, sustained, and long-term popularity suggests enduring cultural influence. In the case of the Narrative, this means that the Narrative addresses issues and themes that were of concern to both the Narrative’s contemporaneous and subsequent audiences. To examine the nature and extent of this influence, this analysis looks at stereotypes that are highly gendered. By their very nature, such stereotypes are prone to being offensive and problematic. My purpose in dealing with these stereotypes is precisely to respond to the problems they have caused, and continue to cause, to society and to the individuals that make up society. They are narratives (in this case narratives of the self), and as narratives, they represent the culture that produced them.21 This makes them “true” in a certain sense, whether they are fictive or real, in that they are accurate presentations of operational aspects of American literature and culture. These particulars identify them as important concepts to focus on and, in doing so, perhaps to modify their effects. For these reasons, I address these stereotypes as themselves, as concepts created by and influencing literature and culture, rather than critique their political or social propriety. An essential element of these stereotypes is that, despite the intensity of the polarization of “masculinity” and “femininity” within them, their roots blur and confuse gender boundaries. These





androgynous roots and what they both imply about and mean to American literature and culture are my primary concern. Within this framework, this study accomplishes four things: it expands the gender designation of the American frontier hero to encompass both masculine and feminine protagonists; it places the genesis of this hero in the earliest decades of large-scale American/ European contact; it identifies and examines transnational and multiracial roots of this hero; and it plots an evolutionary trajectory from this seventeenth-century inception that ties the heroic type generated in Rowlandson’s Narrative to literary woodsmen of the early nineteenth century. A couple of words are necessary here about terminology and usage. I have been using the term Algonquian to describe the group of Native Americans that captured Rowlandson. The group of Native Americans who attacked Lancaster and the smaller band of this same group with whom Rowlandson traveled consisted of members of the Narragansett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag tribes, all part of the Algonquian culture group (Salisbury 5; Strong 47, figures 2–4). Because of this, I use the term Algonquian when naming Rowlandson’s captors, as well as the generic term Native American. Rowlandson uses the term Indian. While this was in line with cultural and linguistic conventions of her time and place, Rowlandson’s use of the term Indian is significant in other ways as well. Calling her captors Indians rejects their individuality and marks their allegiance as different from her own. She sees her captors “as another nation rather than as members of a particular tribe,” and the important distinction as “not racial (red versus white) but national (Indian versus English)” (Armstrong and Tennenhouse 405, fn. 9). Her use of Indian also disavows the reality of her captors, “emphasiz[ing] the utter construction” of the Native American character, and “precisely . . . insist[ing] upon the fictionality of these characters as fantasies of racial others constructed by white[s]” (Courtney 124, fn. 3). I sometimes use the term Indian to denote the specific types of actions, definitions, and connotations that Rowlandson refers to and utilizes. In addition, similar connotations inflect the meaning of the word Indian in the novels examined later in this analysis, resulting in certain moments in the analysis where use of this term becomes necessary for the sake of clarity. Finally, in this analysis, I focus on both Rowlandson’s text and the “Preface to the Reader,” which is commonly ascribed to Increase Mather (Minter 336–337, fn. 7). All versions of Rowlandson’s Narrative published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were published in combination with the anonymous “Preface to the



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Reader” signed only by “per amicum.” (This phrase was also “ter amicam” in the second edition published by Samuel Green in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of four editions published in 1682.) I include examination of the “Preface” in my analysis of Rowlandson’s Narrative because of this publishing linkage and because the “Preface” supports the heroic characteristics of the Narrative in important ways. The “Preface” reinforces both the heroic diction that Rowlandson uses and the heroic nature of her actions, as those actions relate to Puritan society as a whole. In addition, the “Preface” encourages the Narrative’s readers to see the text as a culturally important document. So, to summarize where we are right now: Rowlandson’s text provides the primary American literary roots of this American frontier hero, placing the genesis of this hero in the earliest decades of American colonization. A combination of attributes in Rowlandson’s Narrative, along with its popularity, makes it a primary source of the uniquely American frontier hero. The evolution of this hero can be traced through the course of American literature by identifying character elements that have become characteristics of the stereotypical American hero, as they appear in later fictional works. While some of these later works contest the feminine source of these characteristics, the overall results of the evolutionary process is the reaffirmation of the set of characteristics presented by Rowlandson (and embraced by her culture) as a primary source of the figure of the American frontier hero. Where do we go from here, then? This study plots the trajectory for this early, seventeenth-century literary development of the American frontier hero beginning with its first appearance as a heroine—Mary Rowlandson as she portrays herself in her 1682 best seller. This pushes back the initial emergence of this hero approximately one hundred and fifty years, while expanding the gender designation of that hero to encompass both masculine and feminine protagonists. In later texts, this hero is transgendered. Becoming male, the hero loses its feminine designation but not its feminine characteristics. The study traces these characteristics from their presentation in Rowlandson’s text as attributes of a female character through their evolution into character traits that have become those most highly coded as masculine within American literature and culture. Steps in this evolution are marked by fictional narratives: the anonymous novel The Female American; or, the Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield (1767), Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown (1799), and The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper (1826). Finally, we look at the persistence of Rowlandson’s original prototype into the contemporary era, as seen in the links





between the prototypical heroine and the character of Ethan Edwards in the John Ford/John Wayne film The Searchers (1956). Let’s see how this happens. In the next chapter, we’ll take a look at Mary Rowlandson’s basic qualifications as a hero. To develop these claims, I begin by evaluating Rowlandson’s Narrative in light of mythological hero archetypes and cycles. This process reveals that both Rowlandson’s narrative persona and her rendition of her captivity among the Algonquian parallel the structure of the mythological hero and heroic cycle. This conformity illustrates Rowlandson’s place as a cultural hero, capable of furnishing the raw materials necessary for the advent and formation of the American frontier hero from within the Narrative. It also reinforces other, previously established conclusions asserting the cultural importance and influence of the Narrative.22



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Mythological Roots of the American Frontier Hero

T M H This chapter takes a look at the nature of the mythological hero and the benefits this hero can provide to society and culture. This analysis uses the mythological hero archetype and cycle described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.1 In this description, the hero’s adventures take the form of a journey in quest of a boon. Analyzing religious symbolism, myth, and folktales, Campbell delineated a basic “monomyth” underlying the hero story, “one composite adventure [of] the tales of a number of the world’s symbolic carriers of the destiny of Everyman” (36). The hero of this archetypal myth is typically an average man2 who undertakes, or is forced by circumstances to make, a quest. This quest is a cyclical journey (the “hero cycle”), which begins in the everyday world, moves through the supernatural realm, and finally returns to the everyday world. The hero is “a person of exceptional gifts” (37), which the hero employs to his advantage in his adventures. The hero cycle begins when the hero receives a “call to adventure” and leaves home, often reluctantly. He crosses a “threshold of adventure” into a dangerous and supernatural underworld (245). This underworld is “a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which help him (helpers).” During his stay in the underworld, the hero acquires a “boon,” which he has stolen from the gods or other supernatural beings he has encountered, or which he has won from them through either trickery or his superlative skill (one of his exceptional gifts). The hero must then return from the underworld to the world of his home. This trip may be safe or dangerous: “If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection . . .; if not, he flees and is pursued,” (246) bringing with him the boon(s) that he obtained.



CH A P T ER


When this hero returns to the everyday world with the boon(s), he becomes a benefactor to society: “The effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world” (40). The boons the hero brings with him have specific benefits, which solve crucial or previously unsolvable problems of society or humankind. These deficits range from an insufficiency “as slight as the lack of a certain golden ring,” in fairy tales, to a lack as serious as that in an “apocalyptic vision [where] the physical and spiritual life of the whole earth can be represented as fallen, or on the point of falling, into ruin” (Campbell 37). When these boons are nonmaterial, they can take the form of advantages, advancements, enlightenment, or instruction. In these cases, when the hero gets to the end of his adventure, and returns to the everyday world with the boon(s), he typically learns that “[t]he godly powers sought and dangerously won [i.e., the boon] are revealed to have been within the heart of the hero all the time . . ., only waiting to be known and rendered into life” (39). When the boons are material, they are often technological advancements. In either case, the boons further the development of human life, easing a situation that had been arduous, uncomfortable, or dangerous.3

I C   P F Perhaps the main contribution of the mythological hero is the boon it provides to society, some technique, tool, or material benefit that will aid or preserve the hero’s homeland. What boon would it be that Mary Rowlandson would provide to her community? What is it that she could bring back with her that would make her a hero? Her society’s unsolvable problem arises out of the colonists’ situation on the Puritan frontier, which demonstrates deficiencies of the sort described by Campbell in a number of ways. Puritan theology represented its adherents as sinners who were mere inches from potential eternal damnation, providing a background experience for the individual Puritan of a “spiritual life” that is potentially “falling into ruin” (Campbell 37). In addition, colonists’ perceptions of their experiences in the New World demonstrated that they were preoccupied with concerns regarding their potential physical jeopardy from interactions with new cultures and the dangers of an environment they perceived as an undomesticated wilderness. Even though native peoples and cultures were in far more jeopardy than their colonial counterparts, from both unfamiliar diseases as well as systematic



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extermination efforts, the Puritans’ experience of America destroyed their symbolic image of it as the New Jerusalem or the New Zion, in which they would be protected by God and could rebuild the home of His people. To put it another way, the crucial predicament the Puritan’s faced was the dawning realization that they must learn to live their lives forever within the mythological underworld of the American wilderness. In addition to challenges to Puritan colonial practices that were becoming evident, insufficiencies in military practicalities and theories of war affected the colonists in their interactions with the Native Americans. Both Mather and Rowlandson address these deficiencies in Puritan responses to life in the New World clearly in the discussion each presents of the failure of the English army to defend the town of Lancaster from attack by the Native Americans. The discussions of this failure are important because they illustrate the changes needed for colonials to function successfully in America. In the context of this study, these changes emphasize qualities of character inherent in the American hero who is the focus of this analysis. The actions of the English army that Mather and Rowlandson describe represent attitudes and behaviors of the English settlers that will be altered as they become a part of the American character in general and specifically that of the American frontier hero. The boon that Mary Rowlandson brings with her when she returns home from her hero’s journey will aid in this needed alteration. Mather writes that “the Narrhagansets . . . were the second time beaten up by the Forces of the united Colonies, who thereupon soon betook themselves to flight, and were all the next day pursued by the English, some overtaken and destroyed.” Yet despite this demonstration of superior force, the English army desisted at this point, when they had their enemy on the run, because their “provision [had] grown exceeding short.” Mather excuses the army’s retreat from the field because they had “hitherto followed the chase as hard as they might” (Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 1).4 In addition, Mather states that since “the design of the Indians against that place [i.e., Lancaster] being known to the English some time before,” the army withdrew from pursuit knowing that the Algonquians intended to attack Lancaster (Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 2). Even with this foreknowledge of the pending attack on Lancaster, Mather suggests that desisting is excusable: Because they had already worked hard, the army had earned the right to give up, temporarily at least, its responsibility of protecting the populace. However well this line of military logic worked in England and Europe where rules of warfare supported



MYTHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF THE FRONTIER HERO


it, it was inadequate in America, where the Native Americans took— understandably in our modern view—whatever opportunities were presented to them. Reinforcing this, Rowlandson reports that the Native Americans also commented upon the behavior of the English army: “I cannot but remember how the Indians derided the slowness, and dulness of the English Army, in its setting out” (60). Further, Logan states that Rowlandson’s “ ‘wonder’ at the incompetence of the English in pursuing their enemies is certainly a criticism. While on the surface, this interpretation reaffirms the explicit purpose of her narrative (to ‘declare the works of the Lord’), it also calls into question the actions of the Puritan authorities. Her questions interrupt the authority of their decisions, an interruption which is emphasized by its narrative placement” (271). As a modern reader of Rowlandson, it is easy to be surprised or perplexed by the army’s decision to give up when they were routing the Algonquians, and thus to allow their foe to elude them. That this is seen as the more reasonable course in our American twentieth-firstcentury perspective is an example of the integration of Native American skills into (what has become) American culture. Salisbury explains that the English, “[h]aving defeated the Pequots handily in 1637 and having intimidated Native Americans with threats and shows of force on numerous other occasions, . . . saw little reason to doubt their military superiority.” In addition, “[f]ollowing European military conventions, colonial troops marched in tight columns, expecting to meet their foes on an open field or to besiege them in a fortress.” While the colonial forces employed European field warfare tactics that were cumbersome and maladapted to the American terrain, Native Americans, on the other hand, focused on “mobility and long-distance accuracy.” Furthermore, while the English were learning that the Native Americans were easily subdued, the Native Americans were learning to be more merciless in their warfare, “recogniz[ing] the need to be equally ruthless,” as their English foes. As a result, the English misinterpreted their former success and underestimated their foe, making themselves blind to the need to take the threat to Lancaster seriously. Reinforcing this attitude was the basic English mistrust of Native Americans, which caused Puritan officials to distrust the reports of their own Native American spies that an assault on Lancaster was planned (Salisbury 22–24). Nevertheless, Rowlandson’s and Mather’s subtle critiques of the army struck a resonant note with her readers who had also experienced weaknesses of their culture and its institutions in the New World. The logic and behavior of the English Army is an example of such



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cultural weaknesses, or failings, that appeared as Puritan culture interacted with and responded to the New World. This behavior of the English army is important because it exemplifies ways in which Puritan culture had not yet adapted to New World demands, creating the need among American colonials for new methods of coping and surviving. In addition, military inadequacy is a recurrent theme related to the American frontier hero in later works, such as The Last of the Mohicans and The Searchers. The credibility of English and Puritan ways was called into question by the inadequacy of crucial aspects of the culture to address New World situations. Because Puritan culture could not provide certain vital answers, cultural space opened up—gaps or breaks in individual citizens’ abilities to rely on the social culture. Increased distance between individual Puritans and Puritan society, and a critical stance on the part of individual Puritans, developed as a consequence. These elements provided the opportunity for Rowlandson to provide solutions to these cultural dilemmas. Had things been going satisfactorily for the average Puritan, and had the average Puritan been able to feel that they had answers to the most difficult challenges of the New World, namely, a foreign wilderness and a foreign people within it, Rowlandson would not have had the popularity or impact that she did. The continuance of this situation on the westerly shifting frontier of the next one hundred and fifty years fueled the continued popularity of the Narrative during this period. In many cases, Native American ways provided the solutions that the Puritan populace needed in order to function in the New World. And this application of Native American attitudes and methods to Puritan problems is the foundation of the European American, and also of the American, hero such as Cooper’s Natty Bumppo, who fuses Native American skills with white American concerns.5 The perspective on the army presented in the Narrative is further illuminated by continuing to examine the retiring of the English army and the fall of Lancaster discussed above. While both Mather and Rowlandson excuse the English army for its actions, they also assign blame. Mather places the fault with the Native Americans, for being so uncivilized as to take advantage of the opportunity that the retreat of the English army presented them. Without adequate provisions, “the Councill of War [determined], that the army should desist the pursuit and retire” (Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 1). Mather reports that the Native Americans, “seeing themselves thus discharged of their pursuers, and a little refreshed after their flight, the very next week upon Thursday, Feb. 10, they fell with mighty force and fury





upon Lancaster” (para. 2). Mather’s description of these events presumes that the “civilized,” expected thing for the Native Americans to do would be to retire themselves and regroup, as Salisbury’s description of the orderly progression of European warfare suggests. Yet, while the surface of Mather’s text faults the Algonquians, the subtext presents a description of a failure to act on the part of the army, only excused by the very weak argument of a want of food, when stores were known to be available in Lancaster, the very place most vulnerable to attack by Metacom’s forces. In addition, Mather faults the town of Lancaster for not being properly fortified, stating that Lancaster, “not being Gerisoned as it might, . . . was not able to make effectual resistance” (para. 2). Rowlandson also cites Lancaster’s falling in diction almost identical to Mather’s, describing the incomplete defenses of her house: “there being no defence about the House, only two Flankers at two opposite corners, and one of them not finished” (2). Both these statements suggest that the cause of the defeat at Lancaster was the insufficiency of its fortifications, a circumstance over which the army had no control. Still, this is a communal insufficiency and one not taken into adequate consideration by the army and others in charge. In combination with the other inadequacies, it suggests an overall pattern of deficient response to conditions. However, despite these assignments of blame to the Algonquians and the town of Lancaster, both Mather and Rowlandson suggest that failure of the army was a significant, if not the decisive, contributing factor. Interestingly, the structure of Mather’s language exonerates the army, who had withdrawn from the battlefield “as the time indeed required . . . [and so] was not able to make effectual resistance” (“Preface,” para. 2). While not criticizing outright the army’s focus on its provisions, Mather’s description of the events and the circumstances under which they occurred reveals an assumed parity between food for the army and the lives of the residents of Lancaster. At the same time, Mather suggests that the Algonquians were in a weakened state: The Narrhangansets were now driven quite from their own Country, and all their provisions there horded up, to which they durst not at present return, and being so numerous as they were, soon devoured those to whom they went, whereby both the one and other were now reduced to extream straits. (para. 2)

In addition, he acknowledges that the army leadership knew that the attack on Lancaster was planned, stating “the design of the Indians



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[T]hat ere long, when their beefe & porke & deare is spent & gon, that they wilbe in want of corne, but they intend then to com down upon the English townes, of Lancaster Marlborow Grotaon, & particularly they intend first to cut off Lancaster bridge. (“The Examination” 123)

This further confounds the behavior of the army. Lancaster’s stores of food, which caused it to be targeted by the Algonquians, raise the possibility that the English army could itself have been refreshed by the stores in Lancaster—and thus been on scene to protect the town from attack. Indeed, Rowlandson’s analysis can be read as suggesting that blame for the attack on Lancaster can be placed completely on the army. She even goes so far as to suggest that the army was so bumbling that it gave up at the very point when they were on the verge of victory. She writes: Of the fair opportunity lost in the long March, a little after the Fortfight, when our English Army was so numerous, and in pursuit of the Enemy, and so near as to take several and destroy them; and the Enemy in such distress for food, that our men might track them by their rooting in the earth for Ground-nuts whilest they were flying for their lives. I say, that then our Army should want Provision, and be forced to leave their pursuit and return homeward: and the very next week the Enemy came upon our Town, like Bears bereft of their whelps, or so many ravenous Wolves, rending us and our lambs to death. (59–60)

Like Mather, Rowlandson’s failure to critique the logic behind the army’s lack of provision as reason enough to expose Lancaster to attack, allowing the Algonquians to “rend” the residents “to death,” implies a surface acceptance of this explanation as legitimate. Reinforcing this is her presentation of the Lancaster attack as the first item in a list of “remarkable passages of providence” (59), suggesting that she considers the bloodshed at Lancaster an act of divine will, the purpose of which is to get recalcitrant sinners to repent and to rely on God. Yet this attempt to place such disparate needs on parity is unsettling. The passage above places in parallel the army’s “want [of] Provision” and the fate of the residents of Lancaster, who faced “so



against that place being known to the English sometime before” (para. 2). In fact, plans for the February 10 attack were reported to the Puritan leadership twice, first on January 24 and again on February 9 (Salisbury 24). The report of the spying mission of Quannapaquait among the Algonquians, taken January 24, 1675, states:


many ravenous Wolves, rending us and our lambs to death.” Like Mather, Rowlandson points out the opportunity the army missed to protect Lancaster and to overcome their foe. Both Mather’s and Rowlandson’s diction suggests alternative, preferred behavior on the part of the army. Mather’s phrase, “not able to make effectual resistance,” suggests an impediment to the “effectual” operation of the army. His sentence structure reveals what this impediment is, “the Army being now come in,” a choice the army made rather than a condition or characteristic of the army. There is an implied irony here, at least, as the excuse of the importance of food to the Army is compromised because Lancaster had a well-known, ample store of food, which was the reason behind the Algonquian attack.6 Rowlandson presents her opinion more directly when she characterizes the situation that led to the attack on Lancaster as “the fair opportunity lost,” describing the weakness of the Algonquians at this point and the relative strength of the army. Further, as Rowlandson’s description states, the Native Americans were so low on food that they were eating anything they could find, yet they were able to continue to fight. Rowlandson questions the behavior of the army further with the inclusion of this information. What both Mather and Rowlandson unintentionally demonstrate in their accounts of this incident is that Native American methods of warfare are more successful in America than English/Puritan methods. This is one of the first examples of New World folklore convictions: To create the American who can be successful in America, Native American ways must replace English ways. Knowledge of the process for making this happen is the boon that is needed by Puritan society. Perhaps this is something that Rowlandson can provide.

C  P T  A  L, M Now let’s take a look at Rowlandson’s Narrative with the mythological hero and cycle in mind, and in the context determined by conditions on the Puritan frontier. Rowlandson receives the call to adventure when her hometown of Lancaster, Massachusetts, is attacked by Metacom’s troops. In this attack, Rowlandson answers the call to adventure by managing to maintain her presence of mind, even though many around her are despairing. Rowlandson acknowledges the call to adventure, stating, “Now is that dreadfull hour come, that I have often heard of in time of War, as it was the case of others, but now mine eyes see it” (2). It is clearly a scene of physical



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as well as symbolic threshold crossing, as Campbell describes it, complete with “a shadow presence that guards the passage” (245), namely the attacking Algonquian troops outside Rowlandson’s door.7 She makes a choice and agrees to step out of her everyday world and into the changed one that the attack on Lancaster has created. In the cycle, “[t]he hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark . . ., or be slain by the opponent and descend in death” (Campbell 245–246). Rowlandson allows herself to be taken across the threshold of adventure when she chooses to go with the Algonquians rather than be killed by them. She describes the scene, the shadow presence, and her decision to go forward: “But out we must go, the fire increasing, and coming along behind us, roaring, and the Indians gaping before us with their Guns, Spears and Hatchets to devour us” (3). She steps out with her children into the dangers of the battle and surrenders herself to the attackers, entering a world that is significantly and threateningly different from her own, especially at that moment of warfare. In addition, since, from the Puritan perspective, Native Americans were aligned with darkness and evil, both Rowlandson and her contemporaneous readers recognize this moment as one in which she is threatened not only with death and destruction but, through abduction, with removal from the safety of her culture into Deuteronomy’s “howling wilderness,” the Puritan nightmare of the American wilderness and its native inhabitants as a dangerous and demon-filled underworld.8 Rowlandson quotes this phrase directly in the sixth remove: “I went along that day mourning and lamenting, leaving farther my own Country, and traveling into the vast and howling Wilderness” (20). She has also evoked it earlier in her Narrative in the second remove: “But now, the next morning, I must turn my back upon the Town, and travel with them into the vast and desolate Wilderness” (7). Within this situation, Rowlandson’s actions demonstrate her possession of the hero’s “exceptional gifts.” While other members of her household are becoming passive victims of the attack (one opens the front door in a panic and is immediately shot down, another crawls around helpless out in the yard with a hatchet imbedded in his skull), Rowlandson maintains the presence of mind necessary to evaluate her life-threatening situation, calculate relative risk, and then take action based on her calculation. She determines to surrender, rather than to risk the nearly certain death that would result from continuing to resist in the face of the superior force demonstrated by the attackers. Then she takes positive steps to secure her own and her children’s lives. She speaks to one of the attackers and is able to get reassurance





from him that they would be safe: “I told them they would kill me: they answered, If I were willing to go along with them, they would not hurt me” (4). Thus, Rowlandson succeeds in the first of her many negotiations with the attackers, protecting her own and her children’s lives, even though all around her others are dying. In terms of the heroic cycle, she has now crossed the threshold of adventure. As is often the case in this cycle, she has been compelled to cross this threshold by a combination of circumstances and her heroic (i.e., “exceptional”) response to them.

T S U   A W, T,  H Rowlandson is now in the supernatural underworld—a “world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces”—through which the hero journeys (Campbell 246). Not only is she on intimate terms with the American wilderness, as an inhabitant of a pioneering village on the frontier of the English settlement, she also knows her captors, more than one of whom she recognized personally. In this realm of the supernatural underworld, the hero seeks “the principle of regeneration” for himself and/or his group (17), with the result that “a decisive victory is won” (30). Rowlandson represents the world in which her story takes place through division of her Narrative into sections called “removes,” which generally correspond to successive encampments that the group makes as they move through the wilderness. Rowlandson’s use of this term has been interpreted to suggest her feeling of being increasingly removed from her world as the band travels in the wilderness. When plotted on a map, the path the band traveled through these removes circles back almost to Lancaster, where Rowlandson lived and had been captured. This circular, geographic motion provides a metonym for her circuit through the hero cycle, into and then back out of the underworld of the American wilderness, which results in the hero’s returning to his home transformed. Thus, Rowlandson’s experience of feeling increasingly distant from her life in Lancaster, despite her return to that geographic area, signifies her psychological position within the psychic geography of the transformational path of the hero’s cyclical journey. In relating the river crossings she experiences with the Algonquian band as they flee the English, Rowlandson presents an interesting comparison between the abilities of the English army and those of the Native Americans. During the fifth remove, the Algonquians cross the Baquag River, a tributary of the Connecticut River, in



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northern Massachusetts. The importance of this crossing is that while the Native Americans are able to cross the river, the English army is not. This contrast is made starker when Rowlandson reveals the makeup of the Native American group. Reflecting on their crossing, Rowlandson writes, “They were many hundreds, old and young, some sick, and some lame, many had Papooses at their backs, the greatest number at this time with us, were Squaws, and they travelled with all they had, bag and baggage, and yet they got over this River aforesaid” (19). Burdened women, and the old, sick, and lame all manage to cross the river. Yet when speaking of the English army that is pursuing them, she says, “On that very day [the day after all the Native Americans had made it across the river] came the English Army after them to this River, and saw the smoak of their Wigwams, and yet this River put a stop to them” (19). Ironically, while she is in the mythological underworld of the American wilderness, the English army functions as one of the “tests” she must face, an intimate force that threatens her. On more than one occasion, it is the actions of the army that imperil Rowlandson and threaten her safety. In addition, as discussed earlier, the army’s behavior, when they desisted pursuing the Algonquians and failed to protect Lancaster, can be seen as the fundamental cause or catalyst that drove Rowlandson, in her role as mythological hero, to cross the threshold of adventure in the first place. Thus within the mythological underworld of the American wilderness, the English army is a danger, a test, or a trial. Additionally, this reinforces Rowlandson’s running critique of the army and demonstrates the urgency of the need for solutions to the Puritan predicament in the New World. That the Native Americans would have more ability in the wilderness than the English would not be surprising, but the Baquag River crossing suggests this in a dramatically gendered way. Specifically, burdened Native American women have more strength and ability in the American wilderness than trained English soldiers. If any part of English society should be able to be relied upon for strength and endurance, it is the army. The army’s inability to cross the river demonstrates metonymically a general inadequacy of colonial abilities to deal with the American wilderness. This inability also highlights the need for a boon in the form of a solution to this inadequacy in negotiating the wilderness. Rowlandson provides this boon by first demonstrating that she can survive successfully in the wilderness using Native American techniques and then relating this process to her readers. In keeping with her cultural framework, Rowlandson’s analysis of this situation is theological: “God did not give them [the army] courage or activity to





go over” the river after the Native Americans because she and her fellow captives “were not ready for so great a mercy as Victory and Deliverance” (19). Yet, despite Rowlandson’s attribution of a divine plan to the army’s inability to ford the river, from a practical point of view this difference between the army’s and the Native Americans’ abilities is significant and highlighted by Rowlandson’s own rhetoric.9 She emphasizes mundane practicalities of the situation in terms of the specific physical characters and limitations of the band she travels with—hundreds of Native Americans who are virtually refugees, “marched on furiously, with their old, and with their young: some carried their old decrepit mothers, some carried one, and some another,” bringing all their meager possessions with them (17). In addition, although Rowlandson accomplishes the crossing while still tormented by her unhealed abdominal wound, the army seems to suffer from a lack of motivation: Even seeing “the smoak of their Wigwams” (19) does not stir the soldiers sufficiently to successfully face the challenge of crossing the Baquag. Further, the group Rowlandson travels with are mostly “Squaws” who have “Papooses at their backs” (19), deepening the gendered differential between the English Army and the fleeing Native Americans. Rowlandson’s presence in the Native American group further complicates the meaning of this gendered and ethnically defined demonstration of strength and ability in the wilderness. Her background and enculturation are English, like that of the soldiers, yet her skills and (de facto) allegiance while in the wilderness are Native American. Rowlandson is able to do what an English soldier cannot do: A Puritan woman with a gunshot wound in her abdomen, she successfully negotiates the wilderness, because she is employing Native American methods. From the perspective of the hero myth, Rowlandson is able to do this because she is being assisted by Native Americans who function as the helpers described in the myth. These helpers are also aiding her as she assembles the boon she will ultimately bring back with her to her own everyday world. This is the boon that Rowlandson acquires on her quest and ultimately provides to her culture through the writing and publication of her Narrative. And, while Rowlandson’s skill in river crossing is useful while traveling with the Algonquians, it is also potentially useful to her and other Puritans living on the frontier, or pressing further into the wilderness to develop new settlements. This point is reinforced by Rowlandson’s description of her second river crossing. She writes, “It was a cold morning, and before us was a great Brook with ice on it: some waded through it, up to the knees & higher, but others went till they came to a Beaver dam, and I amongst them, where through the



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good providence of God, I did not wet my foot” (20). Here the Native Americans function as a clear guide through the underworld. She follows them and learns another Native American wilderness technique, using a beaver dam as a bridge. Her statement that she “did not wet [her] foot” recalls the previous river crossing (of the river that stopped the army). For that crossing, the Native Americans built rafts from trees. Rowlandson was able to find a place on the raft such that during that crossing she also “did not wet [her] foot, which many of themselves at the other end were mid-leg deep” (18). During this first crossing, Rowlandson observes and benefits from Native American skills, specifically raft building and river fording. In the second crossing, she adopts Native American behaviors into her repertoire of actions. In both crossings Rowlandson is highly successful, not only in terms of the incompetence of the English army, but also in terms of the Native Americans, because she manages to make her crossing one of the more comfortable crossings among those of the group she is with. She is also helping to ensure her own survival: It is winter in Massachusetts and they are living outdoors. To get wet under these conditions could be potentially life threatening. While the Algonquians’ behavior may have been motivated by their desire to obtain ransom,10 their actions nevertheless place them in the category of the mythological helper. Rowlandson’s captors also demonstrate specific commitment to her and her daughter’s wellbeing. They carry her wounded child on horseback (7), and then (when Rowlandson takes the child in her arms and staggers along carrying it on foot) put Rowlandson herself up on a horse with the child so that she can attempt to sooth it (7–8). When the child dies, they bury it (rather than leaving it on the open ground, as both sides in the hostilities were doing with the dead) and then take Rowlandson to visit the grave (11–12). They give Rowlandson a light load (probably weighing only approximately five to eight pounds) in consideration of her wound (18). When her nerves fail and she breaks down weeping, they reassure, comfort, and feed her (24). Even as they hold her captive, they reassure her about her eventual freedom in the nineteenth remove (47), during which she also reports that they repeatedly fed, assisted, and befriended her (53). Another crucial element of wilderness survival is the ability she develops to successfully negotiate between Native American and Puritan culture systems. Clear illustrations of this are presented in her text in three separate types of actions: when Rowlandson barters with her captors, when she protects her husband from meeting them, and when she facilitates her ransom and thus her return to the Puritan





world. Rowlandson reports three significant exchanges during the nineteenth remove that are emblematic of her position in the band’s commercial system. The first two of these are barters that are presented as a pair. While she is resting at the end of the day’s travels, Rowlandson reports: “Then came an Indian, and asked me to knit him three pair of Stockins, for which I had a Hat, and a silk Handkerchief. Then another asked me to make her a shift, for which she gave me an Apron” (48). A third potentially significant exchange occurs later in the same day. Tom and Peter, two Native Americans who were acting as emissaries between the Puritans and the Algonquians, arrive with a pound of tobacco and some biscuits that had been sent for Rowlandson. They give her these items directly, rather than channeling them through her master and mistress (the specific members of the band who are responsible for her). Thus, despite other markers of her captive status, she was figured as an individual who nevertheless has adequate stature within the group to own and control property. Since, as a captive, Rowlandson could simply be forced to work for her captors, they could get the goods they wanted from her without bartering with her for them. Early in her text, she reports just such incidents. She states that she “was at this time knitting a pair of white cotton stockins for my mistriss” (19). Her description of this incident does not include a mention of either an exchange or an exchange value for these stockings, unlike her later reports of her work barters, which specify the particulars of each exchange. Further, she reports that she was forced to work on the stockings on the Sabbath, under the threat that if she did not do so, “they would break [her] face” (19). Her reliance on begging is also more frequent and less successful in the earlier removes, providing further evidence that she was initially outside of the group’s normal exchange structure. For example, in the seventh remove, she asks one of her captors for some horse liver. He gives her the horse liver, and she “laid it on the coals to roast; but before it was half ready, they got half of it away from [her].” In order to protect what she has left, she is forced “to take the rest and eat it as it was, with the blood about [her] mouth” (22). In these examples, Rowlandson has no real control over goods or services. However as the text progresses, Rowlandson increasingly integrates herself into the band’s economy, so that they barter with her in exchanges involving goods and services of comparable worth. She describes many successful exchanges with her captors. During the eighth remove, she reports making a shirt for Metacom for a shilling, buying horse flesh with that shilling, making a cap for Metacom in exchange for dinner, making another shirt for another person in exchange for bear



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meat, and knitting a pair of stockings for a quart of peas (25). In the thirteenth remove, she describes making a shirt for a baby in exchange for some broth with peas and groundnuts in it (33). Later in the same remove, she reworks some stockings to adjust them for size in exchange for some freedom of motion and some groundnuts (38). In this exchange Rowlandson barters both with the individual who has the stockings (for the groundnuts) and with her mistress (for freedom of movement, possibly granted because of the spirit of involvement demonstrated by Rowlandson’s work on the task). In the nineteenth remove, she knits three pairs of stockings in exchange for a hat and a silk handkerchief, and makes a shift in exchange for an apron (48). A failed barter during the ninth remove provides contrast with Rowlandson’s many bartering successes and highlights her presumption of her entitlement to participate in the group’s exchange system at this stage in her captivity (about midway in her travels). One of her captors “spoke to [her] to make him a shirt, [but] when [she] had done it, he would pay [her] nothing.” She calls this individual “a sorry Indian” (26), using this adjective to connote worthlessness, unfitness, contemptibleness, and so on (“Sorry”). She reasserts her bartering privilege by next reporting a succeeding, successful exchange with the same individual. She writes: “[A]t last he told me, if I would make another shirt, for a Papoos not yet born, he would give me a knife, which he did when I had done it.” This barter recuperates the former failed barter. She also uses this barter to further solidify her position in the band: “I carried the knife in, and my master asked me to give it him, and I was not a little glad that I had any thing that they would accept of, and be pleased with” (Rowlandson 27). This ability to transmit goods demonstrates the status Rowlandson has negotiated for herself within the socioeconomic system of the Algonquian band, while at the same time maintaining her identity as a Puritan. Thus, despite other markers of her captive status, she has positioned herself as an individual who nevertheless has achieved adequate stature within the group to be the owner of property. This status allowed her agency in securing her own survival, another aspect of the boon she is developing from her experiences and with the aid of her mythological helpers. Later, in the nineteenth remove, after Rowlandson has already given away the tobacco mentioned earlier, another Native American asks her for some of it. Rowlandson states: I told him it was all gone [i.e., the tobacco]; then began he to rant and threaten. I told him when my Husband came I would give him some: Hang him Rogue (says he) I will knock out his brains, if he come




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In this incident, she functions as a protective intermediary between the Algonquians and her husband. Although a woman, Rowlandson has developed attitudes and skills that enable her to protect a man from danger. These qualities make it possible for her to remain with the Native Americans, and thus in the presence of that potential danger, in reasonable safety, even as she prevents her husband—a man— from doing the same. When she returns and presents these proficiencies to her community, they have revitalizing value to Puritan society, expanding the repertoire of behaviors available to New World Puritans, while demonstrating a possible, altered relationship between the individual Puritan and the Puritan community.

R   E W  P C Having negotiated the terms of her ransom and release, Rowlandson (in her role as mythological hero) is now ready to return home, bringing with her the means of cultural regeneration that have been won in the “decisive victory” over the forces of the underworld: that is, the boon. As a mythological hero, she returns across the threshold of adventure from the mythological underworld to the everyday world. Sometimes the hero flees the underworld. At other times, he negotiates his return, and this is what Rowlandson does. For Rowlandson this negotiation takes the form of negotiating her own ransom, which is presented in the nineteenth remove. Her interactions with her captors as they work out her ransom demonstrate one aspect of the boon she will be returning with, her facility with their culture: [T]he Saggamores met to consult about the captives, and called me to them to enquire how much my husband would give to redeem me. . . . now knowing that all we had was destroyed by the Indians, I was in a great strait: I thought if I should speak of but a little, it would be slighted, & hinder the matter; if of a great sum, I knew not where it would be procured; yet at a venture, I said twenty pounds, yet desired them to take less; but they would not hear of that, but sent that message to Boston, that for twenty pounds I should be redeemed. (49–50)

Rowlandson sets the amount of her own ransom and, while doing so, demonstrates her competence within Algonquian culture by choosing



here. . . . So that fearing the worst, I durst not send to my Husband, though there were some thoughts of his coming to Redeem & fetch me, not knowing what might follow. (49)

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to base her decision on her knowledge of her captors’ world, so as not to “hinder the matter.” The sagamores’ immediate acceptance of Rowlandson’s sum confirms her competence in operating within their framework. That they ask her opinion in the first place suggests that Rowlandson has demonstrated adequate enculturation to be trusted to give them a reliable answer.11 Her description of body language demonstrates this enculturation process. When the sagamores call Rowlandson to their meeting, Rowlandson says, “I sate down among them, as I was wont to do, as their manner is” (49). This statement reveals both that Rowlandson knew their customs and when to do what and that the Sagamores saw her as more or less an equal. The conditional nature of this status, however, is demonstrated in the changes expected by the Sagamores in the next sentence. Once Rowlandson has sat down, she says “then they bade me stand up, and said, they were the General Court” (49). The Algonquians are playing at being the colonial general court and, in that context, expect Rowlandson to stand, like the accused or a prisoner of that court would be required to do. Here the Native Americans demonstrate an understanding of the power differential suggested by body position in the colonial government, and in a mockery of that government, require Rowlandson to stand. The symbolism of this incident, especially when combined with the sagamores’ response to her suggestion for a ransom amount, is that, as a prisoner of the colony, Rowlandson would be in a more inferior position than she is as a captive of the Native Americans. So, when her captors say Rowlandson is before the general court, they are simultaneously both mocking and retaliating against the English for forcing them to submit to English law. At the same time, by forcing upon her the forms of the colonial court, they are demonstrating that they have the power to enforce legalities on her, including the power to force Rowlandson to submit to their law. This is also both a symbolic demonstration of their actual control of Rowlandson and of the temporarily superior force of Algonquian authority, since, while Rowlandson is with them, colonial rule (for her) is effectively suspended.12 In addition, their use of these forms to ask her opinion on her ransom demonstrates the aspect of play that is involved in the proceedings: Her ability to influence them highlights her possession of a certain autonomy in the interaction, in contrast to their position when in the control of the colonial court—or even her position when under the control of her own society. These actions also underscore differences between the colonists and the Native Americans because “the colonists never considered





the Indians their equals,” yet Rowlandson’s captors routinely treated her with equality and respect. Further, since “the colonies would allow no English person under any circumstances to be bound over to any native community for justice” (Salisbury 3), the Native Americans were emphasizing the fact that they had an English person, and a fairly high status one, under the control of their justice system. While this play with cultural power differentials demonstrates Algonquian knowledge of Puritan systems, Rowlandson’s easy understanding of their behavior as play further emphasizes her successful synthesis of Puritan and Native American ways. It also shows how she becomes “other” than Puritan, by acknowledging the Native Americans as having value and values, a perspective both potentially helpful and threatening to her home society.13

A B   P The boon that Rowlandson returns with is the demonstration, through her Narrative, of a solution to a problem within her Puritan culture: how to deal successfully with Native Americans when they have power, in such a way that violence is de-emphasized and cooperation is enhanced. During her captivity, Rowlandson experiments with methods of interacting with her captors and with methods of operating in their world. The result of these experiments is that Rowlandson develops both attitudes and methods for surviving within the particular requirements of the American wilderness and with its specific inhabitants. This knowledge is the principle of regeneration that Campbell describes. It is the boon Rowlandson brings back from her captivity when she returns to the Puritan world following her experiences with the Algonquians. Specific aspects of these experiences while a prisoner of war form the basis for the particulars of the boons she wrests from the “underworld” of the American continent. Her highly successful river crossings during the fifth and sixth removes are good examples of when she learns important survival skills that are clearly unknown or foreign to the English, as demonstrated by the army facing river fordings. Through her construction of her experience as meaningful and valuable to herself personally, Rowlandson presents this boon as what Campbell calls a “microcosmic triumph,” which is one in which the hero “prevails over his personal oppressors.” Mather, on the other hand, defines Rowlandson’s work in a way that makes her text what Campbell calls a “macrocosmic triumph,” which is one in which the hero returns with “the means for the regeneration of his society as a



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whole” (Campbell 38). Mather’s perspective is demonstrated by his focus throughout the preface, which is that the public should read Rowlandson’s text. Comparing her to the tenth leper, who returned to thank God for his healing, Mather writes that Rowlandson’s “dispensation [was] of publick note” (Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 4) and tells Puritans to “Read therefore, Peruse, Ponder, and from hence lay up something from the experience of another, against thine own turn comes” (para. 9). He suggests, by extension, that readers can choose between categorization with the grateful tenth leper (i.e., Rowlandson) or with the ungrateful nine (i.e., those who fail to recognize their duty to acknowledge and attend to godly beneficence in their lives—a failing that a good Puritan would wish to avoid). Thus, Mather implies that ignoring Rowlandson has the potential to call into question one’s spiritual righteousness. On the other hand, aligning oneself with the grateful tenth leper includes the ability to learn from Rowlandson, since Mather admonishes his readers explicitly to “lay up something” from her experience to use if they should find themselves in similar peril. While Mather’s interest is in maintaining one’s Puritan spirituality in the face of trials, Rowlandson’s text also elaborates a set of skills and, more importantly, attitudes for surviving among the Native Americans—such as cooperation, a facility with cultural assimilation, and dispassionate pragmatism—useful to her fellow pioneers. These aspects of Rowlandson’s text are also promoted by Mather in his blanket endorsement of both Rowlandson and her Narrative. Campbell states, “within the body social, there must be—if we are to experience long survival—a continuous ‘recurrence of birth’ . . . to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death” (16).14 Rowlandson provides such a “birth” in her presentation of a view of wilderness life that assimilates Puritan and Algonquian in an adaptive system that increases possibilities for European integration into America. Her Narrative assists Puritans in this process of remodeling themselves in response to the demands of America, by demonstrating favorable power dynamics and peaceful exchange, even under most unfavorable conditions.

T H T In addition to providing society with a boon, the returned hero is changed: “The hero has died as a modern man; but as eternal man— perfected, unspecific, universal man—he has been reborn. His second solemn task and deed therefore . . . is to return then to us,





transfigured, and teach the lesson he has learned of life renewed” (Campbell 19–20). And Rowlandson does return transfigured, conscious of her transformation and with a lesson to teach. She acknowledges changes in herself as early as the second remove, which begins the morning after the raid on Lancaster. During this remove, Rowlandson heads off into the wilderness with her captors. She writes, “I must turn my back upon the Town, and travel with them into the vast and desolate Wilderness” (7). After describing the physical and emotional difficulties of the remove, she concludes that there was “so much that I could never have thought of, had I not experienced it” (8), referencing changes of the magnitude Campbell describes. She is so changed that her life now would have been impossible for her formerly even to imagine. Already she has demonstrated courage and level-headedness by negotiating with the attackers during the assault on her household, something she had always felt sure she could not even withstand. She has also learned that she has the strength to travel in a forced march as a prisoner of war, wounded and carrying her wounded child. She reflects in a similar way during the fifth remove. After describing an arduous day of travel in which the Algonquians were escaping from the English, and which included crossing the Baquag River discussed earlier, Rowlandson states, “I was not before acquainted with such kind of doing or dangers” (18). During these early removes, she has learned to sleep on the open ground in the winter, to treat the wound in her abdomen with leaves from an oak tree, and to be calm when alone in the company of a dead body. She has kept her presence of mind and her self-control when other captives were losing their nerve, and was even able to attempt to calm and encourage them. She also has begun to make a place for herself in the Algonquian band and has begun to develop the ability to eat their food. In these experiences, she is developing endurance, courage, pragmatism, and cultural flexibility that she did not have previously. What is important is that she is changing as a result of experience, not through mere awareness or knowledge. She acknowledges as much when, describing the attack on Lancaster, she states, “Now is that dreadfull hour come, that I have often heard of . . . , but now mine eyes see it” (2). Rowlandson had heard the many stories that circulated in the Puritan community of captives’ experiences in the wilderness. Yet, it is her experiences that change her, that have power in a way in which the stories did not. Her experiences provide her with the occasion to expand and refine her perspective, responses, and actions. While she is in turn ultimately providing a story herself, the importance of her Narrative as a boon



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to her Puritan community lies in her portrayal of changed attitudes and behaviors rather than in the recitation of events. Later, during the twentieth remove, Rowlandson displays philosophical self-reflection as she comments on her transformation. Released by her captors, she travels to the town of Concord, Massachusetts, and at last returns to Puritan society. She writes that she has “seen the extrem vanity of this World” (72), acknowledging that what she once thought was vital is actually trivial and unimportant. Identifying the world as an illusion that cannot be trusted, she continues, stating that “[t]he Lord hath shewed me the vanity of these outward things” (73). In a shift away from Puritan thinking, in which meaning and control reside outside the individual (and especially outside the individual woman), Rowlandson realizes that society and culture, both in the category of outward things, are of secondary importance to the experience of the individual. Independence of thought and action has brought Rowlandson to the point where she has “learned to look beyond present and smaller troubles, and to be quieted under them” (73). Her preceding this statement with comparisons of her current situation with her previous experience in captivity suggests the contrast between the two as the motivation for her changed perspective on her life. However, in light of her satisfaction as she relates her many successes in dealing with her captors, as well as her obvious pride in her improved wilderness survival skills, it is overly simplistic to interpret this comparison as solely an appreciation of the relative ease and familiarity of her current situation.15 She has moved beyond the cultural constraints of her early modern, Puritan society, to the fundamentally universal human condition of prioritizing one’s own experiences and responses as the bases for personal evolution— Campbell’s “perfected, unspecific, universal” human (19). In addition, Rowlandson demonstrates another aspect of the hero and of the boon the hero provides to the world, namely, that the path or “way” to the solution can be communicated but not the actual solution itself (Campbell 33–34, fn. 38). Rowlandson’s Narrative provides a pathway into the wilderness by suggesting that experience is a method that works and by providing guidelines for negotiating that experience. She can only model for her readers solutions to the challenges they and their society face, just as the stories she had heard could only suggest to her the general outlines of what to expect. In relation both to the stories she has heard and to the stories she relates of her own experiences, her stance communicates that her peers could only acquire genuine knowledge of what she went through by experiencing captivity themselves. Yet, Rowlandson’s tale is still a





boon to her culture, in terms of Campbell’s description, because its particularity and detail provide a guide or path for her fellows to follow in interacting in new ways with Native Americans and the American wilderness: her stories “teach the lesson [she] has learned of life renewed” (Campbell 20). That is, she articulates a third option for Puritan pioneers in their dealings with Native Americans, an option outside the entrenched, existing binaries of victim/victimizer, Christian friend/heathen foe, and civilized Puritan/savage Native American.

T C C Looking at Rowlandson in light of Campbell’s archetype of the mythological hero demonstrates Rowlandson’s potential as a cultural force. Rowlandson fits the pattern of the mythological hero archetype and her experience with her captors fits the pattern of the hero’s adventures identified by Campbell. A person of “exceptional gifts,” as demonstrated by her independence and presence of mind during the attack, which is starkly depicted relative to the behavior of the other members of her household, Rowlandson receives the call to adventure when a band of Algonquians attack her home in Lancaster. Stereotypically for the mythological hero, she answers this call reluctantly—when she makes the decision “out we must go” to surrender to the Algonquians (3)—crossing a “threshold of adventure” into the dangerous and foreign world of the Algonquian war party. Here she faces “tests” in the form of the challenges of surviving physically and psychologically while a prisoner, such as enduring the excruciating death of her daughter, finding ways of interacting with her captors so as to protect her own life, and preventing herself from starving to death or dying of exposure. In facing these challenges, she is sometimes assisted by “helpers” in the form of Native Americans who provide her with goods, information, or other aid. She reinforces her identity as a hero by demonstrating that she is a person of exceptional skill, such that she is capable of acquiring the boon of the knowledge of techniques and attitudes that are necessary for successful interaction with Native Americans and that, which are lacking in her own culture group. Such extensions of knowledge and perspective as successful river crossings, ability to identify edible foods and to adapt to the Algonquian siege diet, and mastery in negotiating internal Algonquian socioeconomic conditions all fit Campbell’s basic description of the boon as “intrinsically . . . an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transformation, freedom)” (246). In



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her ability to survive the attack and negotiate with the Native Americans, she has moved past her “personal and local historical limitations” to become “eloquent . . . of the unquenched source through which society is reborn” (Campbell 19–20). Finally, she returns to the everyday world with this boon, and through her Narrative, makes her boon available to her society. Gender dynamics are also at play in this process. In addition to providing this boon, Rowlandson’s Narrative amalgamates these extra-Puritan (and a-Puritan) competencies and approaches into a religious, “pure,” feminine presence. The next chapter looks at this fusion, which psychologically separates Rowlandson from the Puritan community, creating her as an Other within Puritan society. At the same time, the interweaving of these factors—the fierce and untamed within the religiously feminine—operates in combination with the intense popularity of the Narrative to embed these attributes within early American literary culture and to effect transmission of Rowlandson’s perspective from literary to popular culture. This represents the beginning of the integration of wilderness survival traits— specific to the requirements of the American continent and specifically gendered as feminine—into the developing Euro-American world.







3

Mary Rowlandson, Puritan Hero

Rowlandson’s Narrative likely would have soothed deep, important emotional needs of its seventeenth-century readers. The Narrative responded to the need of the colonists for a body of American mythology that related specifically to their experience in America, and one that was different from the mythology of the European countries they had left behind. In addition, the Puritans were in want of a positive myth of life in the wilderness to replace the developing mythos of Puritan inaptness in the New World. The needs were psychosocial as well as pragmatic. But predominantly, Puritan perceptions, attitudes, and emotional responses to the conditions of their lives provided the cultural space for Rowlandson’s text and made her readers so enthusiastic. It was the Puritans’ relationship with their experiences, rather than merely the experiences themselves, that was determinative. Undeniably, certain events and situations were highly influential on their own, such as the Pequot War and Metacom’s/King Philip’s War. Yet, Puritan popular opinion and feeling, and the perceived—as opposed to actual—success of these and other events in terms of the Puritan errand, made possible this intense and persistent integration of the Narrative into early American popular culture. This cultural engagement, partially a result of the text itself and partially of societal circumstances, resulted in the integration of key elements of Rowlandson’s Narrative into the popular imagination as well as the literature of the colonies/states, facilitating the creation of a genuinely American modification or variation of the mythological hero. In addition, the wholesale popularity of Rowlandson’s text belies claims of the work’s absolute orthodoxy set out in the “Preface” and suggested by Rowlandson as she repeatedly resorts to Puritan scripture to illuminate and contextualize her experiences. Orthodoxy would have perhaps guaranteed its popularity immediately upon publication but would also as certainly have guaranteed its future obscurity, the fate of virtually all of the other seventeenth-century American



CH A P T ER


bestsellers that were purely religious texts. This change was only natural once the political and religious climate of the late seventeenth century gave way to the more secular concerns of the eighteenth century. In contrast, the popularity of Rowlandson’s Narrative suggests that it speaks to its audience on a number of levels in addition to the religious, whether or not the audience is aware of it.

