Mary Rowlandson, Increase Mather, and Puritan Typology

Introduction: Mather's Role in Rowlandson's Publication

Readers of Mary Rowlandson's narrative of Indian captivity within the Puritan colonization of Massachusetts may well wonder about the extent of Increase Mather's influence on the original text. It is now widely agreed among scholars that the preface to the book is Mather's work, and his official imprimatur may very well have contributed to the remarkable popularity of Rowlandson's narrative. As testament to that popularity upon its original publication in 1682, Greene notes that "the first edition is not known to survive…the rarity of the book grew out of its wide popularity: copies were read to pieces," going through "more than thirty editions" and retaining widespread popularity well into the nineteenth century (Greene 25). Because of Mather's proprietary role in guiding Rowlandson to publication — and in providing a kind of instruction on how to read her work — scholars have been quick to suspect that he may have had a hand in the actual composition of the text.

Traister is typical of the scholarly consensus in stating that "we should be careful, given the lack of a corroborative archive, to assert an account of the text's creation in which authorship is shared by Rowlandson and Mather together," although she acknowledges it as a possibility (Traister 334). Nevertheless, I would suggest that the influence of Mather on Rowlandson is palpable regardless of his actual role in the composition. To a considerable degree, Mather — in providing the public voice of the peculiar offshoot of Calvinist theology to which the American Puritans subscribed — had already outlined the interpretive framework, or heuristic, whereby Rowlandson and the larger society of which she was a part were able to read or write at all.

We must necessarily understand Rowlandson within the specific religious context of American Puritanism, of which Increase Mather is a representative example. Faery notes that the original readers of the text would have had no choice but to approach it in exactly this way. As she wryly observes, "When the first edition of Rowlandson's text appeared, it was literally bracketed by the voices of Puritan clergymen: Mather's preface precedes her narrative, and Joseph Rowlandson's last sermon, preached just days before his death, followed it in early editions. The preface makes clear why this tale written by a woman must be enclosed by authoritative male voices: their function is to foreclose the possibility of her text's being read in ways that would render Puritan race and territorial politics subject to critique" (Faery 126–7).

Religious and Gender Politics in Mather's Preface

Mather specifically — if anonymously — recommends Rowlandson as a pious model worthy of imitation, and it is this factor that seems like religious approbation inviting the text to be read for its piety, particularly given that it contains such sensitive subjects for Puritan culture as ethnic otherness (the Indians who held Rowlandson captive) and gender roles (Rowlandson is a woman, and to some extent requires a clergyman's preface to vouch for her purity after so long a sojourn among the heathen). Potter argues that Mather's preface reflects an anxiety about Rowlandson's gender, and that it "establishes an example demanding 'imitation' but even in so doing it reminds the reader that a feminine public voice in any other forum demands the casting of explicitly negative reflection" (Potter 156). In other words, it is only because Mather has examined and vouched for her piety that Rowlandson is able to overcome assumptions about her gender and find her voice as a writer at all.

The question of Mather's influence over the actual writing remains significant. The reader is immediately struck by the heavy use of Biblical quotation within Rowlandson's narrative. Downing, who counted the instances, says Rowlandson "draws on scripture more than eighty times" in the course of the short narrative (Downing 252). The actual number is less the point than the sheer frequency. This heavily religious bent in the composition is one of the chief reasons why Mather's interference in the actual text has been so often suggested by scholars. As Traister pointedly asks: "To state the question bluntly: did Mary Rowlandson or Increase Mather insert all those Bible references?" (Traister 334).

The simple fact, however, is that Rowlandson's husband — before his death — had himself been a Puritan preacher, hence the inclusion of his final sermon in the earliest editions of the narrative. It is therefore entirely plausible that Rowlandson knew such scriptural quotations and methods of theological justification almost by rote, in the same natural way that any deeply immersed member of that community would. We must consequently rely on intellectual and thematic connections — including those with a more secular cast — to establish Mather's intellectual influence over Rowlandson. Potter notes that "both Increase Mather's preface and Rowlandson's account itself are ideologically and politically complicated and at times contradictory, but they alight informatively as they raise questions about understandings of femininity and race in early colonial America" (Potter 153).

Biblical Quotation and the Question of Authorship

There are also broader matters to consider, such as the larger question of Indian captivity itself. As Derounian notes, by way of tracing this sort of influence:

In An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences, published in 1682, two years after Rowlandson's work, Increase Mather closely connects "covenant theology" with Indian captivity by stating in chapter I, "…several of those that were taken Captive by the Indians are able to relate affecting stories concerning the gracious Providence of God…" Indeed in his sermon Humiliations Follow'd with Deliverances (1697), Cotton Mather defines affliction typologically through the Indian captivity experience… (Derounian 85)