In the grand tradition of the American narrative, I begin this paper with a personal narrative of my own, which will lay the foundation for my argument. Making allegorical connections is something that anyone who has been raised in a strict Christian, Bible-based environment could easily make. As a matter of fact, it is a connection that those who, like Mary Rowlandson, myself, and others, could easily make at any number of difficult situations in our lives. Hence, religious allegory, and more specifically biblical allegory, becomes a kind of second consciousness or extended metaphor for such people’s lives. My personal experience with allegorical consciousness is essential in making the case that Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative serves as a Joban allegory.
I was born in Southeastern Kentucky and am the son of a Pentecostal preacher. My father’s family believes in Holiness Pentecostalism and has practiced the religion since the early 1900’s. Holiness Pentecostalism is not easily described by any means. However, it can be characterized by the following basic beliefs: Jesus is the son of God and belief in his resurrection saves the soul from eternal damnation, but to be assured of salvation one must be literally baptized by the Holy Ghost and receive a supernatural conversion experience. Furthermore, after an individual has been legitimately saved from their sins, they must separate themselves from the world and live a sinless life. For my family this meant abstinence from any sort of corrupting influence such as television, non-Christian music, dancing, sporting events, alcohol, bawdy language, and any contact with people who enjoyed such activities. Life for us was dedicated to a monk-like existence of meditation, prayer, and fasting.
The only text in which we were encouraged to read and study was the King James Bible. My father was the ultimate example of a studious theologian. He has read the Bible completely through more times than I can count. He once read the entire New Testament in one day. He experimented with interpreting biblical texts not in context of individual chapters and verses, but as completely separate books. One time I recall him dropping everything that he was doing, on his account of divine inspiration, to immediately read the entire book of Isaiah.
It was in this atmosphere that I began to study the Bible after my own conversion experience. I digested my Bible’s ultra thin pages with an abnormal hunger and thirst for knowledge. I eagerly desired to hear sermons and reflect on other people’s thoughts and interpretations of this literature. I committed much of what I read to memory and began to develop an allegorical consciousness with which I interpreted the events of my unfolding life as signs in an extended biblical metaphor. Every facet of my life became saturated with metaphorical imagery from the Bible. I, like Mary Rowlandson, made personal connections with biblical texts and events to form a parallel existence between them and the current events of my life. When I would go out to the garden to pick beans from the bean vines I would recall John 15:1, 2, “I AM the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bear more fruit.” When bad events would come my way, I would recall the trials of innocent Joseph in the book of Genesis and the testing of righteous Job. When I would feel lost and without hope, I would recall the wanderings of the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai and their deliverance to the Promised Land. Thus, the allegorical connections between biblical texts and my current life events blurred into a metaphysical consciousness of sorts; life itself was an extended religious allegory.
While Mary Rowlandson was definitely not a member of Holiness Pentecostalism, she did appear to be a rather devout Puritan whose husband was a minister in the faith. I assert that Rowlandson also shared this allegorical consciousness and continuously made metaphorical connections between her current life events and biblical texts. Her writing is littered with biblical references and quotations which are made parallel to her current conflicts and emotions. She begins with quoting scripture in her second paragraph with “2 Cor. xii. 9, And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee” (11) and continues throughout the entire narrative with these references. One of the most doleful references is the one she makes in her third paragraph when she states, “Of thirty seven Persons who were in this one House, none escaped either present Death or bitter Captivity, save only one, who might say as he, Job i. 15, And I only am escaped alone to tell the news” (11). This reference, though made early in the narrative, sets the allegorical tone of the work.
Serious questions surface when making claims that texts function as religious allegories. First, and most obviously, one must question whether or not the author intended the work to function as such. I pose the problem of examining the authorial intentions of Mary Rowlandson in her narrative for the simple reason that the work is just that: a personal narrative. This is not some work of fiction, conjured up in the mind of a silly woman, but is, and has been acknowledged by the author as, a true and systematic account of her capture, captivity, and restoration. Therefore, to make the argument that it is actually an allegorical work must take in account the authorial intentions of Mary Rowlandson. To say that it is an allegorical work, or specifically a Joban allegory, is to inevitably say that Rowlandson either consciously or unconsciously intended for the sequence of events and imagery in the text to form parallels with those in the Book of Job. If you have a work such as John Bunyan’s ThePilgrim’s Progress, it is quite easy to make those assumptions since the author in his apology writes, “And thus it was: I was writing of the Way And Race of Saints, in this our Gospel-day, Fell suddenly into an Allegory About their Journey, and the way to Glory” (7-10). Bunyan overtly identifies his work as an allegory, a work of fiction, and it has been universally accepted that it operates as such. Bunyan’s authorial intentions are clearly stated and the parallels of The Pilgrim’s Progress are easily recognizable. Rowlandson’s work, however, is not self-proclaimed as an allegorical work, but I do argue that it operates as such.