T O M To understand these Puritan perspectives requires a look at the Puritans’ purposes in emigrating. The Puritans came to the New World with an agenda. They intended to rework Christianity to make it pure so that it could be reintroduced to their native England, to which they eagerly hoped to return. For the Puritans the New World was the new Eden that they were attempting to enter, so that they could build a model society there, such that a reformed England could “look for leadership . . . to those who in New England had perfected the ideal polity and who would know how to administer it. . . . [N]ot only would a federated Jehovah bless the new land, but He would bring back these temporary colonials to govern England” (Miller 11). The Puritans saw themselves as working for both their God and the good of their country by developing a governmental model based on a purified Christianity that would correct past clerical mistakes and thus lead their fellows to righteousness. The Puritans needed to be right, to belong, to be part of God’s plan. As noted earlier, Slotkin states that all the American colonists, but the Puritans in particular, had a “yearning to prove they truly belonged to their place, that their bringing of Christian civilization to the wilderness represented the fulfillment of their own destiny as children of Jehovah . . . and of the land’s destiny as the creation of God” (269). The Puritans struggled mightily, banishing Anne Hutchinson and others, and doing their best to make good on their commitment to found a holy nation that would be a model for England. However, two things happened to foil their efforts. First, the political and religious climate in England changed, making the New England experiment irrelevant. Second, the purity of the colony itself appeared to deteriorate, both as a result of the lack of support from abroad and challenges inherent in the colony itself, specifically the apparently increasing apostasy of the second and third generations and the continuing conflicts with the Native Americans. The Puritans ended up feeling “twice betrayed,” angry, forsaken, and abandoned in the New World, a paradise that “had degenerated into another Sodom” (Bercovitch 85).1



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Metacom’s/King Philip’s War was a source of particular anxiety for the colonists. Although the war was in actuality a war of extermination of the Algonquian, Pocassets, Wachusetts, and other local Native Americans, the Puritans tended to perceive this conflict as an assault on their colonies by united Native American forces led by Metacom/King Philip, who were successfully routing the colonists from towns and settlements on the frontier, which was located at this time in central Massachusetts. Perry Miller states that “works such as Increase Mather’s A Brief History of the Warr With the Indians presented the decimating conflict with Philip . . . as a revenge upon the people for their transgressions” (7). Perhaps this attitude existed in part because the Native Americans were adopting the more vicious European methods of war and were becoming a more formidable foe, as Salisbury discussed; perhaps it was a result of a general discouragement as a consequence of the apparent failure of the Puritans’ initial errand. In any case, the Puritans perceived themselves to be in a situation of great distress, and faced with problems for which they could not conceive solutions. In Errand into the Wilderness, Miller describes the emotional climate of the decades of Rowlandson’s captivity and the Narrative’s publication. During this period, “all the jeremiads . . . are castigations of the people. . . . They recite the long list of afflictions an angry God had rained upon them. . . . [I]t did in truth seem that shortly no stone would be left upon another, that history would record of New England that the founders had been great men, but that their children and grandchildren progressively deteriorated” (6–7).2 Miller concludes that the New World Puritans felt abandoned in New England, left to shift for themselves with few resources to face the many perils before them. Elliott adds an important qualification to this description. He contends that Puritans of the first generation perceived a degeneration of Puritanism in America in the second and third generations,3 even though “there never really was a decline of religion in late seventeenth-century New England. . . . Therefore, the notion of the degeneracy of the [second and third generations] was not a reflection of an historical event, but an expression of inner fear and insecurity in the society, a sense of impending doom.” He states, further, that “the need for myth and metaphor for understanding and expressing inner fears, doubts, and insecurities . . . was especially acute for the second and third generations of New England Puritans” (4).4 The important thing here is that the colonists perceived themselves to be in a crisis, regardless of their actual circumstances, and felt this condition to such depth that it increased their need for metaphoric



MARY ROWLANDSON, PURITAN HERO


and mythic interpretations of their situation. This perception determined their reality to a much larger degree than their precise situation did and created in those who ascribed to it the need to look for ways to preserve Puritanism. In the second and third generations, this perception created a sense of failure that was both personal and corporate. As these younger Puritans attempted “to live up to the demanding, often perplexing expectations of their illustrious fathers and grandfathers, the young adults . . . interpreted external events inwardly as personal failures.” As a result, they experienced sometimes intense psychological stress, which “they had no way of understanding except as it could be translated into symbolic language” (Elliott 7–8). This situation created a desperate need in the second and third generations for a solution to their confusion and discomfort, which was both personal, since they perceived themselves as individual failures, and corporate, since they perceived themselves failing as a group. This configuration of circumstances makes the covert (encoded or symbolic) message and meaning of Rowlandson’s Narrative even more important to its contemporaneous audience. The Narrative provided answers to both personal and corporate failure and specifically countered the myth of the declining generation. For the Puritans of the later decades of the seventeenth century, life seemed precarious and on the point of ruin. Attempting to live the covenant set forth on the Arbella, they set out on a sanctified mission, only to discover their humanness in the New World. They had confidently entered the wilderness with the law of God, endeavoring to restructure the theocracy, but things were not going as smoothly as they had planned. Their efforts to live in the New World seemed to be failing physically and spiritually. They were becoming increasingly convinced that they were failing at their task. They needed solutions for surviving emotionally and spiritually in the New World, in addition to maintaining their physical survival. This mind-set made Rowlandson’s drama appealing because, in their breaking away from Europe, they needed to develop a new cultural standard. Not only did Rowlandson’s Narrative appear against this background of perceived cultural decay and failure, her story was set in Metacom’s/King Philip’s War, symbolically the greatest crisis the Puritans faced. As a result, the Narrative resonated with her contemporaries and was embraced by her culture. In addition, her experience in the wilderness with the Native Americans was not so completely foreign from her (and her fellows’) experiences in the frontier settlements of New England. Toulouse states that “the community to which she wished to return, and upon whose stabilizing evaluative strategies she had relied, was not in fact so separate, nor 10.1057/9780230103993 - The Emergence of the American Frontier Hero 1682-1826, Denise Mary MacNeil


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ever had been, from the destabilizing factors she herself confronted in the wilderness” (669). Because of the changes in Puritan attitudes and perceptions discussed earlier, the ability of the New England Puritan community to provide stabilization for its members was weakened and contradictory. In addition, there was a sense of similarity between wilderness and settlement experiences, which Slotkin has pointed out. To the mid-century Puritan: The situation of the captive presented an exaggerated and emotionally heightened illustration of the moral and psychological situation of the community. The New Englanders had left their homes voluntarily . . . and come to dwell close to the Indians. Their ties with their families, with civilization itself, had been forsaken for the sake of their God’s will. . . . For the captive, ties to civilization were violently severed, and there was little or no hope of their being restored. (Slotkin 100)

Rowlandson’s circumstances were thus a hyperbolic reenactment of the colonial situation as colonists perceived it. As Miller points out, the attention to and support from England for the Puritan project had been withdrawn. This left the Puritans isolated in their dealings with Native Americans, and shifted the likely outcome of their efforts from that of restoring appropriate Christianity to their countrymen to finding a way to survive in the wilderness, while at the same time relieving their fears, anxieties, and confusions about themselves. Rowlandson provides a solution, showing them how they can live with the wilderness and the Native Americans. She demonstrates new behaviors and attitudes but contextualizes them within Puritan doctrine. The Puritans needed to change in order to accomplish their goals because, from their perspective, the old methods were failing them. Rowlandson answers this need: she justifies alteration in terms of eternal salvation, not just individual survival. Her story was embraced because it answered a hunger in her contemporaries to find a solution to their temporal concerns in the New World that they could integrate into their belief system. This made the Narrative attractive to her contemporaries. In addition, Rowlandson’s survival stems from her connection to the wilderness, and her survival is presented as an example to other Puritans of how to behave in the wilderness. She shows her dependence on God by her reliance on scripture, making her tale of adventures and questionable deeds acceptable to her contemporaneous audience because she uses biblical concepts of law and grace to justify her attitudes, decisions, and actions.5 In addition, she presents a particular manner of integrating Native American skills and perspectives into her repertoire of survival techniques that soothed her peers’ anxieties that they might be “forced to attend the rites of the savages, 10.1057/9780230103993 - The Emergence of the American Frontier Hero 1682-1826, Denise Mary MacNeil




even to join them. . . . [, or] to accept the Indian way of life” if they were to ever survive in this new land (Slotkin 100). Rowlandson relies heavily upon the Old Testament and the concept of grace preceding law to contextualize her “unlawful” behavior in such a way that it does not threaten the Puritan community or her own salvation. Grace is first mentioned in the Bible in the story of Abraham in Genesis 15:6, which reads, “And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for his righteousness” (King James Version). Abraham’s belief has given him grace and mercy; actions or adherence to rules or laws are not required. Later, in Genesis 17, God establishes the covenant with Abraham, symbolized by circumcision, which requires actions (i.e., circumcision) in order to demonstrate adherence to God’s law and to maintain favor with God: “And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people” (Genesis 17:14). It is not until Exodus, when Moses is given the law (including the Ten Commandments) with which to guide and direct the children of Israel, that law becomes a definitive element of the people’s relationship with God.6 This chronology is important because it demonstrates that grace preceded law, and it is this sequencing that assists Rowlandson in surviving with the Native Americans and that assists her contemporaries in accepting her text. Because grace precedes law, the law can be revised without affecting salvation. So the Puritans were psychologically ready to accept changes in law if the changes maintain grace and the covenant. This openness to change in combination with the Puritan’s desire to be successful in their mission in the New World enabled Rowlandson’s contemporaries to be receptive to her text. Rowlandson offers the individual Puritan a way to survive Native American hostility, almost regardless of how difficult or dangerous the circumstances are. She also provides reassurance from a philosophical point of view because Rowlandson explains herself in terms of scripture and because the accuracy of her explanation is theologically verified by the fact of her being preserved throughout her captivity and returned to the Puritan community still espousing Puritan doctrine. That is, her surviving her ordeal is evidence that her behavior was theologically acceptable because, had it not been acceptable, she would have perished and her demise would have been a lesson to the Puritan community of what not to do.7 Instead, Rowlandson’s “unchristian” behaviors become acceptable and a new standard is set. Rowlandson demonstrates this line of reasoning during the thirteenth remove when she compares herself to the biblical David. She



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uses the story of David and Bathsheba to frame and justify her own morally questionable actions. She suggests that her situation is analogous to David’s predicament after he has had sex with Bathsheba and then sent her husband Uriah to the front lines so that he will die in battle and not discover what David has done. Rowlandson quotes from psalm 51:4: “As David said, Against thee, thee only have I sinned” (40). In this Psalm, David is beseeching God to spare him from punishment so that he (David) may serve as a model of goodness for others. The psalm opens with David’s plea for mercy: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions” (Psalm 51:1, King James Version). David pleads for forgiveness for his sins because of no other reason than God’s grace; by the law, he is a dead man. Similarly, Rowlandson’s use of this psalm claims that her actions are unacceptable because they offend the law of God and not because of their effect on other people. David’s transgression is against the law, and does not infringe upon the grace of God that saves him because he is repentant of his transgressions of the law: “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit./Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee” (Psalm 51:12–13). Rowlandson invokes David’s assumption that he can maintain grace and still be forgiven because his transgressions are against law. In verse 14, David beseeches God to “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness.” While David is referring to his sending Uriah to the front, this line could also be applied to several of Rowlandson’s actions, beginning with her withholding of food from her wounded daughter Sarah.8 In the first remove Rowlandson states of her wounded child that she “had no refreshing for it” (7). In the third remove, Rowlandson states: A very wearisome and tedious day I had of it, what with my own wound, and my Childs being so exceeding sick, and in a lamentable condition with her wound. It may be easily judged what a poor feeble condition we were in, there being not the least crumb of refreshing that came within either of our mouths, from Wednesday night to Saturday night, except only a little cold water. (9)

Rowlandson continues to lament their lack of food later in the third remove after Sarah has died: About two houres in the night, my sweet Babe, like a lamb departed this life, on Feb. 18. 1675 It being about six yeares, and five months old. It was




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Given Rowlandson’s grief and the suffering of her daughter Sarah, it is astounding when weeks later in the fourteenth remove, Rowlandson states that she had: Cake that an Indian gave my girle the same day we were taken. She gave it me, and I put it in my pocket . . . ; and [t]his refreshed me many times when I was ready to faint. It was in my thoughts when I put it into my mouth; that if ever I returned, I would tell the World what a blessing the Lord gave to such mean food. (41)

Rowlandson had food, yet refused to give it to her hungry, suffering daughter. Perhaps she was playing the odds, assuming from her child’s condition that it would die, and that under the extreme circumstances that they were in, she should withhold the food if it were not going to save Sarah’s life and keep it instead against future, perhaps even more severe conditions. Nevertheless, Rowlandson’s actions defy our concepts of charity, let alone the urgings of maternal instinct and love. However, her actions do resonate with the necessities of wilderness survival and the demands it places on the individual to make choices pragmatically rather than emotionally (a trait of the frontier hero). The order of Rowlandson’s biblical quotations in the thirteenth remove is revealing, specifically in terms of the verse Rowlandson quotes immediately following Psalm 51. After aligning herself with David and his claims to be an exemplar, Rowlandson quotes Luke 18:13, saying, “I might say with the poor Publican, God be mercifull unto me a sinner” (40). Luke uses the publican as an example of humility, stating of him, “he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 18:14, King James Version). Rowlandson reasserts her humility through the verse from Luke, cleverly contextualizing her boldness within the rubric of Christian humility. This rhetorical move is of a form common to Rowlandson and functions to transform Rowlandson’s bold, independent behavior. First it transforms her behavior into that which is pardonable by God, if only He will “blot out all [her] iniquities” (Psalm 51:9), as David beseeches God to do. Then, once Rowlandson has invoked grace in mediation of the law, she aligns herself with the “poor Publican” to assert her proper humility as a Christian. By establishing her submission to God’s will, she then becomes a “teacher,” worthy of attention and emulation within her community both because of her survival as well as her dependence upon God.



nine dayes from the first wounding, in this miserable condition, without any refreshing of one nature or other, except a little cold water. (11)

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This rhetorical process contextualizes her behavior while she was with the Native Americans, in terms of Puritan theology. Further, in simultaneously claiming humility like the publican and implying that she be seen as an example of goodness like David, she is keeping herself within the confines of the Puritan woman’s position, “with the possibility of redemption coupled with the necessity for submission” (Davis 54). Yet her behavior, as in the example of withholding food from her injured child, goes against our most basic impulses. It could be said here that Rowlandson is not harming her daughter from the perspective of Puritan theology, since dying is not a bad thing if one is in God’s favor. Nevertheless, Rowlandson’s failure (or suppression) of maternal instinct in this example is a telling demonstration of the altered behavior that frontier survival will require of the American frontier hero, who must dispassionately and calculatedly choose survival for the greatest number over concern for the individual whenever that concern jeopardizes group survival (in the case of the example at hand, giving food to a child almost sure to die versus keeping that food against future need). The result here is that Rowlandson’s questionable behavior has been presented in such a way that concerns about its theological soundness have been allayed. This allows her contemporaneous readers to examine the efficacy of her behavior without the necessity of interrogating the morality of her behavior, because the text itself provides an answer to these issues that is at least rhetorically sound. Critics have noted the dissonance in Rowlandson between her theological message and her narrative message and have ascribed a wide variety of meanings to it.9 It has also been suggested that this dissonance was both unconscious on Rowlandson’s part and unrecognized on the part of her contemporaneous audience, but that it “nevertheless puts into circulation an account of a conflict between two cultural paradigms” (Burnham, “The Journey” 68). The representation of the “conflict between cultural paradigms” is crucial to the power and endurance of the Narrative. In addition, the lack of contemporaneous controversy surrounding her work provides a forceful de facto argument that this dissonance was unavailable on a surface level. It is highly unlikely that the preface would endorse her work so heartily or that the Narrative would have been received with so little controversy if the disjunctures in meaning that are so obvious to us had been discerned, or discernible, on a surface or conscious level to Rowlandson’s peers. However, Rowlandson’s contemporaries discerned this dissonance at a subtextual or subconscious level, and this was part of the Narrative’s appeal. Burnham notes that “[p]erhaps





most appealing to its readers, however, was the freedom from traditional morality granted the captive by virtue of her or his need to survive within a hostile landscape and to adapt to a radically different culture” (“The Journey” 72). As Burnham points out, the Narrative provided an escape valve for its contemporaneous readers from the pressures of attempting to live up to Puritan behavior codes, concluding that “It is not surprising that the emergent cultural and linguistic materials Rowlandson’s narrative made available were repeated into a kind of mythology.” This argument follows logically from the many analyses of New World Puritans as chafing under the pressures of contradictory and only partially useful religious and social expectations and mores. It also provides a link between Rowlandson’s text and the Puritans’ need for a solution to the many challenges of surviving in the New World. In addition, Rowlandson structures her recitation of her experience such that she remains within the bounds of Puritan orthodoxy. This enables her text to gain acceptance by the theocracy. Her text was easily recognizable by her contemporaries as part of the tradition of jeremiads, whose ostensive purpose was to exhort the public to greater piety.

T C M One need of Rowlandson’s contemporaneous audience was for reassurance that they were competent and could cope with and survive their predicament.10 As a member of the second generation, in terms of her age (even though not technically one of them because of her immigration status), Rowlandson provided a model of a peer who successfully “struggled to carry forward the errand of their fathers in spite of the attack of hostile Indians” and who had “an extraordinary degree of irrational fear and uncertainty and . . . a deep sense that they were failing to live up to certain expectations of their parents and their God” (Elliott 8). Rowlandson’s resourcefulness and individuality communicate a sense of personal competence that provide a counter to the insecurity and feelings of inadequacy Elliott identifies. In addition, it’s useful to look at what it is about the work that is popular. The adventure story of Rowlandson among the Native Americans is the aspect of the Narrative that accounts for its popularity, not the religious story of trials and reassurances of salvation that is the work’s frame.11 The Narrative corresponds to SmithRosenberg’s description of the function of the novel: “Ultimately affirming the permissible, it makes its readers familiar with the forbidden and the transgressive” (180); rather than attempting



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(or succeeding at) the type of certainty Smith-Rosenberg describes as the goal of captivity narratives: “to speak with polemic certainty” (179). Toulouse offers a similar shifting and transgressive reading of the Narrative, suggesting novelistic counter themes and subtexts. Identifying the same biblical passages from Psalms and Luke in the thirteenth remove discussed earlier,12 Toulouse states that “[t]he assertive dependency of this biblical credo . . . argues that its opposite is also occurring. . . . As hard as she might try to conceal it in her Narrative, her text reveals the impasse imposed upon her imagination by her own interrogation of the old models for establishing her sense of value” (669). This division is the strength and energy of the work; it is what calls to the work’s readers. Davis states that “[t]he rupture of the internalized into the orthodox and authorized narrative fails to mar its ‘pious scope’ in the minds of seventeenth-century readers because Rowlandson effectively masks her unorthodoxy even to herself” (56). Yet this other voice, which I see as the basic voice of the text, conveys something important to its readers, including its seventeenth-century readers. This voice is a fundamental element of the Narrative’s popularity. This dichotomy is the thing that readers identified with, even though unconsciously. Additionally, the sanctioning of Rowlandson’s text “forgives” others who have experienced similar “base” urges. So the Narrative provides cultural acceptance for the powerfully challenging experiences of a submissive woman in both adhering to that submission and in rebelling against it. Rowlandson’s resistance and independence are legitimated by their placement within a stance that is acceptable to the dominant Puritan hierarchy: trials as a test of one’s faith. However, subversion of the Puritan hierarchy is a result of the text. As Fitzpatrick points out, attempts to “derive a socially and theologically conservative lesson from these trials” were undermined because captives simultaneously “claimed radical knowledge of their own providential destiny and of the transience—even meaninglessness—of all earthly concerns” (2). Thus, although trials in the wilderness often brought the survivor closer to the Puritan God, because these trials were individual and not communal, the trials simultaneously strengthened individuality and individual determinism at the same time that they provided the captive with a framework within which to develop as a Puritan Christian. Accordingly, in Rowlandson, power is diverted away from the hierarchy to the independent woman, who is then excused for her behavior because the entire text has been sanctioned when the preface admonishes readers not to “cast any reflection upon this Gentlewoman” (Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 4).13





At this point I would like to take a closer look at the preface to the Narrative, which is presumed to have been written by Mather. Mather’s preface functions as a bridge between the Narrative and its readership. Given how well Rowlandson answers Puritan needs, it is easy to see why Mather prepares the Narrative’s audience to see the text as a culturally important document. To the Puritan who took direction from elders, the preface was likely convincing to the reader to take heed of Rowlandson’s story. Mather’s purpose in doing this is to direct this audience to see Rowlandson’s text as a religious lesson. But his sponsorship of the Narrative does more than just support the religious elements of the text. He endorses the Narrative as a whole, and not merely specific elements of it. He tells the audience that Rowlandson is a special person and that her text is a demonstration of “divine providence” that “deserves both commendation and imitation” (“Preface,” para. 2, 4). Mather clears away potential corporate or public criticism of the Narrative. Reinforcing the weight of her text by adding church and legal authority to the mythological power of the text, he contributes to the positive response the Narrative experienced. He does this because on the surface the text is an exhortation to follow Puritan doctrine in the tradition of the jeremiad, which has been noted by scholars. Smith-Rosenberg observes that “Rowlandson’s narrative was itself a sermon, one of the most forceful in the Puritans’ long tradition of jeremiads” (182). Speaking of seventeenth-century captivity narratives in general, Fitzpatrick states, “[T]he captivity narratives were susceptible to multiple and ambiguous readings, reflecting the dual purposes of returned captive and didactic Jeremiah [sic]” (5). Toulouse contributes to this discussion the claim that Rowlandson’s text actually is an expression of anger at God couched in scriptural language (664), which evokes Miller’s definition of the complex cultural work of jeremiads: “[W]hatever they may signify in the realm of theology, in that of psychology they are purgations of soul; they do not discourage but actually encourage the community to persist in its heinous conduct. The exhortation to a reformation which never materializes serves as a token payment upon the obligation, and so liberates the debtors” (9). Bercovitch states that the jeremiads were not so much expiations of guilt as mechanisms that facilitated the secularization of the Puritans’ errands, that “the American Puritan Jeremiad . . . was a mode of celebration rather than of lament[, which] set out to transform threat into promise” (94–95). While vexed and multilayered, jeremiads were seen contemporaneously to be functioning as catalysts of spiritual transformation. Mather’s endorsement of the Narrative arises in this context.



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Mather goes so far in his support of the Narrative as to admonish its readers that they should be as grateful to Rowlandson for her willingness to publish her text as the sick should be for a miraculous healing. He states that anyone who criticizes Rowlandson for her publication “may be reckoned with the nine lepers, of whom it is said, Were there not ten cleansed, where are the nine? but one returning to give God thanks” (Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 4). Choosing this verse emphasizes the individual Puritan’s responsibility in the face of communal delinquency or backsliding, and thus becomes a powerful incentive to the Puritan reader’s evaluation and acceptance of Rowlandson’s text. Mather’s overarching cultural point is that individual Puritans should keep within the fold. Yet, the verse that he has chosen posits that individual Puritans must decide for themselves and not be influenced by the opinions of their fellows if they want to guarantee their salvation and healing. Such an idea paves the way for acceptance of the independence of mind that is characteristic of the American hero. Mather closes his preface by twice admonishing the reader to find value in Rowlandson’s text. First he states, “I am confident that no Friend of divine Providence will ever repent his time and pain spent in reading over these sheets, but will judg them worth perusing again and again” (para. 6). He asserts that Rowlandson’s text is immensely affecting and beyond reproach. Adding force to this statement, he addresses the reader directly in the next paragraph, suggesting that only a flawed individual could fail to benefit from reading Rowlandson’s text: “Reader, if thou gettest no good by such a Declaration as this, the fault must needs be thine own” (para. 9). Mather will not accept the argument that Rowlandson’s text is without positive influence. He expects that readers will be changed for the better by reading it. Mather is unequivocal in his claims that Rowlandson’s text has beneficial religious, cultural, and personal force. Importantly, a religious and cultural authority is telling Rowlandson’s readers to be swayed by her work. In addition, by suggesting that the fault lies with the reader if the reader fails to be affected by the text, Mather pressures the audience to open itself to what Rowlandson is saying. The result of this opening is more than Mather probably would have hoped for, and is in many ways specifically what Mather would probably have wished to guard against. Mather’s goal was for the Narrative’s Puritan religious message to be assimilated by the text’s audience. While this certainly happened, the message that the individual is an authority that can make decisions for itself outside of cultural bounds was also carried by the text, and thus available for assimilation. Burnham writes that captivity narratives





“circulated fascinating stories of escape from dominant social and moral norms” (Captivity and Sentiment, 52). Rowlandson’s text, therefore, has the influence to be the foundation of the stereotype of the American frontier hero—simplistically (for now) the individual as ultimate authority. And while she is generally overlooked by theorists as the source of this hero, she demonstrates this hero to her readers, most importantly her contemporaneous readers, but also her later readers as well. I have presented Mather’s endorsement at some length to show that his attitude of approval and promotion of Rowlandson’s work is a constant, driving force in his preface. I want it to be clear that the rhetoric of Puritan church authority was behind Rowlandson. This is important because the document that is being so heartily endorsed simultaneously supports the Puritan theocracy while at the same time presenting alternatives to the Puritan response that will evolve into an independence of character at odds with Puritan notions of authority.14 Unconsciously, Mather expounds on behaviors and attitudes that are the forerunners of the American hero, setting the stage for the emergence of that hero. By invoking the story of the ten lepers, he has privileged the individual’s thinking for himself/herself over merely conforming to the status quo. Refining the characteristics of this individual discernment, Mather asserts that “no Friend of divine Providence” could ever see time spent on Rowlandson’s text as futile (Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 6). He makes the independent-minded individual (i.e., the tenth leper) into the solid Puritan citizen, reinforcing this construction with his direct address to the reader, in which he disrupts the validity of critique of Rowlandson by situating any potential fault in the reader. The final step in this mechanism of acceptance of Rowlandson’s text is Mather’s contention that concern for Rowlandson is equal to concern for the community, that it was “altogether unmeet that such works of God should be hid from present and future Generations” (para. 4). He identifies Rowlandson as a Puritan exemplar and significant member of the Puritan corporate body, “that as many hath helped together by prayer for the obtaining of this Mercy, so praises should be returned by many on this behalf” (para. 5). He defines those who find resonance in Rowlandson’s Narrative as solid Puritans. At the same time, this reinforces Rowlandson’s jeremiad as it “transform[s] threat into promise,” as Bercovitch has noted, above. Mather has made the independent-minded individual the basis for what is right for the community by likening concern for Rowlandson with concern for the community, and by his identification of Rowlandson as an important member of the Puritan body.



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Mather continues to expand upon the autonomy and authority of the individual and at the same time begins to incorporate foundational elements of the American hero into his preface, specifically those of the exceptional individual unbound by social conventions, the “hero in space” described by Lewis (91) and discussed earlier. Mather tells the audience: [N]one can imagine what it is to be captivated, and enslaved to such . . . creatures as these . . .; nor what difficulties, hardships, hazards, sorrows, anxieties and perplexities do unavoidably wait upon such a condition, but those that have tryed it. (Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 5)

Mather asserts that Rowlandson’s experience was so unusual that the average reader cannot even imagine what it was like. This incomprehensibility is important for two reasons. The first is that it exempts Rowlandson from the usual cultural mores regarding a woman’s place: “Excuse her then if she come thus into publick” (para. 5). The second is that this presumed incomprehensibility of the Narrative means that the reader has to take Rowlandson’s word for what her experience meant and how she needed to respond to it. Instead of applying cultural values to the judgment of Rowlandson’s experiences, they are to suspend that judgment and allow her experiences and conclusions to guide them. Armstrong and Tennenhouse state, “The captivity narrative requires that the detached—and therefore individuated—individual be reincorporated into the culture from which she was forcibly removed” (399). Therefore, the experience of the American hero (in this case, Rowlandson) in facing these things, which is an experience unknowable to the average person, makes that hero an authority on Native Americans and wilderness matters. This quality of individual authority based upon idiosyncratic experience allows for the possibility of the increased stature of the individual in relation to the community. As individual authority successfully challenges communal authority, dependence by the individual on the community is lessened and the possibility for increased distance between the individual and the community is created. It is important to note that, despite the miseries and dangers that Rowlandson has faced, Mather implies that the reader does not need to feel sympathy for Rowlandson. He states that “this Gentlewoman [is] a gainer by all this affliction, that she can say, ‘tis good for her, yea better that she hath been, than that she should not have been thus afflicted” (Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 7). Mather exempts Rowlandson from the normal response of pity or sympathy for her experience because he





sees her experience as of benefit to her. She has been changed and improved by what happened to her during her captivity. Mather makes this claim based on Puritan notions of improving one’s piety and reliance upon God through hardship. Yet, in a secular sense as part of the basis of our cultural attitudes about the American hero, his statement is also relevant, both in his assertions that Rowlandson was a gainer from her experiences in a vital and unique way and in his claims that Rowlandson does not require sympathy. It is successful experience with danger that creates the American hero and makes him (her) capable of the feats required to survive in the wilderness. Sympathy is also not an element of the cultural response to the American hero. Heroes do not need our sympathy because the trials they face are not as difficult for them as they would be for “normal,” nonheroic humans. Heroes by their very definition rise above difficulties, pain, and adversity in ways that neutralize the power of these negative situations. It is unnecessary to extend sympathy to the hero, since, with his exceptional gifts and aided by supernatural helpers, obstacles that would seem overwhelming to the average person are, perhaps even easily, surmountable challenges to the hero. Rather, the attitude is that the hero enjoys the challenges and dangers of the wilderness, is at home in the wilderness, and probably even prefers the wilderness to settled life. In addition, the hero is seen as having a different attitude toward the wilderness and its dangers and deprivations than “regular” people have. Thus, what would be upsetting to the average person is something the hero takes in stride or even relishes. Mather tells his readers not to have the instinctive response to Rowlandson’s tale, that is, to feel for her. Mather’s direction to his readers demonstrates that the unsympathetic response to the individual in the American wilderness, which is an element in the positioning of the American hero, was fostered early in American cultural development. Mather presents the canvas on which Rowlandson will paint the characteristics of the American hero. He prepares her audience to see her text as culturally significant. He tells them to expect that her story will have a powerful impact on them individually. Although inadvertently, he suggests that English ways are not successful when applied to American problems when discussing the army’s actions in relation to Lancaster, reminding readers of unfulfilled needs. He also defines Rowlandson as a culturally important individual whose experience is significant to all members of the culture. He suggests that Rowlandson is an authority whose word is to be taken on faith when he claims that no one who hasn’t lived through Rowlandson’s experiences can truly understand them. Finally, he tells the Narrative’s audience that the



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W R To move to another question important at this point: Why was it Mary Rowlandson, and not someone else, whose work had such impact? One answer lies in the nature and tone of the Narrative itself. While contextualizing her experience within Puritan theology, she nevertheless demonstrates that the “solution to external difficulties” is external or outwardly focused action. She confirms that there are pragmatic solutions to real problems: while her spiritual life may have been strengthened by her experience, her survival and even success while among the Native Americans is clearly a result of her actions and skills. Focusing on the strength of details, Mather encourages the Narrative’s readers to employ the focused attention that would enable them to benefit from Rowlandson’s experiences, since “particular knowledge of things make deepest impression upon the affections” (Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 5). In addition, a particular constellation of cultural and personal phenomena made it possible for Rowlandson to have a strong cultural impact. This constellation consists of two interdependent configurations of events. The first configuration is gender-related and pertains to the position of women in Massachusetts in the decades following Anne Hutchinson’s trial and banishment to Rhode Island. The second configuration is frontier-related and pertains to the experience of second-generation Massachusetts Puritans, which group included Rowlandson. Rowlandson’s childhood occurred in a world in turmoil over the agency of women. Anne Hutchinson’s challenge to church authority, her assertion that she as an individual had a revelation from God regarding her own salvation, and her subsequent banishment to Rhode Island in 1637 all occurred around the time of Rowlandson’s birth.15 The theocratic silencing of Hutchinson soon extended to women in general, with the colony’s further response of silencing all women, with “most churches [forbidding] women to speak in public in any capacity” (Salisbury 9), seriously curtailing the actions and independence of women. In 1639 when Rowlandson emigrated with her parents to Wenham, Massachusetts, Rowlandson’s community in Salem and throughout the colony was one that was in the midst of the



text is exemplary and that failure to recognize its value or profit from the experience of reading it signifies a fault in the reader. It is right and appropriate, Mather tells the readers, to be changed and influenced by Rowlandson’s text.


uncomfortable process of the repression of significant numbers of its members. Rowlandson thus grew up in this oppressive church atmosphere, among adult women who had recently had their freedoms seriously truncated. However, Joan White, Rowlandson’s mother, did not conform to the edict of public silence for women, as perhaps was the case for other women in Rowlandson’s immediate circle. For the Wenham church, which was convened in 1644, allowed women to speak, and Joan White was one of the women who spoke most regularly. White seems to have been highly influential in the Wenham church, providing a significant role model for Mary of the skills necessary to address the public, the independence of mind needed to resist the dominant cultural mode, and the self-confidence to see oneself as an autonomous authority whose opinion matters. In addition to her religious activities, Joan White was also very active in the secular world during Rowlandson’s childhood. Rowlandson’s father, John White, returned to England to handle some business, leaving Joan to head the family for two years during Rowlandson’s childhood. Perhaps in part because of her experience as a child in a home run by a strong mother and the absence of a father for some years of her childhood, she was able to be freer of the pressure of the expectations of the previous generation. Thus, during a time when women were being actively repressed and when the freedoms they formerly enjoyed were being seriously curtailed, Rowlandson’s mother, and perhaps to a lesser extent other women in Rowlandson’s immediate village community within the Wenham church, provided her the role models of women as outspoken, independent members of both church and secular society. In the figures of Hutchinson, White, and Rowlandson, Puritan questions of individual autonomy in mid-seventeenth-century Massachusetts were being interrogated in a realm that was gendered feminine. In the 1630s, Hutchinson attempted in part to assert the authority of the individual to determine its own position regarding grace and salvation in a manner that made the Puritan theocracy uncomfortable for a number of reasons, one of which was her gender. During the 1640s, White became one of the leading members of the newly founded Wenham church. She spoke publicly and repeatedly on a variety of religious topics, including her conversion experience (Salisbury 7–10). In 1682, Rowlandson published her Narrative, in which the authority of the individual is presumed in her account of her behavior and, especially, in the conclusions she draws about her actions. Thus, while not challenging the clergy as Hutchinson did,



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White and Rowlandson are part of the breaking of the silence generally imposed on women following Hutchinson’s banishment. Rowlandson succeeds where Hutchinson is checked because Rowlandson couches her Narrative in terms of acceptable Puritan doctrine. She frames her work “in a way pleasing to those anxious to control the meaning of her experience in the wilderness” (Logan 264). Rowlandson’s reflections on her own spiritual rectitude reinforce this doctrinal quality of the Narrative. The doctrinal quality of the Narrative protects its subtext of individual autonomy from public censure, thus protecting the Narrative from being banned or otherwise repressed. While this in itself does not make the Narrative popular, it is a vital mechanism assisting the Narrative in attaining popularity by enabling the populace to have unrestricted access to the text. At the same time, however, Rowlandson presents a picture of herself as making her own choices and determining her own spiritual course, even within the context of her doctrinal discourse. During the thirteenth remove, she relates how she has examined her conscience: “Now I had time to examine all my wayes: my conscience did not accuse me of un-righteousness toward one or other” (40). Rowlandson determines that she is not guilty and has done no harm to her fellow beings, but at the same time, she finishes her thoughts with “[y]et I saw how in my walk with God, I had been a careless creature” (40). Rowlandson concludes that she trespassed against God’s law prior to her captivity, even as she exonerates herself regarding her treatment of her fellow humans. With this analysis, she separates her behavior toward humanity from her behavior toward God, de-emphasizing the importance of the former and highlighting the importance of the latter. This theological move provides the foundation for the seemingly sharp contradiction between her claims of guiltlessness and her reports of her response to those in need while in the wilderness. For instance, during the thirteenth remove, she leaves a dying Native American baby out in the cold and covered in dirt, rather than caring for or comforting it in any way (37). The removal of the complication of nationality puts her remorseless attitude into starker focus, when, during the eighteenth remove, she takes food from a young European American child’s mouth to eat it herself (46).16 Because the Narrative is a retrospective meditation on her experiences within the context of adherence to Puritan tropes of spiritual development, and because she does not later in the Narrative admit remorse for these or any other incidents, we can read her statements on her guiltlessness as assumptions of her own innocence that she is applying throughout the course of her text, even in instances where her behavior appears brutally inhumane and self-focused.




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Rowlandson contributed to three changes in Puritan culture that were necessary for development of the character of the American frontier hero. The first is that she made the wilderness a home. That is, she made the wilderness itself into a home, not that she made a home in the wilderness by changing the wilderness. Second, she contributed to an alteration in the relationship between the individual Puritan and the Puritan community. This alteration consisted of the development of an increase in stature of the individual in Puritan culture, an increase in the psychological distance between the two, and an initial blurring of gender boundaries in the New World. The third element was the successful assertion of individual, experience-based authority as a viable challenge to communal authority. Because Rowlandson has answers that her culture doesn’t have (i.e., the “boon” that the hero returns with) and because this boon is an answer that requires individual actions rather than close adherence to a group, it begins a chain reaction of increased individual authority. Fitzpatrick discusses the impact of the captivity narrative on Puritan society. She discusses the phenomenon that triumph over adversity reassures Puritans of salvation, since in Puritan theology it is God who is saving the captive. Yet, the captivity narrative by its very nature suggested a decrease in the importance of Puritan society. As Fitzpatrick notes, “if the wilderness revealed in the captivity paradigm could be understood to foster the anxiety, conviction, and persistent self-scrutiny on which Puritan conversion and assurance relied, then social cohesion could be subverted by the very instrument designed to preserve it” (6–7). This meant that “[s]alvation was possible—even promised—outside the community of saints . . . [and] proclaimed by a woman” (Fitzpatrick 7). While in captivity, then, the captive experiences the efficacy of her own ingenuity and does this outside both the strictures and supports of her home culture. This dynamic will evolve into the American conviction that triumph over adversity reassures us of our toughness.17 Armstrong and Tennenhouse claim that “British America was where the printed word first began to refer back to a source in an epistolary heroine and to derive extraordinary authority from qualities inhering within that individual alone” (388). These individuals were the heroines of captivity narratives of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it was in these narratives that “Englishness [came] to be embodied in a nonaristocratic female” (391). Speaking specifically



C C D  P S

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of Rowlandson, they state that she “represent[ed] the English in the New World as an abducted body” (393), with which she “gender[s] the source of written English” (397). As “the source of writing” (396), Rowlandson creates a divide between “an earlier, apparently more primitive aristocratic culture [in which women were objects of men and] . . . one in which every literate individual matters.” This shifts the culture to one “where mastery is exercised strictly through words” rather than through violence, “quietly and almost imperceptibly chang[ing] that culture forever” (Armstrong and Tennenhouse 401). This process helped to change the relationship between the individual and Puritan culture: “The captivity narrative requires that the detached—and thereby individuated—individual be reincorporated into the culture from which she has been forcibly removed.” When this happens, when the captive is returned to the community, the community is changed: “[T]hey [the captivity narratives] distinguish the new-world community to which the captive returns from the old-world community she left behind.” In the Old World community “[o]ne cannot tell individual families apart, much less individual bodies.” In the early part of the Narrative Rowlandson talks about the community of her home, without any characteristics of the individuals. “It takes the solitude of her captivity to transform the narrator into a separate individual. When she is absorbed back into the community at the end of her captivity, however, her narration does not lose its self-enclosed character. . . . The captive’s return transforms that community into one in which the individual counts” (Armstrong and Tennenhouse 399–400). This is the New World community, the one from which the American frontier hero will emerge because it allows space for the individual who acts without a high level of societal sanction. This shift from Old World to New World community parallels the generational tensions mentioned earlier. The first generation brought the Old World community structure to New England, with its requirement of strict adherence to community mores. They saw their children and grandchildren (i.e., the second and third generations) as in decline and as moving away from the beliefs and practices of the first generation. As the second generation developed, they had to contend with both the pressure put on them by their elders’ perception of them as degenerate and the disintegration of the original Puritan errand, which demanded redefinition of the purpose and structure of Puritanism in the New World. The second generation also, for the most part, had been born in New England, which naturally provided them with a basic perspective radically different from that of their





elders: the second generation was home in the New World, despite whatever ties they had to England in other ways. This meant that the second generation was on its own in the wilderness in a profound way. Not only was the English Puritan movement withdrawing its attention and support, but, unlike the first generation, the nonimmigrant second-generation members were experientially natives in the New World and had no home in England to return to. This meant that at a very fundamental level they were already more individual than their elders because they had fewer and narrower community ties and less reason to adhere to Old World community standards. The myth of the declining generations promulgated by the first generation put additional pressure on the ties between individual and community by telling later generations that they had fallen away, and that they weren’t as close to the community as they should be. This created a sense of failure in the second and third generations, which put distance between them and their community and prompted them to look for other places to experience affirmation and belonging.18 The Narrative responded to the predicament of these generations. Increased psychological distance between the individual and the culture led to the successful assertion of individual authority within the New World community. Fitzpatrick states, “Illumination in the wilderness necessarily separated the individual from her congregation and community and yielded a stark understanding of humanity’s plight not shared by ordinary people” (2). This increased understanding provided the individual with the perspective to challenge accepted attitudes. In addition, as discussed earlier, Rowlandson’s ordeal “proved her own election” (Fitzpatrick 1), reinforcing her position as a voice of spiritual authority to her peers while at the same time infusing her writing with a confidence that she was right (also addressing another Puritan need). The implication is that cultural control of individuals is not as important as individual experiences. Key to this change was the shifting interpretation of individual trials, which could be seen as both warnings to the entire community and as events with meaning only for the individual experiencing them. Acknowledging this, Fitzpatrick points out that “captivity tales increasingly emphasized the redemption of the captives themselves rather than the rescue of the covenanted nation—and one no longer represented the other” (6). This reinterpretation of affliction not only made individual experience personal rather than public, which was another element in creating psychological distance between an individual and the community, it also provided the individual with heightened understanding of a particular nature not shared with the



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community at large, except through narrative report. That is, the meaning of the personal trial was available to the community as a story only and not as an integral part of the experience of the religious community. The individual thus developed a basis for personal authority based on personal experiences of enlightenment not shared by the community. So far we have looked at ways in which Rowlandson’s character interacted with and influenced her culture, and the placement of my argument for Rowlandson as a cultural hero within the critical discussion of Rowlandson. Several factors make Rowlandson a vital, early root of the American frontier hero: the intense and enduring popularity of her Narrative, her easy identification by members of the culture, her heroic traits, and the culture’s readiness to accept her. In addition, the characteristics of the mythological hero that Rowlandson demonstrates contributed to the utility of the text to her culture, which was in need of a positive myth to replace the myth of failure that was developing in it. Rowlandson had the right combination of personality, background, experience, and opportunity to have an impact. She had the right cultural moment to enable her to be noticed and accepted. This moment enabled Rowlandson to move beyond the Puritan assumption of individual value as purely God-given and to instead claim a “sense of worth [resulting] not only through God’s sustaining of her but also through her own will and capacity to sustain herself” (Toulouse 671). As such, Rowlandson “resists becoming the ‘Judea capta’ that the ministers wished her to be. Instead, . . . [she] demonstrates to Puritan men and women alike their ability to survive in frontier circumstances” (Toulouse 671). These survival messages are further strengthened in the Narrative by their secondary nature, which gives them a protected status, existing as they do on the unobtrusive level of subtext underlying her surface tale of reaffirmation of faith.

B A   R H A Rowlandson is a hyperbolic example of Puritan experience, that of isolation among the Native Americans: “[I]f one looked before one, there was nothing but Indians, and behind one, nothing but Indians, and so on either hand, I my self in the midst, and no Christian soul near me” (Rowlandson 20).19 The heightened individuality required for frontier life presumed distance from cultural strictures and independence of judgment. At the same time, “[t]he American wilderness,





the agent of God’s chastising will, was Janus-faced: it destroyed yet it saved” (Fitzpatrick 2). Rowlandson demonstrates acceptance and integration of Native American skills and attitudes into her repertoire of behaviors, making possible her survival in this dualistic wilderness by increasing her ingenuity as her tolerance of her captors develops. And repeatedly, Native American techniques, perspectives, and behaviors save Rowlandson’s life or make her more comfortable among them. Rowlandson is in the position of the frontier hero: alone in the wilderness with the Native Americans. One last look at Mather’s endorsement of the Narrative, juxtaposed against the Narrative’s compelling message of individual power and assertion, captures the dynamic of the reception of Rowlandson’s text. Mather expected Rowlandson’s readers to be powerfully moved, that reading the Narrative must do the reader good. If this did not happen, in Mather’s analysis, the fault was with the reader. This is important because it reveals the strength and depth of Mather’s sponsorship of the Narrative and its messages. This early instance of the assumption of the power of the written word in America also demonstrates the force Mather recognized was resident in the Narrative. The mood of the Puritan citizenry disposed them to be influenced by the Narrative and to be receptive to its potential solutions. Rowlandson was “the self-saving oracle of defiant self-assertion” (Fitzpatrick 16). Finally, Rowlandson’s typification of the English experience in America as that of the abducted female20 is important in two ways. First, it is the English experience of being isolated in the wilderness that is being typified. This is the experience of the American frontier hero. And second, that isolation is experienced through a feminine perspective, while it is male community leaders who attempt to direct and contain this feminine experience. This dynamic in Rowlandson foreshadows a similar dynamic in the American frontier hero, who is most usually in defiance of authority, or at least lives outside the community and is indifferent to community laws and standards, while employing this indifference in support and protection of the frontier community.



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Mothering the Adamic Hero

A remarkable aspect of Rowlandson’s captivity is how quickly and how successfully she makes herself at home among the Algonquians. This capacity for adaptation to Native American culture is a critical capacity of the American frontier hero. Throughout her captivity, Rowlandson is the recipient of kindnesses and protection, a result of her ability “not simply to live with her Indian captors but to become part of their society” (Salisbury 5). Rowlandson recounts many incidents in which she merges into Algonquian society and, as a result, is able to maintain herself against great odds and often more comfortably than some of the Algonquian members of the band. A vivid example occurs during the fourteenth remove. It began to rain in the evening and “they [the Algonquians] quickly got up a Bark Wigwam, where I lay dry that night,” Rowlandson reports. Her shelter from the elements contrasts with the experience of “many of them [who] had lyen in the rain all night.” Rowlandson does not explain how it is that she, a prisoner, “fared better than many of them,” sleeping in the wigwam while members of the band were outside and unsheltered (41). Yet this lack of explanation, along with the frequency of her descriptions of herself in comparatively comfortable positions within the group, reveals her ability to integrate herself into Native American society at a level of relative ease and positive social stature. In addition, her presumption of personal rights within the group, as demonstrated by her lack of justification or explanation, makes a de facto argument for her personal and multicultural strengths. Development of a viable status within the group displays the hero’s resourcefulness. Rather than the “passive victim, equally unwilling to risk an escape and unable to return victorious with the scalps of her captors,” as Lang so articulately states it (19),1 and as Rowlandson has sometimes been seen in the decades and centuries since the Narrative’s publication (and as later captivity victims were increasingly characterized), Rowlandson’s attitudes and behavior demonstrate an acute ability to develop command and control within confining circumstances.



CH A P T ER


Behaviors that Rowlandson demonstrates are seen as resulting from passivity because they are being performed by a woman rather than because the behaviors themselves represent a passive—that is, submissive or unresisting—response to her situation. In earlier periods, this interpretation aligned with social and cultural demands for women’s passivity. In the current era, this interpretation aligns with demands for feminine conformity to masculinized notions of bravery that focus on aggressive demonstrations of risk-taking and the deployment of force. While these academic and popular responses suggest unacknowledged gender bias, Rowlandson is in fact able to leverage her position with her captors so that she is repeatedly more comfortable and secure than many of them are. She also brokers her own ransom and release, as well as mediates for and defends other prisoners, including males. In addition, defining Rowlandson’s actions as based in timidity, rather than as steadiness of nerve and exertion of willpower in the service of cunning resistance, obscures their link to later implementations of similar behaviors by male literary characters. Reinterpreting these behaviors as based upon a carefully calculated restraint rather than timidity brings a different meaning to her behavior. It is at this point that the social and cultural workings of gender reveal their influence on the perceived nature and development of the frontier hero. As a woman, Mary Rowlandson could not be seen as a hero because she was contextualized as the suffering female captive. Therefore, when the frontier hero appears in literature as a male in the early nineteenth century, he seems Adamic—without antecedents, alone within the wilderness, and prime. Despite her popularity, despite, even, depictions of her holding off Native Americans with a musket and anachronistically wearing the Minuteman’s tricornered hat in late eighteenth-century printings of the Narrative,2 Rowlandson remained a woman captured by the “savages” and miraculously returned to “civilization.” Courage was something she had, but the point was not courage. The point was that she had been passively returned to the cultural fold, meek and unresisting. That it had been her own efforts that effected this return was largely unremarked and without acknowledged contemporaneous meaning outside of its religious connotations. Yet, Rowlandson’s character, as presented in her Narrative, depicts the idiosyncratic and definitive traits of the frontier hero, demonstrating the genesis of this hero within the Narrative.

T A H Although Rowlandson portrays the American frontier hero in her seventeenth-century text, that hero is seen as emerging in the early to 10.1057/9780230103993 - The Emergence of the American Frontier Hero 1682-1826, Denise Mary MacNeil


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mid-nineteenth century. In The American Adam, R. W. B. Lewis identifies 1820 to 1860 as the era in which “the beginnings and the first tentative outlines of a native mythology” appear (1). Lewis identifies the American hero as an Adamic hero who materializes without parentage from the pastoral American wilderness in the early nineteenth century. This hero is “a self-reliant young man who . . . seem[s] to have sprung from nowhere and whose characteristic pose . . . was the solitary stance in the presence of Nature and God.” Lewis calls this hero “the hero in space” because “the hero seems to take his start outside time, or on the very outer edges of it, so that his location is essentially in space alone,” and because “his initial habitat is space as spaciousness, as the unbounded, the area of total possibility” (91; italics in original). Lewis continues, “[t]he individual in America has usually taken his start outside society” (101). The Adamic hero is without cultural constraints and, thus, not surprisingly, can easily be at odds with the culture(s) around him. This hero acts and makes decision on his own authority, demonstrating his relatively high stature in relation to the culture(s) around him. This quality of the Adamic hero of having his origin outside society results from two causes. First, Rowlandson’s significance to the origination of this hero is unacknowledged both by Lewis and later theorists. This obscures the hero’s ties to both colonial American culture and Native American culture. Slotkin emphasizes Rowlandson’s representation of Puritan dubiety and suspense as she “dramatizes and brings to the surface the ambivalent feelings of desire (for emigration) and guilt (for ‘deserting’ England)” (107) rather than the heroic aspects of her behavior and character. In such a situation, he concludes that her experience is that of “an unwilling captivity to heathens . . . not a crusader’s quest but . . . a sinner’s trial and judgment” (108). This analysis elides Rowlandson from the evolution of the frontier hero. While her facility in dealing with her captors is conceded, Rowlandson is confined to a gendered definition of her behavior that precludes interpretation of that behavior as heroic in any real sense. This apprehension continues to be evidenced in analyses of the Narrative. Repeatedly, Rowlandson is presented as neither a cultural hero nor an individual capable of heroic behavior. For example, Derounian-Stodola characterizes Rowlandson as a quasar (“an ordinary person [who] becomes temporarily famous largely through media manipulation”) rather than a hero, because Rowlandson “did not perform a noble deed while in captivity.” In this analysis, Rowlandson is not a hero because she does nothing extraordinary, but just survives, whereas “heroes gain celebrityhood for what they do” (“The Captive,” 72, emphasis added). While this definition has 10.1057/9780230103993 - The Emergence of the American Frontier Hero 1682-1826, Denise Mary MacNeil


MOTHERING THE ADAMIC HERO


coherence in relation to Derounian-Stodola’s particular focus on celebrity status, the mythological hero’s noble deed occurs when the hero returns to his home society with the boon. While in the mythological underworld, the hero’s behavior is usually focused on survival, as Rowlandson’s was when she was prisoner. The contribution that the returning mythological hero—and by extension the subset of the American frontier hero—makes to the home world by providing it with the much-needed boon demonstrates his or her heroic nature, rather than displaying it in the more usual acts of bravery. The second source of the extra-societal nature of the Adamic hero is the evolutionary result of Rowlandson’s position, in which she must develop ways of coping with her Native American captors by integrating herself into their society—an action that is anathema to the Puritan theocracy. Slotkin states that “the American hero would have to bridge the gap or mediate between the European past and the Indian present” (190). Burnham takes this a step further. Speaking specifically of Rowlandson, Burnham says that the Narrative probably “led English readers on both sides of the Atlantic to imagine the possibility of not being English at all, to imagine a liminal or hybrid, if not an Indian, cultural identity” (Captivity, 46). In order to ensure her own survival, Rowlandson must refrain from Puritan/English behavior that could cause her trouble, such as refusing to eat certain things. At the same time, she must adopt Native American attitudes and behaviors in order to survive. She must also exempt herself from acting on the popular Puritan premise that Native Americans are inherently evil. Although she often remarks on their evil nature, her behavior toward her captors suggests that she finds them adequately trustworthy and reasonable. Thus, Rowlandson successfully exerts her individual authority in contradiction of Puritan/English customs: For her, the old ways did not work. In order to be successful, she must adjust and come to the challenges of the American wilderness without expecting her preconceived, cultural notions to work. Rowlandson thus becomes the Adamic hero, taking her start outside of Puritan culture by opening herself to adaptation to Native American culture, using her own best judgment as her guide and not Puritan authority. Rowlandson’s diction reflects this condition. Rowlandson’s “choice of the word removes and her use of this method of marking the passage of time reinforce the impression of captivity as an all-environing experience, a world in microcosm, complete even to having its own peculiar time-space relationships” (Slotkin 109; italics in original). This is another reason for the extra-cultural nature of the frontier hero. He comes from Rowlandson’s experience, existing



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completely outside the time and space of usual European American reality. The net result of these two dynamics is the apparent orphan stature of the nineteenth-century American frontier hero. By exposing the racially catalyzed gender shift of the frontier hero, this apparent orphancy dissolves and the maternal parentage of the Adamic hero is made evident.

