Instruction
For this essay, consider The Sovereignty and Goodness of God as “basic narrative equipment for making sense of otherness.’ That is, how does Rowlandson teach her audience to confront and survive an encounter with the ‘other’?
Does she resist? Does she try to become them? How much of her white Christian Englishness does she try to retain through her ordeal? In addition, just as important as what she tells about the encounter itself, we see her on the other end of her experience, after she’s returned to Puritan Massachusetts. Has she been changed by her experience? Does she, deliberately or not, show that sustained encounter with the Other is transformative?
This last question gives you a chance to test one of the premises of this course, that “initial contact is usually followed by conflict and othering—and always by mutual influence.” Is Rowlandson now a ‘hybrid’, not entirely white English Christian?
Be sure to focus on a few specific examples from her text to support your claims. Your essay should be 1000-1300 words.