SOURCE: "The Imperialist Audience: Nationalism and Sympathy in the Frontier Romance," in Captivity and Sentiment: Cultural Exchange in American Literature, 1682-1861, University Press of New England, 1997, pp. 92-117.

In the following excerpt, Burnham interprets captivity narratives as "national" narratives, which attempt either to challenge or to solidify the unity and identity of the newly independent and newly imperialist nation.

Near the end of Ann Eliza Bleecker's 1793 History of Maria Kittle, three Englishwomen, all rendered homeless and husbandless after hostile encounters with the Indians, share their sentimental stories with a group of Frenchwomen in Montreal. The three women tell stories that would have been familiar ones to captivity narrative readers, and their stories produce the profusion of tears that increasingly characterized such narratives. Bleecker's text takes the form of a letter written by one of Kittle's female relations, which recounts the heroine's blissful domestic life, her husband's reluctant departure...