T M R H A  R  V Slotkin defines myth as “a narrative which concentrates in a single, dramatized experience the whole history of a people in their land” (269). Taking Rowlandson’s Narrative into account and focusing specifically on the function and effect of the captivity narratives, he asserts that “[a]lmost from the moment of its literary genesis, the New England Indian captivity narrative functioned as a myth, reducing the Puritan state of mind and world view, along with the events of colonization and settlement, into archetypal drama. In it a single individual, usually a woman, stands passively under the strokes of evil, awaiting rescue by the grace of God. The sufferer represents the whole, chastened body of Puritan society. . . . The captive’s ultimate redemption by the grace of Christ and the efforts of Puritan magistrates is likened to the regeneration of the soul in conversion” (94). For Slotkin, myth is a crystallizing and focusing function, in which individuals operate metonymically in relation to a coherently reducible whole. Although Slotkin questions the ability of myth to develop in a print-mediated culture such as that of the New England colonies (6), he maintains, nevertheless, that “the captivity narratives constitute the first coherent myth-literature developed in America for American audiences,” observing that “[i]t almost seems as if the only experience of intimacy with the Indians that New England readers would accept was the experience of captivity” (95). For American colonists “yearning to prove that they truly belonged to their place” (Slotkin 269) in the New World, myth worked on a pragmatic, almost physical level. Myth functioned as a “secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour out into human cultural manifestation” (Campbell 3), providing the colonists with distinctly American symbols and stories. In his text, Slotkin is involved in a “search for a hero” (180), with the ties between myth and hero providing the basis for the hero’s cultural power. The hero he is looking for is the “hunter-hero,” whom he sees in contradistinction to the “god- and devil-bullied victim” at





the center of captivity narratives (180). He identifies this hunter-hero as a “frontier hero” who values “trusting personal experience of the wilderness rather than orthodox theory” (183) that results from “extended experience in the wilderness” (205). For the colonists, these “mediating figures” balanced European and Native American perspectives, as well as domesticated and untamed spaces. These figures “were the sine qua non of their [the colonists’] continued health” because “the psychological consequences of hanging between the old world and the new were too much to be borne for very long.” The end result of this tension is the “appearance [in literature] of heroes who act as mediators between the two cultures” (205). Slotkin’s own description of the frontier hero resonates strongly with the Rowlandson of the Narrative. Yet despite this, Slotkin’s overall vision elides Rowlandson from view. While he acknowledges the importance of Rowlandson’s Narrative in particular in the development of a European American mythology, Rowlandson is not among those heroes in Slotkin’s analysis because she cannot be seen as a hero, having been confined to the largely gendered category of “god- and devil-bullied” captive. Protagonists of captivity narratives in general are also not included for the same reason. Writing before the full flowering of gender studies, Slotkin reveals the source of this exclusion in his focus on “founding fathers” who “tore violently a nation from the implacable and obstinate wilderness” (4). His focus on masculine aggression may be necessary to achieve his purpose of exposing the myth of regeneration through violence that founds, and still drives, American attitudes, policies, and actions. Inarguably, we are still living out regeneration through violence, even as our latest, Iraqi-focused iteration reveals, yet again, the impotence of this paradigm to address twenty-first-century issues. Yet, preoccupation with gendered violence occludes Rowlandson from view, confining her to the role of feminine victim. And there is another important, unacknowledged myth that we are living out, as well—the schism of the androgynous self into hyper-male hero and ultrafeminine victim. This schism cripples us and interferes with our efforts to move past a gender-bifurcated society and culture. Our lack of understanding and failure to acknowledge this myth stymies progress. As Slotkin himself says, “A people unaware of its myths is likely to continue living by them, though the world around that people may change and demand changes in their psychology, their world view, their ethics, and their institutions” (4–5). Without acknowledging the nature of our own mythology, we are “left unprepared” to make a reasonable and productive next step (5). Myth has the power



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to obscure and confuse the drives of competing realities into one apparently unified whole. Being ignorant of one’s myths results in being unaware of this power. As a channel for cosmic energy and as a focusing element for the energies of the people who make up a particular cultural group, myth has a multivalent, rather than monolithic, cultural influence. The concept of multiple, contesting rhetorics addresses the gaps in these uni-mythic constructions. Multiple rhetorics have the capacity to dynamically represent competing perspectives and questions. Unifying and normalizing myths provide the appearance of stability to an unstable conceptual field. For the American frontier hero, this enforced stabilization contributes to development of unrealistic, destructive, and destabilizing gender bifurcation within the hero. The hyper-gendered split in the frontier hero that appears in the nineteenth and later centuries embodies the polarized, binary outcome of the collision of the push for mythic, energetic unity with the reality of multiple, energetic, and thematic streams.3

T P   A F H The American frontier hero conforms to Campbell’s paradigm in terms of the hero’s general structure and the nature of the quest or journey. This hero is distinguished from Campbell’s more general description by specific frontier characteristics. Rather than traveling between the natural and supernatural worlds, this hero navigates the American frontier, negotiating and renegotiating exchanges between and among the dynamics of the hero’s home culture and the cultures he encounters within the American wilderness. In these border exchanges, the American frontier hero engages the American wilderness and the native peoples of America at an intimate level and in isolation from European American society, in the same way that the mythological hero leaves home and travels into a supernatural world peopled with extraordinary and unearthly beings. Achieving closeness with Native American people, the hero becomes integrated to various degrees into the particular Native American society of the hero’s geographic region, providing the hero with expertise that places him (or her) at a distinct advantage to the average European American. The American frontier hero is an ordinary human who is able to adventure successfully in an extraordinary world, to the benefit of himself and his society. In addition to the service the hero provides to his





fellows, the frontier hero has a pattern of personal characteristics that identify him and predict his response to society and the wilderness. He is Adamic: seemingly without parentage, he apparently springs from the world in which he lives. He is inherently nostalgic and pastoral, existing outside the regular constraints of culture. In the process of his crossings and recrossings of the frontier between civilization and the wilderness, he “discovers his immutable alienation from his own people, without, at the same time, being able to assimilate himself wholly into the Indian way of life” (Cawelti, Adventure 205). His “double gifts of civilization and savagery” enable him to survive and even prosper in the wilderness and among Native American peoples, either friendly or hostile (199). In his positive role, he “represents a synthesis of the best qualities of both worlds, advocating Progress on the one hand, while at the same time, keenly aware of the influence of the natural environment on the other” (Marsden 107–108). He is practical and active; he can be counted on in difficult situations to have a clearcut idea for a solution. Solitary and self-reliant, the frontier hero traverses the threshold between Native and European American society, as well as between populated and unpopulated areas of the American continent, irrespective of nationality or race. Although his defense of European American frontier settlements demonstrates commitment to the European American domestic order, he has internalized dissonance between the settlement and the wilderness and is not truly at home in either world. He appears Adamic in his solitary, seemingly acultural and precultural stance, because his ties to Rowlandson’s earlier heroine have been unacknowledged. He is the “hunter-hero” described by Slotkin, who stands in stark, gendered contrast to the captive or victim. Yet, despite the ultimate presentation of this hero as a hyper-male, this hero has within him the vestiges of Rowlandson’s archetype.

C H T The Narrative presents a catalogue of the traits and experiences that we have come to expect of the American frontier hero, the character that European Americans would come to identify with and mythologize. It was in part because of the need for such a character that Rowlandson’s Narrative became a bestseller. This character was a fallible yet courageous and resourceful individual, separated from the safety of European culture and surviving successfully and reasonably comfortably in the American wilderness. And, despite the strong reliance of Puritan culture on hierarchy and community authority over



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the individual, this independent-minded character was a natural outgrowth of the Puritan personality when placed in the New World environment. Mather describes Rowlandson’s experience as “much too hard for flesh and blood” (Rowlandson, “Preface,” para. 2), suggesting that what Rowlandson endured required superhuman strength. Mather states that it was the superhuman strength of God that protected Rowlandson, which “at length [did] deliver and restore” her (para. 2). However, the concept of enduring experiences that are “much too hard for flesh and blood” has survived in our culture without the religious connotations assigned to it by Mather in the Preface and by Rowlandson elsewhere in the Narrative. This characteristic is replicated in the American frontier hero in a secular context in which superhuman endurance has lost its divine link and is now a quality inherent in the hero himself. Through willpower and the ability to control emotions (traits that Rowlandson demonstrates), the American frontier hero coolly endures horrific experiences and circumstances. This coolness is now no longer figured as reliance on God but instead results from the hero’s reliance on her skills, her intuition, her ingenuity, and herself. Rowlandson also functions as a bridge between reliance on God and reliance on self by demonstrating reliance on her own shrewdness and resourcefulness, while at the same time verbally giving the credit for her survival to God. For instance, Rowlandson writes in the sixth remove that “the Lord preserved [her] in safety” (21), giving God credit for her survival during removes one through six. Yet, during those six removes, she has repeatedly described numerous instances in which she used her own proficiency and judgment to ensure her safety, such as treating her wound with oak leaves on the advice of another prisoner, advising other captives against attempting to flee captivity, observing and imitating Native American techniques for negotiating the wilderness, as well as making herself useful to her captors through knitting and sewing for them. In contrast, she also describes the maiming and murdering of other Puritans, who appear to differ from her not in their piety—which is strong, as is hers—but only in their personal survival skills, which are less developed than hers and which they are less inclined to rely upon. Rowlandson’s sister and Goodwife Joslin are examples of this. In the face of the challenges of war that they experience, they each forsake themselves in their reliance on God, making little or no effort to respond to their circumstances in ways that might aid their physical survival. As the importance of theology diminishes in American society, the religious aspects of Rowlandson’s experience lose cultural significance. Yet, the survival skills that Rowlandson employs, such as cool-headed





pragmatism and ingenuity, retain cultural significance. The significance of the survival skills themselves is increased when survival in the wilderness can no longer be credibly backed up by religious doctrine by much of the populace, shifting the strength of belief from divine protection to the survival skills themselves. This is the beginning of the culturally powerful concept that special traits are required to survive in America. Rowlandson first presents a portrayal of the traits of the American frontier hero in her description of her behavior when her house in Lancaster was attacked on the morning of February 20, 1676.4 I quote from this passage extensively because it provides a vivid picture of a type of scene that has become stereotypic in presentations of the American frontier hero: At length they [the Algonquians] came and beset our own house, and quickly it was the dolefullest day that ever mine eyes saw. The house stood on the edg of a hill; some of the Indians got behind the hill, others into the Barn, and others behind any thing that could shelter them; from all which places they shot against the House, so that the Bullets seemed to fly like hail; and quickly they wounded one man among us, then another, and then a third. About two hours . . . they had been about the house before they prevailed to fire it. . . . [T]hey fired it once and one ventured out and quenched it, but they quickly fired again, and that took. Now is that dreadfull hour come that I have often heard of . . . but now mine eyes see it. . . . [T]he . . . Heathen ready to knock us on the head, if we stirred out. Now might we hear Mothers & Children crying out for themselves, and one another, Lord, What shall we do? Then I took my Children (and one of my sisters, hers) to go forth and leave the house: but as soon as we came to the door and appeared, the Indians shot so thick that the bullets rattled against the House, as if one had taken an handfull of stones and threw them, so that we were fain to give back. We had six stout Dogs belonging to our Garrison, but none of them wou’d stir, though another time, if any Indian had come to the door, they were ready to fly upon him and tear him down. . . . But out we must go. . . . No sooner were we out of the House, but my Brother in Law . . . fell down dead. . . . One of my elder Sisters Children, named William had then his Leg broken, which the Indians perceiving, they knockt him on head. Thus were we butchered . . . standing amazed, with the blood running down to our heels. . . . [T]he Indians laid hold of us, pulling me one way, and the Children another, and said, Come along with us; I told them they would kill me: they answered, If I were willing to go along with them, they would not hurt me. (Rowlandson 2–4)

Here Rowlandson exhibits hero’s characteristics. She is in the “dreadfull hour” where all about her are falling (including men). Even



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though she knows the warring Algonquians are “ready to knock us on the head, if we stirred out,” and the dogs won’t even go out, Rowlandson has the courage and self-reliance to go out, and even to speak to and confront the Algonquians. When they tell her to go along with them, she immediately presses them to negotiate with her, and succeeds in her attempt, by saying, in essence, “Why should I go along with you? You will just kill me.” Considering that her house is under attack and is falling, it would seem obvious that the superior might of the Native Americans in this particular instance would almost dictate that she do what they say. Yet despite the marked power imbalance, Rowlandson displays her steady nerve and cultural acumen by extracting a promise that she will be safe in their custody, demonstrating the American frontier hero’s ability to move between Native and European American cultures. It is interesting to note here that Rowlandson reports this incident using the singular pronoun I even though she has her three children with her. This is another demonstration of the individuality of the frontier hero, along with the hero’s assumption of authority over and responsibility for individuals who are clearly part of the domestic sphere (in this case, children). Rowlandson’s heroic response to horror is demonstrated immediately and continues throughout her Narrative. Beginning in medias res like many novels and films to follow, the opening paragraph of the Narrative depicts the scene at her home as the Algonquian raid begins. As the backdrop to the assault on her own house, Rowlandson catalogues brutal murders of a number of her neighbors in a calm and matter-of-fact tone. Of a wounded man on the ground, she states that the attackers “knockt him in head, and stript him naked, and split open his Bowels” (2). She describes another man “who was chopt into the head with a Hatchet, and stripped naked, and yet was crawling up and down” (5). Infants are pulled from their parents arms and murdered, as the attackers “went on, burning, and destroying before them,” until the town resembled “a company of Sheep torn by wolves. All of them stript naked” (2, 5). Yet despite these scenes, Rowlandson stays calm and does not despair. She says, “I had often before this said, that if the Indians should come, I should chuse rather to be killed by them than be taken alive, but when it came to the tryal my mind changed” (5). Although she had presumed in the past that her courage would desert her if she were ever attacked by Native Americans, she discovers that her courage stays with her and she has the ability to endure trials that those around her cannot withstand. The horror that she has experienced has not diminished her spirit and she is able to step off into the dangerous and threatening unknown of Indian captivity.





Rowlandson’s behavior contrasts with the behavior of the men from the household because she is able to deal with the Native Americans successfully while they are not, placing her squarely in the position of hero, despite possible gender concerns.5 In addition to reporting failed attempts to quench the fire, she specifically mentions the killing of her brother-in-law, her nephew, and three other unidentified male members of her household. In perhaps a deliberate attempt to contrast her own behavior with that of other women, Rowlandson describes mothers and children calling helplessly to one another just before she takes her own children out of the house to confront the Algonquians. Rowlandson’s bold behavior is further highlighted by its contrast to her sister’s response to the raid: “My elder Sister being yet in the House, and seeing those wofull sights, . . . said, And, Lord, let me dy with them, which was no sooner said, but she was struck with a Bullet, and fell down dead over the threshold” (4). Rowlandson’s sister demonstrates the helpless response to the Native American attack that might perhaps be a more expected response for a woman in this culture and under those circumstances. The dramatic swiftness with which the sister’s wish to die is answered further reinforces both the folly of this behavior and the difference between it and Rowlandson’s actions of facing and negotiating with the Algonquians. Her sister’s death in the attack is figured almost as a suicide, a giving up to emotion. Rowlandson also demonstrates pragmatism in her resistance to the pressure of fear. For the American frontier hero, will and reason are stronger than panic and despair. Rowlandson’s sister’s despair contrasts with Rowlandson’s own reaction to the death of her six-year-old child Sarah nine days later. Rowlandson states that “in that distressed time, . . . I did not use wicked and violent means to end my own miserable life” (11), further accenting the heroic quality of her actions, specifically her courage, endurance, and resistance to the pressure of emotions. Rowlandson’s dispassionate presentation of her grisly experiences is emblematic of the American frontier hero, of the way the hero speaks, and of the way we speak about him. As she moves through her Narrative, she maintains her pragmatic, practical outlook. During the thirteenth remove, when she is near the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, not far from the town of Northfield (Salisbury 72), she describes helping John Giberd, a young man, who is also a captive and who is suffering from flux (dysentery): I found him lying without dores, upon the ground. . . . They had turned him out of the Wigwam . . . in a bitter cold day, without fire or cloaths: the young man himself had nothing on, but his shirt and wast-coat.



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Her description of Giberd and his condition is as calm and yet as graphic as always. Rowlandson suggests that the young man’s plight not only elicited sympathy from her, but that it would from anyone. Rowlandson’s statement attributes an inhumane lack of sympathy to the Algonquians who forced Giberd out of doors, suggesting that any person’s heart would be melted into tears of sympathy at the spectacle of Giberd lying exposed on the frozen ground. In part, it may be the danger attendant on weeping, which the Narrative has elsewhere demonstrated is little tolerated by the Algonquian forces, that causes Rowlandson to report this sympathy for Giberd as potential only and that prevents her from crying at this point.6 Goodwife Joslin’s death and other events in the Narrative support this. But, interestingly and importantly, Rowlandson does not record that finding Giberd evoked terror or horror in her, a fellow prisoner, who could easily be treated as callously as the young man was being treated. Tellingly, she does not report experiencing fear as a result of finding the young man, nor does the emotional component of the experience overmaster and unnerve her. Instead, she approaches the situation with extreme pragmatism, courage, and resourcefulness. She makes dispassionate decisions in alarming and potentially dangerous circumstances, circumstances that would tend to engage the emotions very strongly. She demonstrates that she is resourceful and, in addition, probably physically strong, since she suggests that she must almost have carried Giberd because Giberd reported he “could not stand.” Undaunted, she calmly states that “with much adoe I got him to a fire, and went my self home” (37). In this scene Rowlandson also exercises independent judgment and exhibits self-reliance in her conduct. Rowlandson acts without the foreknowledge of her own or Giberd’s captors, asserting her independence vis-à-vis the Algonquians and demonstrating self-sufficiency. Both Giberd’s captors and her own are upset with her actions, and she is accused of attempting to run away. Rowlandson is punished and threatened, but she is able to finesse the situation. Deftly handling the consequences, she takes advantage of an opportunity to mitigate her confinement when a member of the band comes to ask her to do some knitting for him. She asks him to “ask [her] mistress if [she] might go along with him a little way” (38). Rowlandson’s ability to manage Algonquian interpersonal dynamics is exposed here. The request between band members results in her release and, as



The sight was enough to melt a heart of stone. . . . [He] lay quivering in the Cold, . . . round like a dog. (Rowlandson 37)


a consequence of her release, in her obtaining some food from her benefactor as they walked along. Here again she reveals that she is neither Native American nor Puritan American, but an independent individual possessing an amalgamation of traits of both cultures. During the eighteenth remove, her band is in the process of traveling to Watchusett. In the midst of describing a “wearisome day” of travel, Rowlandson interjects the statement that “[a]s we went along I saw an English-man stripd naked, and lying dead upon the ground, but I knew not who he was.” After this statement, she unperturbedly continues, “[t]hen we came to another Indian Town, where we stayed all night” (45). The dead Englishman is important enough to mention in passing, but does not elicit concern, emotion, or further comment from Rowlandson. It is interesting that Rowlandson mentions this dead man when he is unknown to her and when the sight of brutalized, dead, or dying people has become commonplace to her by that point in her travels. The dead Englishman is part of the scenery of her day. It is a wearisome day and the sighting of the dead man contributes to the wearying nature of the day. Rowlandson’s low-key response continues to contrast with her sister’s intense emotion during the initial attack, as well as with the emotional intensity of Goodwife Joslin, another captive, who is tortured and killed by the Algonquians because of her emotionality. Rowlandson reports that Goodwife Joslin “vexed [the Algonquians] with her importunity” by being in such grief and agitating continually to go home (16). In all of these instances, Rowlandson, rather than give in to the demands of anxiety and fear, chooses to focus her perceptions, responses, and actions as practically as possible, demonstrating the dispassionate pragmatism of the American frontier hero. It is also important that this mention of the dead Englishman comes very near the end of the Narrative. The next day, they will travel to Watchusett, and within a very few days the ransom Rowlandson crafted along with the Sachems will be delivered and she will be released. Presented at this point in the Narrative, when there exists more than ever the possibility of returning home but when that possibility is still intangible and remote, the dead man could be seen as an ill omen, as a cold reminder that the Native Americans are still in control of Rowlandson and that things could still go wrong. Strengthening this line of reasoning is the fact that the dead man is found quite close to English settlements; at this point, they are no more than two days’ walk from Lancaster, the site of Rowlandson’s initial capture. The dead man’s being so close to Lancaster makes him a more potent reminder of the power the Algonquians have over



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her: She will remain their helpless captive if that is what they choose, despite the nearness of English settlements. If they choose, they may also kill her and thus prevent her from ever returning home. However, Rowlandson does not even hint at these meanings of the dead Englishman. She merely states that he is there and moves on to her description of arriving in the Algonquian town and seeing some other English captives, among whom is a relative of hers. Rowlandson demonstrates that dreadfulness and death are just part of the scenery against which one must continue to behave dispassionately and practically, not giving in to emotions. Rowlandson has also been characterized as employing the Puritan role of goodwife in her dealings with her captors. The Puritan goodwife is so firmly entrenched in patriarchal social structure that she “accepts all males as authority figures.” For the goodwife, “subjection becomes almost automatic.” Defined as a product of this system, “Rowlandson submits herself without argument to Indian males as distorted images of authority in her imposed society” (Davis 54). While I agree with Davis that Rowlandson’s behavior clearly has a gendered quality to it, her attitude and actions with her captives at crucial points would have been presumptuous for a goodwife. As the daughter of Lancaster’s wealthiest landowner and wife of the town’s minister, Rowlandson was not a goodwife but was the only woman in Lancaster addressed by the title Mistress, and as such was treated with “deference from all the goodwives and other women in Lancaster” (Salisbury 31). It is this superior status that defines her existence in both the Puritan and Native American communities. “She was . . . the most prominent member of a community of women that conducted neighborly exchanges of goods and labor, oversaw childbirths, offered charity to the needy, and enforced community mores” (Salisbury 28). Rowlandson was a leader, and her behavior with the Native Americans was in keeping with her high status in Lancaster. The relative independence of mind and leadership of her position in Puritan Lancaster provide the raw materials for the self-reliant, confident frontier hero she becomes in captivity. For example, during the twelfth remove, Rowlandson complains of the “insolency” of her captors when her mistress slaps her in response to Rowlandson’s complaint that the load she is expected to carry is too heavy (30). Since insolence can only be shown by a social inferior to a superior, Rowlandson’s diction implies that she expects treatment from the Native Americans that would align with the behavior expected of a social inferior. Despite her vulnerability, she is not cowed before her captors. She demonstrates this from the





first, when she negotiates her safety as a condition of surrendering herself and her children in the opening scene of the Narrative (4). Her sense of her entitled position was one of the elements that she employed to protect herself and secure her position among her captors. She also used her assumption of privilege to aid other captives, as demonstrated when she came to the aid of Giberd. In another example that takes place during the thirteenth remove, she intercedes with the Algonquians on behalf of Thomas Read, a newly taken captive who is being harassed by his captors and who is afraid for his life. Rowlandson is able to function as a mediator for Read and obtain assurances from the Native Americans that they do not intend to kill Read. In each instance, Rowlandson’s ability to wield social power proves significant. The adaptations required of Rowlandson in order to survive extend beyond the limits of gender or of the goodwife role. Rowlandson has command of the subtle niceties of hierarchy. “She was prepared to survive captivity . . . by her understanding of the nature of servility. Even though she hated and feared her captors, she knew how to please them” (Ulrich 228). Ulrich suggests conscious choice in Rowlandson’s behavior, and Rowlandson clearly performs deference, even at times when she has initially attempted to assert social privilege and resist the will of her captors. However, in order to survive as well as she does, Rowlandson must think and behave in ways that are in conflict with the role of goodwife within Puritan society, as well as in conflict with more generalized tenets of Puritan behavior. Rowlandson’s experience as Mistress aids her survival. This is demonstrated in the Narrative when she repeatedly explains instances of deferential behavior with her captors in terms of pleasing them or avoiding their wrath. During the thirteenth remove, she is asked to give a piece of her apron to make a flap for a Native American child. Metacom’s maid makes the request and Rowlandson initially refuses. A fight ensues between Rowlandson and Weetamo, and Rowlandson narrowly avoids injury. Understanding the limits of her privilege in this instance, she switches to deferential behavior. She reports that she “ran to the maid and gave her all [of Rowlandson’s] apron, and so that storm went over,” thus avoiding consequences or repercussions for her previous, privileged self-assertion (36). Her deference is a matter of cunning and social sophistication, of understanding and control of the methods, miens, and dynamics of hierarchy. In addition, Rowlandson knows not only when to be deferential, which a goodwife would know, but also when to be more assertive, and when to push back against domineering behavior and counter it with her own demonstrations of status and



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privilege. At points, she is even almost regal in her challenges to Weetamo and her presumptions of status balance with the other Sachems. A goodwife is used to being required to play a deferential role; a higher-status mistress is better prepared to inhabit multiple positions in a power hierarchy. Finally, Rowlandson’s diction as she describes her thoughts and actions is also characteristic of the rhetorics associated with the frontier hero. Her language is essentially unemotional, even in the midst of highly emotional scenes. While others around her are incapacitated by overwhelming emotion, she persistently emphasizes maintaining rationality and focusing matter-of-factly on the achievable and the practical. At the same time, this practicality is combined with descriptions of her experiences that present them as ordeals survivable only with the aid of superhuman abilities and incomprehensible to any except those who have experienced them. Yet, as Rowlandson learns, these ordeals are survivable through very human abilities: intelligence, cunning, endurance, patience, and courage. These are certainly not traits foreign to the Puritans. However, Rowlandson explicitly demonstrates their utility in the multiracial New England environment, while at the same time contrasting her employment of these traits with the consequences of either passivity or of resorting to emotionality that she depicts in other Puritans around her. Cut off from contact with the Puritan community, Rowlandson demonstrates specific, idiosyncratic, and successful application of these skills, along with development of wilderness survival skills patterned on those of her captors. In this way, she provides important guidance and reassurance to her readers of their capabilities, if they were ever to be in a similar situation (as many would). Although some critics have characterized her behavior as passivity, she calculatedly does not antagonize physically superior captives, but employs their language and social customs as she patiently negotiates with them both the terms of her captivity and of her release. She makes herself useful to her captors by trading skills that only she has, such as knitting and sewing, in exchange for food and goods. She endures the agonized death of her daughter, keeps up with the forced march while wounded and in a state of semi-starvation, and maintains emotional control so that her intelligence is available for her to use to protect herself. While she does not engage her captors in a physical showdown, which she would most likely have lost, she courageously holds her own with them, finding ways to survive until she is provided with an opportunity to attempt her release.7




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The Narrative is the first literary presentation of the traits of the character that will come to be identified as the American frontier hero. Within the text, Rowlandson exhibits independence of judgment, pragmatism, and courage. While having a clear allegiance to Puritan culture as a whole, she experiences a liminal position in relation to both Puritan and Native American cultures, inhabiting a sort of psychological and cultural frontier between the two. She experiences “adjustment to an alien culture” and even “trans-culturation” (Burnham, Captivity, 18). Through her descriptions of her dealings with her captors, she demonstrates her partial assimilation into Indian culture and her competence in manipulating social forms. Her handling of herself during their travels reveals her development of wilderness survival skills that incorporate Native American attitudes and techniques. In her sojourn in the supernatural underworld of the American wilderness, Rowlandson has mastered skills and attitudes that make her demonstrably more successful in dealing with the everyday world of the Puritan’s New England home than even the hardiest of the English and many of the Algonquians. Rowlandson presented the emerging European Americans with a character that both fit the stereotype of the mythological hero and also had the social and cultural penetration to move into the cultural lexicon of the Puritans and, later, their descendants. This boon answered the need of the colonists for mythologies related specifically to their experience in America and providing pragmatic answers to the challenges of the American wilderness. Contextualizing her experience within Puritan theology, she makes her story acceptable to her contemporaries, while nevertheless demonstrating that solutions to the challenges the Puritans face in the New World lie in external or outwardly focused action, rather than in introspection or spiritual development. Her idiosyncratic wilderness survival skills and the attitudes with which she employs them—ingenuity, cunning, individuality, defiance of authority, courage, and cool-headedness—identify her as the nascent American frontier hero. The Narrative’s popularity is both the vehicle through which its story and symbology move into the culture and at the same time the demonstration of the intensity of the cultural response to message of the Narrative. The character that emerges from the Narrative through this process fills the requirements for a cultural hero and demonstrates the combination of qualities that are stereotypic of the American frontier hero.



T F A F H

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What remains to be seen is how details of Rowlandson’s character were specifically influential, literarily and culturally, over time, and how the frontier hero emerging in Rowlandson’s tale metamorphizes into the American frontier hero we know today. What happens when fictional texts play with Rowlandson? The next chapter begins to address this question, as it looks at a very early novel, The Female American; or, the Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield. Published pseudonymously in 1767, the novel recounts the experiences of a biracial, binational heroine. The Female American extends the contestation of gendered inflections of the heroic begun in Rowlandson’s Narrative, refining the nascent American frontier hero that appears in Rowlandson’s Narrative and further complicating the amalgamation of gendered, colonial, and Native American attributes within the developing hero.







5

Transcending Gendered English American Social Positions: Gender and Racial Multiplicity in The Female American; or, the Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkf ield

Early in The Female American, Unca Eliza Winkfield tells her readers, “I was obliged to run every risk” (Vol. I, 80).1, 2 With this statement, she reveals her personal nature and identifies herself as the classic, reluctant hero, pushed over the threshold of adventure by force of circumstance. As is often the case with this hero, both the call and the border crossing are unlooked for, unavoidable, and unwelcome. However, unlike other heroes, including Mary Rowlandson, Winkfield will not return to the everyday world with a boon to help her community. Instead, she will send the boon back to that world via an emissary, while she remains in the mythological underworld and makes her life there. In this way, she asserts her link to the development of the American hero within the American wilderness and among Native American peoples. With this voluntary action, Winkfield introduces a characteristic of the American frontier hero—that of consignment to the wilderness—which will become compulsory for later, male iterations of this hero. As her name suggests, Unca Eliza Winkfield is of both Native American and European American origin. She learns both Native American and European culture and skills in childhood, which she spends in both America and England. And although presenting a protagonist who is both female and Native American, The Female American provides an important link in the evolutionary progression of the American frontier hero in American literature,3 a staunch and



CH A P T ER


often violent defender of European American colonizing efforts in the American wilderness. In fact, Winkfield’s race and gender enable her to influence the development of this frontier hero. Winkfield represents a moment in the process at which the heroic is still figured androgynously and situated in a female character. The Female American establishes the transition to fiction of Rowlandson’s prototype while experimenting with regularization of relations with Native Americans.4 Winkfield solidifies racial diversity and androgyny as foundational elements of the frontier hero, within her hybrid self. In addition, Winkfield’s contributions eventually rouse the potential within the frontier hero to move beyond the racist and misogynist violence often perpetrated by this hero. Although this potential is as yet unrealized, it is a key to developing new literary and cultural patterns of this pervasive and particularly American hero, such that he is increasingly prone to value humanistic, cultural, and environmental welfare above harmful, reactive responses. Written under the pseudonym of Unca Eliza Winkfield, the novel tells the story of Winkfield’s life from birth until approximately age twenty-five, when she retreats into the American wilderness to spend the rest of her days, “being determined to live and die amongst my dear Indians,” as she tells us, and “never intend[ing] to have any more to do with Europe” or European settlements in the Americas (Vol. II, 117; Vol. II, 171). Like Mary Rowlandson, the fictional Winkfield was raised on the seventeenth-century American frontier between European American and Native American settlements. Winkfield retains the feminine gender of the frontier hero presented by Rowlandson, while redefining that hero as American rather than English. Winkfield accomplishes this through race—via her Native American mother— and through cultural orientation—via her attitudes toward and ultimate decisions regarding Native Americans.5 The Female American presents the second main step in this evolution of the American frontier hero. The question this chapter answers is this: How does The Female American take the frontier hero developed by Rowlandson and move that hero forward so that it is strengthened and refined? Winkfield solidifies the various aspects of the hero, deepening the psychic distance between the individual and the culture. She achieves increased success and more complete integration in the American wilderness and with Native American peoples. She develops more intimacy with both, while at the same time fashioning an intense, chosen, and permanent isolation from European culture at the end of the novel. In addition, Winkfield presents further corroboration that the Adamic quality of the American hero is a



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chimera, while at the same time she contributes to the strength and believability of that illusion. The novel accomplishes this in several ways. It examines tensions between conceptualizations of the feminine and the heroic, discord between races and within a biracial individual, and with junctures of wilderness and domicile. The novel extends the contestation of gendered inflections of the heroic begun in Rowlandson’s Narrative, refining the embryonic American frontier hero that appears in Rowlandson’s Narrative and further complicating the amalgamation of gendered, colonial, and Native American attributes within the developing hero. In this novel, the psychic distance between the individual and society is increased further than what it is in Rowlandson’s Narrative. Racial and gender identities develop fluidity. Brutality is released as a race-related characteristic. Assertion of individual voice and authority has increased viability and potency, particularly for female and Native American characters (of which Winkfield herself is both).6 Winkfield also resolves not to be a suffering victim regardless of her circumstances, demonstrating instead self-reliance, ingenuity, and resilience. In addition, Winkfield presents the divided consciousness of the simultaneously colonized and colonizing subject. She speaks with equal candidness of her understanding of herself as an exotic to the English and of her patronizing attitudes and actions regarding the Native Americans she meets once she is marooned on the island. The interplay of race and gender within the text questions the relative positions of characters in the text, making visible the conceptual fluidity of the American literary character at this time, the boundaries of which were in the process of being investigated and defined—and a model for which this text presents. The novel spotlights issues of character, community, and domesticity in terms of shifting gendered power and competency, the effects and definition of racial intermarriage, harmonies and dissonances between Native American and colonial religions, and attempts to construct positive domestic and social interactions between the two racial groups.

U E W’ H A Unca Eliza Winkfield’s heroic adventures emerge naturally out of the events of her everyday life. When Winkfield is a young child, her mother dies at the hands of an assassin sent to murder her by her jealous sister Alluca, who had become chief of the tribe upon her father’s death. Although unharmed by the assailants, Winkfield’s father never fully recovers from the “melancholy under which he laboured from



TRANSCENDING GENDERED SOCIAL POSITIONS


the decease of [Winkfield’s] mother” (Vol. I, 52). He prepares to return to his family in England when Winkfield is about twenty-four years old, but “he grew so bad as to be incapable of removal, and in a few days went to that happiness in another world, which he could not enjoy in this,” dying of a broken heart (Vol. I, 53). Once her father dies, Winkfield must rely on herself. She feels compelled to leave home after the death of her father and makes plans to travel to England, with her considerable wealth, where she has relatives. This change in her circumstances marks the beginning of the process that makes her open to the call to adventure and pushes her closer to the threshold of adventure. In order to travel to England and transport her belongings, Winkfield purchases a sloop and engages a captain who, in exchange for his services, will receive the sailing ship as payment once they arrive in England. The captain hires a crew for the ship and loads it with Winkfield’s possessions. They set sail for England. Once they are at sea, the tone of relations between the sea captain and Winkfield alters dramatically, as the sea captain begins to make “strong courtship” on behalf of his son in England (Vol. I, 56). Winkfield’s heroic journey begins when the call to adventure comes soon after she sets off on her voyage. Her ship’s captain is determined to have her wealth for his family and attempts to force Winkfield to sign a bond agreeing to marry his son when they arrive in England. Winkfield refuses.7 Angered, the captain captures and wounds one of her servants. Winkfield recounts this pivotal moment: “I offered the captain a thousand pounds to release him, and to let him be cured of his wounds. ‘Madam, returned the villain, where are your thousand pounds? all you have on board is already in my possession.’—Thus I could only pity and not relieve” (Vol. I, 60). The captain’s statement is the call to adventure, because it announces that Winkfield can no longer function competently in the everyday world. She has no choice but to prepare to move forward. To stay where she is means certain defeat and probably death for herself and for those she wants to protect (her servants). “I now expected my own destiny; and it soon arrived,” she states, acknowledging both that she knows that she has received the call to adventure and is moving toward the threshold of adventure (Vol. I, 61). Soon after this, Winkfield is forced off her own ship onto a deserted island. At this point, she crosses the threshold of adventure into the supernatural underworld of the American wilderness: A few hours afterwards we came to an uninhabited island, where he put me on shore, for nothing that I said could soften his heart. I begged hard for both, or one, of my maids; but all the favour I could obtain, was my bow and quiver of arrows: indeed he gave me a box of clothes;



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The island, off the eastern shore of North America, is reminiscent of both Robinson Crusoe’s island and of John Winthrop’s description of the Summer Isles. In a racial inversion of Rowlandson’s situation, Winkfield is forcibly placed into the wilderness by an English sea captain rather than a band of Native Americans. Here she will come in contact with a Native American population that is not her own. Winkfield assumed that when she was deposited on the deserted island, she would become “prey to wild beasts” (Vol. I, 58). However, when these threats are carried out, Winkfield ends up in a position that is at least as good as the one she was in when the captain threatened her. In addition, her placement in the wilderness ultimately provides her with the opportunity to establish a life free of racial or gendered restraints. As a hero, Winkfield demonstrates individualism, ingenuity, and resilience in a similar fashion to Rowlandson. She adapts to island life and becomes emotionally self-sufficient. Eventually she finds satisfying society among the islanders, demonstrating her integration with multiple cultures and her increased autonomy as an individual. She reports that she thought she might “go and live among them [the Indians]. . . . [because] it might . . . open a way . . . to my living a much happier life” (Vol. I, 149). Even late in the text, after she has already been contacted by her English rescuers, she again affirms that she “might have concluded [her] life with ease and pleasure among the Indians” (Vol. II, 98), which is what she finally decides to do. At this point of non-return, Winkfield’s cycle diverges from both the standard hero’s cycle of call-adventure-return and the more specific “capture-initiation-return” identified by Derounian-Stodola and Levernier for American captivity protagonists and experienced by Rowlandson (100). However, like Rowlandson, the boon Winkfield provides the community is a set of instructions. Rowlandson’s instructions describe how to work with Native American peoples and to live in the American landscape. Winkfield’s instructions are about how to integrate multiple racial and gender aspects into a self-reliant person who is capable of, and does engage in, compassionate efforts to help and protect others.

R G L Winkfield blurs and diminishes gender conceptions. This appears plainly in Winkfield’s explanation of how she came to have the 10.1057/9780230103993 - The Emergence of the American Frontier Hero 1682-1826, Denise Mary MacNeil


but for these I did not thank him, as I never expected to use them, thinking myself consigned to some wild beast, whose prey I should become. (Vol. I, 61–62)


adventures described in the text. She begins by acknowledging that the lives of women are “commonly domestick, . . . generally pretty nearly of the same kind,” while those of men are “frequently more vagrant, [and] subject them often to experience greater vicissitudes, many times wonderful and strange” (Vol. I, 2). She then states that, although she is a woman, her life has included events “so wonderful, strange, and uncommon” that they rival any that have been recorded (Vol. I, 3). In these statements, she develops a parallel between the possibility for adventure in women’s and men’s lives. Further, when describing the nature of women’s lives, Winkfield uses the qualifiers “commonly” and “generally” to attenuate the prevalence of the domestic in women’s lives. Likewise, when describing the nature of men’s lives, Winkfield uses the qualifiers “frequently,” “often,” and “many times” to limit the prevalence of adventure in male experience. While both sets of qualifiers suggest that the majority of female or male experience, respectively, corresponds to her description, they simultaneously acknowledge that this experience is not universal for either gender: Sometimes, at least, the experiences of women would be more like those of men, as her own life has been, filled with events that have been highly active and adventurous. Likewise, the experiences of men sometimes would be more like those of women, having lives that are quietly domestic and regular. In fact, these male lives are similar to what her husband John ends up having as her partner on the island, and the life her father lived with her mother—both were husbands under the protection of brave, adventurous, and nonwhite women, who understood and wielded power. After Winkfield’s cousin John discovers her on the deserted island, Captain Shore’s crew refuses to take John back on board. They believe he has been consorting with the devil because some of them witnessed Winkfield’s speaking through the golden idol to John and Captain Shore. Captain Shore and John arrange for John to remain alone on the island overnight, while Captain Shore returns to the ships and attempts to reason with the crew. However, Winkfield’s intercession prevents this from happening, and John is not given the opportunity to test himself alone in the wilderness as she did. Instead, she finds John wandering alone on the island and brings him back with her to the islanders’ home island where she now resides. While John is enthusiastic about this arrangement, Winkfield takes his response as naïve, telling him, “[M]y manner of living . . . would be very disgusting to you. Rather may you soon return to your native country, [and] be happy” (Vol. II, 102–103). Although she is unable to return John to England, because Captain Shore cannot change



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the crew’s decision against taking John on board, she still succeeds in protecting John from experiencing the level of risk and adventure that she underwent. When she and John learn that Captain Shore has been forced to leave for England without John, she integrates him into her pampered, highly domesticated, and protected life with the islanders. In a similar way, Rowlandson preserves her husband from immersion in the wilderness and interaction with the Native Americans, when she prevents him from risking the wilderness and the Native Americans to come for her.8 In both cases, women are more at home in the wilderness, and more adventurous there, than men. In the case of Winkfield and her cousin John, there is, of course, a racial difference in addition to the gender difference, which could account for Winkfield’s superior skills both in the wilderness and with Native Americans. Winkfield’s Native American heritage certainly plays a part, one that she acknowledges when contemplating making contact with the visiting Native Americans. For example, she tells us she is able to carry out her plan of speaking to the local Native Americans when they come to the island to worship the idol because, “As the manner of my education had afforded me an opportunity of learning several of the Indian dialects, . . . I thought it very probable that they might speak some one of them” (Vol. I, 147), which turns out to be the case. However, the equivalent gender dynamics of Winkfield’s and Rowlandson’s experiences reinforce the gendered basis of the parallel incidents. At the same time, the gender correspondence in combination with Rowlandson’s Caucasian English background further minimize the importance of the racial influence on the events in Winkfield’s text. Winkfield also unmoors both positive and negative traits in terms of race and gender. In this way, she disrupts assumed ties between negative traits and both nonwhite races and women. Winkfield facilitates this process of releasing linkages by setting up contradictions between her explanations of her actions and her descriptions of the actions themselves.9 Despite the obvious courage Winkfield demonstrates throughout her life and her own earlier statements about the adventuresome nature of her experiences, she comes to the conclusion that “[p]erhaps my being a woman made me more timerous”10 than the male hermit who occupied the island before she did (Vol. I, 146). Yet when she makes this statement, she has just related to her readers her daring exploration of the underground passage that she found in the ruins of a temple of “an ancient idol sacred to the sun,” which she read about in the hermit’s manuscript (Vol. I, 115). Reading about this idol excites her adventurous nature. “I had not patience to go through the





whole history, till I had seen this extraordinary idol,” she reports (Vol. I, 116). This idol is androgynous in its form: “The image . . . resembled a man clad in a long robe or vest. . . . [It] was girt about the waist as with a girdle, and on each breast gathered to a point . . . ; the neck and bosom quite bear like the manner of women” (Vol. I, 131). This idol functions metonymically, demonstrating the expansiveness of the role Winkfield adopts. Within the framework of the novel, Winkfield turns herself into the idol, at least temporarily, for all other characters in the book, save the hermit, by entering the idol and speaking through it as an oracle. Thus the focal point of Winkfield’s primary and most highly charged and powerful contact with virtually every other character initially takes place through the androgynous and superhuman form of the idol. The idol, as empowered to speak by Winkfield, graphically represents a hero/ine who is coherent and fluid, synthesizing all the traits that Rowlandson has into a coherent, high functioning being, released from male and female gender constraints.

A  D   T W Curiosity drives her intrepidly forward. She confidently enters unlighted cells, some filled with mummies. She surprises herself by her response to these, reporting she “had no cause to fear” them (Vol. I, 117). As she continues her explorations, she repeatedly comments on her urge to explore and investigate the things she finds. “[M]y curiosity was so much excited,” she states, “that I determined to go home, and fetch a light to explore this subterraneous cavity” (Vol. I, 133). She demonstrates her nerve when she explores the underground passage, which was unknown to the hermit. Although the passage is “terrifying,” she nevertheless follows it to its terminus in the golden idol (Vol. I, 134). Returning home, she declares, “The extraordinary things that I had seen . . . took off from the horror of the gloominess that the approaching evening shed around me. Nor did the thought of walking among the remains of the dead give me the least terror” (Vol. I, 139). Indeed, she must satisfy her need for adventure and the unusual in order to return to her everyday routine. She says that “having thoroughly gratified my curiosity in searching among the ancient ruins and exploring the contents of them, I spent my time in my little domestic concerns, my devotions, and reading the few books that I found in my chest” (Vol. I, 144). Winkfield repeatedly reenters the tunnel and visits the idol. On one of these trips, an earthquake takes place. Although she tries to



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leave the tunnel after the quake is over, she is unable to push open the trap door to the surface and assumes it is blocked by debris. She criticizes herself for being more venturesome than the hermit, saying, “Why did I undertake this rash, hazardous enterprize? Could the poor hermit content himself forty years in his lonely cell, and was I so soon weary of it?” (Vol. I, 166). However, when she is able to release the bolts that are holding the tunnel door, she learns that it is this very adventurousness at going into the idol that has saved her life, because all else has been destroyed, “not even excepting the cell I inhabited” (Vol. I, 168). Winkfield’s demonstration of the adventurous nature of her own life, “[t]hough a woman,” expands the possibilities for either domesticity or adventure to either gender (Vol. I, 2). She strengthens these ties through her further assertions of the credibility of her narrative. While she states that the events of her life are so strange “that true history, perhaps, never recorded any that were more so,” she reasserts the veracity of her reporting of the events of her narrative, concluding that “the greatest sceptic will allow, uncommon as they are, that they do not exceed the bounds of probability” (Vol. I, 3). Thus the rhetoric that describes the individuality of Winkfield’s experiences and life demonstrates the possibility of other lives’ following the same or similar exceptional paths. Later, after she has determined to speak to the islanders when they come for their annual visit to her island, she takes this contradiction between explanation and action a step further, by removing the gendered aspects. Here she talks about her decision to speak through the idol as a “bold attempt,” without reference to gender or race (Vol. I, 147). The domestication of the wilderness is explicitly carried out in distinctly Native American terms, and Winkfield’s domestic life in the wilderness is always and each time inflected by Native Americans. The bower, and other outdoor yet domestic locations that Winkfield’s mother arranged as intimate and safe havens for “Winca” (Winkfield’s father) when they were courting, foreshadow this. Winkfield’s life on the island is secured by constructions built by Native Americans, even though there has been a European living in the ruins (the hermit) before she did. The hermit’s forty years of easy survival in the Native American ruins attests to the appropriateness of Native American responses to the wilderness. The hermit’s timidity attests to his recognition of his own incapability to improve on his situation through his own initiative or actions. European responses result in invasions and vulnerability, and in the creation of unsafe places in the European settlements where characters are defenseless. Both of Winkfield’s





parents die as a result of actions taken in European settlements, while similar attempts in Native American settlements were unsuccessful. This is echoed in the attempt by the captain of Winkfield’s ship to make the desert island a dangerous place for Winkfield. He is unsuccessful at this because previous Native American efforts have created a secure environment on the island, available to both European and Native American characters. Winkfield conquers the fear of the visiting islanders in her very first interaction with them, while the hermit lives in fear of them and hides from them for forty years. The hermit’s incompetence when it comes to the annual visits of the islanders also demonstrates a lack of facility in intimate engagement with Native Americans, which is highlighted by his isolation from European or European American culture. He is unable to perceive the attributes and temperament of the people that visit the island. While Winkfield has an advantage because she knows from her childhood experiences among her maternal relatives that Native Americans are “docile . . . friendly . . . grateful” (Vol. I, 149), the hermit’s lack of insight is nevertheless striking because he spends decades on the island. Never able to develop a clear sense of, or make contact with, the Native Americans who yearly visit his island, he lives in complete isolation, without ever venturing to investigate the nature of the people around him. In addition, Winkfield conquers a wilderness that previous males experienced or characterized as threatening or dangerous. Although the hermit left extensive instructions on surviving in the wilderness and on living in hiding when the islanders travel to the island, Winkfield has greater and more detailed knowledge of the island after a few months residence than that the hermit demonstrates after his four decades of living there. For instance, although Winkfield presents her finding of the underground passage as an accident because she kicked an iron bar with her foot, it is interesting that she finds this entrance so quickly (within a matter of months of arrival on the island) and that the hermit never happened upon it. This demonstration of his lesser curiosity and more intense timidity stands in contrast to Winkfield’s more adventuresome nature. At the same time, Winkfield demonstrates more resourcefulness than the hermit, not only in finding the underground tunnel but by deciding to hide there rather than in her cell. Once she knows of the tunnels existence, she asserts: [I]f prudence teaches us always to avail ourselves of the best means in our power, I ought rather to secrete myself in the subterraneous



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What Winkfield earlier figures as gendered timidity is here revealed as resourcefulness and practicality.

B, R,  G In Rowlandson’s Narrative, Native Americans perform all acts of brutality. Violence by Native Americans is always figured as harsh and cruel, and is accompanied by intense and often detailed descriptions of the traumatic emotional and psychological reaction of Rowlandson and other European Americans. When violence is perpetrated by European Americans, however, it is normalized and contextualized as a required response to unprovoked Native American aggression. Instances of violence by European Americans are presented as minimal and contained, and described dispassionately without an emotional reaction to the violence. In contrast, in The Female American, Winkfield recontextualizes savagery as a trait that transcends race and gender. Handling of European American prisoners is markedly benign in tone, even when violence is involved. In The Female American, brutal savagery is employed dramatically by both Alluca, Winkfield’s Native American, maternal aunt, and by the sea captain that Winkfield hires to take her to England. Alluca’s most violent acts are perpetrated against her own sister (Winkfield’s mother, a Native American). Alluca’s vengefulness and unrelenting nature drive her to succeed in murdering her sister. In the process, Alluca makes all available residences—the wilderness, Native American towns, and European settlements—mortally dangerous for Winkfield and her parents. In a similar fashion, the sea captain—Caucasian, male, and English—also employs savage violence to further his self-interest at the threshold of adventure discussed earlier. When he is thwarted in his attempts to coerce Winkfield into relinquishing herself and her fortune to his son, the captain attacks Winkfield’s travelling party, viciously murdering five Native American men, hanging another by his heel on the yardarm to die of torture, and seriously injuring three Native American women. He leaves no known territory safe for Winkfield. In the Narrative, Rowlandson integrates what is figured as the brute force and savagery of the Native American and the American



passage, a place in which I shall certainly be less liable to be found. . . . The circumstance of the two bolts within-side of the iron door, which opened into the passage, confirmed my opinion in the fitness of this asylum, as by their means I could fasten myself in. (Vol. I, 146)


wilderness into the Puritan female persona. In The Female American, Winkfield takes this integration further. Winkfield is a highly skilled archer, who proudly uses the bow and arrows she inherited from her murderous aunt Alluca. She claims her skill at multiple points in the novel, suggesting that she may never find a man who is her equal with the bow. Winkfield also demonstrates complete competence with, and even superior skillfulness in negotiating, the European social world. At the same time, Winkfield assumes her own Native American traits as recognized, reputable, and respected, needing neither explanation nor defense. Thus by integrating these multicultural and multi-gendered traits within her own biracial and bicultural person, Winkfield fuses Native American and European American traits within an androgynous heroic character structure. The resulting Rowlandson–Winkfield protagonist is a heroic figure who transcends gender. Rowlandson maintains a coherent personality while moving back and forth between the positions of victim, agent, and mediator. For instance, Rowlandson demonstrates courage and cunning when she argues with her captors, aware from past experience that this behavior would result in getting beaten. She takes the risk of injury in a calculated fashion because she has decided she wants to achieve her goal and that is the way open to her. Winkfield solidifies this coherence even further, as she moves beyond the circumstance of the victim and becomes the primary agent in the shaping of her life and her relationships, extending this acceptance of responsibility even to the events that precipitated her becoming cast away. As she reports her abandonment to the readers, she recognizes that her resistance may have been unnecessary: “I did not know law enough then, or else I might have given the bond, and so have avoided the distress my refusal occasioned, as in equity I might have been released from the penalty” (Vol. I, 57–58). Thus Winkfield acknowledges that she is an agent, even in her own problems. Winkfield’s further resolution not to be a suffering victim regardless of her circumstances confirms her acceptance of her ability to determine the quality of her life experience.

