SOURCE: “Her Master's Voice: Gender, Speech, and Gendered Speech in the Narrative of the Captivity of Mary White Rowlandson,” in Sex and Sexuality in Early America, edited by Merril D. Smith, New York University Press, 1998, pp. 55-86.

In the essay that follows, Neuwirth looks at Rowlandson's work in terms of gender politics, arguing that the text features multiple narrators who favor a Puritan male ideology and its construction of femininity; he notes, however, that a female voice eventually does emerge.

The captivity narrative of Mary White Rowlandson, long a staple of American literature anthologies, has come under new scrutiny of late.¹ More than a horripilating tale of Indian captivity, Rowlandson's chronicle tells us much about New England's Puritan culture and the inferior status of women in colonial America. Rowlandson's narrative, in point of fact, is nothing less than a commentary on gender and gender politics in Puritan New...