ROWLANDSON
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​Our project maps the grief-stricken perspective of Rowlandson as she moves through the wilderness, the many psychological aspects of her grief so often overlapping. Notes on our map’s visual component: Grief can be viewed similar to the motion of a wave, starting at a high point that falls into a low point before rising again. To cater this process to Mary Rowlandson, grief’s comparison to a wave is replaced by the comparison to a tree- the fall of its leaves and then its blooming once more. Mary experiences both a physical journey through the wilderness and a mental journey through navigating denial, then anger, sadness, bargaining, and finally moving towards acceptance. The tree begins full of leaves. Moving into anger, the leaves start falling and even the bark can start peeling. Next, the lowest point, depression, where the tree is bare and naked; this is rock bottom. Now, Rowlandson starts picking herself back up as she bargains for more leaves. She moves towards acceptance where the tree is becoming full once again. Grief is not linear, but the model of a tree and its leaves can help people understand the cycle Rowlandson experienced.
THE PHYSICAL, THE EMOTIONAL, AND THE SPIRITUAL: MAPPING ROWLANDSON THROUGH TEXTUAL BREAKS
Susan Vanderveer, Josh Brockland, and Brian Ross
Our project aims to map the ground on which Mary Rowlandson stands, both physically and emotionally. Throughout her capture narrative, Rowlandson experiences cognitive dissonance, which stems from her inability to claim ownership of her American identity. Although she is physically in America, she holds tightly to her English heritage, othering the American land, and its people, as a result. Collectively, our project will address the effects that this othering of the land and the Native Americans had on Rowlandson's telling of her story. We aim to map the textual breaks closely in Rowlandson's narrative; Places where her role shifts from religious rhetoric to active participant in remembering the trauma that threatens her ideological position, one that displaces her personal experiences within her writing.
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