T R  R Responding to the requirement to risk she remarks on early in her story, Winkfield employs her multiracial and androgynous traits to provide solutions not only for herself but also for her husband and Captain Shore, the reformed pirate. Her development of a viable status within the group displays the hero’s resourcefulness. Her ability



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to develop viable statuses for her two male companions reinforces the androgyny of her resourcefulness. And, although contextualized within a framework of assimilation that we now find problematic, Winkfield’s willingness to risk also enables her to develop a protective solution for the Native American nation that she encounters on the island and ultimately joins. Winkfield displays increased psychic distance and increased assertion of individual voice and authority, along with the first-person quality of the American frontier hero. Simultaneously autonomous from and valuable to the surrounding cultures, Winkfield takes herself as her own authority. These result in positive outcomes for both Winkfield and the individuals intimately involved with her. They also have positive outcomes for the social and cultural worlds in which she moves. For instance, despite the considerable European influence in her upbringing, she decides to keep the location of the islanders a secret to protect them from the horrors often resulting from European contact: “[T]heir country might be discovered, and probably invaded, and numbers of the people be carried away into slavery, and other injuries committed” (Vol. II, 66). She sends her family’s accumulated wealth to England to benefit working-class women and the poor. Winkfield’s self-assertion creates a world in which Captain Shore and her cousin John can both be happy and productive. Winkfield develops greater autonomy and personal influence within both Native American and European culture than Rowlandson, and with greater ease, demonstrating transcultural fluency. Winkfield has taken the integration of these two cultures further than Rowlandson has been able to do, because Winkfield comes from a bicultural family and spends significant parts of her childhood in each culture. She has moved beyond the position of cultural mediator/ broker adopted of necessity by Rowlandson.11 Winkfield claims her Native American heritage to distinguish herself from English or European Americans. At other times when talking about Native Americans, she talks as if they are other than she is. In this way, she places herself in a third position—not Native American, not European American.12 In both cases (when talking about Native Americans or when claiming her Native Americanness in contradistinction to European Americans or to English) her position is a superior one to that of either Native American or European American/English. She is especially clear that she is in a superior position in relation to Europeans. Evidence of this is her insistence on a husband who can use her bow and arrow and her reception as a special being among her neighbors in England when she is staying with her uncle (cf. Vol. I,





50, 57, 44). She also gleefully used her knowledge of “Indian language” to wear down her cousin and to block his suit for their marriage (Vol. I, 50). Winkfield exhibits willingness to engage the American wilderness and its Native American population at an intimate level and in isolation from European American culture, advancing the engagement Rowlandson achieved. In her interaction with the Native Americans, she places herself in the social order in a way that allows her to assert her status and independence. Although Winkfield’s circumstances are much more favorable than Rowlandson’s, this is similar to Rowlandson’s developing a working situation for herself as a prisoner of war that includes autonomy, along with relative safety and comfort. Winkfield takes advantage of her situation to place herself in a protected position with the Native Americans. Even though she is in a vulnerable state as the lone castaway on the deserted island, outnumbered by the visiting islanders, she ends up in protected comfort and safety “attended by a whole nation, all ready to serve me; and no care upon me” (Vol. II, 56). At the same time, she becomes satisfied socially and emotionally with her life with the islanders. While female Robinsonades usually develop communities with other women, Winkfield’s world is populated mainly by high-status males—the priests of the island nation she joins.13 Winkfield’s life among highstatus males reinforces the text’s developing androgyny and racial hybridity, blurring of borders, and softening of barriers between genders and races. These results, generated by Winkfield’s immersion in the wilderness, reinforce and expand the substructure of the American frontier hero, placing Winkfield in the ancestry of the Adamic hero, augmenting this hero’s parentage, and weakening the claims to his Adamic nature. Winkfield’s contributions to this ancestry also undergird solutions to the problems that later arise for, and as a result of, this heroic stereotype. In addition, she possesses several of that hero’s most salient traits, reinforcing the lineage of this hero initiated by Rowlandson. Specifically, Winkfield is “self-reliant” and independent. Her independence of mind and spirit give her the Adamic hero’s “solitary stance in the presence of Nature and God,” as she fashions her physical, emotional, and psychological life on the island. Throughout the novel, she lives in “spaciousness, . . . the area of total possibility” (Lewis 91). For the Adamic hero, this translates to the opportunity to create everything from scratch and from one’s own isolated, and thus limited, self. Winkfield extends the full power and flexibility of the conceptualization of total possibility as employed in



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Rowlandson as the ability to call on and cull freely from multiple and competing systems. This approach is more powerful because it is more effective in developing a fully functional, reflective character capable of responding creatively to the unexpected. In addition, Winkfield has “taken [her] start outside society” in that she moves freely back and forth across social/cultural boundaries without restrictions of any sort (Lewis 101). She is supremely facile in multiple cultural systems. Despite her interest in only being an “instructor” to them, the islanders ask her to be their queen (Winkfield Vol. II, 48). Although she refuses their request, she is still treated like royalty—she sets the course for the community leader and is the focal point of community care and attention. In the Native American culture of her own home, she is asked to be the queen of her mother’s people, even though she is only racially half Native American and her involvement with them has been slight. In England with her father’s relatives, she is “caressed” by family and neighbors alike, “who treated [her] in a degree little inferior to that of a princess, as [she] was always called” (Vol. I, 43, 44). She has been educated in Native American languages, “so as to speak them with the utmost ease,” while being at least equally well schooled in English (Vol. I, 147). In her crosscultural self, Winkfield is extra-cultural in terms of any one culture. Winkfield claims extra-culturality, creating a place for herself that exists outside both Native American and European American cultures. As with Rowlandson, ignoring Winkfield’s status as a hero and her place in the lineage of the American frontier hero enhances both Winkfield’s extra-culturality and the illusion of an Adamic nature for the later, male American frontier hero. Winkfield pushes these characteristics beyond where Rowlandson takes them because Winkfield fuses gender and race so that they coalesce into a hero that clearly demonstrates and articulates positive Native American values and traits—and does so outside, and specifically counter to, the paradigm of regeneration through violence. These elements are important because they demonstrate the distancing from society that has happened as the hero has shifted gender and, coincidentally, obscured his biracial, bicultural, and androgynous heritage and background. Winkfield carries traits defined as those of the Adamic hero. This does not make her Adamic. Rather, her having these traits demonstrates that these traits emerge from a situation embedded in multiple cultural attachments.14 Winkfield embodies cultural hybridity physically and demonstrates its functioning in multiple social/cultural situations.15 This embodiment enables Winkfield to offer the reader the opportunity to occupy each of these





positions with Winkfield, with much more facility than is available in Rowlandson’s Narrative. The cultural vacillation that Rowlandson expressed has evolved in The Female American into the first instance of “a modern breed of transcultural individuals,” who in the person of Winkfield “feel[s] herself at home wherever she goes, . . . encapsulat[ing] the previously unrealized concept of English-American hybridization” (Kuhlman 46, 43–44).

R   U Mary Rowlandson ends the Narrative in a complex of gratitude and anxious, trauma-induced insomnia. Identified as a sufferer of posttraumatic stress disorder,16 Rowlandson reaches the end of her Narrative in a weakened condition. Although her experiences have increased her abilities, wisdom, and knowledge, they have also enervated and debilitated her. In a heart-wrenching moment, Rowlandson writes that prior to her imprisonment, she “used to sleep quietly without workings in [her] thoughts, whole nights together,” but is now wakeful while all others sleep, reviewing her experiences in captivity (71). Winkfield’s story ends differently. This change in ending reflects the fuller racial, cultural, and gendered integration achieved by Winkfield in comparison to Rowlandson. This integration is possible because Winkfield is able to take herself as her own authority much more than Rowlandson is able to do, taking whatever she wants from whichever part of her cultural and personal background that she feels like, while Rowlandson is constrained by her ambivalent response to the Algonquians and her greater acceptance of externally developed definitions of mores and behavior. These changes, taking place in the hero as The Female American advances the evolution of the Rowlandson heroic prototype, enable Winkfield to make her decision to retire from the everyday world. In The Female American, the psychic distance between the individual and society is increased over what it is in Rowlandson’s Narrative. Racial definitions develop fluidity. Assertion of individual voice and authority manifest increased viability and potency, particularly for female and Native American characters (of which Winkfield herself is both). The Female American furthers significantly the amalgamation of gendered, colonial, Native American, and European American attributes within the developing American frontier hero. Indeed, Winkfield normalizes this convergence within herself, functioning unselfconsciously as the arbiter of adequate wilderness experience and sufficient competence with Native American skills. This is demonstrated



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in her requirement that her husband must be as capable with the bow and arrow as she is, as well as in her functioning as the source of education for her husband about Native American customs and language (a pattern of behavior she inherited from her mother). Refining the nascent hero that appears in Rowlandson’s Narrative, Winkfield’s novel challenges contemporaneous solutions for women and racial minorities, framing an examination of the value of integration of Native American consciousness, perceptions, agency, and wilderness skills within a complex, successful negotiation of anglicized social challenges. Winkfield flourishes socially and personally in a number of racial and national contexts, an outgrowth of her racially and androgynously integrated heroic character. As American literature and culture evolve, the hero introduced by Rowlandson and solidified by Winkfield will undergo a process of restructuring in the later male American frontier hero. The alloy of adventure and domesticity begun by Rowlandson and fortified by Winkfield diverges along gender lines in later texts, ultimately transfiguring into polar opposites. This disintegrative process begins with Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a SleepWalker. Edgar Huntly undermines the androgyny of the RowlandsonWinkfield hero, while complicating the meaning and valuation of European and Native American attributes. Despite the traumatic nature of her circumstances and the intense emotion she experiences, Rowlandson is able to negotiate a balance, think clearly, and function successfully. In The Female American, emotion is also not an obstacle to competence. Instead, Winkfield extends the capacity to balance capability and intense emotion that Rowlandson demonstrates. However, in Edgar Huntly, the strength and dynamism of the cohesive, androgynous character developed by Winkfield become the subject of masculinizing influences that function disintegratively. Huntly splits self from action, in which process emotionality develops into an obstacle to successful action. The dynamics of this process begin to confuse and conceal the frontier hero’s transgender and multiracial roots, and to generate escalating gender and racial stereotyping and polarization. Edgar Huntly takes the first steps in the process of denaturing the Rowlandson-Winkfield hero and transforming it into a fractured hero: The captured woman who, at whatever cost, must return to white frontier society; and the male American frontier hero embedded in a wilderness between Native American and European American cultures, who is prevented from ever identifying or returning to a home in either culture and is effectively confined to the wilderness, regardless of attempts to leave.







6

Dancing between Ferocity and Delicacy in Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown

“Few, perhaps, among mankind have undergone vicissitudes of peril and wonder equal to mine,” Edgar Huntly relates near the end of the novel Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown, claiming the exceptional nature of the danger and mystery he has experienced (849). At this point in the narrative, Huntly’s hero cycle collapses, and the underworld and world of his everyday experience collide. This highly gothic moment, in which Huntly finds his own packet of Waldegrave’s letters in the room of an unknown visitor who is the only inhabitant of a mysteriously empty mansion (and who will turn out to be Huntly’s long-lost friend and mentor), simultaneously represents the climax of the novel, the beginning of the resolution of the mysteries that have driven the narrative, and the place where the shape of the heroic narrative demonstrates its deepest confusion. Huntly’s use of the terms peril, wonder, and vicissitudes evokes Rowlandson’s Narrative as well as other Puritan spiritual texts.1 This language reminds Huntly’s readers that, despite its irreverent nature and tone, his tale grows out of genres focused on redemption, physical as well as metaphysical.2 Thus, when the confusion and obscurity of the story are at their peak, a template appears with which to organize and decode the story. The cipher, however, is not simple, and the ties to captivity and redemption interlace, crisscross, and contradict themselves. Published in 1799, Edgar Huntly represents the first major emergence into American fiction of the nascent hero generated in Rowlandson’s Narrative and refined in The Female American.3 Edgar



CH A P T ER


Huntly begins the process (later continued in The Last of the Mohicans) of attempting to divorce the Rowlandson-Winkfield hero from the feminine. Edgar Huntly situates this hero in an aggressively masculine persona that is battling its own unacknowledged but assertively feminine characteristics, while at the same time complicating the meaning and valuation of European and Native American attributes. In Huntly, Brown presents the struggle to remove feminine traits from the palate of American heroic attributes. One place that this struggle emerges is in Huntly’s inability to synthesize sensitivity and brutality. While both Rowlandson and Winkfield synthesized these two human attributes, Huntly avoids synthesis and works to deny the influence of sensitivity in his life. These attempts are often figured in the text as alternations between excessive cautiousness and heedless recklessness. Sensitivity is denied in Huntly’s unstable handling of and response to the concept of fear. When following the sleepwalking Clithero, Huntly states, almost boasting, that he could “proceed, without fear” (654), even though Huntly suspects Clithero of murder, and does not know who Clithero is or where he is going. As he carries on his pursuit, his emphasis on fear continues and his cautiousness begins to become apparent. He suggests darkly that Clithero “might resort to more atrocious methods of concealment,” which might endanger Huntly. When Clithero ducks into a cave, Huntly’s nerve weakens. “Hitherto my courage had supported me, but here it failed,” he reports (655). Later, Huntly returns alone to the cave and comments on “some faltering of [his] courage,” noticing a “secret trepidation which attended [him]” (727). While it is understandable that one would be somewhat cautious in these situations, Huntly’s concern contrasts with his recklessness in similar or even more threatening circumstances. “It was easy to find my way out of this wilderness by going forward in one direction, regardless of impediments and crosspaths,” Huntly boldly states (657), his apprehension mysteriously leaving him as he abandons his pursuit of the sleepwalker and decides to plunge through the wilderness. This same impetuous rashness is apparent at other key moments, such as when he retires into the woods with Clithero in hopes of gaining a confession of Waldegrave’s murder from him. In addition, Huntly is an unreliable narrator, whose narrative voice seems not to be his own but is rather the projection of his idealized vision of himself (much as Rowlandson’s does at points). Despite attempts at control, Huntly’s unstable narrator alternately denies and is dominated by the femininity that is inherent in his character, thereby creating additional dissonance between the heroic and the



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feminine within Huntly himself. This character element is figured as a distorted femininity, which Huntly then masculinizes through misapplication of logic. Such is the case when Huntly tells Mary Waldegrave that the money she inherited from her brother should be returned to Weymouth, who claims the money is his and that Waldegrave was just keeping it for him. By Weymouth’s own admission, Weymouth’s claim to the money is based only on the “evidence . . . of [his] own memory and senses” (772–773). And this memory is unreliable. For instance, Weymouth “do[es] not exactly remember the date of the bills” transferring the money to Waldegrave (772). Surprisingly, Huntly dismisses the absence of documents by questioning the logic of even needing them in the first place. He writes to Mary, “The non-appearance of any letters or papers . . . is indeed a mysterious circumstance, but why should Waldegrave be studious of preserving these?” (777). In a distortion of maternal caring for and feminine trust of others, Huntly determines to return the money to Weymouth, even though Weymouth can produce no proof of ownership, and returning the money will “make visible a new train of disastrous consequences” for Mary, Huntly’s dependent sisters, and Huntly himself (774). He acknowledges that he is “not insensible to the evils which have returned upon [them] with augmented force” (776). To return the money to Weymouth will plunge each of these characters into poverty. This is one of many instances in the novel where Huntly’s ostensibly benevolent impulses play out in a distorted fashion, causing damage rather than assistance. In rationalizing his decision, Huntly ignores his obvious responsibility to Mary and to his sisters, for all of whom his protection was demanded by ties of betrothal or family. Huntly’s excuse for his decision to give the money to Weymouth, which will return Mary to her “original poverty” and leave his sisters completely vulnerable to the “precariousness” of being dependent on an aging uncle (776), is that his emotions have been captured by Weymouth. As he tells Mary, Huntly believes Weymouth because “[Weymouth’s] story, hadst thou observed the features and guize of the relater, would have won thy explicit credit” (774). Huntly then uses logic to legitimate this response, saying that “[t]he transfer to Weymouth will not be productive of less benefit to him and his family, than we should derive from the use of it” (777). By calling on Mary as an authority, Huntly attempts to mark his behavior as in keeping with the feminine power that drives the narrative. By framing this within a structure of logic (Weymouth needs the money as much as they do), Huntly tries to project a version of himself and his actions that is above reproach, even though the assumed outcome



DANCING BETWEEN FEROCITY AND DELICACY


will be to expose those for whom he is responsible to danger and suffering. Within the character of Edgar Huntly, the Rowlandson-Winkfield hero starts to break down; self splits from action, creating a problematic emotionality that functions as an obstacle to successful action. This results in an unstable hero who evinces gendered, internal dissonance and alternately proclaims, denies, and subverts his androgynous qualities. In addition, character doubling and the post-traumatic influence of events play significant parts in Edgar Huntly. The shared affliction with sleepwalking is one of the strongest ties creating the doubling of Clithero and Huntly.4 The doubling is part of the metapresence of the text itself. The full title of the novel is Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker. The memoirs are Huntly’s because he is the putative author of the narrative, and one writes memoirs of one’s own life. This identifies Huntly as the sleepwalker. In addition, the structure of the relationship of the title and subtitle equates Huntly directly with memoirs, suggesting a syntactic equivalence between these two nouns. While we do not find out about Huntly’s own sleepwalking until late in the novel, the ambiguity set up by the structure of the title and the early identification of Clithero as a sleepwalker—in the final paragraph of the first chapter (649)—suggests ties between these characters. Despite the emphasis on Clithero’s sleepwalking throughout most of the novel, the syntax of the novel’s title Edgar Huntly; or Memoirs of a Sleep-walker identifies Huntly as the sleepwalker, providing a thematic reminder of the instability of Huntly and the linkage of Huntly and Clithero. The source of Clithero’s sleepwalking is post-trauma stress. Huntly also suffers from sleepwalking, is also a sufferer of post-traumatic stress disorder, and is involved in significant sleepwalking events of his own. Because he is the narrator of the novel and is unaware of his own sleepwalking, the reader does not learn of Huntly’s sleepwalking until Huntly himself deduces it when the story is already quite advanced. Based on their actions while sleepwalking, this affliction, for both Clithero and Huntly, is a result of experiencing trauma involving murder or near-murder. Clithero is haunted by his attempt to murder Euphemia, driving him to be nightly involved in sleepwalking. For Huntly, the trauma appears to be the murder of Waldegrave, Huntly’s close friend and the brother of Huntly’s fiancée, Mary. However, there is an earlier and more essential trauma in Huntly’s past: the death of his parents and infant sibling during an Indian raid when Huntly was a child. Huntly acknowledges this as a source of



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continuing trauma, writing to Mary, “You will not be surprized that the fate of my parents, and the sight of the body of one of this savage band [who killed his parents], . . . should produce lasting and terrific images in my fancy” (791–792). Generalizing Huntly’s experience in terms of his political and cultural moment, Hustis remarks on this passage, stating that “Huntly’s narrative abreaction of the trauma of his family’s murder participates in an early American textual hegemony that repeatedly sanctions and paradoxically rationalizes colonial violence against . . . Native Americans” (116). Reinforcing this contextualization, Huntly acknowledges that “the village inhabited by this clan was built upon the ground which now constitutes my uncle’s barn yard and orchard” (820).5 In addition, Krause ties the elm tree in Edgar Huntly to Penn’s Treaty Elm, claiming “Brown . . . was burying that era of transient peace at the foot of a symbolic Elm surrogate of the one that had supposedly presided over its birth” (465). Looking at Hustis’s statement and the location of the Huntly farm through the lens of Krause’s analysis reinforces the importance of the killing of Huntly’s parents on the contemporaneous focus and events of the novel. Huntly is drawn to the elm because his friend Waldegrave died there, but also because of the failed treaty with the Delawares, which was broken by the European Americans and is implicated in the deaths of his parents and sibling. His family farm’s occupying the former location of Old Deb’s village suggests complicity on the part of Huntly’s family with the breaking of the treaty and at the same time demonstrates that the raid and their deaths were a result of the breaching of the treaty by the white settlers. Thus, Huntly’s fascination with the elm runs deeper than either his yearning to solve the mystery of, or his grief at, Waldegrave’s death. Waldegrave’s name, meaning wooded or forest grave, provides further reinforcement of this analysis.6 These terms simultaneously denote death of the forest (wilderness); death of those in the wilderness (most conspicuously, Native Americans); and the death of Huntly’s family, who lived “on the verge” of the wilderness of Norwalk (791). Taking grave as an adjective deepens the symbolism of this name further, bringing in denotations of somber or mournful anxiety or restless uneasiness. Considering the nearly homographic adjective graven adds suggestions of permanence, human intentionality, and deliberate design to the creation of the situation. The results identify the elm as the restless and somber forest grave of the deliberately subverted treaty. Within this framework, Huntly’s obsession with the elm, his focus on Waldegrave’s death, and his own sleepwalking coalesce in a pattern of splitting or severance of the self from action, in





which the purpose, meaning and goal of behaviors are unmoored from the impulse or emotion that triggered them. As a result, emotional coherence between intention and action is disrupted. Without this, Huntly’s ability to act out his urges toward benevolence successfully is thwarted. Huntly’s heroic failures are founded on these disjunctures and lost linkages. With Clithero as a double, Huntly’s shifting and unstable character is highlighted. In both characters, this unstable personality works against consistency of emotion and action, causing breakdowns in and around him. This inconsistency radiates out to embrace minor characters as well. While these minor characters demonstrate moments of coherence of emotion and action, these moments are quickly overcome by the disruptive force driving the narrative. For example, the search party that sets out to rescue Huntly attempts to kill him instead. This instability ranges from Clithero’s murderous behavior regarding Euphemia, which is echoed in Huntly’s unknowingly shooting at Sarsefield. Huntly’s shooting at Sarsefield is also a type of patricide, similar to Clithero’s murder of Wiatte because Wiatte was Clarice’s father and, thus, would eventually become Clithero’s father-in-law. Likewise, Sarsefield is a stand-in patriarch for Huntly, who not only treated the young Huntly in a fatherly fashion when Sarsefield was Huntly’s tutor but who also has returned to America with the intention of settling a patrimony on Huntly. Even the death of Uncle Huntly, figured within the novel as an unfortunate but reasonable outcome of events, yields its ties to Huntly’s unsound character because Uncle Huntly is killed with Edgar Huntly’s gun, which had been given to Edgar Huntly by Sarsefield. This symbolically ties both Edgar Huntly and Sarsefield to Uncle Huntly’s murder, compounding the patricidal dynamics of this event as well.

D  F  H C: H, V,  V  H O H C For Edgar Huntly, the heroic cycle is not so much a cycle as it is a repetitive diving into and out of the wilderness underworld. Huntly is no longer the reluctant hero seen in the Narrative or The Female American: the hero forced across the threshold of adventure against his/her own wishes, as are Rowlandson, when her home is attacked, and Winkfield, when she is forced off her ship. For Edgar Huntly, the threshold to adventure is both unmarked and unremarked. The boundary between the everyday world and the mythological underworld is intentionally permeable. Doors to homes are left unfastened



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night and day, and characters acting in their roles in the hero cycle are routinely present in domestic spaces. Huntly’s life is scarcely more ordered when he is in the everyday domestic world than it is when he is in the mythological underworld of the American wilderness. Huntly’s relationship to these two spheres—the everyday world and the mythological underworld—represents the embryonic stage of a later development of the masculinized American frontier hero. In later versions of this hero, consignment to the interstitial wilderness between everyday worlds (whether Native American or European American) becomes the condition of the American frontier hero. Huntly remarks on this aspect of his relationship with the wilderness. On one of his many dives down to the nadir of the underworld, he observes, “I was surrounded by barriers that would forever cut off my return to air and to light.” Immediately following this, he swings back the other way. Again, this change is reflected in the physical environment, as his “road appeared now to ascend” (727). Not only does this underworld exist in the natural wilderness between cultures that exists in Norwalk, it also exists in Huntly’s own internal wilderness underworld of sleepwalking. Huntly’s internal struggles—with sleepwalking, in denying the femininity inherent in the frontier hero, in his own twisting of motive and action—are what make Huntly a captive of the wilderness. Throughout his journeys into and out of the wilderness underworld, Huntly is never captured by another person, but only by his own delusions or the wilderness itself. Further confounding the confusion of everyday world and underworld and despite his seeming difficulties within the wilderness, Huntly treats this underworld as a place of safety, while the home repeatedly is identified with danger, alienation, and certain loss. The narrative underpinning that supports these hazardous incidents is Huntly’s original loss of parents and sibling as they lay asleep in their beds. Throughout the novel, this disruption is played out by multiple characters. It is the threat to the home that Wiatte creates by the possibility that he may show up and disrupt peace and safety. It is deep within domestic recesses that the attempted murders of Clarice and Euphemia take place. The danger of the home extends to the risks inherent in family or domestic ties within the novel. Euphemia’s life and well-being are tied to her twin brother Wiatte, who has the ability to drive away the domestic safety represented by Sarsefield and to influence Clithero to distort his own protective urges so that he becomes murderous. Huntly’s cycle is actually a vacillation of his own devising, which ultimately collapses. “[T]o return was scarcely a less arduous task





than to proceed,” he states, characterizing his lack of focus and of differentiation between worlds, as he plunges through the wilderness (728). In both the external and internal underworlds his quest is distorted. There is no boon that he retrieves in either case. Immersion in either wilderness or home produces chaos, confusion, and often, destruction.7 In addition, Huntly attempts to fill all of the positions in the captivity story. He kills five Indians in a wild chase and rescues a white girl who has been captured by the Indians.8 He avenges Waldegrave’s murder, by most likely killing the Indian who killed Waldegrave. Even in this incident, Huntly confounds his role within the hero cycle by his reference to this Indian as a “shedder of blood” (886). These words appear ironically self-reflexive, coming as they do at the end of Huntly’s narration of his exploits, which includes multiple, grizzly descriptions of vicious murders he himself has committed, while the narrative only acknowledges for certain one murder performed by the Indian. In addition, Huntly himself is searched for by two patriarchal figures—his Uncle Huntly and Sarsefield, who form a search party to look for Huntly. This search party mistakes Huntly for an Indian. They shoot at Huntly, Sarsefield included. When the search party must become a war party, Huntly’s masquerade as simultaneously a captivity victim and an Indian is complete. Having ironically repulsed his rescuers, he returns from the wilderness to the European American domestic world. Describing himself as he “entered an avenue of tall oaks, that led to the house” (846), on his final return from the wilderness, he says: My legs, neck and bosom were bare, and their native hue were exchanged for the livid marks of bruises and scarrifications. An horrid scar upon my cheek, and my uncombed locks; hollow eyes, made ghastly by abstinence and cold. (846–847)9

With his “native hue” exchanged for something darker and his body demonstrating the presence of scarifications, which evokes tattooing and other intentional markings sometimes placed on European American captives, Huntly figures himself as an Indian captive.10 This is a confounded situation. Huntly has not been a captive, of anyone, except perhaps his own confusion. In addition, rather than being rescued by the search party sent to save him, he has battled that group, who themselves have become so confused that when they finally find him, they leave him for dead, even though they have with them a doctor skilled at diagnosing the condition of the wounded.



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Ultimately Huntly fails at all aspects of the hero cycle as he unsuccessfully occupies multiple positions within it and within the fundamental captivity narrative. Repeatedly, Huntly compromises his own possibility of return. Although two possible marriages and the bestowal of adequate, if not possibly substantial, wealth from two different sources is available to Huntly prior to his adventures within the novel, by the end of the novel he has foreclosed one of these options, certainly, and possibly both of them. The closest thing to a boon for his home society as a result of his sojourns into the underworld is the grudging acknowledgement that his home society might have already had the correct answers in regard to Clithero Edny. Without a boon to assist his home society, Huntly is instead an agent of destruction for that society. His forays into the mythological underworld confuse and weaken him, destroying his own marital and financial future, annihilating the chance for Mary Waldegrave and his sisters to live anything but a life of grinding poverty, and obliterating Sarsefield’s future through destroying his paternity, both physical (through the death of Sarsefield’s unborn child) and psychological (through alienation of Sarsefield, which repeats the alienation of Sarsefield accomplished by Clithero). Huntly is a failed hero, whose effect on his countrymen and countrywomen, as well as on Native Americans, is destructive. He is a hero who creates victims, especially in the case of Clithero Edny. Prior to Huntly’s meddling, Clithero is “a pattern of sobriety and gentleness. . . . [with a] mind superior to his situation. His natural endowments were strong, and had enjoyed all the advantage of cultivation. His demeanor was grave, and thoughtful, and compassionate” (651). Clithero’s purpose had been to live a quiet life: “During the day he was a sober and diligent workman. His evenings he spent in incommunicative silence. On sundays, he always rambled away, no one knew whither, and without a companion” (661). Clithero is undeniably eccentric in his sleepwalking behaviors. However, these appear to be harming no one. Huntly repeatedly seeks Clithero out and insists that Clithero pay attention to Huntly’s concerns and attempts to help him, which follow from the distress Clithero experiences as a result of Huntly’s attention. Each of Huntly’s attempts to help Clithero results in a bigger problem for Clithero. Huntly is an incompetent hero, ignoring pragmatic realities and unreflectingly responding to his inner emotional situation. Rather than learning from his experiences and developing increased skill and nuance, Huntly’s logic and solutions become increasingly crude. He brings this brutishness to his home society, materially demonstrating its destructive qualities when he





attempts to close Clithero’s box. Trying to force the box to close, Huntly breaks it: “In my efforts to press down the lid, which were augmented in proportion to the resistance I met with, the spring was broken” (742). He uses even less finesse when dealing with the box he has dug up from under the elm—his own box containing Waldegrave’s letters, which in his unruly state he does not recognize. Desiring to open the box, he reports, “I placed it on the ground and crushed it to pieces with my heel” (744). The physical representations of Huntly’s developing response to circumstances are metonymic of the decreasing sophistication and nuance in his dealings with other characters and situations. Rather than becoming more capable, as is the expected outcome for the hero, Huntly rapidly and markedly becomes increasingly incapable and damaging in his effects on events and characters.

E  O The battle Huntly wages to divorce the frontier hero from his feminine roots arises dramatically in relation to emotion. The development of emotionality into an obstacle to successful action is one aspect of the evolution of the American frontier hero that develops in Edgar Huntly and that occurs as part of the severability of self from action. If we think back to Rowlandson’s Narrative, emotional expression is frequent and intense. As does Huntly, Rowlandson makes many references to losing heart. However, unlike Huntly, Rowlandson is able to balance or alternate between moments of intense emotion and moments of effective action. Repeatedly, Rowlandson successfully protects herself and other captives. In her reports of these instances, she describes experiencing great emotional intensity, dispensing timely pragmatic advice, and initiating prompt application of remedies to threatening situations, moving swiftly and efficiently from one to the other. This is what she did when she rescued John Giberd, for instance, the young man suffering from dysentery, whom she found lying outdoors on the cold ground, half naked, and who is discussed in chapter 4. Despite the intensity of the situation and of her intense response to it, Rowlandson does what she has to do and moves on, heedless of any effects of gender enculturation or emotional distress. Unflustered, almost detached, she virtually lifts and carries the man to the fire, encouraging him all the while to take heart. And while she jeopardizes her own well-being in the process, because she risks the wrath of her captors for her independent behavior, she manages the retribution she experiences with skill and cunning. As a result, the overall outcome of her endeavors is positive



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because she potentially saves Giberd’s life while managing to incur only minor negative consequences for herself. In a similar vein, Rowlandson capitalizes on several opportunities to meet with and assist her twelve-year-old son Joseph, held captive by another Algonquian band, providing him with psychological support and eventually exerting a favorable influence on his captor’s handling of Joseph. She intervenes for Thomas Read, another captive, extracting a commitment from his captors that they do not intend to execute him and then conveying this information to Read and comforting him emotionally. In The Female American, we saw a similar positive integration of emotion and action in the character Unca Eliza Winkfield, which produced beneficial results for Unca Eliza Winkfield and other characters in the novel, as we saw in the previous chapter. In contrast, emotion exerts a distinctly inhibitory and dangerous influence within Edgar Huntly. A striking example is the tie between altruism and murder that is enunciated in the story of the break between Clithero Edny and Euphemia Lorimer Sarsefield. The break is the outcome of Clithero’s attempt to murder Euphemia, his benefactress and surrogate mother. Such is the antithesis of emotionality and safety within the novel that Clithero’s motive for murder is kindness: He wishes to prevent Euphemia’s learning that her twin brother has been killed. Euphemia believes that she has a special psychic connection to this brother that both enables her to know whether he is alive or dead and that will also trigger her own death once her brother perishes. Thus, to protect Euphemia from the terror of experiencing her own death, Clithero intends to kill her while she sleeps so that she will remain “serene and happy. . . . rescued from anguish,” never having to wake up and experience “the consciousness of instantly impending death” (710). Clithero is thwarted in this attempted execution by Euphemia herself, who has not been sleeping after all, but “had withdrawn to her closet” while her niece Clarice slept in Euphemia’s bed (882). As Clithero is about to plunge a dagger into the sleeping Clarice’s breast (thinking it is Euphemia), Euphemia grabs his arm and forces the knife into the mattress, saving Clarice. Euphemia then saves Clithero’s life a few moments later, when he attempts to turn the dagger on himself, in horror at his own actions. The debilitating nature of emotion is exemplified in Huntly’s own internal response to hearing Clithero’s story: My judgement was, for a time, sunk into imbecility and confusion. My mind was full of the images unavoidably suggested by this tale, but they existed in a kind of chaos, and not otherwise, than gradually, was




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This process prevents Huntly from acting in line with his concern for Clithero, as his response to Clithero’s story did not “allow [Huntly] to attend to the intimations of self-murder which he [Clithero] dropped” (718). Instead, Huntly muses on Clithero’s logic, echoing Clithero’s claim of the reasonable connection between altruism and murder, stating that Clithero’s action was “the necessary result of a series of ideas mutually linked and connected,” and that “[h]is conduct was dictated by a motive allied to virtue” (719). The result of Huntly’s “methodical inspection” of Clithero’s motives and actions mirrors Clithero’s distorted emotionality, reinforcing the inverse links of benevolence and morbidity, if not mortality, as Huntly adopts Clithero’s logic that it is better to die than to experience emotional pain. Later when Clithero has been rescued from the Indians by the search party that went in search of Huntly, Clithero tells Huntly, “I wanted to assure thee that thy efforts for my benefit were not useless. They have saved me from murdering myself, a guilt more inexpiable than any which it was in my power to commit” (876). However, this beneficial outcome of Huntly’s attempts to alleviate Clithero’s suffering is only temporary. Fortified by the food Huntly provided him, Clithero’s spirits rise and he decides to return to Inglefield’s house to retrieve the manuscript of Euphemia Lorimer’s memoirs, which Clithero has hidden in a nearly unopenable wooden chest. However, when Clithero finds the box, it has been opened and the manuscript is not there. Distressed, Clithero smashes the box and falls once again into suicidal despair: “My transports of astonishment, and indignation and grief yielded to the resumption of my fatal purpose. I hastened back to the hill, and determined anew to perish,” he states (877). Clithero’s response reveals not only his own emotional fragility but, as Huntly’s double, the quality of Huntly’s emotionality as well. As Huntly’s double, Clithero demonstrates the feminine roots of the frontier hero in his emotional response to this invasion of his privacy and integrity.11 Huntly is the one who opened the box and he did so because he wanted to do so.12 He explains, “I looked at it for some time, till the desire insensibly arose of opening it and examining its contents” (740). Granted, he pauses for a moment to consider the propriety of his intentions: I had no more right to do this than the Inglefields; perhaps, indeed, this curiosity was more absurd, and the gratification more culpable, in



I able to reduce them to distinct particulars, and subject them to a deliberate and methodical inspection. (718–719)


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Huntly is the culprit, and this sequence of events demonstrates the convergence of the danger of emotionality in the novel with the failure of the heroic. Huntly acknowledges that his intended actions are inappropriate. But the thing is he wants to do it. He wants to know what is in the box. Even though his curiosity may be “absurd,” even though its “gratification [is] more culpable” than such an invasion of privacy would be in others, and even though “all the maxims of society combine to render [Clithero’s privacy] sacred,” he is unwilling to act on anything but the urge to open the chest and find out what is inside. He rationalizes that he only “intended to benefit [him]self without inflicting injury on others” (740). This is all right because, as he tells himself, he can conceal his prying. “The lid might be raised and shut down again without any tokens of my act; its contents might be examined, and all things restored to their former condition, in a few minutes,” he justifies (740). In this scene, Huntly goes through the motions of reflecting on his plans, but this reflection is only formal, without substance or content. He wants to do what he wants to do and so he uses the structure of reflection to create a rationalization of his behavior, excusing himself because he doesn’t mean to hurt anybody. Hurt, of course, happens, but Huntly does not accept responsibility for causing it because his intention was only to gratify his own urges. As Huntly has stated earlier in the story, “Proofs of a just intention are all that are requisite to exempt us from blame” (719). This negligent recklessness characterizes Huntly’s behavior in response to emotion throughout the novel. Even when Huntly acknowledges that he is aware of the possibility of considering a reason mediated by analysis and emotion, he quickly abandons this in favor of an unreflective emotional response that is more instinctive than anything else.

M C Upon hearing Clithero’s story of his attempt on Euphemia’s life, and while still unaware of his own sleepwalking, Huntly’s suspicions that Clithero may be Waldegrave’s murderer are heightened and the novel’s conjunction of emotion and danger is strengthened. Admitting the possibility of perverted benevolence as a motive for murder,



me than in them. . . . What excuse could I make to the proprietor, should he ever reappear to claim his own, or to Inglefield for breaking open a receptacle which all the maxims of society combine to render sacred? (740)


Huntly muses: “[W]hat should hinder but that the death of my friend was, in like manner, an act of momentary insanity and originated in a like spirit of mistaken benevolence?” (718). Because he is Huntly’s double, this question about Clithero is revealing of Huntly’s own motivations. This same “mistaken benevolence” functions in Huntly’s life, with consequences every bit as dark and detrimental as those that follow Clithero’s actions. Throughout the novel, Clithero and Huntly are linked through this self-proclaimed heroic goal of saving others. As we’ve seen in Rowlandson’s text, Rowlandson successfully demonstrates this heroic trait on numerous occasions as she alleviates the suffering and/or assures the safety of several other captives. While Clithero is also motivated to save others, his method is distorted by a debilitating emotionality. For example, when he got the idea to kill Euphemia, he reports that “[t]he impulse was not to be resisted” (710). This emotion quickly results in his attempt to murder Euphemia, his patroness; his attempt at manslaughter of Clarice, his beloved; and, swiftly following, his own, highly dramatic, onstage suicide attempt, one of many suicide attempts Clithero makes, or is reported to make, throughout the course of the novel. This mimics Huntly’s own repeated and ineffectual responses to Clithero’s suicidal tendencies. Huntly’s emotions incapacitate him to such a degree that he is no longer able to make sense of his surroundings. True, Clithero does not succeed in killing himself at any of the points in the progress of the narrative when Huntly is present. However, this lapse in Huntly’s response at this crucial moment, caused by his inability to strike a balance between deep emotion and effectual action, prefigures the lethal lapse in Huntly’s judgment later in the novel, which also results from parallel emotion-action dynamics, and which is the catalyst of Clithero’s successful suicide in the paragraphs of the novel.13 Additionally, in both of these instances, and at many other points throughout the novel, Huntly is unaware of the influence of his emotionality on his judgment and actions, reinforcing his inability in these situations. The inhibitory influence of emotion this demonstrates is present within a series of moments relating to Clithero’s suicidal tendencies. Huntly’s response to these moments evinces early stages of another shift in gendered heroism: a shift away from saving oneself, as Rowlandson and Winkfield both do, to an emphasis on saving another who has been deemed to be weaker. However, within Edgar Huntly, this heroic impulse to save others does not come with an ability to effect such rescues. Within this novel, this series of narrative moments



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also reinforces the shift away from self-protection because Huntly is unable to save Clithero, despite his repeated, often highly dramatic, and personally dangerous efforts to do so. Huntly’s ultimate inability to save Clithero (even at hazard to his own life), coupled with Huntly’s culpability in relation to Clithero’s drowning himself en route to Philadelphia from New York, confirm the hampering influence of emotion within the world of this novel. That Huntly fails to save another male, and one that is his narrative double, reinforces both the shift to individual inability that, within this novel, is temporarily experienced by the American frontier hero and the debilitating effects of emotion as they are beginning to be specifically experienced by a more masculinized hero. Throughout the novel, the newly masculinized hero is unable to act for both himself and others in a mutually beneficial way. This inability is aptly portrayed by Sarsefield, a secondary character in the text, in incidents relating to Huntly and to his double, Clithero. When Sarsefield sees Huntly lying wounded and unconscious outside Old Deb’s hut, Sarsefield misdiagnoses Huntly as dead. Sarsefield explains that: full of sorrow and perplexity I had admitted an opinion which would have never been adopted in different circumstances. My acquaintance with wounds would have taught me to regard sunken muscles, lividness and cessation of the pulse as mere indications of a swoon, and not as tokens of death. (863)

Too late, Sarsefield realizes his error and Huntly is left lying overnight out in the open in this injured state. Once his thinking cleared the next day, all that Sarsefield hoped he could do, he tells Huntly, was to “ascertain your condition and at least transport your remains to some dwelling and finally secure to you the decencies of burial” (863). Sarsefield is also overtaken by emotion at other key moments in the text during which he is attempting to care for Huntly, which results in increased peril for Huntly. Sarsefield is the first member of the search party to fire at Huntly, whom Sarsefield sees as “a savage and a foe” and “determine[s] therefore to rouse . . . by a bullet.” As Sarsefield tells it, “My decision was perhaps absurd. I ought to have gained more certainty before I hazarded your [i.e., Huntly’s] destruction” (865). Later, Sarsefield abandons the wounded Huntly a second time once Huntly has managed to get himself to the relative safety in the house where Sarsefield is awaiting the rest of the search party. Because Huntly’s emotional response inhibits him from acting in a useful and reasonable manner, Huntly repeatedly determines that he





is compelled to contain or deny his emotional response. This he attempts to do through the expedient of reason or logic. However, Huntly’s reasoning at crucial moments in the plot is inflected with an unidentified and unexamined emotionality. Because it is unacknowledged, this emotionality replaces logic in Huntly’s analyses. This results in Huntly’s fabricating rationalizations for his actions or intentions. These rationalizations are merely covers for the true emotional drives that Huntly is responding to. We have seen this already when Huntly reasons that it is alright for him to open Clithero’s box because he will be able to close it without anyone knowing what he has done. Huntly’s bifurcation of action and emotionality leads to his demonstrating an aggressively masculine persona that has uncontrolled and uncontrollable, so-called “feminine” characteristics.14 Ultimately Huntly’s incapacity to respond to emotion except irrationally and impulsively catalyzes the series of events that result in Clithero’s death. Huntly’s action at the end of the novel precipitates Clithero’s drowning himself in the river to escape from Sarsefield. As Sarsefield reports, Clithero “forced himself beneath the surface” of the water as he was about to be recaptured and thus “saved himself . . . from lingering for years in the noisome dungeon of an hospital” (898). Clithero acts out the same logic here that impelled him to try to murder Euphemia after Wiatte’s death and that set up the chain of events in Clithero’s narrative in the first place. Further complicating the meaning and valuation of emotion, Clithero’s choice of death over life may have some legitimacy, given his situation: Clithero faces a grim fate—internment in an eighteenth-century mental hospital, which is virtually a literal entombment. Clithero’s drowning himself constructs a convergence of the various examinations of the nature of emotion and action presented in the novel, maintaining irresolution regarding this dynamic. While suicide and murder are condemned—at least through lip-service—within the novel, the novel itself suggests that Clithero’s consignment to the mental hospital is the execution of a slow death sentence. So, is Clithero then right in his response to his emotions as he crosses The Narrows? If so, was he fundamentally correct in his decision regarding Euphemia’s life after the death of Wiatte? In that instance, Clithero “desired to confer on her [Euphemia] the highest and the only benefit of which he believed her capable,” given the realities of her life as Clithero understood them (735–736). Seen in this light, can Clithero’s perspective possibly confer a certain, although misguided, legitimacy on his decision to kill Euphemia? And what about Huntly? If Clithero’s suicide rescues Clithero from



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the types of suffering that Huntly has also been motivated to relieve Clithero of, what does Clithero’s act mean to our understanding of Huntly’s motivations and his responses to those motivations? Is there any other outcome available for Clithero? If it hadn’t been Huntly, wouldn’t it have been something else, eventually, that would have pushed Clithero over the brink and caused him to be the subject of social and/or legal retribution. It is not until we look beneath this incident, which, as the final incident presented in the story, seems to close the novel, do we see the wreckage that benevolence is capable of within the world of this novel. Asking Clithero, “Have you so soon forgotten me who is truly your friend?” Huntly tells Clithero that he wants to “benefit a man . . . who has awakened in [his] breast the deepest sympathy” (892). To perform this compassionate act, he hopes to “out-root a fatal, but powerful illusion” by telling Clithero that Euphemia is alive, supporting this claim by revealing where she lives (893). Huntly assumes that accurate knowledge will cure Clithero of “the dejection” caused by “the groundless belief that he had occasioned the death of his benefactress” (890). However, even this rash step is insufficient to save Clithero. At the same time, it sets in motion the sequence of events that results in Clithero’s suicide by drowning, mentioned above, the premature birth and demise of Euphemia and Sarsefield’s baby, and a morbid physical and emotional illness for Euphemia, from which it is uncertain whether she will recover.15 Huntly acknowledges that it is his own “unfortunate temerity” that initiates this chain of actions (894). But at the same time, he asks, “Yet who could foresee this consequence of my intelligence?” (894). With this question, Huntly reveals the persistent, unyielding disconnection between his drives and any capacity to address those emotional urges with success. Rather than alleviate pain and suffering, Huntly’s self-identified benevolent actions increase and intensify pain, suffering, and death throughout the novel. Huntly’s emotionality also sets up situations that threaten his own life. For example, as he is toiling through the wilderness (having disdained the path described to him by the woman living in the cabin), he comes to a dead end on a ledge. Below the ledge is the road he is trying to reach. Overcome by his emotions, he thinks he should leap over the edge and land on the road, even though “[s]uch an attempt was, to the last degree, hazardous” (828). It is only chance observance that saves him. He relates, “I know not but that I should have finally resolved to leap, had not different views been suggested by observing . . . the outer edge of the road,” which fell away to a river (828). Huntly continues to





come up with ill-designed schemes to reach the road. The only thing that saves him, if it can be even given that appellation, is that the search party comes along, Huntly and Sarsefield mistake each other for Indians, and both start shooting to kill. The meaning is clear: In the world of Edgar Huntly, emotionality kills. Huntly is concerned with Clithero’s well-being and safety. However, this concern does not come with an ability to act effectively in regard to Clithero. Despite Huntly’s focus on Clithero alone, and in contrast to both Rowlandson’s successful efforts on behalf of a number of other characters in her Narrative and Winkfield’s ability simultaneously to aid numerous individuals from multiple cultures, Huntly is incapable of succeeding in his goal of comforting and protecting Clithero. The obstacle between Huntly and his goal is his incapacitating emotional response, which prevents Huntly from saving Clithero, despite Huntly’s repeated, often highly dramatic, and personally dangerous efforts to do so. While some of Huntly’s actions, such as his delivery of a small amount of food to Clithero when Clithero is attempting to starve himself to death in the cave at the top of the mountain, provide Clithero with some temporary comfort, Huntly is ultimately unsuccessful in his efforts to save Clithero. Instead, Huntly is the catalyst of the final series of events in the novel, which culminate in Clithero’s drowning himself en route to Philadelphia from New York as Sarsefield’s prisoner. Huntly’s incapacity to influence the career Clithero follows to his demise demonstrates that within the world of this novel, positive emotion is ultimately fatal. Negative emotion, on the other hand, causes failure to act, or to engage in useful and willed pursuits. Edgar Huntly fails to integrate Rowlandson-Winkfield’s female-gendered and capable persona into that of the male, which struggles with the competent and assertive authoritative feminine voice present in both of these earlier texts. The attempt to sever self from action is revealed in the quality of danger inherent in emotion in Edgar Huntly: Hyper-masculinity expressed in violent super aggression and hyperbolic femininity figured as unbalanced, maddeningly intense, and often painful compassion that results in the abandonment of sense and self-protective rationality.

