SOURCE: "The Wilderness of Fiction: From Captivity Narrative to Captivity Romance," in Bound and Determined: Captivity, Culture-Crossing, and White Womanhood from Mary Rowlandson to Patty Hearst, University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 106-36.

In the excerpt that follows, Castiglia studies femaleauthored captivity narratives in terms of gender relations and identity, finding that the works, which combine elements of both sentimental fiction and the wilderness tale, question culturally accepted notions of home and domesticity.

Captivity Narratives … have repeatedly transgressed boundaries between cultures and identities. As these historical narratives became fictionalized, they allowed white women authors to cross literary boundaries as well, combining conventional genres and challenging distinctions between fact and fiction. As Carter's "Our Lady of the Massacre" and editorial rewritings of the captives' accounts show, captivity narratives from their inception have complicated the apparently transparent overlap of experience and representation. Editorial tampering as well as more subtle restrictions in...