Unlike Mrs. Rowlandson, [Cotton] Mather was a conscious artist, careful in his selection of material and in his presentation of a consistent point of view.
Haha yikes no.
captivity is "the only acceptable way of acculturating, of being initiated into the life of the wilderness"
If you have not already read it, you may enjoy Margot Mifflin's The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman (2011), which is both a well-researched biography of its subject and a really commendable attempt to separate the provable facts about her time with the Mohave from the captivity narrative into which her experiences were rewritten and in which she actively participated after her unwilling return to white society. The timeline is much later than the Puritan captivity narratives—1851 to 1856 if speaking strictly of Oatman's time with the Tolkepayas and the Mohave, 1837 to 1903 if talking about her life—and Oatman came from a Mormon family, which is the one aspect of her background that may not get as much attention from the book as it could have. (She did not in any case acculturate back into Mormon life, but married an Episcopalian rancher and spent the rest of her life as a wealthy businessman's wife in Texas.) I read it last year and really liked it. The author is good about gender.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2016-12-01 10:23 pm (UTC)Haha yikes no.
captivity is "the only acceptable way of acculturating, of being initiated into the life of the wilderness"
If you have not already read it, you may enjoy Margot Mifflin's The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman (2011), which is both a well-researched biography of its subject and a really commendable attempt to separate the provable facts about her time with the Mohave from the captivity narrative into which her experiences were rewritten and in which she actively participated after her unwilling return to white society. The timeline is much later than the Puritan captivity narratives—1851 to 1856 if speaking strictly of Oatman's time with the Tolkepayas and the Mohave, 1837 to 1903 if talking about her life—and Oatman came from a Mormon family, which is the one aspect of her background that may not get as much attention from the book as it could have. (She did not in any case acculturate back into Mormon life, but married an Episcopalian rancher and spent the rest of her life as a wealthy businessman's wife in Texas.) I read it last year and really liked it. The author is good about gender.