D A This denied androgyny erupts into the novel in other ways, most profoundly present in the feminine meta-grounding of the novel, which forms the very structure of the novel. Overall the novel is under feminine guidance and direction. Where the feminine has gone in this



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narrative is to an overarching, assumed position. The male is potentially sacrificed to the female. Feminine power is the demonstrated backdrop against which Huntly attempts to assert a male mono-gendered heroic model. While female characters scarcely speak in the text itself,16 it is the request of a woman that is the impetus for the creation of this epistolary narrative. “I sit down, my friend, to comply with thy request,” Huntly writes in the opening sentence of the novel (643). With this statement, he acknowledges that the entire text satisfies a female’s (Mary Waldegrave, sister of the murdered man and Huntly’s fiancée) unspecified wish for knowledge of the events that make up the narrative. This exposes a larger, Ur- or meta-feminine power, prior to and catalyzing of male agency. And this Ur-feminine power is on a grand scale, which Huntly remarks on as he closes his letter to Mary. He writes: Thus have I fulfilled my promise to compose a minute relations of my sufferings. I remembered by duty to thee. . . . I am surprised at the length to which my story has run. I thought that a few days would suffice to complete it, but . . . I have consumed weeks and filled volumes. (887)

Not only is Huntly compelled to expend himself in service to Mary, but he runs risks in doing so. By satisfying Mary’s desire for knowledge, Huntly risks psychological injury, further reinforcing this hierarchical relationship of female-to-male power that provides the overall narrative frame and direction. Huntly questions the appropriateness of his intention to recount his experiences: Yet am I sure that even now my perturbations are sufficiently stilled for an employment like this? That the incidents I am going to relate can be recalled and arranged without indistinctness and confusion? That emotions will not be reawakened by my narrative, incompatible with order and coherence? (643)

Retelling of the events of Waldegrave’s murder makes Huntly vulnerable to reactivating his post-traumatic stress disorder. Huntly contracted this disorder as a result of the murder of his parents and sibling by warring Native Americans when he was a child. This disorder was also exacerbated in the process of undergoing the experiences he is about to narrate for Mary. However, Huntly feels driven to complete his assigned task. In the first of the many moments when he applies spurious logic to emotional situations, he muses: Yet when I shall be better qualified for this task I know not. Time may take away these headlong energies, and give me back my ancient




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Here he demonstrates his incapacity to protect both himself and others, as he rationalizes placing himself at hazard because he is concerned with offending Mary: “To keep thee in ignorance of what has happened would justly offend thee,” he writes a few lines later (643). He is incapable of developing a solution that would satisfy her interest in the narrative and protect himself at the same time. Fulfilling Mary’s request creates other gendered stresses for Huntly as well. In addition to her request to be told of the events surrounding her brother’s murder and Huntly’s search for the killer, Huntly has agreed to Mary’s request to provide her with copies of letters her brother sent to Huntly. In these letters, Waldegrave wrote “on topics connected with religion and morals,” which Huntly views as potentially damaging, particularly to women (754). He explains this to Mary in gendered terms: Thou, like others of thy sex, art unaccustomed to metaphysical refinements. Thy religion is the growth of sensibility and not of argument. Thou art not fortified and prepossessed against the subtleties, with which the being and attributes of the deity have been assailed. Would it be just to expose thee to pollution and depravity from this source? (755–756)

The tension between feminine and masculine authority is figured in Huntly’s concern with protecting Mary from narrating events or ideas that he perceives would be corrupting of her femininity. He tries to construct a parallel between masculinity and logic (“argument”) and femininity and emotion (“sensibility”). However, these divisions do not hold and Huntly is unaware of their instability. Waldegrave, who had “adopted [an irreligious, utilitarian philosophy] with all the fulness of conviction, and propagated [it] with the utmost zeal,” later relinquishes his beliefs “insensibly,” based on “the benign temper and blameless deportment” of his new spiritual mentor (754). In addition, the masculine “fortifi[cations]” Huntly assumes he has against false metaphysical arguments prove inadequate as he admits that he “did not entirely abjure the creed which . . . had been defended in these letters” (756, 755). Waldegrave is convinced to abandon his philosophy because of an appeal to his emotional side, and Huntly retains that same philosophy despite Waldegrave’s attempts to logically refute the doctrine. Although asserted in both instances, gendered differences are not in fact evidenced.



sobriety: but this change will only be effected by weakening my remembrance of these events. (643)

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Huntly’s problem is that he is trying to exorcise emotion and complexity from his personality. This effort results in his playing a sort of carnival game with his feelings: that game where the player has a large mallet and the purpose is to pound down as quickly as possible the colored pegs that rise up randomly from holes in the game table. In the end, the more of these colored pegs the contestant has pounded down, the higher the score. Be fast and efficient enough at this physical repression and win a prize. So it is with Huntly. He subscribes to a philosophy that “tended to . . . deify necessity and universalize matter,” and the conflicts and dynamics of this philosophy are some of the contributors to his situation (754). In the novel, the chief proponent of this philosophy that privileges the so-called objective over all else is Waldegrave, Huntly’s esteemed and deceased friend. For Waldegrave, however, this doctrine was only one of his “earliest creeds,” one that “efface[d] the impressions of his education,” and one that he soon relinquished. He quickly became “the vehement opponent of all that he had formerly defended” in this philosophy (754). From this point for Waldegrave, “[t]he chief object of his labours, in this new state of his mind, was to counteract the effect of his former reasoning on my [i.e., Huntly’s] opinions” (754–755). Waldegrave is generally recognized by the other characters in the novel as an exemplar of wisdom, virtue, and compassion. Therefore, his recanting of this belief system can be seen as confirmation of important flaws in the doctrine, perhaps suggesting that Huntly should reject the philosophy as well. However, Huntly is not persuaded by Waldegrave’s new efforts to influence his thinking. Although through Waldegrave’s efforts “the poison had been followed by its antidote,” and despite Huntly’s respect for his friend, Huntly “did not entirely abjure the creed” (755). Instead, he insists on preserving the letters in which Waldegrave propounds the doctrine “with great copiousness and elegance” (755). This philosophy “destroy[s] the popular distinctions between soul and body” and “dissolve[s] the supposed connections between the moral condition of man, anterior and subsequent to death” (754), resulting in Huntly’s confounding the valuation of character, emotional essence, and pragmatism. This confusion places Huntly in the position of denying the legitimate power of emotion, and thus causes him to misplace his attention and energy; to vacillate unpredictably in his responses to his own emotions, the emotions and needs of others, and events around him; and to attempt to reduce this complexity to an overly essentialized binary. While Mary’s unspecified request delimits the world of the novel and thus creates the reality that Huntly lives, Mary also creates, along with Old Deb and, later, Euphemia, the terms of Huntly’s existence.





Old Deb’s fight to hold on to her people’s ancestral land causes the whole adventure to happen, because if Huntly hadn’t been trying to solve the mystery of Waldegrave’s death, he would not have seen Clithero and started following him. (And Clithero may never have chosen, subconsciously, the elm as the focus of his sleepwalking.) Clithero could have continued his quiet life on Inglefield’s farm. Waldegrave, of course, would still be alive, Uncle Huntly likely would not have been shot by an Indian, and so on. In addition to her metainfluence on the text, Old Deb is a formidable presence in the wilderness. She is tougher than all the other Indians (males included) because she is not chased away by the whites and is not afraid to ask the whites for whatever she needs. In addition she commands a pack of half-wild wolves, with whom she creates a domestic world. Further, Old Deb controls Huntly’s access to knowledge of Native American language and culture, as well as the source of resistance to colonials and mastermind behind the Native American attempts to protect themselves and preserve their sovereignty.17 This dynamic is mirrored to a lesser degree in Clithero, whose world is created and defined by Euphemia. In addition, Euphemia is the source, or potential source, of wealth for all surviving main and secondary characters by the end of the novel. She has the power to determine the outcome for all other characters in the novel (Clithero, Sarsefield, Huntly and his sisters, Clarice, and even Mary Waldegrave [by aiding or preventing her marriage to Huntly]). Earlier, of course, Euphemia has also saved Clarice’s and Clithero’s lives, as well as her own. Clithero’s experience of Euphemia at that moment, as one who “could not . . . be less than divinity,” concedes this power (711). “All that I am able to conceive of angel was comprised in the moral constitution of this woman,” he adds in reinforcement (712). The denied femininity of the frontier hero asserts itself in microcosm in the woman at the cabin alone in the wilderness who gives Huntly food in Chapter XX. In addition to Mary Waldegrave, Euphemia Lorimer Sarsefield, and Old Deb, this pioneer mother also represents the power of femininity in the novel. Not only does she inhabit the wilderness in serene sufficiency, while Huntly is “assailed by anguish, and fear, and watchfulness; by toil and abstinence, and wounds” (825), she also makes order out of the chaos resulting from Huntly’s sleepwalking—both his misunderstanding of persons and events, and his disorientation within his physical environs. The mother in the wilderness cottage condenses the power of the feminine into a single, minor character. She has power over Huntly’s life and the direction of his narrative, while representing an omniscience



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that he is painfully lacking. In addition, the iconography of her selfreliant, maternal domesticity within the deepest recesses of the wilderness reminds the reader of the field of feminine power grounding the narrative while highlighting Huntly’s incapacity. “The path was narrow, and on either side was a trackless waste,” Huntly tells us of the only way into her homestead. As he walked, the track “became more narrow, and exhibited fewer marks of being frequented,” and Huntly assumed he was “receding from the habitation of men.” He continues along for “[s]ome hours,” feeling himself to be “further than ever from the end of [his] toils” (818). The path leads him to a stream and, when he has just about given up hope of emerging from the wilderness into European American domestic space, he comes across a meandering cow path leading from a watering hole near the stream into the forest. At the end of this path, and to his surprise, Huntly finds an intensely domestic scene, complete with a sheltering and well-built house, having a “window of four panes, . . . and a chimney of brick, well-burnt.” From within this snug cottage, come “the voice of children and the hum of a spinning-wheel.” The “good woman” who is mistress of this house is alone with the children in the wilderness. Although she tells him she is fearful, she nevertheless calmly and openly welcomes the lost and famished Huntly into her house. Huntly “assum[es] an air of supplication and humility” as he begs for food, “any thing however scanty or coarse” (819). She feeds him and gives him information about the people who are looking for him. She also tells him how to get over the mountain to the road to Solebury on the other side. She pointed out a path that led to the rocky summit and down to the river’s brink. The path was not easy to be kept in view or to be trodden, but it was undoubtedly to be preferred to any other. A route, somewhat circuitous, would terminate in the river road. Thenceforward the way to Solebury was level and direct. (824)

Within a short time, however, Huntly has lost the trail that the woman described to him. Unfortunately for him, he does not attempt to find it, dismissing the path as unimportant, and casting the woman as unreliable: Hence a doubt was suggested whether I had not missed the true road. . . . I consoled myself with thinking that the survey which my informant had made of the hill-side, might prove inaccurate, and that in spite of her predictions, the heights might be reached by other means than by those pointed out by her. (826)





Because Huntly doesn’t follow her directions, he has a terrible time of it. He is out all night, has to make a dangerous leap into the river and is almost killed again by Indians. Huntly rejects the power of the feminine within the frontier hero by refusing to heed the woman’s instructions. In addition, Huntly’s dismissing the woman’s guidance ultimately lands him in the fracas with the search party that is trying to find and rescue him. The searchers mistake him for an Indian, and he mistakes them for Indians, because they were “following each other in that streight and regular succession which is peculiar to the Indians” (832). Mutually mistaking each other, both parties shoot, and Huntly leaps from “tremendous height into the river” (833), emerging into a “shower of bullets [that] fell upon the water” (834). When he finally finds his way back to the outskirts of Solebury, he attempts to find refuge at a house that was “the model of cleanliness and comfort,” with an uncommonly high level of appurtenances and finishing (837). However, this inviting façade conceals a distorted domesticity. As he enters the gaping kitchen door, he sees the remains of an attempt to light the house afire. Upstairs in a bedroom, he finds a ranting and drunken man. In the barn, the man’s wife and child are hiding from the husband’s brutality. On the path away from the house, he finds a murdered and scalped girl, and later a dead Indian. Eschewing feminine guidance, Huntly’s own best and concerted attempts to extricate himself from danger and the wilderness fail. Divesting himself of the feminine, he arrives at a distorted semblance of European American domesticity, which is, if anything, more immediately threatening than the wilderness itself. Here again, emotionality arises as a danger, as Huntly bases his decisions on a feeling that it is “hopeles” to continue to attempt to follow the path set out for him by the woman in the hut (826). Huntly could have avoided all of these problems and all of this danger if he had accepted the feminine power and authority represented by the woman living in the wilderness. That this almost impossibly difficult stream of events follows from his disregarding her instructions on traversing the wilderness and reaching the relative certainty and safety of the road to Solebury depicts the folly and disaster attendant upon the gender-bifurcated American frontier hero.

W, D,  R Interestingly, and despite substantial evidence to the contrary in the novel, Huntly treats the wilderness as a place of safety and refuge. An example of this attitude toward the wilderness appears when Huntly



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and Clithero meet to talk about Clithero’s crime. Clithero wants to go into the forest so that they will not be disturbed by passers by, to “go into the wood together: and find some spot, where we might discourse at our leisure, and be exempt from interruption.” Although Huntly describes Clithero at this point as “pale and wan” and “emaciated and shrunk,” Clithero’s own sense of vulnerability and need for self-protection could make him still a potentially formidable and menacing opponent (668). Yet, Huntly does not hesitate to follow Clithero deep into the woods, despite the fact that doing so will separate Huntly from the help of any persons who might come by on the road, should Clithero prove dangerous. And there is good reason to suspect that Clithero might be untrustworthy; Huntly believes that Clithero is the murderer of Waldegrave and that he (Huntly) is the only one who knows this information. Huntly’s purpose in seeking out Clithero is to extract from him a confession to Waldegrave’s murder, and Clithero has suggested that he will confess to murder. Were Clithero to kill Huntly, Clithero could remain free from punishment for the murder Huntly assumes Clithero committed. Yet, Huntly eagerly walks into the wood with the person Huntly assumes is the murderer of Waldegrave, in sharp contrast to his habitual cautiousness. As we learn later in the narrative, Clithero is in fact not dangerous in the wilderness—to others at least. His purpose in the wilderness is always to harm himself. He eventually uses the natural environment to this purpose when he drowns himself in the river. The only violence he has ever committed or attempted took place in highly domesticated space. At the same time, the narrative doublings of Clithero and Huntly extend the threat Clithero represents to himself to include Huntly as well. A more general demonstration of the assumption that the forest is a safe place is Huntly’s relationship to the wilderness. Huntly states that the doors of his own house “are always unfastened, and are accessible at all hours of the night” (653). He follows a sleepwalker in the middle of the night all over the place, only stopping short of following him into a pitch-black cave (a house-like enclosure, which melds domesticity and wildness). Although he gives lip service to the dangers existing in the wilderness, he rarely hesitates to rush off into the wilderness, regardless of his physical condition. Also, his need for the emoluments available in European American civilization is surprisingly minimal, despite the apparent extremity of his physical condition at several points in the text. In addition, Huntly is remarkably skilled with the musket and the tomahawk and triumphs over each foe that the wilderness presents, regardless of his own physical





condition, the identity of the enemies, or his apparent unfamiliarity with terrain or weapon. Yet, such bold behavior is in sharp contrast to Huntly’s often fearful and emotional temperament. And while his emotionality is so great that it prevented him from even recounting the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body of his friend Waldegrave, he is able to respond directly and aggressively to violence experienced in the wilderness. At the same time, the wilderness and its unpredictable inhabitants do not intimidate him. Although he later denies the timid and indecisive nature that he demonstrates in early sections of the novel, (“this cowardice . . . . was, indeed, an alien to my bosom” [837]), Huntly’s protestations cannot erase his excessive demonstrations of cautiousness, evocative in its power to immobilize him of Winkfield’s temporary extremes of anxiety. In contrast to Winkfield, however, Huntly’s cautiousness ceases operation when he has cast himself away from civilization and into the wilds, suggesting the possibility of severing this trait from his persona while never really accomplishing that eradication. But is reducing his cautiousness, or even his timidity, really a good idea for Huntly? In Edgar Huntly, the violence that occurs to the main characters in the wilderness is not devastating psychologically or socially. On the other hand, violence that occurs in towns and houses both determines the trajectory of the plot and is psychologically devastating to the character(s) involved. The most potent violence in the novel happens to European or European American characters in towns or deep within their homes—as in the case of Clithero’s attack on Euphemia (really Clarice) in Euphemia’s bed. Euphemia’s bedroom is deeply interior, accessed by “[w]inding passages” leading to a hall from which double staircases ascended. . . . to a saloon above, on the east side of which was a door that communicated with a suit of rooms, occupied by the lady of the mansion. The first was an antechamber, in which a female servant usually lay. The second was the lady’s own bed-chamber. This was a sacred recess. (707)

This bedroom is secluded, sheltered, and controlled. It is a privileged space to which Clithero has “never been admitted” (707). Euphemia’s brother, Arthur Wiatte, dies on the streets of a highly urban city, at the hands of a character (Clithero) who at that point in the narrative has been constructed as highly civilized and restrained. Wiatte does not die during transportation and exile to the penal colony—a wilderness full of criminals too awful to be kept in so-called civilized



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places and of aborigines who were often figured at the time to be unreasoningly and unpredictably violent—but instead in the tamed and domesticated interior of London. The trauma of both of these events drives major aspects of the novel’s plot. Waldegrave’s death is the other main violent event that drives the novel. While the elm under which he is murdered is a natural object and is in a solitary location, it is not part of the wilderness, as that is presented within the novel. The elm sits “in the midst of a private road, . . . near the habitation of Inglefield, but three miles from my uncle’s house” (646). Even Clithero’s own death by drowning in The Narrows between Staten Island and Long Island happens within a natural body that has been turned to domestic use. Both the elm and this body of water are areas of domesticated wilderness, and because of this domestication, they are inhospitable to the male American frontier hero, who is being forced into the interstitial spaces of the American wilderness between domesticated locations. Clithero, as Huntly’s double, and Waldegrave, as Huntly’s intimate, admired friend—whom Huntly strives to emulate—serve as illustrations of possible outcomes for Huntly in even partially domesticated spaces. So Huntly’s lack of caution within the true wilderness takes on a different cast. Yes, Huntly endures many trials in the wilderness. However, pitted against the wilderness itself or its inhabitants— Native Americans and indigenous animals—Huntly is able to endure and even to triumph in a certain, limited way. The true threat to his well-being comes from European American culture and its domesticated environs.

H  A “Disastrous and humiliating is the state of man! By his own hands, is constructed the mass of misery and error in which his steps are forever involved. . . . How total is our blindness with regard to our own performances!” (883, 884). Huntly’s wail at the end of his letter to Clarice identifies the source of his troubles and failures throughout the novel. He colludes in his own confusion and is unseeing, unwilling, or maybe unable to accurately and effectively respond to what is going on around him. “Hurried by phantoms too indistinct to be . . . recalled,” he has thrashed his way through the wilderness of Norwalk, sometimes lurching, sometimes slinking, in and out of domestic spaces (884). He has demonstrated his unfitness as a hero by his incapacity to save others, to provide his home society a boon wrested from the powers of the mythological underworld, or even to





truly return from the underworld at all. His position at the end of the novel is tenuous, and he has increased the vulnerability of other characters. Because of the ambiguous nature of his relationship with Sarsefield at the end of the novel, the patrimony that Sarsefield has offered him (which is really Euphemia’s money) may not materialize. Mary Waldegrave has not broken their engagement even though he has all but given away the money that would have made their marriage possible (and which, in the chance that it is not Weymouth’s, belongs to Mary and is not Huntly’s to give), but this may happen, and Huntly himself has suggested that the marriage may no longer be able to take place. As the novel closes, he is outside of the domestic arena of any culture. All that can save him, or any of the characters dependent upon him, is feminine strength and compassion: Mary’s resistance to the plan to return the money to Weymouth, or perhaps her continued commitment to him despite the change in situation; or Euphemia’s forgiveness of the devastation he has caused her and her family, if she even has the strength to do so. However, given the impediments, encumbrances, and distortions of these feminine capacities throughout the narrative, it is unlikely that they can function effectively now. Mary Waldegrave has been handicapped by the demand to return her inheritance to Weymouth. Euphemia has been incapacitated by the reemergence of Clithero and the subsequent miscarriage of her pregnancy. Even Old Deb, who “seemed to contract an affection for [Huntly], and regarded [him] with more complacency and condescension than any other received,” has disappeared from the narrative and so cannot assist Huntly (822). At the least, based on past experiences, Old Deb had the potential to open marginal domestic space to him within Native American culture. Old Deb “frequently came to [Huntly’s] uncle’s house, and [Huntly] sometimes visited her.” In addition, Huntly “had taken some pains to study her jargon, and could make out to discourse with her. . . . [which] wonderfully prepossessed her in [his] favour” (822). However, even this contracted and insubstantial possibility is foreclosed by Old Deb’s mysterious disappearance from the novel. Indeterminacy characterizes the state of things for Huntly at the end of the novel. Although the murderer of Waldegrave has been identified, mystery surrounds Huntly ever more deeply than it did when his tale began. Is his relationship with Sarsefield broken? Has Mary Waldegrave spurned Huntly, or will he breach his promise to her? What will happen to his sisters? Will Euphemia live or die, and, were Sarsefield to forgive Huntly and wish to bestow a patrimony, would Euphemia countenance it? And what about Clarice, and Sarsefield’s intimation that Huntly might marry



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her? Opportunities and plans that have been concrete and available when the novel opened have now become tenuous and insubstantial. As Edgar Huntly closes, possibilities for its hero are diminishing. In Edgar Huntly, “the hero turns from an active agent of his quest into the object of forces he is unable to control” (Schulz 334). His de facto confinement at the end of the novel to the wilderness outside domestic space asserts his and his culture’s tacit awareness of this. Although Huntly intends a forcible return to domesticity marked by his statement in the last sentence of his letter to Mary—“As soon as I have seen Sarsefield, I will visit you”—this return to domesticity is a futile act (Brown 887). The domesticity he hopes to return to is, or will soon be, in ruins, in large part as a result of his own behavior. The familial and financial losses detailed above mean that there is no real domestic world for him to return to. Thus any return he performs is actually a false return. In addition, Huntly has demonstrated his own inner, uncontrollable brutality that kills, or attempts to kill, both Indians and European Americans alike. This places Huntly in the physical and psychic wilderness between cultures. And, as the novel has so vividly portrayed, this wilderness is sterile, inhospitable to sustaining life, and the home of id-driven panthers. Edgar Huntly performs a disintegration of the heroic character set forth in Rowlandson and Winkfield, using the characteristics of Americanism and heroism presented by Rowlandson and Winkfield. The novel alters the developmental trajectory of the nascent American hero and attempts, unsuccessfully, to remove from that character its feminine traits, while wrestling with the importance of nationality and station through the subplot dealing with Clithero Edny. Taking advantage of the increased stature of the individual, the increased distance between the individual and European American culture, and the re-gendering of the European experience in the New World that Rowlandson introduces and Winkfield develops, Edgar Huntly continues the examination of creating a home in the wilderness begun by Rowlandson and continued by Winkfield, although in a disintegrative and solipsistic fashion. The dissonance between the feminine and the heroic in the text is played out primarily in and around the character of Edgar Huntly and is configured as part of the discord between the European background of the colonials and their emerging identity as Americans, as Huntly meanders back and forth between wilderness and domicile, reflecting the unresolved nature of the divisions between these two entities, and questioning gendered definitions of each. In his vacillation between efforts to either develop or subvert a synthesis of sensitivity and brutality, Huntly, as narrator, applies shifting





and incomplete definitions of masculinity and femininity to his own and others’ actions. Further, his narrative voice denies the femininity that is inherent in his character and thereby creates further dissonance between the heroic and the feminine within Huntly himself. The character struggles with a number of internal dichotomies: questions of the potential for, and possible implications of, a specifically masculinized weakness; the significance and impact of specifically feminized strength and guidance; and the severability of self from action. As have all three of our narrators so far, Huntly also wrestles with the dynamics between domesticity and adventuring. The result of Huntly’s exertions is that the Rowlandson-Winkfield hero acquires internal, weakening fissures, moving it away from its initial emergence as an androgynously grounded, female character, and beginning the transgendering of the American frontier hero that will result in this character’s being identified exclusively as male. By the end of the novel, these shifts also result in the emergence of emotionality as a hazard to personal safety and as an obstacle to successful action. In addition, Huntly, born in the New World of Caucasian parents, defines himself as a native American, in competition with “Indians” for rightful possession of America.18 Brown claims this same identity as a native American himself in his preface to the novel, referring to himself as “a native of America” (641).19 These assertions, along with their dramatization in Huntly’s skill in “Indian” abilities and language, represent the absorption of Native American into native American. Hegemonically claiming as his own Indian skills (but not Indian culture), such as tracking and the use of the tomahawk, Huntly dismisses Native American contexts and culture. As part of the nationbuilding spirit of his historical period, Huntly instead attempts to maintain strong cultural parity between American and European Caucasians in an effort to present Americanness as equal in stature to Britishness. Huntly’s focus on nationhood further obscures the Native American heritage undergirding the Rowlandson-Winkfield hero. Huntly’s colonial birth removes the question of Indian racial heritage from the issue but leaves the defining nature of Britishness intact. This contrast with Britishness makes the American frontier hero white and Eurocentric. Such reflected whiteness blinds the observer/reader and subject/Huntly alike to the Native American contributions to this character. Huntly asserts his whiteness (figured as “American” Englishness), attempting to differentiate it, and himself, from the Native Americans and the Native American culture with which he interacts. Despite the insistent nature of his professions of commitment to his home world in European America, and to



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defending that world against the penetration or influence of Native American culture, Huntly demonstrates an ambivalent acceptance, however unstable, of European and Native American characteristics and culture and a significant integration of Native American traits into his personality, outlook, and actions. The gender-conflicted and racially bleached frontier hero that comes into view by the time we reach the end of Edgar Huntly sets the stage for further, monogendered, uni-racialized development of this character, which takes place in our next text, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper.







7

Reconstituting the American Frontier Hero through James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo in The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757

For Cooper’s contemporaneous readers, the central event of The Last of the Mohicans was the surrender of Fort William Henry. This event was epitomized in the brutal murder of a baby and its mother as the defeated column of English leave the fort.1 This image of the helpless and innocent mother and child as victim of the vicious, unreasoning and unreasonable savage resonated with cultural attitudes of the period.2 A second, less acknowledged dynamic also plays out in this scene: the inability or the unwillingness of the hero to protect women in the wilderness. All the heroic figures of the book are present at this scene. Not one can help the woman and the baby. Not one even tries. It is only Cora who makes a movement to counsel the woman, but it is too late.3 A third aspect of this scene also demonstrates the nature of the dynamics of the frontier: the women are taken into the wilderness, almost captives to the hero(es), and put at peril there. This scene is one of many examples in the novel where female characters are taken into the wilderness by male characters and function as captives in one spot or another throughout their sojourns in the wilderness. They are captives within the fort, where they are being protected but where they are also confined and prevented from leaving. Indeed, there is no place for them to go. If they were to succeed in leaving the fort, they would become prey to the Indians. If they were to somehow avoid the Indians, they would be “left to starve in the wilderness” (210). In The Last of the Mohicans, the androgynous hero is reconstituted as male after fragmentation of the androgynous hero in Edgar Huntly.



CH A P T ER


However, this reconstitution relies on exclusion and polarization to effect the hero’s reformulation. Like Edgar Huntly, The Last of the Mohicans addresses the feminine qualities and roots of the hero, attempting to deny the feminine and placing the male hero in a feminized and maternalized wilderness, which is devoid of feminine assertiveness and/or aggression. Within this wilderness, women are captives of men—taken into the wilderness, in between captivity in various places (forts, with Indians), and made vulnerable by men. Edgar Huntly created a victim in Clithero Edny. In Mohicans, victims are also created, but in this case the victims are always gendered female, as the gendered rift within the frontier hero widens and solidifies. This wilderness in Mohicans, in which the hero is located, evokes the natural wilderness between cultures that we saw in Edgar Huntly. The wildernesses inhabited by Mary Rowlandson and Unca Eliza Winkfield contain tamable and domesticated spaces while in Edgar Huntly and The Last of the Mohicans there is no longer any functional domestic space. All characters on both sides of the conflict live in temporary lodgings or out of doors, where the type of homely activities and commercial exchanges described by Rowlandson and Winkfield are noticeably absent. Domesticity in the wilderness is becoming increasingly improbable. In Edgar Huntly emotion emerged as a hazard to safety and as an obstacle to action. With the possible exception of Cora (and to a certain extent David Gamut), these traits do not exist successfully within any characters in Mohicans. Across the range of characters, emotion and effective action become increasingly compartmentalized. The results of this are incapacity and confusion more profound than that in Edgar Huntly. The internal wilderness that Edgar Huntly focused on so much and which was emblematized by the sleepwalking has been completely suppressed and walled off in Mohicans. Instead, the internal self appears in characters largely as elisions, in things that Hawkeye professes not to understand or won’t talk about, and in Munro’s oppressed confusion when his daughters are captives. At the time when his skills are needed for the protection of those most dear to him, he who was once a dynamic leader becomes powerless. Munro’s change is curious, suggesting as it might the newness to him of the experience of loss of family members. Yet Munro has buried both of his much loved wives, one after only a year of marriage. In each case, he demonstrates the will and the ability to continue to function successfully. That he loses that ability when faced with the loss of his daughters foreshadows later frontier paternal figures, such as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, who will be the subject of the next chapter.



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The Last of the Mohicans continues the decomposition of the frontier hero begun in Edgar Huntly. In this novel the male American frontier hero takes on a force of his own, in which the RowlandsonWinkfield prototype is subsumed. The result is that the characteristics that Rowlandson and Winkfield employ are no longer available to female figures, as Rowlandson’s and Winkfield’s self-reliance is excised out of the female characters as the male takes the position as hero. The metamorphosis from English to American initiated by Unca Eliza Winkfield and Edgar Huntly is taken a step further by Hawkeye. For Hawk-eye, the distinction between English and American does not require Native American blood, distinction from the English, or equality with the English. Putatively, it just requires assertion of one’s individuality—being “without a cross” of any kind (as one defines that for oneself). This is the assertion of the “I” as an authority that appeared in embryonic form in Rowlandson’s Narrative. Although Hawk-eye constantly references himself as white, he also offers a continuing stream of explanation of why he is different from his white fellows. Hawk-eye’s exceptionalism represents the assertion of the “I” as authority in contradistinction to culture or race that we looked at in the previous texts. Hawk-eye figures this exceptionalism as the driver of his actions, integrity, and patriotism.4

S   U   A W Other degenerative processes continue in The Last of the Mohicans. In Edgar Huntly, the hero cycle arced and dove spirally around between worlds, leaving Huntly finally in an interstitial, undetermined space. The heroic tensions in The Last of the Mohicans have deformed this cycle further. All meaningful references to or experiences in the everyday world have disappeared, and the cycle has flattened and become completely submerged in the mythological underworld. All characters throughout the course of the novel inhabit the interstitial underworld of the American wilderness between cultures. While Heyward and Alice flee this underworld, (“the ‘open-hand’ had conveyed his [Munro’s] surviving daughter far into the settlements of the ‘pale-faces’ ” [392]), this is not even part of the novel but “events of a later time than that which concerns our tale” (Cooper, Mohicans, 392).5 In Mohicans, this wilderness is figured as being as dangerous to soldiers as battle itself, taking the mythological underworld to another level. The opening of the novel explains that “the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered, before the adverse hosts could



RECONSTITUTING AMERICAN FRONTIER HERO


meet. A wide and, apparently, an impervious boundary of forests” stands between isolated groups of hostile forces (15). This wilderness is not only untamed but also possibly untamable: “While the husbandmen shrunk back from the dangerous passes, within the safer boundaries of the more ancient settlements, armies larger than those that had often disposed of the sceptres of the mother countries, were seen to bury themselves in these forests, whence they rarely returned but in skeleton bands” (16). So formidable is this wilderness barrier that “the toil of marching through the wilderness” is so great that Montcalm is “satisfied” with this effort and so “neglected to seize the adjacent mountains [overlooking Fort William Henry]; whence the besieged might have been exterminated with impunity” (166). Indeed, any army of the period suffered this same challenge, such that “[t]he transportation of a single heavy gun, was often considered equal to a victory gained” (167). Mohicans places Hawk-eye in a feminized and maternalized wilderness.6 The gendered nature of the wilderness in Mohicans is complex and shifting, and the language expressing these qualities suggests ambivalence and uneasiness. At times, the feminine nature of the wilderness is an active principle, which absorbs men or maleness. This is demonstrated in the scene where soldiers head out from Fort Edward to Fort William Henry: “While in view of their admiring comrades, the same proud front and ordered array was observed, until the notes of their fifes growing fainter in distance, the forest at length appeared to swallow up the living mass which had slowly entered its bosom” (20). While the early phrases in this description present a clearly eroticized depiction of massed male penetration of a highly sexualized wilderness, the outcome of this “proud” and public action accomplished “in the view of . . . admiring comrades” suggests the combatants are rendering over to a superior force. The language in this passage implies that their military bearing is at least partially a temporally constrained act (the “front,” which was maintained “[w]hile in view”), and that they are actually shapeless, even passive (a “living mass”) and are being engorged by the feminine forest. The ultimate power of nature to consume the soldiers indicates that the entry of the soldiers was suffered or allowed by Nature rather than achieved by the agency of the soldiers. This aspect of the scene has the potential to legitimate male usage of nature and the feminine, because the penetration of the male factor is being allowed and thus, by extension, could be resisted if desired, and is certainly inherent in this scene. Simultaneously, however, this same construction implies a superior agency on the part of nature. Taken in conjunction with other descriptions of the impenetrability and



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intractability of the natural world within this novel, these qualities reinforce the divestiture of feminine capabilities and strengths from the frontier hero that is one of the ongoing processes of the text. Reminders of this appear later in the narrative during a cease-fire in the fighting at Fort William Henry. At this point, the wilderness reasserts its femininity: “[N]ature had also seized the moment to assume her mildest and most captivating form. . . . [, while] numerous islands rested on the bosom of the Horican” (167–168).7 This is the mythological underworld of the American frontier, both mighty and feminized, an evolution of the underworld in the earlier texts under discussion.

C V  E V Edgar Huntly created a victim in the character of Clithero Edny, whom Huntly then attempted—and ultimately failed—to rescue. A similar dynamic exists in The Last of the Mohicans. In this novel, women are assigned the status of victims in the specific subcategory of captives. In The Last of the Mohicans, women are dependent upon, framed, and controlled by men, many of whom are designated symbolically as the women’s protectors: fathers, fiancés, and so on. Within the novel, women are actually captives of these and other men. Women are taken into the wilderness, in between captivity in various places under male control (such as forts and camps of warring groups of Indians), and made repeatedly vulnerable by men. Numerous male characters are involved in this process in Mohicans, but the main agents are Duncan Heyward and Colonel Munro. Various other male characters assist in this captivity, which undeniably functions simultaneously as protection at multiple points in the plot: Hawk-eye, Uncas, Chingachgook, Tamenund, and even Magua. Despite this protective function, the overriding condition of Cora and Alice is that of captivated victims, a condition that neither has relinquished at the end of the novel. Cora and Alice’s condition of captivated victimage exists from the opening lines of the novel. As the novel opens, Cora and Alice are setting out from Fort Edward to meet their father Colonel Munro at Fort William Henry, where he is the commander. The absence of any mention of a mother of either of the young women and the fact that they are setting out into a wilderness alive with warring forces in hopes of gaining the protection of their father at a besieged fort makes it clear that neither Cora nor Alice has a mother. (Later in the novel, we in fact learn that both Cora’s mother and Alice’s mother are





deceased.) Thus, the novel opens into a field of domestic and maternal lack, with Cora and Alice embodying this lack. Against this background of motherlessness, Colonel Munro stresses his paternal responsibility. Munro sees himself as proudly maintaining his familial responsibilities by bringing his daughters with him into the battle arena, claiming that “we are not yet in such a strait, that it can be said, Munro is too much pressed to discharge the little domestic duties of his own family!” (178). Colonel Munro, then, appears to be forced by circumstances to take his daughters into the “bloody arena” between the Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers (16). However, in addition to being conjectural, since the novel does not explain Cora and Alice’s presence, it is also disputable, because Cora and Alice are both grown women, who conceivably could have remained “within the safer boundaries of the more ancient settlements,” in the company of neighbors and other families (16).8 Therefore, Cora and Alice’s basic status as gendered captives has paternal origins. Because Colonel Munro represents the massed cultural and military power of the patriarchal structures within the novel, that Cora and Alice are within the war zone at his direction and discretion indicates the fundamental nature of this dynamic within the framework of the novel and suggests the extreme difficulty inherent in extracting Cora and Alice from this position as gendered captives or victims.9 As Munro’s functionary, Heyward makes Cora and Alice vulnerable in the wilderness, as they set off down the forest trail to Fort William Henry, by ignoring his trained intuition that he saw someone watching them from within the woods. He does this because their Indian guide is not demonstrating awareness of anyone in the woods. However, “Major Heyward was mistaken only in suffering his youthful and generous pride to suppress his active watchfulness” (33). Their guide Magua is actually their enemy and it is his allies who are watching them as they head down the isolated forest trail. It is only the timely intervention of Hawk-eye that saves them from ambush. At the blockhouse several days later, Heyward again places Cora and Alice at risk. Having “proved [him]self a sluggard on [his] post during the past night,” when he fell aspect while on watch, he determines to make amends by staying awake all night to guard Alice and Cora. This is a complex moment in terms of this analysis, since Heyward’s watch would be both inadequate and redundant: Chingachgook is to be the sentinel for that night. Heyward knows this, and has been encouraged by Hawk-eye to rest as all the others, save Chingachgook, are doing, observing that Heyward is not capable of protecting them: “The eyes of a white man are too heavy, and too blind, for such



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a watch as this. . . . [I]n the darkness, and among the signs of the wilderness, your judgment would be like the folly of a child, and your vigilance thrown away” (146). Nevertheless, Heyward persists in his intention to stay awake. Despite this, he soon falls into a deep sleep and dreams that “he was a knight of ancient chivalry, holding his midnight vigils before the tent of a re-captured princess, whose favour he did not despair of gaining, by such a proof of devotion and watchfulness” (147). Heyward dreams he is protecting Cora and Alice while he is actually providing no protection at all. Because his keeping watch is both redundant and ineffective, this incident highlights the ability of male characters to make women vulnerable, through Heyward’s profound, multifaceted inability to provide protection at this moment. Heyward’s figuring Alice as a “re-captured princess” reinforces both the status of female characters as captives of males, whether benign or hostile, while signifying the intractable nature of this categorization of women as captives within the novel. Hawk-eye, too, places Cora and Alice at risk as a result of his handling of emotions, demonstrating the problems of a narrowly defined, gendered response to emotion that is also a detriment to action and safety, as in Edgar Huntly. An example of this takes place when the group, which had been hiding in the cavern at Glenn’s Falls, is discovered by Magua’s party of Hurons. During the fighting, Hurons surround them and they struggle to protect themselves, running low on powder and shot. Their only opportunity for escape is their canoe. A Huron marksman in a tree is wounded by Hawk-eye and dangles precariously over the rushing river. Duncan wants to shoot the Huron out of compassion, to prevent the Huron from suffering further. Hawk-eye orders them not to do this because they “have no powder to spare, for Indian fights, sometimes, last for days; ‘tis their scalps, or ours!’ ” (86). All watch the suffering of the Huron. Then, just as he falls to certain death in the river, Hawk-eye raises his rifle and shoots him. Hawk-eye followed his compassion for a dying man, instead of keeping the necessities of the situation in mind. It is a useless gesture because it saves the Huron virtually nothing; he was a split second from falling into the river, and within an instant would have been over the falls. However, Hawk-eye’s action places the entire party at additional risk. As a result of this, Hawk-eye is out of powder and shot. Helpless, he sends Uncas to get more from their canoe, which Uncas discovers is in the process of being stolen by one of the Hurons. The canoe is only “a short distance from the rock” where they all stand (87). “The instant this unwelcome sight caught the eye of the scout, his rifle was leveled, as by instinct, but the barrel gave no





answer to the bright sparks of the flint” (87). This brief moment of failure results in the loss of the canoe, powder, and shot. If Hawk-eye still had the last shot that he had used on the wounded Huron, he could have been able to stop the theft of their canoe. Before there is time for another response, the canoe moves into the main current of the river, where “it glided swiftly down the stream” (87). The Indian and the canoe are so far out of reach of Hawk-eye that the “Huron raised his head above the shelter of the canoe, . . . waved his hand, and gave forth the shout, which was the known signal of success” (87–88). This sequence of events, arising as a result of Hawk-eye’s shooting of the dying Huron, put the entire group in danger of capture and execution. Hawk-eye himself refers to it as “the act of a boy!” and laments that, “[h]ad the powder held out, this disgrace could never have befallen!” (87, 91). Rather than attempting to develop a plan of defense, Hawk-eye quickly acquiesces to this fate. This problem quickly becomes racialized, as Hawk-eye and the two Delawares begin preparing for defeat and death. Hawk-eye figures this as heroic and pragmatic on his part, saying, “[L]et us remember, we are men without a cross, and let us teach these natives of the forest, that white blood can run as freely as red, when the appointed hour is come” (88). He, Chingachgook, and Uncas, “the three quickest and truest rifles in these woods,” do not consider other options for resistance or escape (88). Although he states that the Hurons’ “hearts will soften, and they will change to women” if they do not hurry to claim their victory, it is Hawk-eye himself who has caused their predicament by the inappropriate softening of his own heart (89). The gendered nature of his statement is also apparent, for his usage of the term men is not generic but specific, focused on the white male members of his party, particularly Heyward. Chingachgook and Uncas mirror Hawk-eye’s hopelessness, “gradually losing the fierceness of combat” (88). Heyward protests Hawk-eye’s analysis of their situation and is controverted by each of the three woodsmen. Cora alone is able to change the trajectory of the situation, highlighting and complicating questions of gender and pragmatism.10 Cora proposes a workable solution that provides the possibility of hope. Refusing to accept Hawk-eye’s fatalistic resignation, she demands of Hawk-eye “Why die at all!” (89). She insists that Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas slip into the river, escape and go for help, while she and Alice hide in the cave, risking almost certain capture by the Hurons and possible death. Hawk-eye protests that to do so would leave him “liv[ing] haunted by an evil conscience” (90), and Cora must spell out for him the nature of his responsibilities to protect



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them by attempting to go to obtain reinforcements. Despite the desperate position each of the characters will be in, it is their only hope. Cora must overcome the reluctance of the three woodsmen in turn to focus on the practicalities of the situation rather than on emotional responses. Only Heyward resists Cora’s logic and is allowed to stay with them, although he demonstrates his willingness to concede to her plan, as “the faith that Cora Munro would exact from her protector” (92). Cora accepts Heyward’s presence in the diminished group because it is a reasonable amendment of her plan, now that Hawk-eye and the others have gone for help. Without Heyward, Cora would be left with two incompetents to manage and protect on her own—the wounded and befuddled David Gamut and the helpless Alice. Further, Heyward’s reasons for staying are highly practical: that “the presence of one who would die in [their] behalf may avert” some of the dangers that Cora and Alice may face while they are captives and thereby contribute to the possibility of safety and survival for the entire group (92). Hawk-eye’s resistance to Cora’s plan would not have accomplished what Heyward’s remaining with them possibly could achieve, because Hawk-eye is sought by the Hurons and so is a magnet for pursuit and violence, rather than protection. What is most important in this scene is that the character most highly coded as male and as master of the American wilderness and the ways of Native Americans—Hawk-eye—demonstrates serious flaws that endanger the whole party and that result from his inability to balance emotion, pragmatism, and action.11 In contrast, Cora develops a plan that does not consider “idle subtleties and false opinions” but instead recognizes that it is “a moment when every duty should be equally considered” with stout-heartedness and pragmatism (92). Hawk-eye’s thinking and responses again become clouded at the bloody pond, as he tells Heyward the story of the battle there. Perhaps demonstrating a post-traumatic response to those events, Hawk-eye mistakes a French picket for the ghost of one of those slain at the pond. It is Heyward who recognizes the figure as a French picket, and speaks to the picket in French, allaying the picket’s suspicions and preventing him from sounding the alarm. Had Heyward not intervened, Hawk-eye’s garrulous commenting in English could easily have alerted the picket to the presence of enemies. Instead, Hawkeye’s inability to manage emotion and pragmatism is balanced and neutralized by Heyward’s level-headedness in this situation. Weaknesses in Hawk-eye’s judgment and behavior put the group at risk in a parallel event once they reach Fort William Henry. When they are trying to get through the French troops surrounding the fort by





sneaking through the fog, they are discovered and shot at “by the explosion of fifty muskets. Happily, the aim was bad, and the bullets cut the air in a direction a little different from that taken by the fugitives” (163). Although the order is given to pursue, the French do not know exactly where the fugitives are. Outnumbered and outgunned, the fugitives’ only advantage is this confusion regarding their location. Hawk-eye orders, “Let us deliver our fire, . . . they will believe it a sortie and give way; or they will wait for reinforcements” (163). The others follow his direction and fire into the fog. Hawk-eye has misjudged the French, however, and the result is not as expected: “The scheme was well conceived, but failed in its effect. The instant the French heard the pieces, it seemed as if the plain was alive with men, muskets rattling along its whole extent, from the shores of the lake to the farthest boundary of the woods” (163). The shooting also identifies the location of the fugitives. Realizing the menace of their situation, Heyward takes charge, ordering Hawk–eye to “Lead on . . ., for your own life, and ours!” (163). Although “[t]he scout seemed willing to comply” with Heyward’s order, he mistakenly leads them away from the fort. Hawkeye is able to get his bearings as the cannons in the fort start firing. “ ‘Tis from the fort!’ exclaimed Hawk-eye, turning short on his tracks; ‘and we, like stricken fools, were rushing to the woods, under the very knives of the Maquas’ ” (164). Hawk-eye’s confusion extends the peril of the group. As they run for their lives, “retrac[ing] the error with utmost diligence,” they are chased by “[m]en, hot angry in pursuit, [who] were evidently on their footsteps, and each instant threatened their capture, if not their destruction” (164). Duncan takes charge and leads them to the sally-port, where they can try to enter the fort. However, as they reach the fort, their peril ironically increases. Hawk-eye had warned that they were going into the field where they may end up “a mark for both armies to shoot at” (162), and this is what happens. Munro is heard from inside the fort, ordering the English to begin firing on them, thinking they are the French rushing the fort. It is only Alice, the weakest and frailest member of the group, who saves them by calling out “ ‘Father! Father!’ exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist; ‘it is I! Alice! Thy own Elsie! spare, oh! save, your daughters!’ ” (164). Fortunately, Munro hears Alice’s cries and orders his troops to hold their fire. He opens the sally-port, sending out his troops to hold off the French in man-to-man combat. These troops, “a long line of dark-red warriors” are Heyward’s “own battalion of the Royal Americans” (164, 165).12 Heyward turns and heads back out onto the field to lead his troops in battle. Munro rushes out onto the field to retrieve his daughters.



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Had Hawk-eye not given the order to fire at the French when the French first discovered them in the mist, the violence of the scene might not have escalated so dangerously and suddenly. Had they at that point, instead, attempted to rush to the fort, as they did later when they were under fire, the confusion about their location and identity might have continued to protect them from harm. As in earlier scenes, Hawk-eye’s actions once again drew danger to the group, the vulnerability of which was specifically focused in Cora and Alice, who are both figured as dependent and helpless at this point, with Uncas supporting Cora and Heyward bearing Alice. In perhaps Hawk-eye’s most grievous failure, he lets the letter from General Webb fall into Montcalm’s hands. Although Hawk-eye is “warmly recommended” as a messenger, he is “returned in the custody of the French.” This is seen as ill-luck on Hawk-eye’s part, “his good fortune seem[ing] at last to have failed,” rather than a reflection on his abilities (171). In the conversation, Munro and Heyward display the way in which the narrative as a whole turns away from a recognition of Hawk-eye’s inconsistencies and failings. However, acquiring General Webb’s letter has put the French at an important strategic advantage, which, within the novel, will be crucial in determining the outcome of the conflict at the fort. Montcalm now knows that Webb will not be sending reinforcements before the British troops inside the fort are aware of this. Although Munro recognizes that Montcalm’s returning Hawk-eye is a “jesuitical way . . . of telling a man his misfortunes,” neither he nor Heyward pushes this analysis as far as it needs to go to protect themselves. Calling Hawk-eye a “dunce” because he does not know what Webb’s message is, Munro at the same time reasons that Montcalm would not keep the letter unless it contained information about the movements of Webb’s troops toward Fort William Henry (171). This is an inaccurate conclusion and Montcalm, in fact, keeps the letter to use the surprise of its intelligence to force the British to surrender. Had Hawk-eye performed more capably in any number of ways—in not getting caught, in destroying the letter before it got into Montcalm’s hands when he was captured, or, even if failing to do these, just knowing what the letter contained—Munro would have been in a better position to decide on his maneuver. The same helpless, captive status of women demonstrated by Cora and Alice’s experiences as they traveled to Fort William Henry is enlarged out from just Cora and Alice to European American women in general in the scene of the retreat from Fort William Henry, mentioned at the opening of this chapter. The English ready themselves





for retreat, “exhibit[ing] all the signs of a hurried and forced departure. . . . Women and children ran from place to place, . . . searching, in the ranks, for those countenances they lookup to for protection” (193–194). This air of abandonment of the maternal and the feminine is reinforced in Munro’s response to his daughters. No preparations have been made for them in the retreat, because as he tells Heyward, “To-day I am only a soldier, Major Heyward. . . . All that you see here, claim alike to be my children” (194). Interestingly, Munro claims that explanation for his abandoning paternal duty is paternal duty. However, Munro’s mien and behavior suggest that he has fallen back on his identity as “only a soldier,” relinquishing larger focus and responsibility. He moves “among his silent troops, firm, but dejected,” not able to offer encouragement or direction. The defeat is “his misfortune,” which he attempts to sustain “with the port of a man” who is deep in “his grief” (194). At this point in the plot, it is Munro’s turn to place women at risk in the wilderness by his self-absorbed inattention. Heyward finds the sisters “already prepared to depart, and surrounded by a clamorous and weeping assemblage of their own sex, that had gathered about the place, with a sort of instinctive consciousness, that it was the point most likely to be protected” (194). This response of the women emphasizes the abandoned and potentially captive status of them all, because even the daughters of the commander of the fort are without safeguard or defense. In addition, Heyward’s assumption that “of danger, there was none” involved in the retreat reinforces the inability of the heroes to accurately assess or respond to circumstances (196). Throughout this scene, the manner and actions of the women belie this presumed safety. While the retreating soldiers are “silent, and sullen, . . . the women and children [were] in terror, they knew not of what” (197). And, these feminine instincts are accurate, for while the French were “attentive, . . . failing in none of the stipulated military honours, and offering no taunt or insult, . . . [a]long the sweeping borders of the woods, hung a dark cloud of savages, . . . like vultures, who were only kept from stooping on their prey, by the presence and restraint of a superior army [the French]” (197). As the French will remain at Fort William Henry and will not accompany the English through the forest to Fort Edward, the “confused and timid throng” of the vanquished English will soon be vulnerable to attack (197).13

D   W Divisions between domesticity and wilderness in Edgar Huntly were unresolved and gendered. In The Last of the Mohicans, domesticity



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and the wilderness have been severed for all characters of either gender or any race. Native American characters figured as simultaneously naturally nomadic and as uprooted as a result of Eurocentric warfare in America.14 European American characters do not live in homes but in forts, ruins, or exposed to the elements out in the wilderness. The only true settlement within the novel is the beaver village. This village is a highly domesticated scene of peace, security, and tranquility. It is captured at the height of its bucolic domesticity when Heyward views it for the first time: [T]he glow of a mild summer’s evening had fallen on the clearing, in beautiful contrast to the gray light of the forest. . . . [T]he stream had seemingly expanded into a little lake. . . . The water fell out of this wide basin, in a cataract so regular and gentle, that it appeared rather to be the work of human hands, than fashioned by nature. A hundred earthen dwellings stood on the margin of the lake. . . . Their rounded roofs, admirably moulded for defence against the weather. (248)

The irony, of course, is that Heyward is mistaking it for a Native American town, one that is better constructed than most Native American towns within the confines of the novel. For instance, its roofs, mentioned above, “denoted more of industry and foresight, than the natives were wont to bestow on their regular habitations, much less on those they occupied for the temporary purposes of hunting and war.” This difference from the usual Native American town pervades the entire village, which was “possessed more of a method and neatness of execution, than the white men had been accustomed to believe belonged, ordinarily, to Indian habits” (248). As a symbol within this novel, the beaver village has a strong ability to fuse the wilderness and the domestic. Its being better engineered and built than Native American towns reinforces this symbolism, while simultaneously reinforcing the depiction of Native Americans as temporary and uncaring inhabitants of the American wilderness.15 In addition, this beaver village is, seemingly, the one truly safe place where characters in the novel can hide from violence. Hawk-eye “placed the commandant [Munro] and the Sagamore [Chingachgook] in an old beaver lodge, where they are safer from the Hurons, than they would be in the garrison of Edward,” while Hawk-eye, Heyward, and Uncas work to free Alice and Cora from Magua (290). Indeed, when the warring Hurons pass the beaver village, the response is veneration. For one of the chiefs in the party, “who carried the beaver as his particular symbol,” it would have been “a species of profanity in the omission, had this man passed so powerful a community of his





fancied kindred, without bestowing some evidence of his regard” (321). Although the beaver is not the totem for the rest of the war party, they demonstrate their respect in their “grave” and “attentive” manner while the chief is speaking. At the end of the chief’s speech a “large beaver” is seen to stick his head out of a lodge. This was “an extraordinary sign of confidence [that] was received by the orator as a highly favourable omen” (322). This beaver, of course, is Chingachgook wearing a beaver mask. Chingachgook’s boldly showing himself in this context also performs a doubled purpose. It bolsters the image of the beaver village as a secure shelter. At the same time, it demonstrates that this shelter is permeable and not sealed against either aggression or the domestic deterioration that trails all characters in the novel. In their lack of domesticity, the white characters in the novel are tied repeatedly to the dead. The group is staying at the blockhouse, and Hawk-eye and Heyward are walking near the adjacent bloody pond. Hawk-eye is recounting the story of throwing the dead, and possibly the dying, into the pond, because “in the hurry of that evening, the doctors had but little time to say who was living and who was dead.” Hawk-eye interrupts his own reminiscence because he thinks he sees someone walking on the other side of the pond. Heyward’s response focuses on their domestic status and not the possibility of danger. “Tis not probable that any are as houseless as ourselves, in this dreary forest,” he states, suggesting the unlikelihood of finding another person in the vicinity. While this is another example of Heyward’s inattention to signs of danger, it is also an instance of Hawk-eye’s emotionalism, because his belief in ghosts has mastered his reason. “Such as he may care little for house or shelter,” Hawk-eye responds (154). Of course, it turns out to be a French picket, but the interchange has additional import beyond the reiteration of weaknesses of Hawk-eye and Heyward. The focus on houselessness and the desire for shelter links the group at the blockhouse to the dead. The tie to the dead is fortified following the fall of Fort William Henry, when Hawk-eye, Chingachgook, Uncas, Heyward, and Munro are searching for Cora and Alice. The group stays the night in the demolished fort and sleeps “as heavily as the unconscious multitude, whose bones were already beginning to bleach, on the surrounding plain” (228). European American characters in the wilderness are no better off than the unburied dead. They are completely outside of any domestic space. Hero or villain, all are beyond the domestic sphere of any civilization, not just Hawk-eye, Uncas, and Chingachgook. Magua’s house is



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the half-completed, tumbled-down hovel on the edge of the village: “A neglected hut was a little in advance of the others, and appeared as if it had been deserted when half completed—most probably on account of failing in some of the more important requisites; such as wood or water” (302). It is only fit for one like Gamut, who is the first character we see occupying this structure, and who is seen by the Native Americans as having “mental alienation” and by the European Americans as profoundly lacking in ability and sense (311). When Magua occupies his house, upon his return to power with the Huron, the cheerless house is cast even lower. Despite his being “placed at the head of affairs” of the tribe, Magua “occupied a hut, without companion of any sort.” His wife is dead and they had no children, his home a “dilapidated and solitary structure” (320).

