![]() ![]() Puritan clergyman Samuel Willard warned about the dangers of “irregular mourning” in his writings, while at the same time encouraging the Puritan community to mourn for the particularly pious aspects of the saintly deceased (Breitwieser 17-18). This reasoning may have led to a moral quandary in which Puritan leaders could not decide to what degree one may mourn and still be in submission to God’s authority. If submission was proof of salvation, lack of submission was tantamount to the damnation of the soul. Submission to God’s authority was a requirement for salvation and proof that an individual was predestined to be one of God’s elect (Davis 52). Each person was to be submissive to the people in the tiers above them in order to remain in submission to God. For Puritan communities, God held the top tier of authority, followed by clergy, who were in turn followed by men, and then women, children, and servants. Though the origins of Puritan anxiety over mourning are unclear, it may be due to their strict social hierarchy and beliefs concerning submission. ![]() In response to cultural anxiety about mourning, Rowlandson either uses her periods of intense grief to serve her ultimate goal of framing her experience to uphold her beliefs in typology, or she turns mourning into another emotion so that her narrative does not call into question her submission to God. Rowlandson’s intent in writing her narrative was to prove that she was part of God’s plan, and if this end was to be achieved, mourning simply would not fit into the story. Considering what is known about how people respond to grief, it is clear that Rowlandson did go through periods of mourning during her captivity, but Rowlandson often describes them as something other than grief. Feelings of anxiety about mourning can be found in seventeenth century sermons as well as the works of both Edward Taylor and Anne Bradstreet. Intense grief was evidence that one was questioning God’s sovereignty. This apprehension concerning mourning was not Rowlandson’s alone but was common to Puritan culture. The implications in that reference are clear: looking back at, or mourning over, what was lost is tempting, but wrong. She writes that during her captivity, she “understood something of Lot’s wife’s temptation, when she looked back” (266). There was certainly enough tragedy occurring in her life to justify feelings of grief and prolonged mourning, and yet when Rowlandson writes about her times of mourning, she is constantly making amends for them. “Lot’s Wife’s Temptation”: Mourning in Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrativeĭuring Mary Rowlandson’s eleven month captivity as chronicled in her narrative, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, she endured the loss of family members and her home, starvation, involuntary servitude, physical affliction, and loneliness. ![]()
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