A  C The tenacity and determination of Cora and, even, Alice are crucial factors at key points in the narrative.16 In particular, Cora’s actions and attitude present an examination of sensibility and practical action that brings to mind Rowlandson and Winkfield. Cora is resolute, courageous, and persevering. These traits are acknowledged by most other characters. When watching the early morning shelling of Fort William Henry, Cora states, “I sicken at the sight of danger, that I cannot share.” In response to Cora’s statement, Hawk-eye affirms that Cora has the strength and bravery of a man, saying “I would I had a thousand men . . . that feared death as little as you!” (161). Heyward states his admiration of Cora’s courage and fortitude on a number of occasions. He calls her “noble” in a tone of “admiration” for her brave attitude during the siege (170, 171). When speaking to Montcalm, Heyward says that he “would gladly trust the defence of William Henry” to Cora (175). Cora demonstrates these qualities at moments crucial to her own, her sister’s, and even other characters’ survival and safety, as at the scene at Glenn’s Falls examined earlier. Before he gets into the river, Hawk-eye directs them to “break the twigs on the bushes as you pass, and make the marks of your trail, as broad as you can” (91). Shortly after this scene, Cora, Alice, Heyward, and Gamut are captured by Magua. During this first captivity, Cora demonstrates her ability to keep her focus alone and under duress in the wilderness. As Hawk-eye has instructed, she marks the trails for rescuers to follow. Of the four captives, “Cora alone remembered the parting injunctions of the scout, and whenever an opportunity offered, she stretched forth her





arm to bend aside the twigs that met her hands.” In addition to presence of mind, doing so takes courage and tenacity because “the vigilance of the Indians rendered this act . . . both difficult and dangerous. She was often defeated in her purpose, by encountering their watchful eyes.” At these moments, Cora brings her agility to play, “feign[ing] an alarm she did not feel, and occupy[ing] the limb, by some gesture of feminine apprehension.” Cora demonstrates the androgynous nature of the heroic character in her agility in switching between miens and actions in this scene. Despite her perseverance, “[o]nce, and once only, was she completely successful; when she broke down the bough of a large sumach.” Even though “one of her conductors . . . broke the remaining branches of the bush in such a manner, that it appeared to proceed from the struggling of some beast in its branches,” the efficacy of Cora’s androgyny is demonstrated when the searchers attempt to follow the trail of the captives (112). While Uncas has rightly identified the Narragansett horses by their gate, and all have presumed that these horses carry Cora and Alice the prisoners, this is not confirmed until they come upon the sumach with the broken branches. The gendered breaking of these branches—some “bent upward, as a lady breaks a flower, . . . [and others] ragged and broken down, as if the strong hand of a man had been tearing them”—confirms the presence of Cora and Alice among the group being followed (139). During the second captivity, when Cora, Alice, and Gamut are once again taken by Magua during the massacre at Fort William Henry, Cora again provides a trail for the rescuers to follow. Her actions with the twigs during the previous captivity suggest that Cora’s trail-marking is intentional and designed to help the searchers find her, Alice, and Gamut. In this instance, the reader is not shown Cora’s actions as she drops pieces of her riding veil along the route, but only the result of those actions. The response of the searchers when they find the first piece of the veil emphasizes the vital nature of Cora’s actions, while calling to mind her trail-marking during the first captivity. Uncas is the first to sight the “fragment of the green riding veil of Cora,” which he waves “in triumph.” Munro “seized the piece of gauze, and crushed it in his hand” (209). Heyward reads the veil as indicating that the sisters are still alive, and all in the group renew the energy of their pursuit. They are soon rewarded in their efforts, finding “another portion of the veil fluttering on the lower branch of a beech” (210). Here again this second marker evokes Cora’s trail-marking during the first captivity, suggesting that Cora has increased her skills in trail-marking, over what they were the first



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time. Because the captives are held prisoner by the same person, Magua, they are likely as closely watched as before. In addition, when, during the first captivity, Cora “let her glove fall,” it was quickly retrieved and given back to her with a threat, as her captor “laid his hand on his tomahawk, with a look so significant, that it put an effectual end to these stolen memorials of their passage.” So in order for Cora to leave two marks as obvious as pieces of her veil, she must have improved her abilities to both feign “feminine apprehension” and to place her markers unobserved (112). The third captivity occurs when Cora, Alice, Hawk-eye, Heyward, Gamut, and Uncas are held by the Delawares. During this captivity, Cora’s strength of nerve is again highlighted. Magua has returned to the Delaware encampment with a force of Hurons who want Hawkeye. Magua is intent on reclaiming Cora as his captive. The Delawares are reluctant to turn over any of the prisoners to Magua and his forces. During these events, Cora is again singled out for her bravery. When Magua has intimidated both the Delawares and the prisoners, such that “the men were unable to offer any resistance” to Magua’s demands that they turn the prisoners over to him, “Cora met his gaze with an eye so calm and firm, that his resolution wavered” (342). Throughout this sequence, Cora demonstrates her resolution, flexibility, and perseverance. She is the only one to petition Tamenund to change his obviously unfair decision. When she realizes this is impossible and she is to be turned over to Magua, she switches her focus and pleads for Alice’s release. Of the women in the novel, Alice is figured as the “super” captive, who epitomizes the aspect of helpless dependence assigned to female captives. She embodies the “alarmed colonists [who] believed that the yells of the savages mingled with every fitful gust of wind that issued from the interminable forests of the west,” and on whom “the magnifying influence of fear began to set at nought the calculations of reason, and to render those who should have remembered their manhood, the slaves of the basest of passions” (17, 18). As the embodiment of this submersion in the passions, Alice is presented as paralyzingly overcome with emotion, almost regardless of the situation. Prior to the first captivity, when Hawk-eye, Chingachgook, and Uncas have fled down the river, Heyward refers to Alice when talking to Cora as “that trembling weeper on your bosom” (95). As they are hiding in the cave, the covering of the entrance to the cave shifted a little and “Cora folded Alice to her bosom in agony” (98). Alice relies on the maternal nature of Cora. Throughout the novel, Alice occupies this position, to the point where she goes into a sort of catatonic





state in the final scenes of the novel. Despite her deep love for Cora, Alice is unable to attend Cora’s funeral because, although conscious, she is unable to control or move her body. She has become so prostrate that she is present in the novel only through “low and stifled sobs” as she is carried on a litter out of the wilderness (392). Despite all of this, Alice exhibits courage and tenacity that demonstrate instances of clear alignment of emotion and action. She shows her ability to muster tremendous strength when she overcomes her terror twice to call out for help at crucial moments. In both incidents, her cries were instrumental in her and her comrades’ survival. This is clearly demonstrated in the first incident, discussed earlier, when Alice calls out to her father as they are first approaching Fort William Henry. The second incident, during the retreat from Fort William Henry, echoes the first, as Alice again calls out to her father to save them. In this case, she does not get the direct response that she is crying out for. Nevertheless, her cry, exhausting her strength as it does, changes the trajectory of the scene immediately surrounding her, such that her and her companions’ survival becomes ensured, as will be discussed later in this chapter. Other than Cora Munro, David Gamut is the only character able to maintain a working synthesis of feminine- and masculine-gendered traits.17 David Gamut is the lone male character who does not structure Cora and Alice as victims. At the same time, he provides significant and functionally successful protection to both women. Hawk-eye even acknowledges about Gamut that he has the “gift to go unharmed amid fire” (369). Gamut protects Cora and Alice and stays with them when all others have left. Even when he has had the opportunity to escape himself, David does not take it. Perplexed at this, Hawk-eye asks him, “[W]hy, when the path lay open before your eyes, did you not strike back on your own trial, . . . and bring in the tidings to Edward?” Gamut answers him that “[his] feet would rather follow the tender spirits intrusted to my keeping, . . . than take one step backward, while they pine in captivity and sorrow” (254). Gamut might have been some assistance to Cora and Alice by returning to Fort Edward and alerting them of the location of the sisters, but this is uncertain, the more so since General Webb, commander at Fort Edward, is just as likely not to send help as to do so, judging from his actions at other moments within the novel. Gamut’s deserting the sisters and attempting to reach Fort Edward is not necessarily going to provide the sisters with the protection they need. Gamut does, however, demonstrate the ability to exert a protective influence and to aid them by his presence.



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In addition, Gamut is an example of the assertion of “I” as authority because he does what seems right to him, is not afraid to be different, and goes with his own guidance. In contrast, even Hawk-eye is operating according to a code—that of “a man without a cross,” as he is forever declaiming (130). Interestingly, Gamut’s errors and weaknesses are actually his strengths, which is in sharp contrast to all other male characters in the novel. Gamut holds “a deep laid scheme of communicating” Alice’s location to Heyward. When Heyward and Gamut are in the cave with the sick woman, whom the Huron chief has ordered Heyward to cure, Gamut says, “She expects you, and is at hand!” (288). He delivers this message when he is momentarily overcome with wonder or fear at the apparent ability of a bear (Hawk-eye in a bear costume) to sing. As a result of his emotion, Gamut gives the wrong inflection to the message, suggesting by his intonation that he is referring to the sick Indian woman. However, in his supposed error, Gamut is inadvertently protecting Alice and assisting in her rescue. Some of the Hurons speak English and certainly are aware that Gamut could easily know where Alice is being held, because Gamut, as a “non-composser,” is allowed to ramble wherever he wishes (254). Gamut’s obscuring the referent of the pronoun she in his communication with Heyward preserve’s Alice’s safety by making it difficult for his listeners to discern whom he is talking about. Earlier, Gamut has protected the women during the massacre following the surrender of Fort William Henry. In the midst of the fighting, Alice called out to her father, “Come to us, father, or we die!” As we have seen, this had worked before, effecting the rescue of her party when all other types of approaches were failing to do so. Overcome by the intensity of the experience and exhausting her strength in her cry, “Alice had dropped senseless to the earth.” Munro at first appeared to hear Alice’s cries but does not follow up. Unable to incorporate a response to his daughters’ needs into his actions he instead “proceeded, bent on the high duty of his station.” Only Gamut, who is called “helpless and useless, . . . had not yet dreamed of deserting his trust.” Although he is figured as undeniably less capable in battle than Munro, Heyward, or the others, Gamut nevertheless protects Cora and Alice when none of them can. Unlike Munro, who “shook his head, in disappointment,” in response to the cry of his daughter, Gamut looked at Cora as she “hover[ed], in untiring tenderness” over her sister, and, based on his “comprehend[sion of] the unyielding character of her resolution,” Gamut also takes heart. As Gamut looked at the violence around him, “his tall person grew more erect, while his chest heaved, and every feature swelled, and seemed to speak with the power of the




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poured out a strain so powerful as to be heard, even amid the din of that bloody field. More than one savage rushed towards them, thinking to rifle the unprotected sisters of their attire, and bear away their scalps; but when they found this strange and unmoved figure, rivetted to his post, . . . they passed on to other, and less courageous victims, openly expressing their satisfaction at the firmness with which the white warrior sung his death song. (200–201)

Rather than running or fighting, both of which are useless under the conditions of this battlefield, Gamut draws on his emotional response, on “the power of the feelings by which he was governed,” in a daring and integrated way that protects all three of them. Perhaps, not surprisingly, since the narrative figures Gamut as an incompetent, the text attempts to undercut this important victory.18 Mocking Gamut, the omniscient narrator explains, “Encouraged and deluded by his success, David exerted all his powers to extend what he believed so holy an influence.” The text structures this confidence and self-satisfaction as unmerited pride and arrogance because Gamut’s increased efforts attract the attention of “a distant savage, who . . . hunted for some victim more worthy of his renown.” This, of course, is Magua, “who uttered a yell of pleasure when he beheld his ancient prisoners again at his mercy.” Magua scoops Alice up off the ground, knowing Cora will not leave her, and heads off into the forest. Gamut, still true to his commitment to stay with the sisters, follows after Cora. As they cross the field, “through the flying, the wounded, and the dead,” Gamut continues to exert his protective influence (201). While Alice is protected from attack by being carried by Magua, “Cora would have fallen, more than once, under the blows of her savage enemies, but for the extraordinary being who stalked in her rear” (202). Thus, although Gamut’s singing identifies Cora and Alice’s location for Magua, their recapture by Magua at this moment in the narrative has a protective function because it removes them from the intense danger of the battlefield. What is figured as Gamut’s hubris, because his singing alerts Magua, is actually a pragmatically useful emotion because it assists Gamut in continuing his efforts at a heightened level, which protects Cora as they make their way off the battlefield. Indeed, they are able to make their way off the battlefield more successfully than they would have done on their own, because Magua “knew how to avoid the more pressing dangers, and, also, to elude pursuit” (202).



feelings by which he was governed.” Although it appears to be a foolish, even ludicrous response in the face of the violence, Gamut decides “to try the potency of music here” (200.) He begins singing and:

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Had they not been captured by Magua, they would have been on their own, left to their own untutored responses. The importance of the protective function that Gamut performs in this scene is then reinforced by the subsequent actions described in the next few paragraphs. Magua has Cora and Alice’s horses. This is a great benefit, since Alice is still unconscious. Had Gamut, Cora, and Alice been able some how to get off the field on their own, they would have been still quite vulnerable in the forest, on foot, without weapons, and trying to carry the unconscious Alice. Instead, all three ride. This is due to Cora’s presence of mind. Despite what she has undergone, Cora is able to experience the “present relief in escaping from the bloody scene enacting on the plain,” and to retain her clear thinking (202). Cora mounts one of the horses and asserts herself with Magua to have Alice ride in her arms. This provides additional protection for Alice. And it frees up one of the two Narragansetts. Once the two sisters are on the horse, and ignoring Gamut, Magua “seized the bridle, and commenced his route by plunging deeper into the forest.” Once again, Gamut remains true to his commitment to the sisters, despite the opportunity to flee, this time on horseback. Instead, he “threw his long limb across the saddle of the beast they had deserted” and followed the group (202). The final scene of the chapter makes plain the hopeless situation Gamut and the sisters would have been in had they remained on, or even near, the battlefield. The group looks down on the field from a mountaintop: “On every side the captured were flying before their relentless persecutors, while the armed columns of the Christian King stood fast. . . . Nor was the sword of death stayed, until cupidity got the mastery of revenge” (202–203). Without Gamut’s ability to integrate the results of his having “fallen into the hands of some silly woman, when he should have been gathering his education under a blue sky” with the demands for survival occasioned by the massacre, the only protection available to Cora and Alice during the retreat battle would have been military (254). As the rout the military is experiencing suggest, this defense could only have been inadequate. The entire structure of the sequence of events surrounding this battle—from Munro’s failure to make provisions for his daughters, to Heyward’s assumption of their safety, and thus, his failure to provide adequate protective force for Cora and Alice, to the final scene of the battle from the mountaintop—all demonstrate the inadequacy of military, paternal, or aggressive force to maintain Cora’s and Alice’s safety. Only Gamut’s ability to successfully blend feminine-gendered traits of valuing and responding to emotional and aesthetic concerns with




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T F  H There is a confounding moment near the end of Mohicans when all heroism fails. This is the moment when Tamenund, with Uncas’s assistance, turns Cora over to Magua as Magua’s rightful prisoner. Although Heyward and Hawk-eye are also present, they only look on as “the triumphant Magua passed unmolested into the forest, followed by his passive captive” (357). Lacking in the actions and responses of all of the male characters (save, ironically, Magua) is the refusal to give in that Cora demonstrates throughout the novel, and which she has used to save these same individuals at the beginning of their adventures, when she convinced Hawk-eye, Chingachgook, and Uncas to drop into the river to escape the Huron and go for help. At this moment, by placing the decision in the hands of Tamenund and figuring it as a matter of Indian honor, since “[t]he Great Manitto forbids that a Delaware should be unjust” (353), Native Americans are blamed for the vulnerability and victimhood of European American women in the wilderness—especially for Cooper’s contemporaneous readers, who were more likely to be conditioned to Native Americans as “maddened brutal savages [ready] to kill and scalp a white maiden who is both sexually arousing and the bearer of civilization” (McWilliams, “Introduction,” xi–xii).19 The dynamics of this scene receive an additional charge from Cora’s actual racial status as only partly white. Cora is actually the only African American character in the novel.20 This has the potential to make it more acceptable for Cooper’s contemporaneous readers to experience both the titillation of the scene and the release from manly guilt at the failure of the heroes to protect Cora to the same extent that she protected them at Glenn’s Falls early in the novel.21 It is the failure of the searchers that legitimates Cora’s fate: because Magua had succeeded in carrying off Cora and because the cooperative heroes had been unable to free her from him, she was doomed to be Magua’s prisoner, while all the other (white) prisoners are allowed their freedom. This scene, reinforced by Cora’s later murder, exposes an important underlying issue: if all those heroic male characters watch passively as Cora is taken prisoner by Magua—the undisputed villain of



masculine-gendered commitment to the duty to provide protection enables Cora and Alice to survive the battle. Extending the androgyny of his actions, Gamut provides a similar protective function to Uncas, when Gamut agrees to exert his courage and stay in the Huron village in Uncas’s place while Uncas escapes in the bear costume.

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the novel—who is the hero in this novel? Is it Heyward, who gets the girl and is able to retire to a life “far into the settlements of the ‘pale-faces’ ” (392)? Is it Uncas, figured as the fallen hero, who has been true to his role as courageous, thoughtful guide and protector, who “filled his time with honour. . . . was good. . . . was dutiful. . . . was brave” (393)? And what about Hawk-eye, calmly accepting Cora’s captivity? And what of Gamut, Munro, and Chingachgook, who are almost inexplicably absent from this scene? (At this point, David Gamut is still among the Huron, and Chingachgook and Munro are hiding in the old beaver lodge.) The novel does not answer these, except seemingly by default: as the lone remaining white male character at the end of the novel, Hawk-eye is positioned as the frontier hero.22 Yet, he has failed as often in the wilderness as the other white male characters, sometimes with much more dire consequences as a result of his leadership role in the group. The cohesive androgynous abilities of the RowlandsonWinkfield hero, which Edgar Huntly assigned shiftingly to Huntly and Clithero, have disbursed further in Mohicans, to fall among various male, female, white, and nonwhite characters. This displacement of “feminine” characteristics and emotion completes the fracture of the Rowlandson-Winkfield hero, while the haphazard nature of this dispersal is demonstrated by the inability of any one character, save perhaps—once again—David Gamut, to successfully employ these traits in the long term. The original prototype is thus structurally submerged, replaced by the positional authority of the male American frontier hero, in the form of Hawk-eye, which now takes on a seeming force of his own that appears as a result of his ostensible lack of forbearers. All vestiges of these submerged traits are removed by the end of the novel, becoming unavailable except in highly indirect ways.23 The heroism of the novel is a heroism of bafflement and defeat. It is not surprising, then, that the end of The Last of the Mohicans is figured as sorrow, loss, and ruin, focused on mourning for two nonwhite characters—Cora and Uncas. These deaths emphasize that there is no boon for any civilization at the end of this novel, because Cora and Uncas are figured as the most highly esteemed woman and man in the novel in terms of both their capabilities and their virtue.24 Tamenund, who in the mythological hero cycle could fill the place of father, is even himself at a loss: “My day has been too long,” he says (394). There will be no mythic atonement with the father. Tamenund has no boon to give the hero because he has nothing for himself. Likewise Chingachgook, another paternal character who has been noted for his sagacity within the novel, has nothing to offer any





longer. The death of the son Uncas represents a tragic loss for all, including Hawk-eye, who claims Uncas as an adopted son. The novel has produced only incapable heroes and disposable victims. These heroes, unable to protect themselves or others within the mythological underworld of the frontier, are no longer aware of an alternative to life in the interstitial underworld. Despite his emptiness, the continued presence of Chingachgook at the end of the novel perhaps suggests that Chingachgook could once again become able to continue to take up the slack and fill in the blanks for Hawk-eye. However, Chingachgook’s characterization of himself as a “blazed pine, in a clearing of the pale-faces,” in his eulogy for Uncas just minutes before the novel closes, makes such assumptions unsettled at best (393). The reference to the blazed pine brings back the blazed pine marked and then destroyed by Uncas and his warriors prior to their assault on the Hurons. That blazed pine was: severed . . . asunder, splinter by splinter, until nothing remained of the trunk but its roots in the earth. . . . [T]he most ruthless deeds of war were performed on the fragments of the tree, with as much apparent ferocity, as if they were the living victims of their cruelty. Some were scalped; some received the keep and trembling axe; and others suffered by thrusts from a fatal knife. (360)

Cooper’s footnote, added to the 1831 edition, ties the usage of the term blazed to mean the removing of bark from a tree to the concept of whiteness, “for a horse is said to be blazed when it has a white mark” (358, fn. 1). As the concept of blazing is applied here to Chingachgook, it suggests that he may be both the victim of a brutal physical destruction like that which was acted upon the blazed pine and a symbol of the racialized frenzy of obliteration happening in the larger culture that produced the novel itself. As the novel closes, the narrator reassures the reader that Hawkeye will continue to spend his time deep in the mythological underworld of the American wilderness, as he has done from the outset of the novel. For Edgar Huntly, the border between the everyday world and the mythological world was pervious, unmarked, and repeatedly traversed. For Hawk-eye, the boundary between the everyday world and the underworld is far out of sight, something he cannot even come near to. Domestic European American space has become exotic and distant, not an everyday world to return to, but more like a mythological underworld itself, with familiar-seeming yet unfathomable customs and concerns.



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8

Mary Rowlandson in Jeans: The John Ford/John Wayne f ilm The Searchers and the Mary Rowlandson Archetype

As the character of Ethan Edwards (played by John Wayne) in the film The Searchers half swaggers, half saunters across the screen, we don’t think of Mary Rowlandson, almost three hundred years earlier, sitting on the ground in the forests of Massachusetts with her young wounded daughter slowly dying on her lap. For one thing, what we see when we look at Ethan Edwards is John Wayne himself, whose “name is virtually synonymous with masculinity” (Giannetti 260) and whose personality dominated any role that he played. In addition, the character Ethan Edwards himself seems savvy and tough, as he untiringly searches for his captured niece, while battling Indians and whites alike when they interfere with him, always at the ready and one step ahead of trouble. If anything, we would tend to think of Mary Rowlandson as the type of character whom John Wayne should—and would—be rescuing from the ravaging wilderness and the savage Indians of Caucasian creation: like Ethan Edwards’s captive niece, Rowlandson is the pure woman, the iconic representation of white civilization. Nursing her dying child, she is what the John Wayne character protects. Yet a closer look at the traits of the heroic character of Ethan Edwards reveals his ties to the evolution of the Rowlandson heroic prototype.1 He fits the classical hero paradigm, with the addition of certain distinctive characteristics infused into the hero paradigm by the texts discussed in earlier chapters, demonstrating adaptation to Indian cultures and the ability to live with Indians. His ability to integrate into Indian culture provides him with certain types of



CH A P T ER


expertise that put him at an advantage, over other European American characters in the film, in his interactions with the American wilderness and with Indians. The idiosyncratic survival skills first popularized by Rowlandson are identifiable in Edwards as well: ingenuity, cunning, individuality, defiance of authority, courage, and coolheadedness. However, in Edwards, these characteristics are not always present in a functional state. Instead, the deterioration of the hero that has been charted in previous chapters progresses further in Ethan Edwards, as emotion continues to be a hazard to safety and the hero persists in his inability to protect either women or the family. Edwards represents the sustained and deteriorative post-maturity of the masculinized American frontier hero seen in earlier developmental stages in Edgar Huntly and The Last of the Mohicans. The pragmatic assertion of will and reason as directing principles is challenged by denied— and therefore unaddressed—suppression of emotions such as panic and despair. As in The Last of the Mohicans, the text disperses successful employment of these heroic characteristics among characters in The Searchers. The continuum between Ethan Edwards and the evolution of the Rowlandsonian hero is also delineated by the relationship of each hero to the threshold to adventure (see figure 8.1). As this hero progresses, this threshold becomes increasingly elusive. For Rowlandson, the threshold was a sharply delineated border between positive and negative worlds, which is only crossed under the pressure of murderous violence. For Winkfield, the threshold is still sharp, and her initial crossing of it also catalyzed by homicidal violence, but the worlds separated by this boundary are not opposites. Instead they are reflective of each other. Both are capable of containing and maintaining positive and negative lives and influences. Winkfield can find a positive life in either one. In addition, crossing the threshold is itself an act that she can choose to perform without difficulty. For Winkfield, her life condition is a matter of her agency as a frontier hero. Like Winkfield, Edgar Huntly can cross the threshold of adventure at will, and does. For Huntly, however, this border is confusingly pervious and unmarked. Although he, like Winkfield, repeatedly traverses this border, chaos and violence dog him regardless of his spatial relationship to this threshold. While Winkfield (like Rowlandson before her) is capable of finding safety and exerting positive agency in the mythological underworld and the everyday world alike, Huntly repeatedly demonstrates the fragility of his position and the questionable efficacy of his abilities, regardless of the world he inhabits. In addition, the unremarked and porous nature of the threshold in Edgar Huntly



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Hero(ine) moves through full victimhero transit, bringing boon to fix home society and following Campbell’s adventure cycle (245–246).

The Female American

Edgar Huntly

The Last of the Mohicans

The Searchers

Hero(ine) moves through full victim-hero transit, employing boon in the underworld of the American wilderness to create new-wave, hybridized society there.

Protagonist engages in erratic self-assignment to victim and hero roles, and does not seek or retrieve boon. His return to home society is uncertain.

Heroic self severed into female victim and male hero. Female characters are endangered by male heroic concepts. For male hero, domestic European American space is exotic and distant.

Female victim is actively hunted by male hero (with intent to murder her). Male hero is consigned to the interstitial wilderness between everyday worlds of Native American and European American cultures.

threshold of adventure ? ? hero’s m ove out of culture

?

?

Figure 8.1 Relationship of the American Frontier Hero to the “Threshold of Adventure” and the Adventure Cycle (Campbell 245–246)


Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect 2011-03-14

Narrative (Rowlandson)


jumbles the everyday world and the mythological underworld such that it is always uncertain where he actually is and what outcomes are actually possible. In The Last of the Mohicans, the threshold of adventure is out of sight in the far distance. Hawk-eye is no longer truly aware of a life beyond the mythological underworld. The mythological underworld is the encompassing reality and the everyday world has itself become the myth, which Hawk-eye references in bafflement. In The Searchers, the threshold of adventure is again clearly evident, as it was for Rowlandson and Winkfield. For Ethan, however, this boundary has become an impenetrable barrier, fused closed and sealed shut. Although he appears to cross this border at the beginning of the movie when he enters his brother Aaron’s home, Ethan’s arrival is more an incursion of the mythological underworld into the family’s household than a crossing of a boundary between these two markedly different worlds. Almost as soon as he enters the home, the narrative forces him back out into the wilderness with the posse. In addition, Ethan’s arrival brings first anxiety, then disruption, and finally destruction. When he attempts to return to the everyday world at the end of the film, he can no longer even cross the threshold between the two worlds, which is represented in his inability to step over the threshold of the front door of the Jorgenson home. Nor is his presence wanted by the pioneer family, as it was at the beginning of the film. Instead, they unceremoniously leave him hovering outside as they retreat indoors—Indian, African American, an Indianized woman, ethnic and Anglo whites, but not Ethan. All are welcome but the hero himself. The ending shuts out not only Ethan but also John Wayne (for this is whom we see when we look at Ethan Edwards)—“the movie cowboy”—and through Wayne all frontier heroes (Savage 25, italics in original). American culture, which defines itself as permanently expansive, and thus permanently in need of skill with borders and cultural brokering, has shut out its own custom-made guide.2 For almost three hundred years this hero has dispensed directions, cautions, and practical training to an eager audience. Now he turns from the doorstep unheeded and wanders back into the howling wilderness. The decreasing ability to successfully balance capability with intense emotion, evidenced as the gendering of the American frontier hero became more polarized, is played out in The Searchers in Ethan Edwards’s motivations, attitudes, and intentions as he searches for his captured niece. The trope of women as captives to men within the wilderness combines with the failure of heroism to develop additional intricacy, played out in the dynamics between Ethan and his niece



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Debbie. Ethan represents a complex, shadowed version of the incapable hero, obscured by the ultimate return of Debbie to the settlement. Although Ethan is technically an agent in this return process, he spends most of the movie committed to preventing that return and is largely a threat to Debbie rather than a protector. And while he is able to survive in the mythological underworld of the frontier, as well as to safeguard others from coming to harm when he chooses, he is a character that barely exists, with scant links to other characters in the film. Unreflected, unreflecting, and solitary, he inhabits the interstitial underworld between cultures. Without even Chingachgook and Uncas to befriend him, Ethan is alone, the intensity of his relationships only driven and bordered by anger in both the white and Indian worlds. The problem of the schism of the captured woman who must be retrieved at any cost and the masculinized frontier hero helplessly embedded in the interstitial wilderness is revealed and addressed repeatedly in the texts in this analysis. In The Last of the Mohicans, the murder of Cora at the end of the novel denies the potential for synthesis that Cora represents. In The Searchers, Lucy’s death and Debbie’s subsequent “Indianization” catalyze Ethan Edwards’s graphic representation of the nadir of the fractured American frontier hero. His murderous yet ineffectual rage when faced with evidence of the continuum between the captive female, the Indian, and the frontier hero reveals his handicapped persona, which insists on a polarized dominance that is available only through intense brutality and even then is only partial and temporary. Although Ethan’s determination has assisted him in being successful in his search for Debbie, this determination runs on the fuel of hate. This failure of the heroic results from the splitting off of aspects of experience in the mythological underworld of the interstitial wilderness. This mythological hero is simultaneously both hero and victim. It is the hero’s own actions and circumstances that result in success or failure, life or death. The hero’s own attempt to wall himself off in a gendered prison results in a lopsided hero, and that which has been suppressed seeks release. The suppression of the feminine and the confinement of the victim to the position of the Other create psychic potential energy that resides in the heroic dynamic. This potential energy is not available to the hero either to employ, express, or even control. The balance of capability and intense emotion has become the suppression emotion and the distortion of capability that quickly gets converted to undifferentiated recourse to violence. Independent judgment and self-reliance have become iconoclastic impulse and isolation. No longer does the hero have a viable status within any group,



MARY ROWLANDSON IN JEANS

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W T HE S E ARCHERS ? The Searchers, released in 1956, was directed by John Ford and starred John Wayne as Ethan Edwards, the main “searcher” in the film.3 The film both was an immediate success and has maintained a position as a classic example of the Western film genre, “which has been one of our most consistently popular art forms” (Marsden 109). This popularity stems, in part, from the mythologizing quality of Westerns themselves, which “depict a [fictional] moment in our national American past when the American choice was made and when we as a people decided who we were and where we were headed” (Marsden 107). Critically, it is seen as both John Ford’s and John Wayne’s greatest achievement in their long careers of depicting the American frontier and frontier hero.4 John Ford, the film’s director, is recognized as the leading creator of this genre.5 As major contributors to the development of the genre, Ford and Wayne had significant influence on the emergence of this determinative quality within the genre. The Searchers has maintained its importance to later film makers.6 In addition, the cowboy film star—and John Wayne in particular—is an especially potent character in American culture, one that is of “transcendent importance in the popular mind” (Savage 24). John Wayne’s popularity augments the film’s cultural influence and penetration.7 Popularity of this sort represents well developed societal acceptance (similar to that of Rowlandson in her time, as well as to Edgar Huntly and The Last of the Mohicans) and acknowledges the “enormous influence a star can wield in transmitting values” (Giannetti 262). The presence of Wayne in The Searchers further reinforces the cultural value of the film, placing it in the category of culturally significant works under analysis in this analysis. In addition, because it is Wayne who is playing the character of Ethan Edwards, the frontier hero of The Searchers, and because, by his own admission, Wayne always plays the same character (i.e., himself) no matter what the role,8 two assumptions underlie this examination of The Searchers. First, we can presume that the character of Ethan Edwards will carry more of the burden of the cultural influence and more of the representative power in terms of cultural archetypes than the other



even in the ever-dwindling search party that accompanies him into the wilderness. While earlier versions of this hero were able to develop command and control within confining circumstances and to deal successfully with Indians, Ethan deals with all, white and Indian alike, through violence, domination, and suppression.

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characters in the film, who are not played by actors with the popularity of Wayne. Second, because Wayne is playing this role essentially as he has played other roles, thereby presenting a character that is essentially similar to his other roles and capitalizing on his immense popularity, we can assume that Ethan Edwards adequately represents the American frontier hero of this period and thus can be used as the basis for drawing conclusions about the nature of this archetype in the mid-twentieth century. The story of The Searchers opens in 1868 with the arrival of Ethan Edwards at his brother Aaron’s homestead in Texas. Living at the homestead in addition to Aaron are Martha, Aaron’s wife; their three children Lucy (in her late teens), Ben (approximately age twelve), and Debbie (about eight or nine); and Martin Pawley, an orphan rescued as an infant by Ethan, who is now in his late teens. Ethan wears the uniform of a Confederate soldier, even though the Civil War has been over for three years, and does not tell his family where he has been since the war ended. The significance of Ethan’s returning this long after the close of the Civil War is acknowledged in the film by Ben’s outraged and condemning questioning regarding this long and unexplained absence from the family. Ethan’s only answer to Ben is a repressed silence, one of many he employs throughout the film to address emotionally substantive issues and demonstrating the complexity of Ethan’s relationship with domestic spaces, concerns, and interactions. During the silence of Ethan’s nonanswer, the shot registers a communicative look exchanged by Aaron and Martha, reinforcing the critique implicit in the frustrated and judgmental hurt in Ben’s voice. The next morning, a group of neighbors arrive at the Edwards homestead. A volunteer band of Texas Rangers is being formed to go after Indians who rustled the cattle of neighbor Lars Jorgensen. The local preacher Reverend Samuel Johnson Clayton serves as the captain of the volunteers. He attempts to swear in Aaron and Martin. Ethan will not allow Aaron to be part of the posse and insists on taking Aaron’s place. Although Ethan refuses to be sworn in because he says that he has already taken an oath to the Confederate States of America, he leaves with the posse in search of the cattle. Through Ethan’s knowledge of Comanche culture, the posse learns the cattle were rustled just to get the men out and that one of the homesteads is going to be attacked. It turns out to be the Edwards place. Aaron, Martha, and Ben are found dead; Lucy and Debbie are gone. The remainder of the film involves the search for the girls. At first the entire posse goes out, but before long the majority of the group gives up, leaving Ethan, Martin, and Brad Jorgensen (who is in love





with Lucy) still searching for the girls. These three wander through the Texas desert, following the band of Comanches who have Lucy and Debbie. After a short time, Brad is killed, leaving only Ethan and Martin, who traverse the wilderness for years without luck. As time passes, Martin learns that Ethan intends to kill Debbie if he finds her because he presumes she has reached sexual maturity and become the wife of, or has otherwise become sexually involved with, a Comanche brave. As a result of Ethan’s attitude, Martin is determined to be with Ethan when he finds Debbie in order to protect her life. In the course of their searching, Ethan and Martin find Debbie twice. The first time, she refuses to go back with them. Ethan tries to kill her but is thwarted by Martin, who places himself in front of Debbie to shield her from Ethan’s gunfire. The second time they find her, Debbie willingly and inexplicably goes with Martin. Ethan once again attempts to kill her, but in the last moments of the film, Ethan changes his goal from murdering Debbie to saving her. Rather than shooting her when he has her cornered after a chase at the end of the film, Ethan instead lifts her up and takes her back to the Jorgensen homestead riding in front of him on his saddle. The end of the movie leaves us with the reconstituted frontier family: Mr. and Mrs. Jorgensen, their adult daughter Laurie (who is in love with Martin Pawley), Martin Pawley, Debbie Edwards, and Mose Harper, an aging African American man. In this closing scene, Ethan is purposely left by the camera outside the closing door of the Jorgenson home, choosing to return to the interstitial wilderness between cultures over returning to civilization.

A  A Many elements of the film demonstrate the link between Ethan and our earlier texts. One of these is the similarity between Ethan and his cultural milieu and Rowlandson and hers. The first of these demonstrates parallels in the relationship between individual authority and societal authority. Since this was the change vital to the development of the American frontier hero, it is probably not surprising, then, that the position of each of these individuals and his/her society is strikingly similar. Ethan’s allegiance to the Confederacy provides the first link that symbolically ties these two characters and their cultures. Ethan is a Confederate soldier who has not surrendered, even though the war has been over for three years. The meaning of his Confederate allegiance becomes apparent when we look at differences between the Confederate and federal governments. Although both the federal government and the Confederacy are unions of politically individual



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states, the Confederate structure privileged individual states’ rights over federal concerns. In the Confederacy, individual state constitutions were more important than the Confederate constitution and took precedence when there was a conflict between the two. In the federal government, it is just the opposite; the federal constitution determines the outcome in cases where there is a conflict between a state constitution and the federal constitution. This represents a significant difference between these two systems in terms of concepts of authority and individuality. The Confederacy, then, represents the importance of the individual member over the group as a whole. This is significant because it echoes the change in Puritan society whereby the status of the individual increased in relation to the group, enabling the individual to challenge group authority. Ethan’s unwillingness to surrender to the Union demonstrates his adherence to the principle of individual authority, similar to that asserted by Rowlandson. In addition, his refusal to surrender despite the defeat of his confederation further exaggerates his individuality, since he now only really holds allegiance to himself because there is no longer a Confederacy for him to remain loyal to. Pledged to something that no longer exists, his loyalty is thus now only and always to himself. A second characteristic of the Confederacy links Ethan to our earlier texts. By maintaining his loyalty to the Confederacy, Ethan evokes Rowlandson’s loyalty to Puritan theology despite her experiences outside it, which illuminate some of its flaws and weaknesses. Further, since Ethan’s allegiance is to an entity that no longer exists, his allegiance is purely internal because there is no Confederacy to respond to his allegiance. Like Edgar Huntly and Hawk-eye, Ethan’s allegiance is to a principle; it is an allegiance very similar to the theological allegiance that Rowlandson demonstrated, both in its predominantly ideological nature, and also in the absence of an entity on which to focus. While Rowlandson is with the Algonquians, the Puritan theocracy is reduced to the level of an abstraction for her; although the Puritan world certainly continues to exist (unlike the Confederate world that claims Ethan’s allegiance), she both exists completely outside its confines and has virtually no contact with any of its members. The theocracy for her is an abstraction that she keeps alive within herself during the period of her captivity. In a similar fashion, Ethan’s allegiance to the vanquished Confederacy articulates his separation from the reality of the world of the Texas frontier. Perceptions of and interactions between the army and the settlers provide another link relating the cultural milieux of the texts. In Ethan’s case—as was also examined in Rowlandson’ Narrative and





The Last of the Mohicans—the organized, professional military fails to respond adequately to the needs of the frontier. This defining, catalytic failure of the military grounds Ethan’s perspective, responses, and actions. It is reprised in the various weaknesses of the military units within the film. This failure creates a vacuum in the societies and calls for the frontier hero in order to fill that vacuum. In Rowlandson’s case, the incompetence of the army and the chasm between military actions and frontier needs are delineated and commented upon by both Rowlandson and Mather. In The Last of the Mohicans this chasm has become more complex and situated within nationalized struggle between England and France. In The Searchers the lines between military and civilian are not so clearly drawn because the boundaries between individual and group, army and civilian, family and fanatic continually shift between the three entities involved in the search: Ethan, as an essentially singular searcher, wears the uniform of a defeated and defunct military group. In addition, he serves as a scout for the Texas Rangers, the second entity involved in the search. The Texas Rangers are a volunteer, governmental police force, constituted and led by the Reverend Captain Samuel Clayton Johnson. An imperfect amalgamation of the religious and the militaristic, Johnson shifts reflexively between religious and military functions and perspectives. Finally, in a further confusion between home and military, the company of U.S. Army Cavalry, led by Colonel Greenhill, is only present in the film in the person of an emissary, the colonel’s son Lieutenant Greenhill. The result is a leaderless cavalry capable of only filial, and not patriarchal, reach and authority. The greatest effect of this blurring occurs as a result of the actions of the volunteer Texas Rangers. When the Rangers are presented in contrast to Ethan, they are ineffectual and limited. When they are presented in contrast to the Cavalry, the Rangers are energetic and efficient and aligned with Ethan, while the Cavalry is lethargic and rule-bound. However, the overall picture is the same in The Searchers as it is for Rowlandson: the organized military is inadequate to the needs of the frontier because it follows rules of warfare that have not been adapted to the specifics of frontier and wilderness demands. Civilization in the wilderness seems to demand the protection of an organized military force, but the wilderness surrounding the civilization continually befuddles all historically recognizable representations of force, thus requiring new and radical definitions of protection, vulnerability, and the consequences of each. Further establishing the parallels between the military and the individual is the conflation of church and state effected by the



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Reverend Captain Samuel Clayton Johnson, which mimics the theocracy of Rowlandson’s Narrative in that it links religious and secular power and authority as the Reverend Captain fuses church and state by operating in both roles regardless of whether the situation is secular/military or religious. An example of this is when the Reverend Captain unceremoniously gives his Bible to Nesby, a member of the posse who was wounded as a result of the Reverend Captain’s bungled attempt to run off the Comanche’s horses, rather than to follow Ethan’s plan. Also, when the Reverend Captain shoots an Indian, he shouts “Hallelujah!” This conflation ties the military to both civil and biblical law, as in Rowlandson’s era, while symbolically confining the Rangers within both civil and biblical law. This situation is further accentuated by Ethan’s disregard for both the Reverend Captain’s military and religious authority throughout the course of the film. In the military arena, Ethan repeatedly resists the Reverend Captain’s authority, such as when early in the film Ethan countermands the Reverend Captain’s orders to Aaron to join the Rangers and when Ethan, now taking Aaron’s place, refuses to take the oath himself while at the same time insisting that he be included in the Rangers’ party. In this scene the Reverend Captain fuses the religious and the military by asking Debbie whether she has been baptized yet, while he is at the same time attempting to swear Aaron and Martin in as volunteer Texas Rangers. Later, Ethan twice interrupts the Reverend Captain while he is performing his religious duties. The first takes place when Ethan cuts short the funeral for Martha, Aaron, and Ben in order to begin the search for Lucy and Debbie. The second occurs when the return of Ethan and Martin interrupts Laurie and Charlie’s wedding. Both of these interruptions bring military matters into the religious sphere. Instances of military incompetence are presented throughout the course of the film. The company of Texas Rangers creates noisy disorder in the Edwards household as it attempts to respond to the demands of the Reverend Captain. Conversely, when this group appears in comparison to the cavalry regiment commanded by Colonel Greenhill, which is presented as having a limited ability to respond to frontier demands, the smaller, Minute-Man-like nature of the Texas Rangers gives us a feeling of relative confidence in them. But when we look at their behavior, we see that they are also incompetent in many ways. In addition, they do not become effective until the end of the movie when Ethan directs their actions. The Rangers’ use of choreographed military actions, directed by the Reverend Captain, makes it impossible for them to retrieve Debbie





or to save Lucy’s life because their methods are ineffectual and enrage the Indians. For example, the Rangers turn back early on from each of their pursuits of the Indians. While the first of these, when they return to the settlement after Ethan has told them that the Indians are about to raid the settlement, is logical, it is also without practical result because they make the wrong choice about which family needs protecting. They retreat the second time after only a brief skirmish with the Indians, leaving only Ethan, Brad, and Martin to continue on to find Lucy and Debbie. While it’s not clear whether Ethan’s individual methods could have saved Lucy and retrieved Debbie earlier, especially before she had become “Indianized,” the ultimate success of Ethan’s methods at the end of the film and the complete failure of the Reverend Captain’s methods suggest that Ethan could have retrieved the girls earlier had he not been required to respond to and compensate for the failures of the military. The Reverend Captain also plays war by the rules in a fashion quite similar to that of the seventeenth-century British army in Rowlandson’s text. A vivid demonstration of this occurs after the Indian attack at the river is driven off and the Indians are in retreat. While they are retreating, Ethan continues to shoot at them. The Reverend Captain pushes down Ethan’s rifle and tells Ethan to “Leave ‘em carry off their hurt and dead.” Like the Army in Rowlandson, the Rangers play according to a European code of conduct that is ineffectual when confronting the pragmatic efficiency of the Indians. The more socially rigid Cavalry only enhances these elements of incompetence. When Scar’s encampment has once again been located, the volunteer Rangers can be out the next morning to head for him, but the cavalry can’t get into the field until the day after. Lieutenant Greenhill uses the phrase “can’t possibly” when responding to the Reverend Captain’s statement that Colonel Greenhill’s regiment should meet the Texas Rangers in the field the next day. The military force more acclimated to its surroundings (evidenced by a comparison between the haphazard uniforms of the Rangers and the dirty but properly dressed army) can throw off the limiting restrictions of cultural behavior, follow Ethan (who as “scout” will become “leader”), and thus foil Scar and his band. When the Reverend Captain tells Lieutenant Greenhill that the Rangers will go out anyway, the Lieutenant protests, countering with, “for your own protection . . . .” Before he can get very far the Reverend Captain interrupts him, saying that the only protection they need from the army is for it to get out of their way. This scene parallels Colonel Webb’s response to the plea to send help to Fort William Henry in The Last of the Mohicans,



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as well as the response of Montcalm’s army to the massacre of the retreating English on the plain outside the fort. It also resonates with moments in Rowlandson in which Rowlandson and Mather discuss that the army can’t protect Lancaster even though they know the danger. It reinforces the concept that the individual wilderness hero operates in isolation in the wilderness and has to be able to engage the Indians successfully on his/her own. Ethan Edwards, like our earlier heroes, conforms to the mythological hero paradigm developed by Campbell and applied earlier to Rowlandson. He is an ordinary man, who also possesses exceptional gifts, such as an almost ferocious independence, an extensively developed knowledge of Indian cultures, fluency in a number of languages (including Comanche and Spanish), and extensive contacts with individuals of diverse origins throughout the frontier region that is the locale for the film. For example, early in their pursuit, the Rangers discover one of Jorgensen’s prize bulls slain in the wilderness. Protruding from the side of one of the bulls is a Comanche spear. Ethan alone, of all those people who live on the frontier, reads the meaning of this image: the Comanche have drawn the men out into the wilderness/underworld so that they can perform a “murder raid” on either the Jorgensen or the Edwards homestead. This spear in the side of the dead bull marks the boundary between the everyday world of the white settlement and the supernatural underworld of the American wilderness.9 The Rangers realize that the Indians have stolen the cattle merely to draw the men away so that the homesteads will be vulnerable to attack. At this first encounter with the threshold of adventure, the entire company turns back into the everyday world. They hastily divide themselves up, with some members going to each homestead. All of the characters flee frantically except for Ethan Edwards and Mose Harper, who functions in the film as the wise fool and is the only one in the posse to recognize Ethan’s unusual knowledge of the Comanche. Ethan and Mose rest and water the horses, heightening the tension as they linger at the marker and, perhaps, delay aid to the settlers, especially Ethan’s own relatives. From the perspective of the American frontier hero, Ethan displays the dispassionate pragmatism Rowlandson employs in much of her decision-making and which is vital to this hero. Although Ethan appears careless of the safety of his family, he is actually calculating the best odds. On their way back to the settlement, Ethan and Mose overtake Martin Pauley as he struggles across the desert on foot toward the settlement, carrying his saddle. Martin’s horse has collapsed or died





under the strain of the return trip. Despite Martin’s racing back toward home, it is Ethan who arrives first at the Edwards place, which is the one that was attacked. Ethan’s caring for the horses means that he arrives at the Edwards place before those who left earlier than he did. However, all arrive too late. Aaron, Martha, and Ben have been killed, and Lucy and Debbie have been taken prisoner. The inability of either Martin or Ethan to arrive in time to assist their family suggests that it is impossible to protect domestic space within the wilderness.10 Ethan’s course of action, at least, enables Ethan and Mose to be ready for whatever they were presented with. Racing back, as the rest of the posse did, means that the protectors arrive vulnerable to easy attack themselves and unable to provide any real assistance to others. During this scene Ethan also demonstrates the increased psychic distance between the hero and society. Ethan is willing to do what he determines is appropriate, regardless of what it looks like to others. In this case the cultural norm says that one should immediately drop everything and rush back, as is demonstrated by the behavior of the rest of the posse. But this is shown to be the method that is a complete failure, creating more vulnerability than it fixes. Employing dispassionate pragmatism, Ethan and Mose arrive strong and first, demonstrating what it takes for, as a minimum, the hero to survive and with at least the potential to contribute positively to the situation.

A D Ethan’s progress toward the threshold of adventure is complex. Ethan begins to move toward the threshold of adventure when the Reverend Captain Samuel Johnson Clayton arrives at the Edwards homestead to form a posse to chase the Indian rustlers of the Jorgensens’ cattle. Stereotypically, Ethan is forced toward this threshold. It could be concern for the welfare of his brother’s family that compels him to take Aaron’s place with the Texas Rangers. Or it could be that Ethan does not want to be left alone with that family in a domestic space. Of the American frontier heroes looked at so far, Ethan is the most at odds with the everyday world of the white frontier. With Aaron in the home, Ethan can retain his outsider, mobile stance; with Aaron gone, Ethan would be forced to assume a paternal role, as well as face the relational dynamics that exist between him and Aaron’s wife Martha. In addition, Aaron’s absence would tie Ethan to the homestead, preventing him from engaging in the sudden acts of mobility that characterize his visits to the settlement. Thus, it is possible that Ethan



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may be forced reluctantly toward the threshold, into a wilderness from which he has just lately reemerged. Or he may be forced toward the threshold as an escape route from the everyday world that is subtly attempting to shackle him. Ethan could be fleeing an everyday world, which has become the locus of dangerous forces and trials, into a mythological underworld that, while dangerous, is a known and familiar sphere. Because Ethan is the only one who knows the mystery of Martin Pawley’s history, Martin’s presence in Aaron’s family strengthens the family’s identity as a surrogate for the family Ethan disallows himself, accenting the domesticity that is inaccessible to Ethan. The interpersonal dynamics between Ethan and Martha (Aaron’s wife)— suggesting a thwarted sexual and/or romantic tie—further reinforce this surrogacy. The murder of Aaron at the homestead, along with that of his son Ben, both demonstrates the danger of domesticity to the male and the impossibility of a frontier hero’s residing in a domestic space, while at the same time clearing the way for Ethan to step into the role of avenging husband. And, like the killing of Uncas at the closing of The Last of the Mohicans, Ben’s death ends the patriarchy of Aaron and by extension Ethan, since Ethan is officially childless, although Ethan’s functioning as a surrogate father for Martin confuses this somewhat, as do the mysteries surrounding Ethan’s purported finding of the infant Martin in the wilderness.11 Still, as in Mohicans, only the older non-reproducing male Ethan remains to be the last in his line. Attempting to retrieve the future of the settlement, if not the Edwards family, Ethan disrupts the funeral service for Martha, Aaron, and Ben to direct the Rangers to leave a second time in pursuit of Lucy and Debbie.12 The entire posse now unreflectingly crosses the threshold to adventure into the supernatural underworld of the American wilderness. Ethan’s sojourn into the underworld is initially a clearly defined pursuit of a goal: the rescue of Lucy and Debbie. When they are taken, Lucy and Debbie represent the fertile innocence that will perpetuate white culture, unaffected by the influence of Indian cultures. Once Lucy is killed, the pursuit narrows down even more to focus exclusively on Debbie. At this point, Debbie’s retrieval is seen as vital by both Ethan and Martin, although each has a different reason for wanting to find her. To Ethan, she has become a threat to the frontier society; she has been tainted by her (presumed) sexual contact with the Comanche and the settlement must be protected from the possibility of contamination.13 Martin sees Debbie’s removal from her home as a loss; he seeks to restore her to her rightful





place and at the same time repair the damage done to the community by her removal. Ironically, both Ethan and Martin search for the same thing: closure. This is the boon both seek for themselves and their society. For Ethan, closure, in terms of sealing up the boundaries of the frontier family against incursion and contamination, will be the prevention of the possibility of present or future contamination of the frontier society through the murder of Debbie before she can be reunited with the frontier family. For Martin, closure, as completion of the frontier family by including all vital components representing the diversity demanded on the frontier, will come when he restores Debbie to the settlement, repairing the community injured by her loss and returning her to her home. Both Martin and Ethan see the closure each seeks as the key to cultural regeneration. Ethan will protect his society from degeneration through contamination (as Ethan views things throughout most of the film); Martin will provide for the future of his society by making it whole again through the return of one of its lost members. However, in pursuit of his goal, Ethan will do that which he will not tolerate for Debbie, that is, become less than European. He learns the language, behavior, and lifestyle of the Indians, recognizing no borders (either political or behavioral) in order to pursue his goal, while Martin, who is unconcerned by the idea of contaminating the pure society, actually keeps himself pure by failing to ever learn or understand the ways and language of the Comanche. Rather, Martin is consistently threatened by a wilderness in which he has no interest—becoming both child and bait to Ethan as he pursues his quest. In addition to the completion and protection of the pioneer family pursued by Martin and Ethan in the 1868 world of the film, the boon of closure was also needed by the 1956 world of the film’s production. Just as Rowlandson’s Puritan society needed to find its place in the American wilderness and a method for dealing with Native Americans, so both Ethan’s mid-nineteenth-century society and the film’s mid-twentieth-century society yearned for closure, completeness, and a sense of security. Both societies were recovering from wars that radically changed the structure and outlook of family and society. Both had faced internal mistrust: in 1868, the division of country and family through the Civil War; in 1956, a number of social pressures, such as the social disruption of World War II, the ideological upheaval expressed and caused by McCarthyism in the early 1950s, the nascent civil rights movement, and so on. Each of these societies had a need for stories of reintegration, and for stories of the relinquishing of blind hatred and mistrust, such as Ethan displays for



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the Comanche and which he symbolically repudiates in his reacceptance of Debbie in the last moments of the film.14 This ambivalence at the end of the film confounds a simple triumph of good ethics over bad, however, while also questioning the potential of the frontier hero, as personified by Ethan, for significant reflective development. At the same time, Ethan Edwards employs the same constellation of traits and behaviors, including that of adopting Indian skills, in his attempts to protect and restore both his family and the settlement, which are first seen in Rowlandson as she negotiates her own and her children’s survival in the wilderness.15 The heroic character that Rowlandson demonstrates is courageous and self reliant. When her house is under attack, she chooses to go out into the fray and even bargains with the Indians to set the terms of her surrender to them, extracting from them a promise that they will not kill her, even while she is standing in the midst of carnage. This act also demonstrates her ability to negotiate the middle ground between the indigenous and immigrant cultures, which is in stark contrast to the inability of her fellow settlers. In these negotiations, she demonstrates individuality coupled with an assumption of authority over and responsibility for the welfare of those in the domestic sphere. Her resistance to the pressure of fear and despair demonstrates her pragmatism, a vital characteristic for wilderness survival. Despite her former assumptions that her courage would desert her if she were ever to face an Indian attack, she remains practical and pragmatic. The horrors around her do not diminish her spirit, overwhelm her reason, or impair the operation of her survival instinct, as these thing are shown to do to other members of her household. Instead, she calculates her best chance for survival, negotiates for as much safety as she can from the Indians, and coolheadedly takes steps to maximize her own and her children’s chances for survival. Once in the wilderness, she demonstrates remarkable willpower and endurance along with extreme adaptability and the capacity to adopt Indian skills. The mise en scène of many of the film’s scenes demonstrates the link between Ethan’s wilderness activities and their importance to the home, aligning wilderness shots of Ethan with interior shots of the family at home. In many wilderness shots, the mise en scène is filled with the landscape: the characters are never alone even though out in the wilderness because the wilderness fills the space around them with shapes and colors that mirror the fullness of the mise en scène in scenes in the Edwards’ and the Jorgensens’ houses. This mirroring links Ethan’s actions in the wilderness to the domestic concerns presented in the interior shots, visually tying the American





frontier hero to the home and the settlement. Examples of this occur when domestic activities are taking place in the wilderness, such as when Ethan and Martin have prepared a camp, or when Martin is nursing the wounded Ethan. In these scenes, rock facings evoke the walls of a room and boulders and logs function as furniture. This pattern is also present in scenes with the original posse as they debate their course of action. In these scenes, the natural scenery confines the characters within the center of the frame, requiring proxemic patterns identical to those of scenes shot within houses. Other visual techniques link the hero in the wilderness to the settlement community, specifically demonstrating that the community can go on with its life because Ethan and Martin are out looking for Debbie. For example, this is illustrated in the juxtaposition of two scenes, one in the wilderness and one in the settlement. The sequence starts with Ethan and Martin out in the rocky hills above the desert floor. Scar’s band had attacked just after Debbie had arrived in Ethan and Martin’s camp and told them to flee. In the raid, Ethan was wounded in the shoulder. Martin cares for Ethan, who is incapacitated by the wound, but who has lost none of his ferociousness. There is a heated altercation between the two regarding Debbie. This culminates when Martin says to Ethan, “I hope you die,” and Ethan responds, “That’ll be the day.” Immediately following Ethan’s statement there is a cut to the interior of a large hall in the settlement where the townspeople are dancing at the wedding party for Laurie Jorgensen and Charlie MacCorry, linking Ethan’s unwillingness to give up to the community’s safety and continuance. The first of the elements of Rowlandson’s heroic character that Ethan demonstrates are superhuman strength and willpower. These were commented upon in the “Preface” to Rowlandson’s Narrative when she was described as having to endure things that were “much too hard for flesh and blood” (para. 2). This is the quality of persevering in the face of severe discomfort and against heavy odds. Ethan presents these traits in parallel conversations, one that he has with Brad and one that he has with Martin. In the first conversation, Ethan, Brad, and Martin are walking through the desert as they hunt for Debbie and Lucy. Brad and Martin are becoming discouraged: Brad: They gotta stop sometime. If they’re human men at all, they gotta stop. Ethan: No. A human man will ride a horse until it dies and then go on afoot. A Comanch comes a long and gets that horse up, rides it twenty more miles and then eats it.



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Here Ethan implies that the Indians have superhuman endurance and determination. Later in the film he uses a parallel rhetorical structure to present his own determination and endurance. This second conversation takes place when he and Martin are traveling home through the snow. They have now searched fruitlessly for two years, during which time both Lucy and Brad have been killed and discouragement is again overcoming Martin, who wants to give up the search: Martin: We’re beat and you know it. Ethan: Nope. Our turning back don’t mean nothing, not in the long run. Martin: Do you think maybe there’s a chance we still might find her? Ethan: An Injun’ll chase a thing ’til he thinks he’s chased it enough. Then he quits. Same way when he runs. Seems like he never learns there’s such a thing as a critter’ll just keep coming on. So we’ll find ’em in the end, I promise ya. Just as sure as the turning of the earth.

In the previous conversation, Ethan said that Indians have endurance and perseverance that is supernatural, beyond what “a human man” will do. In the second conversation, Ethan says that he himself has perseverance beyond that of the Indians, that he is a “critter [that will] just keep coming on.” He places his own perseverance and endurance beyond that of the Indians, whose strength and endurance he has already defined as beyond that of “a human man.” That “a human man” is a settler is reinforced by Mrs. Jorgensen’s use of the phrase when she defines the term Texican to Ethan and her husband Lars, stating that a Texican is “a human man out on a limb.” Ethan has defined himself as superior in strength and endurance to the Indians, whom he has also defined as superior to the average “human man,” that is, the average settler. In addition, Mrs. Jorgensen’s definition of Texican implies that the settlers are even in a weaker state than the average person, since the Texican is an average person “out on a limb,” or in an overwhelmed and tenuous condition, lacking in resources. Brad’s and Martin’s discouragement in these two conversations with Ethan further emphasizes Ethan’s superiority to the settlers. Although Ethan is decades older than both Brad and Martin and although they have both grown up in the frontier, neither is adequately equipped to successfully negotiate dealings with the Indians. This point is emphasized starkly in the later scene when Brad, in a fit of crazed anguish over Lucy’s apparent sexual defilement and death,





rides into the Comanche encampment and is shot down. The dynamics of this scene echo those in Rowlandson’s Narrative when Rowlandson’s sister, overwhelmed by the psychological intensity and violence of the Indian attack on the Rowlandson garrison, asks to die, and is immediately shot dead. In contrast to her sister, Rowlandson demonstrates a balance between emotional response and pragmatism and, later while with the Algonquians, her adaptability as she integrates Native American wilderness survival techniques into her repertoire of skills. Rowlandson’s presentation of these skills to Puritan society at least partially answers their need for successful techniques for wilderness survival. In a similar fashion, Ethan provides his social group with demonstrations of wilderness survival techniques adapted from Indian methods. Courtney states that Ethan “sports Indian accessories and repeatedly interprets their war maneuvers, beliefs and even language for his white companions” and in addition has “unexplained knowledge” of the Comanche (111). For example, Ethan’s beaded and fringed Indian-like sheath on his rifle signifies that his expertise is linked to Indian skills, representing the fusion in Ethan of white and Indian sensibilities and codes, making him an outsider to both groups, with skills from both. Ethan has knowledge of Indians that his peers in the settlement do not have, reinforcing the idea that Ethan’s knowledge comes from a source unavailable from within the frontier settlement. Ethan must interpret Indian behavior for his fellows. A demonstration of this is when Ethan interprets the meaning of the dead bull with the spear stuck in its side: “Stealing the cattle was just to pull us out. This is a murder raid.” At other points in the movie, Ethan demonstrates knowledge of Comanche spiritual beliefs, symbol interpretation, language, social rules, and cultural customs. His knowledge is always presented in contrast to the ignorance of his fellow whites, even, somewhat ironically, Martin, whom we know is one-eighth Cherokee.16 In fact, Ethan uses Martin’s Indian heritage as a reason to discount his assertions, reinforcing that it is knowledge and not ethnicity that is important. An example of this is presented when Ethan and Martin are being followed by Jerem Futterman, a trader who intends to murder Ethan and Martin in order to take the gold they are carrying. As Ethan and Martin get ready to bed down for the night, Martin says that he has the feeling they are being followed (which they are, by Futterman and his gang). Ethan says, “That’s the Injun in ya. Go to sleep.” Martin protests that the horses are sensing something, too. Ethan brushes it off as a change in the weather. Yet, the fact is that Ethan knows that they are being followed and knows who it is and has already planned



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Martin: What if you’d missed? Ethan: It never occurred to me.

The mickeymousing musical score following this interchange is laughing and mocking, accentuating the ironic humor of Ethan’s self-confident remark. Yet, this remark is based on Ethan’s demonstrated expertise at wilderness life. Not only is he a good tracker and hunter and good with the rifle, he turns himself from Futterman’s prey into his hunter. Ethan’s confidence and calm acceptance of his expertise echoes the attitude Rowlandson demonstrates when negotiating her ransom while at the same time resisting the pressure of her captors for her to send for her husband. A second demonstration of Ethan’s knowledge is presented in his discussion of the meaning of the Comanche term noyeki. As Ethan explains, noyeki means “sorta like roundabout.” The structure of Ethan’s definition demonstrates that he is fluent in the Comanche language17 because he understands the words in Comanche with their Comanche meanings and not just as translations of English words. He has to work for an English equivalent to the word and yet also clearly has full understanding of the meaning of the word itself. A final example of Ethan’s Indian knowledge involves Martin’s unwitting purchase of a Comanche bride. Here again Ethan’s knowledge is contrasted with Martin’s ethnicity. When Martin trades two hats to two Indian women and gets the younger one as a wife, Martin thinks that he just traded a blanket for the hats. The woman, whom they later name Luke, follows them as they pursue Scar. Martin tells her to go back, that she can keep her blanket. Ethan says, “You don’t understand, you chunkhead, you didn’t buy any blanket, you bought her. You got yourself a wife, sonny.” Martin tells Ethan to tell the woman to go home, and Ethan refuses because that would bring revenge from her family for spurning her. The contrast between Ethan’s and Martin’s behavior accentuates the message that it is the fusion of Indian and White abilities within the American frontier hero that provides a more successful model for wilderness survival than either ethnic group individually demonstrates. In addition, by playing Ethan’s abilities against Martin’s mixed ethnicity, the film reinforces the notion that it is knowledge and not merely identity that is required. This is not merely the “melting pot” in a cowboy movie, yet another



a trap, with Martin unknowingly playing the part of the bait. Ethan successfully ambushes Futterman, killing him and his accomplices. Martin is angered that Ethan has used him as an unwitting decoy:


erasure of anyone or anything nonwhite from the concept of Americanness. More significantly, this is an attempt to remove the venom from racial and ethnic difference by destabilizing the undercarrying structure of such categorizations, questioning the very ontology of such systems, and revealing their chimeric nature. At the same time, Ethan’s ability to respond to horrors dispassionately presents a contrast between Rowlandson and Ethan. While Ethan rejects emotionality in other characters and mutes his own expression of emotion, his emotion is evident and presents a handicap to purposeful, successful functioning. To camouflage this, the film attempts to code Ethan as unemotional by contrasting him to Lars Jorgensen. An example of this occurs when Ethan and Martin return to the Jorgensen home after their first two years out in the wilderness. It is spring or early summer. Mr. Jorgensen cries about Brad when Ethan asked him if he received Ethan’s letter, which he says he received a year ago. This contrasts with Ethan whose delivery is brief and monotone. An entire year has gone by since Mr. Jorgensen received Ethan’s letter about Brad’s death, and yet just the mention of it causes Mr. Jorgensen to sob. Although it is a quick sob, it is convulsed, clearly the result of emotion that is too intense to be contained. In contrast, Ethan is stoic and unmoved, standing absolutely still while Lars Jorgensen’s body convulses forward in a slight dropping motion as he cries. Ethan’s dispassion is a thin disguise, however. His response to the sexual assaults on Martha and Lucy and the possibility of Debbie’s sexual involvement with the Comanche demonstrate his emotionalism and its debilitating effects on him. Each of these incidents strikes Ethan mute with repressed anger and emotion. This muteness mimics the stoic succinctness of the frontier hero while at the same time deconstructing that stoicism through the visual display of the intensity of what Ethan leaves unsaid and the deleterious effects of the unspoken response on Ethan’s ability to act. In addition, the repetition of this pattern reinforces the conflict between stoic brevity and the effects within Ethan of the intensity of his emotional response. An example of this occurs when Ethan finds Martha’s dress outside a low outbuilding on their homestead. A woman’s empty dress symbolizes her sexual defilement in this movie. Martin sees this and comes running, calling out Martha’s name. Ethan refuses to let Martin enter the outbuilding and is so determined about it that he punches Martin in order to prevent him. When Martin is lying on the ground, Ethan tells Mose (who also hasn’t looked into the building), “Don’t let him look in there, Mose, won’t do him any good.” Ethan’s intense anger



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and his determination to prevent Martin from seeing what he himself saw attest to the strength of his own response. A second incident mirroring the finding of Martha’s dress and body occurs when Ethan, taking a different route from Brad and Martin, finds Lucy in a canyon, dead, probably naked, and most likely raped. Ethan cannot speak for the horror of it. Like Rowlandson, Ethan is highly emotional. However, unlike Rowlandson, Ethan is unable to both experience emotion and engage in effective, logical action. Addressing Ethan, Brad questions, “Did they? Was she?” using the rhetorical style established in the film of never speaking of anything sexual directly but only through contextual inference. “As long as you live, don’t ask me, don’t ask me more,” Ethan answers Brad, providing no solid information, while at the same time communicating his intense distress at even being asked the question. Brad continues to ask for information, and Ethan responds in a snarl: “What do want me to do draw you a picture? Spell it out?” A reasonable answer to Ethan’s questions is yes: Ethan has provided almost no information, and Brad needs to know what has happened to his fiancée. Ethan’s questions, however, are purely rhetorical. Ethan throws himself down on the sand, prone, his back to Brad and Martin, too overcome to articulate what he has experienced. A similar thing happens when Ethan talks about the likelihood that Debbie is still alive with her captors even after a few years have passed: “If she’s alive, she’s safe. For a while. They’ll keep her to raise as one of their own until she’s of an age to. . . .” Here again the intensity of Ethan’s discomfort strikes him mute. His gruff manner provides him with emotional camouflage, yet his rhetorical failure belies his apparent displeasure with others for asking for information, revealing instead his own emotional intensity and his inability to master it. Ethan’s emotionality, with its specific focus on the female members of his family and their sexual vulnerability to men is an enactment of social values of the mid-1950s, which required male emotional allegiance to the family at the same time that it demanded male emotional stoicism and psychological distance.18 Finally, The Searchers deals with returns, both of the hero and of the captive.19 The permutations of the repeated homecomings of Ethan Edwards are significant. This focus on homecomings echoes Rowlandson’s focus on returning to Puritan civilization and the various opportunities to do this that are presented to Rowlandson throughout her Narrative. Rowlandson will not return to her people until she can return with a relative degree of certainty of actually arriving among the Puritans (i.e., she will not run away from her





captors, even though she is given opportunities to do so, even with others traveling with her who could conceivably protect her). In addition, she refuses to involve her husband in the process of her ransoming, in order to protect him from the Indians, who have made threats on his life. These concerns of Rowlandson are duplicated in Ethan’s various homecomings. His first return, three years after the Civil War, is timed such that his refusal to surrender is unlikely to cause any serious repercussions. He has waited long enough to return that he will be able to arrive at his family’s homestead without interference from any occupying Union troops. His second and third homecomings with Martin, but without Debbie, coincide with Rowlandson’s attempts to negotiate with her captors and with her interactions with her children in captivity and other representatives of her world: these returns reassure Ethan of the continuance of the family and the settlement without providing any progress either in Debbie’s retrieval or in the life of the family. His final return with Debbie parallels Rowlandson’s return after her ransom. Despite his threats of violence toward Debbie, Ethan returns her to the settlement without incident, just as Rowlandson ultimately is released without any problems, despite the repeated unquiet of her captors regarding the delivery of the ransom, and so on. With her homecoming, the family is reconstituted as an “ ‘integrated’ society wherein Martin with his Indian blood and Debbie with her Indian experience will be sheltered under one roof with the Jorgensens. Visually, the doorway through which the characters finally move suggests that it leads to a haven where Debbie, finally safe inside, will live that family nucleus: mother, father, brother, sister, husband, wife” (Card 8).20 As Rowlandson returns to her husband and then quickly reunites her family as her children are released by their captors, Ethan reunites the Texas frontier family.

I   L  L Campbell states that when the hero gets to the end of his adventure he typically learns that “[t]he godly powers sought and dangerously won are revealed to have been within the heart of the hero all the time. . . . From this point of view the hero is symbolical of that divine creative and redemptive image which is hidden within us all, only waiting to be known and rendered into life” (39). The theme song of The Searchers addresses the concepts Campbell presents. As the opening credits are displayed on the screen a male chorus sings. The accompanying music includes a strumming guitar and has a loping



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quality evocative of the walking pace of a Western rider on horseback. The “man” who is the subject of the song is clearly the American frontiersman. As the music continues, the song questions: “What makes a man leave bed and board and turn his back on home?” The answer to this question has two parts. The first is the necessity Ethan feels of protecting home and his ideal of it. He is going to redeem the home destroyed by the Indians by saving Debbie from the Indians or killing her to protect the family, if he cannot “save” her in time. Skerry states that “to Ethan the family is the bedrock of society” (88). This is in line with Cawelti who says that the frontier hero is dedicated to the home while at the same time apart from it. The basis for the hero’s action is “the epic moment when the values and disciplines of American society stand balanced against the savage wilderness.” This situation “places[s] the hero in a position where he becomes involved with or committed to the agents and values of civilization” (Cawelti, Six-Gun 66).21 Thus the frontier hero, although coming at it from the reverse, is in the same position as Rowlandson, who was dedicated to home and apart from it. It is analogous to her efforts to take care of her children in captivity and her dedication to reuniting her family. Second, Ethan is searching for “the essence of oneself and the essence of the world,” which is “that divine creative and redemptive image” defined by Campbell (39). Ethan finds this when he catches up with Debbie at last and, instead of killing her as he intended, he embraces her. In this scene, the conflict between duty and family love is resolved by the concept of tolerance.22 This ethnic and sexual tolerance is the boon that Ethan brings back to the group, almost despite himself and his own beliefs and emotional responses. In his earlier experiences of finding Lucy’s body in the canyon and of seeing Debbie functioning within Scar’s tribe, Ethan had the opportunity to find tolerance. This tolerance, one of the boons that Rowlandson also provides to her society, is the necessary missing element for the Texans, for it is the only way that they will be able to live on the frontier successfully and without fear of constant raids. The problem is that, as the modern hero, Ethan does not know what it is that he is searching for and, therefore, cannot recognize it when he finds it. Campbell describes the situation of this modern hero in terms that evoke Ethan Edwards and which emphasize the modern hero’s singularity and the intangible yet vital nature of his quest: [T]oday no meaning is in the group—none in the world: all is in the individual. But there the meaning is absolutely unconscious. One does




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Because Ethan is a creation of the 1950s, this modern quest for the coordinated soul is Ethan’s quest. And it explains why he seems to be more of a searcher than a finder: The things that can be found out in the wilderness are for the most part those things that either seem to be the causes of the loss of the coordinated soul of Ethan’s society, such as competing culture groups, or the emblems of that loss, such as individuals who have been captured by or have fled to competing culture groups. Ethan’s search for Debbie imbeds him in a landscape of loss; the longer the search goes on, and thus the older Debbie becomes, the greater the loss becomes, until Ethan’s goal becomes aligned with that loss through his desire to kill Debbie. However, despite his intention to kill her, Ethan instead restores Debbie to the family.23 While Peek asserts that, since Debbie is no longer the little girl she was, Ethan has essentially failed at his mission (73), it is more accurate to see Ethan as having succeeded in both his mission to retrieve her, as well as in the earlier mission to save Lucy, who is evoked in the returned Debbie, now approximately the same age as Lucy was when she was captured. This conflation is supported by the film’s initial linking of the two girls, first in Ethan’s confusing Debbie for Lucy and later in Ethan’s satisfying Debbie’s desire for a necklace from Ethan, like the one he had previously given to Lucy. In this way, Ethan has been doubly successful in his mission and has symbolically even atoned for his failure to retrieve Lucy. By this point in the film, Ethan’s goal has become the fixing or repairing of the community’s loss of that which both Lucy and Debbie represent. The Texas family at the end of The Searchers, generated by several returns through the course of the film, is a markedly different one from that in any of our previous texts. The family produced by Unca Eliza Winkfield at the end of The Female American, which includes the hybridized Unca as its locus, suggests the outlines of the family at the end of The Searchers. The family in The Searchers is much more highly hybridized than Winkfield’s, with a center that is itself eccentric within either the wilderness or pioneer settlement frame. This center is the Jorgensens, who embody the racially white but clearly Other immigrant from non-Anglo Europe. The Jorgensens’ ethnic folksiness functions as a questioning foil to the supposedly superior perspective and manner represented by Ethan. That Mr. Jorgensen is



not know toward what one moves. One does not know by what one is propelled. . . . The modern hero-deed must be that of questing to bring to light again the lost Atlantis of the co-ordinated soul [of the mythologically-focused society]. (388)

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capable of developing an integrated and broad life, in comparison to Ethan’s narrowly defined and incomplete world, can be used ironically as reinforcement of Ethan’s superiority because Jorgensen is coded as the Other.24 For the same reason, Mrs. Jorgensen’s strength and leadership ability can be mocked safely by the film, disempowering women and all those in their sphere (such as Mr. Jorgensen, who clearly defers to Mrs. Jorgensen as leader of the household). This simultaneously casts these leadership traits as unstable, and unpleasant, outside of a masculine character. Additional members of the family include the racially indeterminate Martin Pawley, the Jorgensen’s daughter Laurie who is coded as about to marry Martin, the African American Mose Harper (who is treated as a cherished family elder), and the sexually Indianized Debbie Edwards.

T P  R The closing image of the film reiterates Ethan’s inability to recognize that he has found what he was searching for, despite his finding Debbie and transforming his intentions toward her from murder to rescue. In this final scene, Ethan stays outside and turns away from the house when the others have entered it. He faces toward the wilderness/underworld with the obvious intent to reenter it. The male chorus, which sang at the beginning of the film, now begins again with another verse of the same song. This verse, however, contains the answer to the questions posed at the beginning of the film. “Peace of mind” is what the searcher longs for, but this is not something that he can either recognize or identify. Since he cannot detect the answer, he, in effect, will never find it, at least not for himself. His incapacity to perceive what he has found means that he will be required to continue to wander. Nevertheless, Ethan has certainly found the answer for his culture group, however unwittingly: providing them with the boon of tolerance, which also returns to them their youth and fecundity. Further, he has acquired this same boon of tolerance for himself, as demonstrated by his acceptance of Debbie, despite his inability to recognize the change in himself. His remaining outside tells us that he does not recognize that he has found what he needs in order to have peace of mind. He cannot enter the Jorgensen’s house because he does not know that he has the tolerance to accept the domesticity of the settlement. He does not recognize that the softening of his heart and the modification of his attitudes that occurred when he spared Debbie and returned her home has provided for him a place within the family, that he has reintegrated the emotional element that





Rowlandson possessed and that, as we have seen, was separated off into gendered spheres in the course of the development of this frontier hero. Unlike Rowlandson, who embodied both frontier agent and family member, Ethan is only frontier agent; the family member has been split off in the gendering and gender-polarization that occurred in the interval between these two works. In Rowlandson’s Narrative Rowlandson rescues herself.25 In The Searchers the splitting of the frontier hero into gendered forms means that Ethan must rescue Debbie. This fission also means that Ethan must remain outside “to wander,” as the song says.26 Ethan doesn’t find the little girl Debbie that he began searching for. Instead, he finds the sexually Indianized, reincarnated Lucy and brings her into the frontier home. Whatever his emotions, this action demonstrates an emerging tolerance that was absent through much of the film. As Mary Rowlandson integrated the Indianized woman into the Puritan theocracy, Ethan has reintegrated the “Indianized” woman into the white settlement. In the process, he has also freed Martin from the need to keep searching, since Martin’s reason for searching was always and clearly to find and protect Debbie; this allows Martin to marry Laurie Jorgensen, further integrating the frontier settlement by introducing Martin’s Cherokee heritage into its pool. Ethan stands outside the Jorgensens’ doorway, a reverse of the doorway at the beginning of the film through which we see Ethan enter the Edwards homestead. Rowlandson stated that her experience in the wilderness allowed her to see “the extrem vanity of this world” (72), and that it is not to be relied upon. Ethan’s sparing of Debbie’s life represents a similar change in him: he has learned tolerance, which involves a devaluing of differences, the recognition of “the vanity of these outward things,” as Rowlandson would put it (73). However, tolerance is not all that is necessary. Integration is the only method of actual return. The reconstituted frontier family at the Jorgensen homestead represents the integration that Ethan cannot achieve—within himself or with the social world around him.27 When Rowlandson returns to Christendom, she says, “I was not before so much hem’d in with the merciless and cruel Heathen, but now as much with pittiful, tender-hearted, and compassionate Christians” (65–66). She chooses the verb phrase hemmed in to express her situation, revealing an ironic interplay of meanings in her statement: The restraint and confinement suggested by the verb phrase are semantically negated in relation to the Indians and affirmed in relation to Puritan society. While this interpretation runs counter to



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what one would presume to be Rowlandson’s intent (that is, to express the intensity of her experience of reintegration into Puritan society), the suggestion of a more intense confinement among the Puritans remains. This sentiment has echoed throughout the evolution of the American frontier hero. Her awareness of the greater autonomy and responsibility she experienced among the Algonquians, as she struggled to ensure her own survival, attempted to shepherd other captives, and ultimately negotiated for her own release, suggests a redefinition of the nature of her experience with the Indians from that of captivity to the original mechanism in the process of creation of the hero. Several restructuring maneuvers fix the American frontier hero in the wilderness, preventing him from ever really returning home, as the mythological hero paradigm demands. In The Female American, Winkfield neutralizes the dissonance brought by the experience in the mythological underworld of the American wilderness by choosing to retire into the wilderness to an integrated life of her own construction. She purposely cuts out the difficulties of European American dynamics. Edgar Huntly loses track of the threshold between everyday world and the mythological underworld. For Huntly, the border becomes permeable and ill-defined: Anything can happen anywhere. Because neither danger nor safety can be assumed in either world, the hero’s responses and decisions are marked with vacillation. In The Last of the Mohicans, the threshold of adventure is far in the rear of the action of the novel. In addition, Mohicans presents the emergence of the “super” captive Alice. The super captive, in combination with the narratively dissonant murder of Cora, removes heroic traits and actions from female characters. Furthermore, HawkEye constructs the everyday world as itself mythological, rather than the underworld, but without longing for or interest in that mythologized everyday world. Unlike the mythological hero, the American frontier hero now must make the underworld of the American wilderness his home. Transforming the trope of the captured woman who must be retrieved at all costs, the American frontier hero is confined to the wilderness regardless of attempts to leave. And just as the description of Rowlandson’s return to the Puritan community presented above carries conflicting meanings, assignment of the hero to the wilderness is also dichotomous. While the religious impetus behind the conceptualization of the wilderness as a place to be reborn falls away, the paradisiacal, restorative connotations remain, existing alongside wilderness experiences of brutality, isolation, and loss. When Rowlandson returns to her home society, her peace and her illusion of the safety of her world have been destroyed. She shows no





indication of wishing to return to the Indians and sees her time with the Indians as that of God “to scourge and chasten” her (72). She acknowledges that ideally Puritans who have been so tested should be able to see that “they have been gainers thereby.” Yet her own response is qualified and noncommittal: “I hope I can say in some measure, . . . It is good for me that I have been afflicted” (73). She does not commit herself to this conclusion, however, as her use of the verb hope and the adjective some imply. Her life in the settlement remains disrupted. At the time she wrote her text, which is estimated to be between four and seven years after her capture, she is still unable to comfortably resume her life, to the point of even being unable to sleep.”I can remember the time, when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts, whole nights together, but now it is other wayes with me,” she writes (71). Although she has returned to her home world, she is not able to be immersed fully within it. In the same way, the closing shot of The Searchers, like Rowlandson’s statement of her reentry into the Puritan world, is deceptive and inconclusive. In this shot, Ethan stands on the front porch of the Jorgensen home, outside the open front door through which the reintegrated frontier family has entered and disappeared. Ethan is framed by the dark outline of the doorway as he looks into the house. Thomson states that “[t]he camera exposure is set for the brightness outside: the spirit of the film remains there, in space, with Ethan” (31). This suggests that the answer for Ethan is attainable, that if he continues to search and to traverse the wilderness, he will find for himself what he has found for his community. For Ethan Edwards, the prohibition against return is insistent and public. It is not only an internal battle as it is for Rowlandson, a personal choice as it is for Unca Eliza Winkfield, a matter of confusion and uncertainty as it is for Edgar Huntly, or an unremarkable and untested concern existing far from the locus of the narrative as it is in Mohicans. The Searchers bans Ethan from even entering into social interactions, let alone a home, once the reconstituted frontier family is inside. Instead Ethan is held on the far side of the threshold of return, remaining helplessly on the porch incapable of recognizing what is needed to enable him to cross into the everyday world. While he has been successful in providing his social group with the boon it needs to continue, tolerance and integration, he is unable to employ that boon himself. And while Ethan is compelled to remain in the wilderness, his making it a home has broad implications, which the closing shot also suggests. The darkness of the interior of the Jorgensen house that Thomson notes suggests that the doorway is a reverse, an opening of



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the home out into the wilderness. This reversal reverberates with and comments upon the mirrored opening shot of the film in which Ethan is brought through a nearly identical doorway in a nearly identical shot and into the home of his brother Aaron and his family. The difference between these two sequences rests in the character of Ethan’s sister-inlaw Martha. Martha notices the distant figure of Ethan approaching across the desert floor, identifying that the solution to the dilemmas faced in the world of The Searchers comes out of the wilderness. She then welcomes Ethan into the Edwards home. However, Ethan turns out not to be what Martha—and Aaron—thought he was, as the many anxious glances exchanged between this couple demonstrate. Martha and Aaron know intuitively that the key to their survival and to their ability to thrive comes from the wilderness rather than the white frontier settlement. As characters in a captivity narrative, they are, after all, both descendents of and recipients of the cultural wisdom represented by Rowlandson. They know the symbolism, as well as the value to them, of the frontier hero and recognize the iconography of this hero in Ethan. However, while Ethan may have once possessed the positive synthesis of heroic traits constructed by Rowlandson and Winkfield, these traits are not present in the Ethan of The Searchers. Ethan’s long, unexplained absence from home following the end of the Civil War and his startling return still in his Rebel uniform, still asserting his allegiance to the vanquished Confederacy, signify the degeneration wrought on him by violence, and specifically by violence dedicated to the suppression of the Other. Ethan’s behavior throughout the film confirms his inabilities. At critical points, he acts at cross purposes to those of the hero, to what Martha and Aaron presume this hero will do, and to what they need from him. He goes with the posse in search of the rustlers of Jorgensen’s cattle, leaving the incapable Aaron and the young boy Ben to protect the Edwards homestead. Clearly unable to read the nature of the threat they face, Aaron’s efforts to protect his family fulfill the form such protection might take but not the function of protection itself. Ethan’s leaving to protect property leaves the family defenseless. Murder and captivity take place. Following Lucy’s murder (another death Ethan has not been able to prevent), Ethan is also unable to prevent Brad from his suicidal assault on the Indian encampment. Without Martin’s prescience, vigilance, and determined interference, Ethan would have been the agent of Debbie’s death as well. Ethan is able to demonstrate a brief moment of clarity while he has Debbie cornered at the end of the film. He is a failed hero, but a hero still grasping the thread of tolerance, at this point in the film.





He may be able to slaughter buffalo out of pure vengeful rage and to dispassionately murder Indians, but he is not yet capable of being the actual agent of death for the captive woman, regardless of the nature of her sexual and social ties to Indians. Ultimately reaching its distressing apex in Ethan Edwards, the deepening fission of this heroic paradigm into polarized racial and gender opposites results in ever-escalating violence against Native Americans, women, and the natural world, perpetrated by this crippled hero, even as this hero continues to evince vestiges the androgynous and multiracial traits deployed by Rowlandson and Winkfield. However, the persistent reemergence of these vestigial forms during instances of high emotional intensity is hopeful, implying the potential resolution of the oppositions that have developed within this polarized hero and suggesting a resolution to the dilemma of the American frontier hero. That the first American frontier hero was a woman, and the heroine of American literatures’ foundational captivity narrative, explains why the later male versions of this hero are fixed in the interstitial wilderness: like the captive who must experience redemption in order to be readmitted to the Puritan world, he cannot return until he has been redeemed. He must rediscover his identify as an integrated whole person, affect the reintegration of a denied and lost feminine side, and emerge with balanced androgynous characteristics.28 Until this happens, Ethan is confined to the wilderness and cannot leave, just as in the captivity mythology the captive is not rescued until she has completed her spiritual development. Ethan has not done this. Despite the change in his behavior regarding Debbie (i.e., not killing her), his own bewilderment at the end of the film demonstrates that he has not yet reintegrated himself, although he may have temporarily or permanently halted his devolution. So he must stay in the interstitial wilderness between cultures, alone and isolated from both Caucasian and Native American society. The evolution that he has not completed involves the psychological integration of his male and female sides, which is the twenty-first-century cultural equivalent of the Puritan spiritual experience expected of early captives. However, Ethan’s inability to become the actual annihilator of the sexually Indianized captive woman demonstrates the opening for regeneration in this character. The gendered divisions, which the texts we have looked at all wrestled with, have been played out to their unsatisfactory conclusion. The result is a crippled hero. While Natty Bumppo marveled at his own and others’ ability to behave with brutality more than a century earlier, Ethan takes this ability to be



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brutal as a right to be exercised as he sees fit. Ethan has also lost his guide into the home with the death of his beloved sister-in-law Martha. However, the opening of the Jorgensen home out into the wilderness in the film’s closing shot suggests the possibility of a positive re-amalgamation of the wilderness and the settlement within this hero. By logical extension, the conjunction of wilderness and home evident in the closing shot implies the potential resolution of the oppositions of home and wilderness, and of emotional facility and pragmatic capability, that at present confine Ethan. In addition, it is Ethan’s biracial “son” Martin Pawley who challenges Ethan’s viciousness and attempts to contain it, representing both the racial integration at the root of this hero and the multiracial pathway to the balance Ethan needs. Martin is able to return to the safety of home, the reconstituted home that can accept hybrid characters, such as himself, Mose, Debbie, and—potentially—a reintegrated and gender-andracially-hybridized Ethan.









T A F H  M R’ N AR R AT I V E OF THE C AP T I V I T Y A N D R ESTAUR AT ION

1. Throughout the remainder of this book, Rowlandson’s text will be referred to by the short title Narrative. 2. Projections based on Mott pages 303 and 305–306. 3. I use the terms English and Puritan pretty much interchangeably in this discussion because of their unity of purpose and method at this stage in regard to Native Americans and the American wilderness. 4. Among others, see Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture by John Cawelti; The Six-Gun Mystique, also by Cawelti; The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century by R.W.B. Lewis; The Cowboy Hero: His Image in American History and Culture by William W. Savage, Jr.; Regeneration through Violence by Richard Slotkin; and The Voice of the Old Frontier by R.W.G. Vail. 5. For identifying that a link exists between Rowlandson and the American hero, see Fitzpatrick. 6. All italicization in quotations from Rowlandson’s Narrative and its “Preface” are as they appear in the text, unless I’ve indicated otherwise. Likewise, all spelling and punctuation are from the text, unless otherwise indicated. 7. In Captivity and Sentiment, Burnham states captives often engaged in “startling forms of transgression. . . . , since survival frequently necessitated abandoning Anglo-American cultural traditions, social and legal standards, and gendered codes of conduct” (52). See also Burnham “The Journey,” and Castiglia. 8. The nature of the Narrative is unusual among early best sellers. Generally best sellers of seventeenth-century America were sermons or religious poetry. Other best sellers of the period surrounding the publication of the Narrative include Michael Wigglesworth’s “The Day of Doom” (1662), Richard Baxter’s A Call to the Unconverted (1664), Lewis Bayly’s The Practice of Piety (1665), Samuel Hardy’s A Guide to Heaven (1681), Francis Bacon’s Essays (1688), and Jonathan Dickinson’s God’s Protecting Providence (1699) (Mott 303). 9. These estimates are based on information provided by Derounian, synthesizing statistics provided by Hall and Bennett. Based on these



N 

10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

NOTES

findings, I have estimated press runs for each of the 1682 editions at between 300 and 2,000 copies. My cataloging of the editions Vail presents can be summarized as follows: 1682, four editions; 1720, one edition; 1770, three editions; 1771, one edition; 1773, two editions; 1791, one edition; 1794, two editions; 1795, one edition; 1796, one edition; 1800, one edition; 1802, one edition; 1805, one edition; 1811, one edition; 1828, two editions; 1853, one edition; 1856, one edition; 1883, one edition; 1903, one edition; 1930, one edition; 193_? [precise year unknown], one edition; 1933, one edition; and 1934, one edition (cf. Vail, page 486, “Rowlandson, Mary”). All of these editions were published in America, with the exception of the fourth edition in 1682, which was published in London (Vail 169). Lang states that there were twenty-three editions of Rowlandson’s text by 1828 and forty by 1990 (19–21). In addition to those named by Vail (see note above), the National Union Catalogue: Pre-1956 Imprints lists editions in 1792, 1812, 1913, 1915, 1937, and 1953 (422–424). WorldCat reveals additional editions of Rowlandson’s text appearing in 1972, 1975, 1977, 1983, 1988, 1990, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2003, and 2005; and anthologized editions appearing in 1913, 1915, 1992, and 1998. In addition to the sustained, popular interest represented by these many editions, academic attention to the Narrative is extensive. Sound recordings were released in 2003, 2007, and 2008. In 1953, the Library of Congress produced an audio discussion of Rowlandson’s work. There is also a PBS radio version of the Narrative. Castiglia expanded this definition to include European Americans taken captive by social/cultural groups other than Native Americans: for instance, the 1974 kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army. On increasing the stature of the individual and gendering colonists’ experience in the New World, see Armstrong and Tennenhouse. Armstrong and Tennenhouse have identified a number of elements in Rowlandson that are significant to my argument. However, my analysis looks specifically at the evolution of the American frontier hero, who required the changes that Armstrong and Tennenhouse identify, but which they do not address. Fitzpatrick cites Fliegelman 144–148 in this section of her argument. See also Fitzpatrick; Toulouse. Burnham suggests that Rowlandson has “a growing ease” among the Indians because “she has become relatively more acculturated and has moreover gained an economic independence she never experienced in her own culture” (“The Journey” 63). See also Logan 270. Derounian, however, suggests that Rowlandson’s forgetting where she is results from her being “in a state of shock” as a result of her traumatic experiences (“Puritan Orthodoxy” 87).



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19. See Breitwieser; Toulouse. 20. Cf. Armstrong and Tennenhouse; Burnham “The Journey”; Fitzpatrick. 21. I am grateful to Elizabeth Truax for articulating these hypotheses. 22. Among others, see Armstrong and Tennenhouse; Breitwieser; Fitzpatrick; Logan. 

M R   A F H

1. In Campbell’s text, see especially 3–40 and 245–251 for descriptions of the hero and the hero’s journey. 2. In Campbell’s analysis, the hero is male. I use male nouns and pronouns in my descriptions and discussions of this hero for the sake of accuracy in discussing the genesis of the American frontier hero, a character type that has become hyperbolically and hyperstereotypically masculine. My use of male nouns and pronouns, as opposed to gender-inclusive or gender-neutral terms, does not suggest that women or the feminine can be adequately addressed within a generic male diction assumed to represent both sexes. 3. Campbell cites perhaps the most dramatic and most well-known example of a material boon that advanced the technology of humankind: Prometheus’s providing humans with fire, which he had stolen from the gods. 4. Because the pages of the text containing the “Preface” are unnumbered, I use paragraph numbers to identify the location of quotations taken from the “Preface.” 5. The hero of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales: The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841). 6. Logan examines Rowlandson’s use of irony. 7. Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, and James Arthur Levernier, The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550–1900, have identified an “overall mythic structure of capture-initiation-return” within Rowlandson’s text that “became the norm for the form” of the captivity narrative. They elaborate the details of this structure as “a sudden attack, casualties, a forced march, sale or trade, and eventual ransom, release, or escape” (100). These elements replicate the hero cycle, reinforcing the relationship between Rowlandson’s travels with the Algonquians and the path of the hero’s journey described by Campbell. 8. The phrase is from Deuteronomy 32:10 (King James Version). 9. Among others, see Breitwieser; Davis; Derounian, “Puritan Orthodoxy”; Fitzpatrick; Logan; and Toulouse. 10. Obtaining ransom was a primary reason Algonquians took captives (Strong 55–56).



NOTES

NOTES

11. This interchange can also demonstrate that Rowlandson’s allegiances have shifted from being attached only to her own people. She is no longer perfectly Puritan. Logan states that “Rowlandson’s work exhibits a tension between the language of typology, which stabilizes interpretation, and other kinds of language that disrupt the authority of this interpretation. Rowlandson’s use of Native American words, her growing differentiation of her captors from the ‘heathen’ stereotype, and other evidence of adaptation to her captors’ culture seems [sic] to undermine the portrayal of experience in terms of Babylonian captivity and providential affliction” (269). Smith-Rosenberg states, “Passionately elaborating American Indian otherness, she fuses with them” (184). This acceptance of and fusion with the Algonquians is the flip side of the changes the mythological hero must undergo in order to return to his everyday world bringing a boon that has the capacity to address cultural deficits and solve previously unsolvable problems. 12. Being under the control of Algonquian precepts may not have been all bad for women captives. Burnham summarizes Griffin, who “noted the possibility that for many female captives, release from the Indians frequently promised only a return to captivity in another form—as domestic wife and mother in Puritan New England” (“The Journey” 72; cf. Griffin 47). As the highest status woman in Lancaster—Mistress Rowlandson, rather than a goodwife— Rowlandson could have experienced more freedom within the confines of Puritan society than some women. However, it is likely that she too experienced greater agency and, ironically, autonomy during her captivity than she did before it. 13. Woodard states that it is when Rowlandson begins to change as a result of her captivity that she becomes most dangerous to the Puritan community: “Transformation proves so subversive because it challenges the very notion of identity promoted by the Puritan community by blurring the line between self and other” (121). 14. Campbell here references Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. VI, 169–175 (Oxford UP, 1934). 15. The ending of Rowlandson’s text has received focused critical attention. See, in particular, Breitwieser and Derounian, “Puritan Orthodoxy.” 

M R, P H

1. See Miller 4–15. See also Bercovitch 85–88. 2. Metacom’s, or King Philip’s, War was a genocide in which the Native Americans of eastern Massachusetts were virtually exterminated. The Puritans, however, did not have this perspective on the conflict. My purpose here is to present the Puritan mind-set or point of view in order to demonstrate conditions that predisposed Rowlandson’s contemporaries to embrace her text.



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3. Elliott defines the first generation Puritans in New England “to include all settlers who came to New England between the years 1630 and 1650,” and the second generation as “composed of those who were born during New England’s first two decades” (viii–ix). The third generation would then be the children of the second generation (cf. Elliott 7). Interestingly, Mary Rowlandson is tied to both the first and second generations. While she emigrated to New England in 1639, making her part of the first generation, she was only approximately two years old at the time, making her chronologically and experientially part of the second generation. 4. Elliott cites Robert G. Pope, The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1969) in this argument. Miller points out that the second and third generations felt cut off and abandoned in the New World. This perception may explain the particularly insistent need for myth that he identifies in these generations. 5. The influence of Old Testament law has also been noted in the American frontier, specifically that it demonstrates “qualities of the wrathful God of the Old Testament” (Marsden 108). 6. I am grateful to Janna Henrichsen for her assistance in elucidating Mosaic law. 7. An example of this theological principle in which the outcome was death exists in the story of Jeroboam and the golden calves (1 Kings 12–14, Kings James Version). Because Jerusalem and the temple were given to Judah, leaving Israel without access to the tabernacle, Jeroboam attempts to hold the kingdom of Israel together by providing them with a focus for their worship by constructing two golden calves. As a result of this, not only is Jeroboam killed but his entire family as well. In addition, Israel is cast out of its land. 8. See Salisbury fn. 25, page 74, and fn. 54, page 91. 9. See, among others, Breitwieser, who discusses it in terms of mourning; Burnham (“The Journey”), who addresses Rowlandson’s position between two cultural perspectives; Davis, who looks at Rowlandson’s divided loyalties engendered by her training as Puritan goodwife; Derounian in “Puritan Orthodoxy,” who examines Rowlandson in light of characteristics of Neiderland’s survivor syndrome; and Toulouse, who demonstrates an angry, covert critique of Rowlandson’s plight in the juxtaposition Rowlandson chooses for her presentation of biblical quotations. 10. Elliott’s analysis of the Puritan psychological condition, which provides an in-depth description of Puritan attitudes and psychological stresses, suggests this conclusion. 11. “Critics frequently claim that Rowlandson’s narrative fulfilled a novelistic need in a society otherwise devoid of such amusements. . . ., exhibit[ing] linguistic and cultural characteristics which mark it as a type of proto-novel” (Burnham, “The Journey” 68).



NOTES

NOTES

12. I.e., “Against thee, thee only have I signed” (Psalm 51:4), and “God be merciful unto me a sinner” (Luke 18:13). 13. Cf. Davis 58. 14. Fliegelman states that “the captivity narrative secretly taught a still pious public how to live self-sufficiently alone” (145). 15. Data in this section on Hutchinson, Rowlandson, and White is taken from Salisbury 7–10. 16. Several critics have commented upon Rowlandson’s taking the food from the child. See, for example, Davis 54; Derounian, “Puritan Orthodoxy” 89; Woodard 121. 17. Fitzpatrick states, “In the end, a narrative figure designed to maintain and enforce boundaries came instead to explode them, to sanction the venture of the individual into the wilderness, there to be destroyed or saved” (20–21). 18. Cf. Elliott. 19. Slotkin discusses this characteristic of Rowlandson’s experience. 20. Cf. Armstrong and Tennenhouse. 

M  A H

1. Lang attributes this perception of Rowlandson to “expectations set by later and far more sensational tales of pioneers and Indians” (19). 2. In the 1773 Boston edition, Rowlandson stands at the front door of her house, holding off the Indians with a musket. In this edition, she wears a woman’s bonnet (A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Boston: John Boyle’s Printing Office, 1773). Notice that in this edition, the words sufferings and removes have been added to the title, replacing the original second term of restauration. These changes emphasize the idea of Rowlandson’s passively enduring her captivity and her distance from her home in the Puritan world. In another late eighteenth-century edition, a bosomy Rowlandson has exchanged her bonnet for a tricornered hat reminiscent of those worn by Revolutionary War Minutemen (Salisbury 52). 3. A concise discussion of the differences between myth and rhetorics is presented in Fisher. 4. This date is according to the Gregorian calendar, which we currently use. On the Julian calendar, in use in Massachusetts at this time, the date was calculated as February 10, 1675, which is the date Rowlandson uses. See Salisbury page 63, fn. 1, and page 68, fn.13. 5. One possibility that twentieth- and twenty-first-century readers might suspect is that the Native Americans were systematically killing all adult males, and it is this that accounts in part for Rowlandson’s survival. There is no evidence for this in the Narrative or the historical texts I have consulted. In addition, Rowlandson mentions at least two captive Puritan men that she meets in the course of her travels with the Algonquians.



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6. Burnham addresses the danger of tears and sympathy for captives and their importance for readers. “The captive’s tears may lead to death. . . . [signaling at the same time] the sympathy of English captives for one another but, even more significantly the reader’s vicarious sympathy for the suffering captives—a response that directly distinguishes them from the unsympathetic Indians” (Captivity, 51–52). 7. Ulrich draws a similar conclusion (177).  T G E A S P: G  R  M  T HE F EM A L E A MER IC A N ; OR , THE A DV EN T UR ES OF U NC A E L IZ A W I NK FI EL D 1. The Female American; or, the Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield is a recently rediscovered novel, which was published pseudonymously in 1767. The novel recounts the experiences of a biracial, binational heroine named Unca Eliza Winkfield. In the novel, Winkfield steers her way through multiple life calamities, including becoming castaway on an uninhabited island. Attention to this rich addition to transatlantic early American fiction is growing. To my knowledge, the novel was first addressed contemporarily in 1997 when I presented “Perspectives on The Female American by Unca Eliza Winkfield” at the American Literature Association Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., on May 25 (MacNeil). Since then, a critical edition has been released, and the novel has been the main focus of a dissertation as well as a number of journal articles. Colleagues in early American literature report routinely teaching it in their courses, with students interested in and receptive to the text. 2. Winkfield’s first name of Unca ties her in the minds of nineteenthcentury readers and later readers to the later Uncas of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826 and which is examined in a later chapter of this text. Cooper remarks on the name Uncas in his preface to Wept of Wish-ton-Wish. Cooper writes, “The appellation of Uncas, came like those of the Cæsars and the Pharoahs, to be a sort of synonym for chief wit the Mohegans, a tribe of the Pequots, among whom several warriors of this name were known to govern in due succession” (“Preface,” vi). Although not writing about Native Americans from the northeast, the late eighteenth-century author of The Female American may have been employing this symbolic tie in the choice of the name of Unca for the heroine of the novel. 3. Burnham states that, although the identity of the author of The Female American is not known, the novel is an American novel because “the contents, concerns, and language” of the text define it as American (“Introduction,” 23). 4. There are still problematic aspects of these relations within The Female American, however, demonstrated by several of Winkfield’s actions,



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5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10. 11.

12. 13.

such as destroying the idol and her sending of gold items from the Native American temple to England. Burnham states that The Female American presents a “radical vision of race and gender through an account of a biracial heroine who is able to indulge in a kind of ‘rambling’ mobility and ‘extraordinary’ adventure precisely because she is, as the title declares, an American female. . . . The Female American is . . . about the potentially extraordinary possibilities of being both female and American” (“Introduction,” 24). Kuhlman states that the novel is “a founding interracial myth” (3). Burnham refers to the strength of Winkfield’s status as both female and American, saying, “Those actions and abilities that seem most unusual or surprising for a female are invariably explained and legitimized by her status as a female American, an identity that strategically allows her to indulge in what would otherwise be, for an English woman, transgressive acts and adventures” (“Introduction,” 17; italics in original). As was the case in Rowlandson’s Narrative when her garrison-house was under attack, violence acts as a catalyst to move the hero Winkfield along in the heroic cycle. For a discussion of this incident, see chapter 2 of this book, pp. 29–30. Burnham notes a similar circumstance in Rowlandson’s Narrative. Referring to Rowlandson’s involvement with her captors, Burnham states that the “experiences described in such detail by the author contradict the interpretive conclusions drawn from them” by Rowlandson (“The Journey,” 61). Unless otherwise noted, all spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure are the novel’s own. Kuhlman discusses similar concepts at length, commenting on Winkfield’s “nuanced perspective on the possibility of multiple hybridities,” her “straddl[ing] cultures, communities, traditions, religions, and ethnicities,” and her formation of “a new culture that blends aspects of Native American traditions, Christian ideals, and European rationalism” (4). Kuhlman also states that in The Female American, cultural harmony “exists in her [Winkfield’s] person,” and that Winkfield “survives and thrives . . . largely because of her ability to transition between and adapt to the cultures she encounters on both sides of the Atlantic” (3, 5). See also Kuhlman Chapter 2 generally. Kuhlman states that The Female American presents “the possibility of a third space” (39). This is one of the characteristics of female Robinsonades that Blackwell identifies: “women do not remain alone on the island at length . . .; they find other women quickly” (13). Contrary to what is often the case with female Robinsonades, Winkfield’s life with the Native Americans does not include her immersion in a female social circle. Instead the novel presents numerous examples of Winkfield’s intense, and



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sometimes even exclusive, involvement with high-status males once she has been castaway. A few instances of this follow: From within the golden idol, Winkfield announces herself as a person coming “especially” to teach the priests (Vol. II, 34). Once the islanders make her acquaintance, she reports that “the priests and [she] took a comfortable repast together” (Vol. II, 50). When she sets out for their island, she is “in company with all the priests” (Vol. II, 54). Once she arrives there, “the priests conducted [her] to a little town” and into “one of the best” cottages (Vol. II, 55). Interestingly, Winkfield’s text is not included in Blackwell’s study and the publication date of Winkfield’s text precedes the chronological field of Robinsonades included in the study. Because no explanation for this omission is provided in the essay, I assume The Female American was left out because Blackwell was unaware of it. 14. The hermit’s journal is another element that reconfigures the understanding of the American frontier hero, and ties that hero to a lineage rather than having that hero remain loose in space and time as the Adamic hero, because the journal and Winkfield’s employment of it demonstrate the value of relying on others’ prior knowledge and experience. 15. Kuhlman comments that Winkfield’s “completely hybrid identity remains relatively stable throughout her adventures” (46). 16. Cf. Derounian, “Puritan Orthodoxy.”  D  F  D  E DG AR H U N TLY ; OR , M EMOIR S OF A S L EEP -WA LK ER  C B B 1. Hamelman notes ties between Huntly’s rhetoric and “the generic rhetoric of the captivity tradition” (para. 28). 2. Hamelman also notes Edgar Huntly’s ties to the captivity narrative, and to Rowlandson’s Narrative in particular. He states that “the captivity narrative is deeply embedded in Edgar Huntly. . . . the novel reflects the memoir of Rowlandson. . . . [and] the captivity narrative is the novel’s generic starting point” (para. 35). 3. While not the blockbuster Rowlandson’s text was, Edgar Huntly had the strongest sales for a literary text in 1799 and is considered by Mott to be a “better seller” for the 1790s. Mott lists Edgar Huntly as the only “better seller” for 1799, with no “best seller” identified for that year (317, 305). 4. Schulz notes that Clithero’s “position as the hero’s doppelganger is reinforced when Huntly turns somnambulist himself” (328). 5. Sivils notes, “Huntly Farm is built on the exact location where her [Old Deb’s] village stood thirty years before” (para. 12). 6. Krause notes that the name Waldegrave “signifies forest burial” (471). 7. Schulz makes a related observation about Huntly, saying “In the course of his search, the hero turns from his role as active agent of his quest into the object of uncontrollable forces within his own self” (325).



NOTES

NOTES

8. Schulz calls Huntly’s rescue of the girl “gratuitous” because it has “no significance” to the plot (330). However, the rescue has meaning in relation to Huntly’s attempts to inhabit multiple positions in both the hero and captivity cycles. This relevance of the rescue is emphasized by the girl’s later being recaptured, while under Huntly’s care, by the same band of Indians—highlighting Huntly’s disintegration, inabilities, and distortion within these cycles. 9. Unless otherwise noted, spelling and sentence structure are as in Brown’s text. 10. Hamelman notes, “Huntly’s self-portrait might be that of the generic captive” (para. 34). 11. My thanks to Luciana Cabral Pereira for pointing this out to me (2008[a]). 12. Cf. Gardner, who says that Huntly opens the box because of its ties to his surrogate father Sarsefield, who taught both Huntly and Clithero to make secretly locking boxes (445). 13. Schulz also notes this tie, stating that Clithero “is rushed to his death in a fit of insanity” as a result of Huntly’s “self-imposed mission to save Clithero” (332). Cf. also 328 and 331. 14. Cf. Hustis, especially 101 and remarks on “elision.” 15. Sivils also notes these results of Huntly’s benevolence (331). 16. Smith-Rosenberg notes the silence of female characters in Edgar Huntly and reads this as a “deni[al] . . . [of an] authoritative voice” for female characters (495). 17. Sivils states that Old Deb is “an elderly and enigmatically powerful matriarch . . . central to the plot and meaning of the book.” He defines her as “a representative for dispossessed Indian nations and their fight to retain sovereignty over the land that defines their existence” (paras. 1 and 3). Gardner defines Old Deb as “the force behind all the novel’s action, from the murder of Waldegrave to the attack on Solebury” (446). 18. Gardner states that “the question of identity in Edgar Huntly is importantly national rather than (generally) human or (particularly) individual. . . . [focusing on] the question—newly urgent in the United States in 1799—of what it means to be American” (429). 19. Gardner also notes this passage, stating that Brown is “staking his claim to a uniquely American writing via his portrayal of the Indian” that Brown includes in Edgar Huntly (430).  R  A F H  J F C’ N B  T HE L AST OF THE M OH IC A NS : A N AR R AT I V E OF 1757 1. See also McWilliams, “Historical Contexts,” 410–411. 2. McWilliams states that “Incidents of exactly this kind had been reported in the most sensational of recent captivity narratives. . . . From



200

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4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

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captivity narratives through film westerns, the image of the savage descending on the woman and her babe would out-Herod Herod in arousing horror at the persecution of the innocent” (“Historical Contexts,” 411). McWilliams writes that “Leatherstocking and the Mohicans prove their heroism primarily by protecting the two white women, flowers of civilization, on their journey into the wilderness” (“Introduction,” xiv). Cora’s action echoes Mary Rowlandson’s advising Goodwife Joslin (discussed in chapter 4) to be calm and patient in order to preserve her life. This tactic fails in both instances because in each case the character who is the receiver of the advice is unable to respond agilely and pragmatically to a terrifying situation. In addition, both Goodwife Joslin and the unnamed woman in Mohicans are highly maternal symbols—one pregnant and one the mother of a young baby. In both cases this intense maternity provides an explanation for their inability to employ that advice successfully, while also separating them from the givers of that advice. In Mohicans, however, the presence of unresponsive male characters highlights Cora’s gender and emphasizes the inability of the designated heroes in the novel when they are faced with female characters at peril. The assertion of the “I” as authority would become increasingly pervasive and obvious as the nineteenth century progressed, and would be demonstrated throughout the literature of this period, in keeping with the philosophical and romantic perspectives of the age. For example, Walt Whitman’s poetic self, the “I” of many of his poems, can be seen as evoking the same first-person authority standing in contradistinction to the greater culture that Rowlandson’s Narrative presents in nascent form, thus indentifying Whitman’s poetic self as a version of this same hero. My thanks to Luciana Cabral Pereira for pointing out the tie between Whitman and the American frontier hero prototype (2008[b]). The page references to The Last of the Mohicans that follow will use the abbreviated title Mohicans to identify the novel, where necessary. The feminized construction of the American wilderness has been noted by other scholars. Cf. in particular The Land before Her by Annette Kolodny. Commenting on the larger passage of the novel containing this phrase, McWilliams notes that the mood of the narrative moment results from the “suspension of military and historical time decreed by the two political powers” (“Historical Contexts,” 414). He claims that “Nature’s tranquility depends on the truce declared by human enemies. . . . Nature’s peace is feminine and life-giving, but its intensity depends on its seeming suspension from time” (415). As the retreat from Fort William Henry demonstrates, Cora and Alice function as metonyms for the larger situation in which families were a common component of the warring armies’ entourages. The incident



NOTES

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9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

during the retreat in which the baby of the unnamed woman with the shawl is killed reinforces this view. An anonymous contemporary reviewer of The Last of the Mohicans charges Cooper with “[h]aving taken pains to leave them defenceless [sic] [in the wilderness], and to throw them in the way of the enemy” (“Last American Novel,” 86). Callahan states about Cora that she is able to “remain conventionally womanly while at the same time exhibiting putatively masculine characteristics of courage, resourcefulness and competence when placed under stress” (251). Callahan states that “Cooper’s fiction, however awkwardly and unevenly, is attempting to revise male heroism in the direction of qualities associated with female priorities and arenas of action” (252). For Slotkin, Hawk-eye may be attempting to be the “hunter-hero” discussed earlier in chapter 4 (180). This “frontier hero” values “trusting personal experience of the wilderness rather than orthodox theory” (183), because of his “extended experience in the wilderness” (205). However, the abysmal results of Hawk-eye’s self-reliance demonstrate that he is not, in fact, this hero. The description of these forces is an interesting side note to the examination of the American frontier hero. They are described as dark red and as walking in an “Indian file.” In addition, they are called warriors, a term often used in the novel to denote Native American combatants. Yet these forces are not identified as Indians. Instead, they are called the “royal Americans” and are said to make up a battalion—“a tactically organized military group” (“Battalion”). This equates Americanness with these dark-red, single file warriors, and legitimates them further with the adjective “royal” and with Heyward’s obvious feelings of attachment to, and responsibility for, his battalion. Ringe states that “Montcalm and the victorious French cannot completely govern their Huron allies after the evacuation of the fort, and the French commander himself muses about the dangers of setting in motion a process which he cannot control. . . . In the massacre at Fort William Henry, the Indians clearly dominate the whites who have invaded their lands” (26). In the nineteenth century, “[p]roponents of Indian Removal found it handy to write and speak of Indians as if they were all nomadic hunters,” because it eased white consciences about taking Native American land and about removing Native Americans from lands they had historically held (McWilliams, “Historical Contexts,” 419). The Last of the Mohicans participates in this cultural construction, McWilliams argues: “Readers predisposed to favour Indian Removal would surely have found their concept of the Red Man as a nomadic warrior . . . fully confirmed. . . . They would, moreover, have focused approvingly upon those passages in which Cooper seems to suggest that the demise of the Indians is inevitable” (420).



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15. The language and extent of the description of the beaver village contrast with that of human habitations. The Delawares who receive Heyward and Alice when they are freed from the Huron are called a “half-tribe” residing in a “present place of encampment.” The Hurons are living in a “temporary village” (Cooper, Mohicans, 323). When Hawk-eye and the others need shelter for the night after freeing Cora, Alice, Heyward, and Gamut from Magua after the first captivity, they stay in the “decayed block-house. . . . [a] rude and neglected building . . . thrown up on an emergency” (142). 16. Callahan states that Cooper’s female characters, in general, “if they are positive, [are] allowed to infuse their supposed feminine characters with conventionally masculine traits” (251). 17. Gamut also brings active maternity and the core of domesticity into the interstitial wilderness in the form of his horse Miriam and her nursing colt. Additionally, as the only one who can effectively protect himself and others, when they are with him, from attack, Gamut acts on his synthesis of emotion and logic, presenting positive proof of his androgynous nature. 18. A contemporaneous review holds a similar opinion: “David Gamut is a bore in every sense of the word. Invested with that official situation of bore, which is a necessary appendage of the modern novel, as the fool was of ancient royal courts” (“Unsigned Review” 102). Cast by the novel as illogical and almost a simpleton, he is in the lineage of the wise court fool and provides a link between them and Mose, the wise fool of The Searchers, whom we meet in the next chapter. 19. McWilliams uses this phrase to describe the 1804 painting by John Vanderlyn, Death of Jane McCrea, who, like Cora and Alice, travelled into the wilderness from Fort Edward (“Introduction,” xi–xii). I include the quotation here in reference to the captured Cora because the psychological dynamics for the contemporaneous white reader are the same as those of viewers of McCrea’s painting. Although Cora is not immediately threatened with death or scalping in this scene, both she and Alice have been mock scalped earlier in the novel. This scene evokes those earlier artificial scalping, bringing the potential of Cora’s actual scalping that much closer to reality. 20. As Munro explains, “ ‘[I]t was my lot to form a connection with one who in time became my wife, and the mother of Cora. She was the daughter of a gentleman of those isles, by a lady, whose misfortune it was, if you will,’ said the old man, proudly, ‘to be descended, remotely, from that unfortunate class, who are so basely enslaved to administer to the wants of a luxurious people. . . . Major Heyward, you are yourself born at the south, where these unfortunate beings are considered of a race inferior to your own’ ” (Cooper, Mohicans, 180). 21. Reviewing The Last of the Mohicans for North American Review in 1826, W. H. Gardiner falls all over himself expressing contemporaneous acquiescence to racial prejudice. Gardiner universalizes his statements



NOTES

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by expressing himself using the royal “we.” I quote at length to present the contortions of the tangle of self-justification Gardiner constructs: In the present case, we are free to confess, that so far as Cora is concerned, our judgments, like Major Heyward’s may be somewhat biased. We mean no offence whatever to the colored population of the United States; on the contrary, we have a great esteem for them in certain situations; and we acknowledge it to be a vile and abominable prejudice; but still we have (and we cannot help it) a particular dislike to the richness of the negro blood in a heroine (111). 22. In this solitary position, Hawk-eye evokes the Adamic “hero in space . . . outside [and] . . . essentially . . . alone” (Lewis 91; italics in original). 23. Although Alice demonstrates these heroic traits in her intermittent assertions of courage and independent action, she, in the end, is taken far from the frontier, into space that has been coded throughout the novel as feminized. Cora Munro, who could be said to be the female American frontier hero in this novel, is killed senselessly in the end by an anonymous Indian. And, as with the murder of the mother and baby at the retreat from Fort William Henry, discussed at the beginning of this chapter, all are powerless to prevent Cora’s death, even Magua. In addition, here again, as when Tamenund turns Cora over to Magua, the racial structuring of Cora comes into play. Cora’s death is the end result of Tamenund’s decision, a decision that pits supposedly Indian ethics of fairness in war against European concepts of the rights of the individual for freedom and safety. Race obscures the nature of the heroic dynamics at work as the startlingly murder of Cora is figured as beyond the sphere of influence of heroic abilities. 24. In 1826, an anonymous reviewer for the United States Literary Gazette protested the deaths of Cora and Uncas, saying that there was “reason to believe that Cora and Uncas were preserved through so many dangers for some good end,” and suggesting that “Uncas would have made a good match for Cora, particularly as she had a little of the blood of a darker race in her veins,—and still more, as this sort of arrangement is coming into fashion, in real life, as well as in fiction” (“Unsigned Review,”100). 

M R  J: T J F/ J W  T HE S E ARCHER S   M R A

1. While The Searchers is set in 1868 (almost exactly two hundred years after Rowlandson’s captivity in 1676), the film was produced in the 1950s, making The Searchers a cultural document of the mid-twentieth century (cf. Lehman 411). This multiplicity of historical periods, which is also present in The Female American and The Last of the Mohicans, is a richness of these works. (The temporal gap in Edgar



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3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

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Huntly is slight, representing approximately forty years between the chronological situation of the novel and the publication of the novel.) Not only does each of these texts simultaneously represent multiple temporal and cultural sensibilities, they implicitly demonstrate the continued cultural relevance of their subject matters and perspectives. “Americans could conclude that the years spent re-creating episodes of imagined national history somehow qualified the movie cowboy to assess our current condition and offer guidance—to function, ultimately, as a father figure, benevolent and all-wise. Of this phenomenon John Wayne is perhaps the best, most obvious example” (Savage 24). The film adapts the novel by the same name written by Alan LeMay and published in 1954. Skerry states that The Searchers presents “the most complex and profound statement of Ford’s western vision. . . . Ford’s critics see The Searchers as the consummate dramatization of the mature Ford’s western mythology” (86). On this point, Skerry also cites Tag Gallagher, John Ford: The Man and His Films (Berkeley: U of California P, 1986); and Peter Stowell, John Ford (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986). Aleiss is representative of the evaluation of Ford’s contribution to the development and direction of the genre: “No film director has created as enduring an image of the American West as has John Ford. During a career that spanned more than fifty years, Ford directed approximately 135 films, of which close to sixty were Westerns” (167). “It is often cited as the most influential movie by a whole generation of filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas” (Lehman 402). Lehman also points out that the film still has strong appeal today and has proved to be a major cultural influence. Courtney states that “the film is considered an example of the genre [of Westerns] par excellence” (86). “John Wayne was the most popular star in film history. From 1949 to 1976, he was absent from the top ten only three times. . . . In a 1995 poll, John Wayne (who had been dead for over sixteen years) was named America’s all-time favorite movie star” (Giannetti 260). Wayne “completed nearly three hundred films in a half century of work and became the movie cowboy. . . . [He was] a fixture of American popular culture” (Savage 25, emphasis in original). “I play John Wayne in every part regardless of the character, and I’ve been doing okay, haven’t I?” Wayne once asked (Giannetti 260). Interestingly, John Wayne as John Wayne was also a character, since Wayne’s real name was Marion Morrison. Thus “play[ing] John Wayne in every part” was a presentation of a character constructed in the very interplay of myth and culture that is the focus of this analysis. This spear resonates with the musket that Edgar Huntly drives bayonet-first into the road and which is read by Sarsefield as “a beacon attracting our attention to the spot” (Brown 864).



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10. This fragility of domestic space is reprised later in the movie, when Ethan and Martin ride through the devastation of Scar’s encampment and find Martin’s wife Look murdered where she slept. The close-up and intense focus on the village of teepees as they ride through establishes Scar’s encampment as a domestic space, existing in contradistinction to the interstitial quality of Ethan and Martin’s existence. Shots of the Indians who had been captured during the raid reenforce the domesticity of the village. The beleaguered line of cold, hungry, and clearly un-warrior-like Indian prisoners trudging through the snow to the fort demonstrates the lack these characters experience away from the village. The meaning of earlier, somewhat obscure images of raiding horses now becomes clear as shots of a U.S. Cavalry raid on the village. In these shots, the cavalry is figured as an anonymous destructive force through mise en scène and camera angle. The shots of the cavalry are focused low on the thundering hooves of the horses, including very little of the riders themselves. This anonymity confirms the interchangeability of raiders on domestic spaces. The focus on the wildly thundering hooves emphasizes the potential force and power of the raiders, while erasing references to the possibility of logic and discipline that could inhere in images of military organization and controlling structure. In addition, these two parallel scenes—the “murder raid” on the Edwards homestead and the even more murderous raid on Scar’s “homestead”—confound the movie’s presumed perspective that the Indians are the “bad guys,” shifting the focus instead to questions of the nature of and justification for violence itself. Finally, these parallel scenes unmoor linkages of race and thoughtless, unprincipled violence assumed by the movie’s genre identity. 11. Ethan claims that he found Martin out in the wilderness and that Martin’s mother was an Indian. Ethan’s phraseology and manner, freighted with the silences and gaps that he uses throughout the film as markers of intensity, suggest that he knows more than this, however. Courtney remarks on these suggestions of Ethan’s greater knowledge, proposing that Martin is Ethan’s son, since Ethan “found” Martin and also “recognizes Martin’s mother’s scalp among those flaunted by Scar,” suggesting that Ethan has “intimate knowledge . . . of Martin’s mother” (116). This “possibility that Ethan himself has slept with an Indian and is Martin’s father” (117) draws a sharp contrast between Pawley’s hybridity and Hawk-eye’s asserted (or actual) purity in The Last of the Mohicans, identifying Pawley as most likely being a man with a cross. 12. Peek states that “[Debbie] is a marker . . . of Ethan’s normative desire. If he can re-capture Debbie he can re-capture a world where families stand together, a world where big strong men like him rescue helpless little girls” (81). 13. British filmmaker Lindsay Anderson refers to Debbie as a “contaminated creature” (qtd. in Roth, 65). Roth goes on to state that The



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15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

20. 21.

22.

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24.

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Searchers is part of “a series of [John ford’s] films devoted to . . . fantasies of miscegenation that variously ‘pollute’ the white daughter and kill the white mother” (65). Brode looks at the film as “a morality play in which the rugged American individualist Ethan—and subsequently America itself— works himself free of racism” (180–181). Marsden notes the tie between captivity narratives and the Western hero as specifically that which “fused the instincts of the frontiersman with those of the American Indian” (107). Interestingly, Mose Harper, the one African American character in the film and who functions as the wise fool, demonstrates intuitive knowledge of Indian goals and intentions, survival tactics while among the Indians, and judgment regarding who among the whites knows the proper (most successful) approach to take. This is analogous to Mary Rowlandson’s fluency in Algonquian, a fluency that she demonstrated with the same casual mastery. Peek discusses the recognition in “the media of the 1950s [of the] perils [that] befell men at every turn,” which took the form of “recognition of the burdens—physical, emotional, and psychological—preying on men who attempted to fulfill traditional masculine roles” (74). Card states that Ford’s films “often deal . . . with homecomings” and that in particular there exists a “centrality of family and home in its [The Searchers] narrative structure” (7–8). Card quotes Brode’s use of the term integrated. Marsden states that the Western film hero “stands between the forces of wilderness and civilization and provides the necessary advantage so Progress and the American Way can survive and thrive” (107). Critics have offered a variety of reasons for Ethan’s refraining from killing Debbie. Card states that “for Ethan, blood ties, the sense of family or kinship, prove stronger than murderous hate” (7). Lehman suggests that Ethan’s lifting Debbie when he catches up with her at the end of the movie reminds him of lifting her in a similar fashion when he first met her when she was a little girl and that this causes him to change his plans (398). Roth suggests that Ethan does not kill Debbie because, as Ethan’s niece, she represents a “transcendentally fierce connection between father and child” (73). Skerry states that because Ethan “satisfies his need to revenge his family and his honor” by scalping Scar, he is “[c]ured of the poison of revenge [and] and now ‘save’ Debbie” (90). Lehman also comments upon this, stating “the film begins with Ethan approaching a home with a complete family and it ends with him leaving a home after restoring Debbie to it” (396). Mr. Jorgensen’s position as the white Other explains how it is that the Edwards homestead is the one that is attacked and not Jorgensen’s, even though it was his bull that the Comanches rustled and then



NOTES

25. 26.

27.

28.

NOTES

killed. As the white Other, the Jorgensen’s are not full-fledged Americans in the ethnic parlance of either the film’s setting in the 1860s or its production era of the 1950s. Slotkin recognizes this trait of Rowlandson’s, calling her “the heroine-victim” (103). Various critics have addressed the question of why Ethan remains outside. Card states that for Ethan “there is no place in this integrated world” of the reconstituted frontier family (8). Courtney suggests that it is “the severity of the threat posed by women on the frontier” to masculinity that keeps Ethan in the wilderness (109). Lehman concludes that it is Ethan’s “loner status,” saying that “it is a commonplace of the western genre that the hero, after fulfilling his function, leaves the community rather than integrate himself into it” (395). Marsden suggests that it is the character of the Western hero to remain outside, who “having tasted of the Western landscape, refused to return to civilization” (108). Skerry states that it is because Ethan is out of place, an anachronism “in a west that will soon no longer recognize him” (90). Thomson gives perhaps the most interesting reason, stating that it is because of “the hardness in Wayne, the way in which he could carry heroism so close to something terrible and ugly and solitary. Something not fit to come into the house,” that “searching is a fine life. . . . It is not in Ethan’s way to go into any house and settle down.” And finally that it is Ethan’s sexuality, his “impacted desire” that sends him back off into the desert. (31). Interestingly, in an earlier John Wayne/John Ford film, Stagecoach (1939), John Wayne plays The Ringo Kid, a parallel character who is able to take part in the integration of a similarly reconstituted frontier family. The difference in the social and emotional dynamics surrounding these two characters reflects the perspective on of the hero to the time period of each movie’s production and the trajectory of the development of the American frontier hero. The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach represents an attempt for the frontier hero to find a way to reconcile sociality with embedment in the wilderness. Cf. Slotkin: “[T]he redemption of the soul is followed by the rescue of the body, as in the classic captivity of Mary Rowlandson” (442).



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214

Notes of Explanation The following abbreviations are employed in this index: Afh—American frontier hero EH—Edgar Huntly MRN—Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative, The Soveraignty & Goodness of God TFA—The Female American TLM—The Last of the Mohicans TS—The Searchers [ ]—square brackets enclose page numbers of text tied to the referenced endnote 1868 v. 1956, 172–3, 204–5n1[157n1], 207–8n24[183n24] 1950s 1956 v. 1868, 172–3, 204–5n1[157n1], 207–8n24[183n24] male stoicism, 179, 207n18[179n18] psychic wholeness, search for, 182 20th century, 204–5n1[157n1] MRN, readers, 196n5[74n5] 21st century, 188 MRN, readers, 68, 196n5[74n5] Abraham, 44 Adamic hero hermit’s journal and, 199n14[97n14] maternity of, 64–7 TFA, 96–7 TLM, 155

adventure, call to in MRN, 22–3 in TFA, 86 adventure, threshold of, Afh and, 15, 158–60, 159 fig. 8.1 in EH, 106–7, 158–60 in MRN, 30, 158 as sealed border, 160 in TFA, 86, 158 in TLM, 160, 185 in TS, 160 adventure cycle Afh, 15–16, 159 fig. 8.1 see also hero cycle adversity and toughness, 58 Afh adventure cycle, 15–16, 159 fig. 8.1 defiance of cultural, authority, typified by MRN, 62 evolution, 13–14, 155, 158–60, 159 fig. 8.1 hunter-hero as, 67–8, 202n11[141n11] traits, 69–71, 80, 159 fig. 8.1 see also Adamic hero, hero, hero cycle, heroic traits, masculine hero African American Cora, 154, 203n20[154n20] Mose, 207n16[176n16] aggression, inadequacy of, for protection, 153 Algonquian (as term), 12 Alice, character and captivity, 149–50 pragmatism, 142 Alluca, 85, 93, 94



I 

INDEX

altruism in EH, see benevolence amalgamation of heroic traits, TS, 173 American v. English/European, 129: hero, 84; I as authority, 135; mythos of America, 39; nationality, EH, 200n18[130n18] Native American and, 202n12[142n12] novel, TFA as, 197n3[83n3] American Adam, The 53, 65, 96, 97 androgyny, 96 Cooper’s female characters, 203n16[147n16] Cora, 202n10[140n10] dispersion among characters, 155 EH, denied, 118–24 Gamut, David, 150, 153–4 of hero, 84, 94, 153–4: diminishing, in EH, 104, 130; diminishing, TLM, 136–7; masculine and, 133–4, 202n11[141n11]; in TFA, 99 MRN v.TFA, 98 redemption and, 188 see also feminine, gender, masculine Arbella, covenant, 42 Armstrong, Nancy, and Leonard Tennenhouse, 4, 5, 8, 12, 53, 58–9 authority spiritual, MRN, 7, 48, 60 see also I as authority baby, dying Native American, 57 Baquag River 25, 34 Bathsheba, 44–5 beaver village, 145, 203n15[145n15] begging, MRN, 28 behavior toward others v. toward God, MRN, 57

benevolence, perverted, in EH, 103, 106, 113–14, 117, 128, 200n15[117n15] and murder, 111, 114–17 best seller, EH, 199n3[101n3] MRN, 1, 4–6, 191n8[4n8], 191–2n9[4n9], 192n10[6n10], 192n11[6n11], 192n12[6n12] bible quotations, order in MRN, 46 bicultural, see cultural biracial, see race Blackwell, Jeannine, 198– 9n13[96n13] boon, 15–16, 25–6 agency a component, 29 as assimilation of Puritan and Native American, 33–5 in EH, 108, 109 hero’s noble deed v. quasar, 65–6 as instructions, MRN v. TFA, 87 in MRN, 30, 32–3; portrayal of changes as, 34–7 Puritans, 58; as adopting Native American abilities, 22 in TFA, sent back by emissary, 83 in TLM, lack of, 155 in TS, 172–3; as tolerance, 181 borderland, cultural, 6, 61–2 bow and arrows, 94–5 box, Clithero’s, and paternity, 200n12[112n12] bravery, masculine ideas of, 64 Breitwieser, Mitchell, 8 Brief History of the Warr with the Indians, A, 41 Brown, Charles Brockden, see EH. See also individual topics. brutality in EH, 109–10, 129 gender and, 93–4 race and, 85, 93–4 synthesis of, with sensitivity, 102 brute force, “savage,” 10–11, 93–4 Burnham, Michelle, 4–5, 8, 47–8, 51–2, 66, 191n7[3n7],



216

192n18[10n18], 194n12[31n12], 195n11[48n11], 197n6[75n6], 197n3[83n3], 198n5[84n5], 198n6[85n6], 198n9[89n9] Call to the Unconverted, A, 191n8[4n8] Callahan, David, 202n10[140n10], 202n11[141n11], 203n16[147n16] Campbell, Joseph, 15–16, 24, 32–3, 35, 67, 159 fig. 8.1, 180, 181–2 captive autonomy, English v. Native American court, 31–2 behavior of, in Puritan context, 47 Edgar Huntly as, 107, 108, 200n10[108n10] feminine, 99, 161 girl Huntly rescues, 200n8[108n8] super-, Alice as, 149 tears and sympathy, danger of, 197n6[75n6] see also victim captivity of Alice and Cora, TLM, 147–9 in EH, 101, 199n2[101n2] masculine hero and, 207n15[173n15] narrative, 6 self-sufficiency and, 196n14[52n14] surviving, 9; and passivity, 64 capture-initiation-return cycle hero cycle and, 93n7[23n7] TFA and, 87 caution in EH excessive, 102, 126 lack of, 113, 127 Cawelti, John G., 70, 181 church and state, conflation, 166–7 Civil War, 172

217

class status Clithero in EH, 129 readers of MRN and, 5 working class, 95 Clithero, death of, 114–17 colonized and colonizing subject, 85 compassion in EH, see benevolence competence emotion and, 99 Native American skills and Afh, 98 Confederacy allegiance to, and Puritan theology, 165 Ethan Edwards and, 164–5 violence to Other and, 187 consciousness, divided, 85 control, assertion of, in confinement, 63 Cooper, James, Fenimore, see also TLM and individual topics. Cooper, Preface, of Wept of Wishton-Wish, 197n2[83n2] Cora as Afh, 149, 204n23[155n23] androgyny of, 202n10[140n10] maternity of, 149 mother at retreat and, 201n3[133n3] pragmatism, 140–1, 147–8 survival skills improvement, 148–9 Cotton, John, 5 Courtney, Susan, 12, 176, 205n6[162n6], 206n11[171n11], 208n26[184n26] covenant, God and Israel, 44 cultural amalgamation, 76 and masculine hero, 207n15[173n15] cultural authority defiance of by Afh, typified in MRN, 62 endorsing alternative to, MRN, 51



INDEX

INDEX

cultural changes for Afh, 58 multicultural individual, 63, 99, 207n15[173n15] cultural integration, in MRN, 3, 5, 6, 27, 31, 32, 80, 98 in TFA, 98 cultural mediator, TFA, 95 extra-cultural nature of TFA and Adamic hero, 97–8 danger, perception v. reality, and Puritans, 41–2 daughter, wounded, not fed, MRN, 45–6 David, King, 44–5, 46–7 Davis, Margaret H., 9, 47, 49, 77 Day of Doom, The, 191n8[4n8] Derounian, Kathryn Zabelle, 4, 5, 8, 192n18[10n18] Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, and James Arthur Levernier, 87, 193n7[23n7] destruction, hero as agent of in EH, 109–10 in TS, 160 determination, gendered, 153–4 domestic space anonymity of raiders of, 206n10[170n10] beaver village, 145–6, 203n15[145n15] dead outside of, 146 effects on Edgar Huntly, 127 fragility of, 206n10[170n10] gender, 88–9, 91 hero: danger to, 107, 142; outside of, 186–7; protector of, 62 and hybridized family, 182 MRN, 7 and Native American, 91 and race, 146 TS, 171–2, 173–4: inaccessible to Ethan Edwards, 171; Martha Edwards and, 187 violence in, 124–6

wilderness and, 134, 144–5, 170, 207n21[181n21]: death of Clithero, 114–17; death of Waldegrave, 127; as home, 58; mother in cabin, EH, 123 doubling of Clithero and Huntly, 112–14, 199n4[104n4] emotion, distortion of, 112 feminine roots of hero and, 112 memoirs and, 104 sleepwalking and, 104 violence/danger in domestic space, and, 125 Eden and New World, 40 Edgar Huntly, see EH. See also individual topics. Edwards, Ethan Confederacy and, 164–5 not a protective function, 161 Edwards, Martha, frontier domestic survival, 187 EH, 101–4, 105, 107–14, 115, 116–30, 205n9[169n9] MRN and, 101 scarifications, tattoos, 108 Elliott, Emory, 42, 195n3[41n3] elm, Huntly farm, and,105 Elm, Treaty,105 emotion competence, 99, 114–15, 117–18, 207n18[179n18]; and Alice, 149–50 danger and: in EH, 117–18, 130; in TS, 158 distorted, 106; and doubling,112 in EH, 109; engaged by others,103 Gamut, David, and power of, 152 gender, safety, and, 141 logic and, 115–17; and Waldegrave’s letters, 120–1 needs of 17th-C colonists and, 39–40 as obstacle, 99, 104



218

English (as term), v. Puritan, 191n3[1n3] English, as abducted female, 62 English army, as test in MRN, 25 English/European v. American, see American v. English/European Englishman, dead, and Mary Rowlandson, 76 Essays, Francis Bacon 191n8[4n8] ethnicity, destabilizing, 178 Euphemia, meta-feminine as single character, 122 everyday world gone, 135 hero retires from, 98 returning to, in TS, 179–80, 207n19[179n19] Examination, The, 20 Exodus, 44 extra-cultural nature of Afh, see various topics under cultural failure heroic, in TS, 143 personal and corporate, perception of, 42 Female American, The, see TFA. See also individual topics. feminine displaced among characters, 155 distorted, in EH, 103 hero and, 84, 85, 93–4: denied, 122–4; discord 129; evolution, 65, 68 hyperbolic: Alice as, in TLM, 149; in EH,118–20; victim as, 68 identity in MRN, 9 masculine defined by,121–2 meta-, in EH, 118–20: Old Deb as, 121–2, 200n17[122n17]; Euphemia as,122; compassion and distortion in EH, 128 sexualized, danger to domestic, 171, 206–7n13[171n13]

219

silence, in EH, 200n16[119n16] suppression of, 101–2, 161–2: in 1630s, 55–7 wilderness and, in EH, 136 see also androgyny, gender, masculine fiction societal need for, 195n11[48n11] transition of hero to, 84 figure 8.1, 159 Fitzpatrick, Tara, 8, 49, 50, 58, 60, 61–2, 62, 196n17[58n17] food, in MRN Lancaster stores, 21, 22 taken from child, 57, 196n16[57n16] withheld from daughter, 45–6 fool, wise, 207n16[176n16] Gamut and Mose, 203n18[152n18] Ford, John, 162, 205n4[162n4], 205n5[162n5] frontier, shifting, 19 Gamut, David androgyny, 150, 153–4 emotional power, 152 I as authority, 151 as protective function, 150–4, 203n18[152n18] gender adventure and, 91 authority, 56, 85 bifurcation, 69, 99, 188, 206n12[171n12]; in EH, 124; in TS, 184 boundaries, 96: and Adamic hero, 64; blurring of, 58, 87; and colonists, 7, 8; wilderness and, 9, 87 culture and survival skills,37 determination and, 153–4 domestic and wilderness, 88–9, 91, 207n21[181n21] dynamics of captives, 6 emotion and safety, 141



INDEX

INDEX

gender—Continued frontier regulation by, 2 readers of MRN, 5 resilience and, 140–1: and resourcefulness in TFA, 92–3 experience of, 144 shift, Afh, 130: and race, 67 trans-, Afh roots, 99 see also androgyny, feminine, masculine General Webb, letter, 143 generation first, 59–60, 195n3[41n3] myth of declining, 42, 60 second, 41–2, 55, 59–60, 195n3[41n3]: Rowlandson member of, 48 third, 41–2, 59–60 Genesis, 44 Giberd, John, 74–5, 78, 110–11 God’s Protecting Providence, 191n8[4n8] golden calves, Jeroboam, 195n7[44n7] Golden Multitudes, 4, 5, 199n3[101n3] goodwife, Rowlandson as, 77–9 Good Wives, 78, 197n7[79n7] gothic, 101 grace individual determination and, 56 law, salvation, and, 43 Grey, Zane, 2 grief, altered subjectivity and, 8 Guide to Heaven, A, 191n8[4n8] Hamelman, Steve, 199n1[101n1], 199n2[101n2], 200n10[108n10] Harper, Mose, wise fool, 203n18[152n18] Hawk-eye, hunter-hero as, 202n11[141n11] Hearst, Patty, 192n13[6n13] hegemony, 130

helplessness, of modern hero, 186 hemmed in, 184 hermit’s journal, Adamic hero and, 199n14[97n14] hero Adamic, 155: hermit’s journal and, 199n14[97n14]; maternity of 67; TFA, 96–7 as agent of destruction: in EH, 109–10; in TS, 160 diminished possibilities for, in EH,129 evolution of, 13–14 humanistic potential, 84 male nouns/pronouns and, 193n2[15n2] protective function (of masculine hero), 182, 200–1n2[133n2], 207n21[181n21], 207n23[182n23]: failed, 133–4, 139; Ethan Edwards not, 161; Gamut, David, as, 150–4, 203n18[152n18]; Magua as, 152–4 psychic distance from society, 52, 59, 60, 84, 170 redemption of, 208n28[188n28]: androgyny, wilderness, and, 188; in EH, 101; race, violence, and, 97 in space, 53, 65 unstable, 99, 104 see also Adamic hero, Afh, hero cycle, heroic traits, masculine hero hero cycle, 15–16 divergence from, 87, 159 fig. 8.1 in EH, 106–10: collapse of, 101; 124; positions within, 199n7[108n7], 200n8[108n8] removes and, MRN, 24 see also, Adamic hero, Afh, hero, heroic traits, masculine hero Hero with a Thousand Faces, The, 15–16, 24, 32–3, 35, 67, 159 fig. 8.1, 180, 181–82



220

INDEX

I as authority, 7 19th century, 201n4[135n4] community v., 10, 96: meaning of personal traits to, 61; status and, 7, 53, 58, 60 experience based, 35, 53, 58 Gamut, David, 151 nationality and, 135 Native American captors and, 66 Whitman, Walt, and, 201n4[135n4] idol, 89–91, 197–8n4[84n4], 198– 9n13[96n13] independence legitimating for American women, 198n6[85n6] tenth leper, Puritan, and, 52 Indian (as term) 12 innocence, MRN, 57 intimacy, with Native Americans, 63 hermit, 92 Winkfield, 96 Iraq, 68 Israel, 195n7[44n7] children of, 44 jeremiad, MRN, 48, 50 Jeroboam, 195n7[44n7] Joslin, Goodwife, 71, 75, 76 mother at retreat and, 201n3[133n3] King Philip, see Metacom Kings, 1, 195n7[44n7]

Kuhlman, Keely Susan, 98, 198n5[84n5], 198n11[95n11], 198n12[95n12], 199n15[97n15] Lancaster attack on, 72–4: see also military inadequacy dead Englishman and, 76–7 food stores, 21, 22 fortifications, 20 as underworld, 23 Lang, Amy Schrager, 63 Last American Novel, 202n9[138n9] Last of the Mohicans, The, see TLM. See also individual topics. Lehman, Peter, 205n6[162n6], 207n22[181n22], 207n23[182n23], 208n26[184n26] lepers, ten, 33, 51, 52 Lewis, R.W.B., 53, 65, 96, 97 Logan, Lisa, 18, 57, 194n11[31n11] logic and gender, in EH, 103–4, 109, 113 Lucas, George, 205n6[162n6] Luke 18, 46 MacNeil, Denise, 197n1[83n1] Magua, as protective function, 152–4 marriage, interracial, 85 masculine aggression, 68 logic and character, 103–4 as protective function, 200–1n2[133n2], 207n21[181n21] subject to feminine, 118–20 see also androgyny, feminine, gender masculine hero androgyny of, 202n11[141n11] captivity and, 207n15[173n15] as creator of victims, 109–10, 134, 137–40



heroic traits dispersion, 158 positive become negative, 161–2 humanism, heroic potential for, 84 husband, protected by wife, 30, 88–9 Hustis, Harriet, 105 Hutchinson, Anne, 55, 56, 57 hybridity of identity, 199n15[97n15] third space and TFA, 198n12[95n12]

221

INDEX

masculine hero—Continued danger to women, 133–4, 137–40, 143, 144, 158, 202n9[138n9] disintegration of, 99 emotionality of, 115–17, 207n18[179n18] hyper-, 68, in EH, 118 protector of women, 206n12[171n12] racism and, 207n14[173n14] see also Adamic hero, Afh, hero, hero cycle, heroic maternal nature of Cora,149 distortion in EH,103 Goodwife Joslin, mother at retreat in TLM, and, 201n3[133n3] maternity of Adamic hero, 67 Mather, Increase, see MRN, Preface. See also individual topics. McCarthyism, 172 Metacom, 20 maid of, 78–9 Metacom’s War, 41, 42, 194n2[41n2] military paternity and, 166 theocracy and, 166–7 military inadequacy, 17, 24–6, 153, 165–9, 17–22 Miller, Perry, 40, 41 Minuteman’s hat and Rowlandson, 64 miscegenation, 206–7n13[171n13] mistress, Rowlandson as, 77–9 Moses, 44 Mott, Frank L., 4, 5, 199n3[101n3] MRN, 1, 3, 10, 18, 20, 57, 61, 63, 71, 72, 73–5, 77, 78, 184, 185–6 army, 21, 25–6 barters, 27–8, 29 begging, 28

daughter, not fed, 45–6 EH and, 101 hero cycle, 22, 34–5 howling wilderness, 23 husband, fears for, 29–30 Preface (Increase Mather), 12, 17, 20, 50, 51–5, 62, 71, 174: army, 19; macrocosmic triumph, 32–3 as quasar, 65–6 ransom, 30–1 river crossing, 25, 26–7 Rowlandson: Joseph, 111; Mary, childhood, 55–6; Sarah, 45–6 multicultural individual, see various topics under cultural murder and altruism, see benevolence and murder musket in EH, skill, 125 in MRN, 64 myth of declining generations, 42, 60 multivalent, 69 as pathway from cosmos, 67 rhetorics and, 69 mythological underworld, see underworld, wilderness Narrative, Rowlandson, see MRN. See also individual topics. narratives, as true, 11 narrator, unreliable, in EH, 102–3 Native (as term), v. native, 130 Native American (as term), 12 Native American ambivalence toward, 98 American as, 202n12[142n12] blame of, 154 captives, 6 Edgar Huntly as, 108 in interstitial wilderness, 202n14[145n14] interpersonal dynamics, in MRN, 75



222

Lancaster attack plan, 17 language and hero, 89, 97, 98–9, 128, 169, 177, 207n17[177n17] as mythological guide, 27, 29 relationship to, improving, 84 rout by English, 18–19 Rowlandson’s negotiations with, 24 as shadow presence, 23 skills of Afh, 33, 53, 62, 130, 207n15[173n15] treaty with Delawares, 105 Neiderlands survivor syndrome, 195n9[47n9] New Jerusalem, 17 New World community, 59 emotional survival in, 42 psychological stress and Old World, 68 Puritan competence in, 48 New Zion, 17 Northfield, 74 noyeki, 177 oak leaves, wound treatment, MRN 71 Old Deb feminine power, 121–2, 200n17[122n17] Huntly farm and, 105, 99n5[105n5] Old World community, 59 psychological stress and New World, 68 Other treatment in TS , 182–3, 187 violence to, and degeneration, 187 white, 207–8n24[183n24] passage, underground, 92–3 paternity in EH, 106, 108, 109: Clithero’s box and, 200n12[112n12]

223

in TLM, 155: inadequate, 134, 138, 144, 153 in TS, 170, 171, 206n11[171n11], 207n22[181n22] ; military and, 166 patricide, 106 Peek, Wendy Chapman, 182, 206n12[171n12], 207n18[179n18] personality, coherence of, 94 Pilgrim’s Progress, 6 popularity MRN, 1, 3–6, 192n10[6n10], 192n11[6n11], 192n12[6n12]: nature of, and voice, 49; presumed orthodoxy and, 39–40; Puritan New World experience, readers, and, 18; significance of, 5 TS, 162 Wayne, John, 162–3 post-traumatic stress disorder, 98, 104–5, 119, 141 poverty, 95, 103–4, 109, 128 Practice of Piety, The, 191n8[4n8] pragmatism, 75, 141, 169 of Alice, 142 of Cora, 140–1, 147–8 Preface, Cooper, of Wept of Wish-tonWish, 197n2[83n2] Prince, Thomas, 5 Prometheus, 193n3[16n3] Psalm 51, 45, 46 Puritan (as term), v. English, 191n3[1n3] Puritan culture New World experience, 40, 43 MRN accepted by, 7, 10, 48: and changes to, 33, 42, 49 restraints of, MRN, 31, 35 Puritan experience, relationship to, as determinative, 39 Puritan theology diminishing importance in America, 71



INDEX

INDEX

Puritan theology—Continued EH and, 101 frontier and, 16 justification of changes, 43 MRN as doctrinal, 46 salvation and self-determination, 51 stabilizing effects, weakening, 43 subversion by MRN, 33, 42, 49 Quannapaquait, 21 quasar, Rowlandson as, 65–6 quest, 15, 159 fig. 8.1 race authority and, 85 boundaries, 96; destabilized, 178; wilderness and, 87 domesticity, the dead, and, 146 hero, redemption of, violence and, 97 hybridity, 96: of heroine, 198n5[84n5]; of individual, 85; 93–4; marriage and, 85–6; MRN v. TFA, 98 masculine hero, prejudice, and, 207n14[173n14] polarization, 99, 188 resistance to defeat and, 140 ransom, negotiation, MRN 30 Read, Thomas, 111 recklessness, EH, 102, 113, 127 redemption of hero, 208n28[188n28] androgyny, wilderness, and, 188 in EH, 101 race, violence, and, 97 Regeneration through Violence, 40, 43–4, 65, 66–8, 202n11[141n11], 208n25[184n25] removes, MRN, hero cycle, and, 24 resourcefulness, gender and, TFA, 92–3 rhetoric EH, captivity, and,199n1[101n1] MRN, 62, 79

rhetorics, myth and multiple, 69 Robinson Crusoe, 87 Robinsonades, female, 96, 198– 9n13[96n13] Roth, Marty, 206–7n13[171n13], 207n22[181n22] Rowlandson Joseph, 111 Mary: childhood, 55–6; EH and, 101; as quasar, 65–6 Sarah, 45–6 see also MRN and individual topics Salisbury, Neal, 12, 32, 55, 63, 77 Savage, Jr., William W., 160, 162, 205n2[160n2], 205n7[162n7] savagery, 10, 93–4 scarification, EH, 108 Schulz, Dieter 128, 199n4[104n4], 199n7[108n7], 200n8[108n8] Scorsese, Martin, 205n6[162n6] Searchers, The, see TS. See also individual topics. self internal, elision of, 134 split, 117, 118; from action, 99, 104 self-determination, Puritan salvation and, 51 self-sufficiency, 75 captives and, 196n14[52n14] sensitivity, synthesis of, with brutality, 102 settlements, European, and danger, 91, 93 Sewall, Samuel, 5 Sivils, Matthew Wynn, 199n5[105n5], 200n15[117n15], 200n17[122n17] Skerry, Philip J. 205n4[162n4], 207n22[181n22], 208n26[184n26] sleepwalking, doubling and, 104 Slotkin, Richard, 40, 43–4, 65, 66–8, 202n11[141n11], 208n25[184n25]



224

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, 9, 48–9, 50, 194n11[31n11], 200n16[119n16] Soveraignty & Goodness of God, The, see MRN. See also individual topics. Spielberg, Stephen, 205n6[162n6] Stagecoach, 208n27[184n27] Strong, Pauline Turner, 6, 12, 193n10[27n10] subjectivity, altered, 8 suicide, Clithero, 114–17 Summer Isles, 87 supernatural underworld, see underworld, wilderness survival hero’s focus on, v. quasar, MRN, 65–6 skills, increased significance of, 72 Symbionese Liberation Army, 192n13[6n13] sympathy Afh and, 54 danger of, 197n6[75n6] in MRN, unnecessary, 53–4 tattoos, EH, 108 tears, danger of, 197n6[75n6] Ten Commandments, 44 Texican, 175 TFA, 81, 83–4, 85–7, 89–93, 94–8, 98–9n13[96n13], 198n11[95n11], 198n12[95n12], 199n15[97n15] rediscovery, contemporary, 197n1[83n1] theocracy military and, TS, 166–7 restructuring, MRN, 42 see also Puritan culture, Puritan theology theology diminishing importance in America, 71

225

see also Puritan theology TLM, 133, 135–6, 150–6, 203n15[145n15], 203n20[154n20] captivities in, 147–9 domesticity, 144–7 female vulnerability, 137–40 pragmatism, 140–2 responsibility, 142–4 tomahawk in EH, skill with, 125, 130 Toulouse, Teresa A., 42–3, 49, 50, 61 trans-cultural individual, see various topics under cultural transformation, heroic potential for, 84 trauma, altered subjectivity and, 8 Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, 78, 197n7[79n7] Unca and Uncas, 197n2[83n2] underground passage, 92–3 underworld collision with everyday world, 101 hero remains in, 98: submerged, 135 mythological, MRN, 30: wilderness as, 15 as safe, 107 see also wilderness Unsigned Review, 203n18[152n18] Uriah, 45 VanDerBeets, Richard, 5 victim, see also captive, captivity captive as, 137 as center of captivity narrative, 67–8 as created by hero, 109–10, 134, 137–40 heroine-victim, 208n25[184n25] as ultra-feminine, 68 violence catalytic, 198n7[86n7]



INDEX

INDEX

violence—Continued domestic space, wilderness, and, 125–6: see also domestic, wilderness escalated by hero, 143 gendered, 68: see also victim hero as locus for, 109–10, 141 voice MRN, and popularity, 49 narrative, 102–3 Waldegrave death and wilderness, 127 letters, 120–1 meaning of name, 105, 199n6[105n6] war Native American success in, 22 theories, 17–18 Washusett, 76 Wayne, John, 208n26[184n26] constructing myth and culture, 205n8[162n8] popularity, 162–3, 205n7[162n7] Weetamo, 78–9 Wenham Church, 56 Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, Preface, Cooper, 197n2[83n2] white, American as, 130, 200n19[130n19] White, Joan, 56–7 Whitman, Walt, 201n4[135n4] Wiatte, Arthur, death of, 126–7 wilderness ability in, gendered, in MRN, 25–6 Clithero’s death and, 114–17 as dangerous as battle, 135–6 dangerous to self, doubling and, 125–6 domestic and, see domestic space Edgar Huntly treats as safe, 107, 124–6 as feminine, 134, 136–7, 201n7[137n7], 201n6[136n6]

gender, race, freedom, and, 87 hero confined to, 83, 127–8, 160, 207n23[182n23], 208n26[184n26], 208n27[184n27]: assertion of control in, MRN, 63; in EH, 107; sociality and, 208n27[184n27]; in TFA, 89 hero immersed in, 99: and Adamic hero, 96–7; in TFA, 87 homemaking and, see domestic, domestic space howling, 23, 34 internal, in EH, 107, 109 interstitial, hero trapped in, 188: redemption from, 208n28[188n28]; characters and, 135; Edgar Huntly in, 107, 128–9; Ethan Edwards in, 161; everyday world unknown from, 156; hero trapped in, 182; Native Americans and, 202n14[145n14]; redemption from, 188 invasion as European response to, 91 isolation in, 7, 161, 169: hermit, 92; Winkfield, 96 males construct as dangerous, 9, 92 Native American experience, MRN, 34 supernatural underworld, 15 survival, 3: Cora, 148–9 Waldegrave’s death and, 127 see also underworld Winkfield, Unca Eliza, see TFA. See also individual topics. Winthrop, John, 87 word, written, power of, 62 work, forced, MRN, 28 working class, 95 World War II, 172



226

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