Authorial intention, however, is a concept that quite literally died when Roland Barthes wrote “The Death of the Author.” Barthes indicates that the act of divining the authorial intentions of a work is a “pathetic view” and that “every text is eternally written here and now” (255). In other words, Barthes explicitly denies the author any say in what the work is supposed to mean in form, function, or anything else. An author is simply the one who wrote the text and the text stands alone. All focus shifts to the reader and the “reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost” (257). Barthes writes, “Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature,” and transitions to make the ultimate claim, “…the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” (257). Barthes claim, however, is his own hypothesis of how criticism should be approached. While his view has been adopted by many in the field, I must again assert that since Rowlandson’s writing is such a personal and factual text that her authorial intentions cannot be arbitrarily sacrificed in the name of post-modern scholarship.
The introduction to Rowlandson’s narrative alludes to her authorial intentions. It is written,
Methinks this dispensation doth bear some resemblance to those of Joseph, David, and Daniel, yea and of the three children too, the stories whereof do represent us with the excellent textures of divine providence, curious pieces of divine work: And truly do doth this, and therefore not to be forgotten, but worthy to be exhibited to, and viewed and pondered by all, that disdain not to consider the operation of his hands… This Narrative was Penned by this Gentlewoman her self, to be to her a Memorandum of God’s Dealing with her, that she might never forget, but remember the same, and the several circumstances thereof, all the daies of her life (6-7).
This seems to suggest that Rowlandson is writing her story for the glory of God and to preserve her story for posterity. The allegorical connections of her narrative and several biblical figures are mentioned here, but this list does not include Job. While Rowlandson does not specifically state that her intention was to make her story a Joban allegory, connections can be made between her account and that of Job to show that it performs as such.
Authorial intentions set aside, the one test of whether a work operates as a religious allegory hinges on determining if the sequence of events in the text matches any known religious textual events without having to overstretch one’s imagination. Allegory, in its most basic form, parallels one event, or sequence of events, to another known event or sequence of events. Robert Hariman wrote in his essay “Allegory and Democratic Public Culture in the Postmodern Era, “allegories give us dynamic juxtapositions in a static frame” (268). In an allegory, therefore, there exist events or sequence of events which can parallel those in another work. A visual example of allegory can be considered in the equation “(x + y) = (a + b)” where “x” is associated with “a,” “y” is associated with “b,” and the sequence “(x + y)” is associated with the sequence “(a + b).” These variables can be replaced with events from two texts in comparison to each other. When compared, if a work is allegorical, there should be a degree of congruency between the events. The degree to which these associations are made essentially determine the strength of the allegorical connection.
It is useful and necessary to explore the theory behind allegory and make an attempt to define it in terms of literary criticism at this point. Bainard Cowan wrote extensively on this subject in his article “Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Allegory,” which was published in the New German Critique. His article was an exploration of Walter Benjamin’s study on allegorical theory. Cowan writes of allegorical theory,
In Benjamin’s analysis, allegory is pre-eminently a kind of experience. A paraphrase of his exposition might begin by stating that allegory arises from an apprehension of the world as no longer permanent, as passing out of being: a sense of its transitoriness, an imitation of mortality, or a conviction, as in Dickinson, that “this world is not conclusion.” Allegory would then be the expression of this sudden intuition. But allegory is more than an outward form of expression; it is also the intuition, the inner experience itself. The form such an experience of the world takes is fragmentary and enigmatic; in it the world ceases to be purely physical and becomes an aggregation of signs… Transforming things into signs is both what allegory does – its technique – and what it is about – its content. Nor is this transformation exclusively an intellectual one: the signs perceived strike notes at the depths of ones’ being, regardless of whether they point to heaven, to an irretrievable past, or to the grave (110).
Thus, allegory, according to Benjamin, can be construed as an experience on a metaphysical level. Cowan’s interpretation of Benjamin’s allegorical theory suggests that the concept of allegorical consciousness is a reality. Immersion in an environment which saturates a person’s mind with signs and connections to a single text or concept inevitably leads to this phenomenon as evidenced by Rowlandson and myself. Rowlandson views her world in the context of biblical events, as evidenced by a nearly constant flow of biblical references in her narrative, and it is through these spectacles that she interprets her life events. Her bible-based mind subconsciously filters the events of her life and transmits them to her consciousness in terms of metaphorical biblical events, or religious allegory. Thus, as Cowan theorizes, “the world ceases to be purely physical and becomes an aggregation of signs, “or, in other words, an allegorical consciousness is formed.
Hariman suggests that viewing the world through allegory is more a phenomenon in the sense of allegorical consciousness than just simple metaphorical association. Hariman explores the concept of allegorical consciousness in the modern world where daily existence is bombarded by a steady data stream of signs and symbolism through the mass media. He argues that this proliferation has affected the development of mass media, politics, and even our own consciousness. Having set the stage for the concept of allegorical consciousness as a phenomenon, he then sets out to describe the “allegorical composition,”
The key to allegorical composition is that juxtaposition, and especially the accumulation of images, is done to point toward a common theme that is otherwise tacit in its totality. The affinities with both enthymematic argument and ideological manipulation should be obvious… Although allegory is built on devices easily suited to mystification – including personification, depictions of cosmological order, fetishized details of typification, magical powers, hypertrophied landscapes, and formulaic plots – these techniques often are accompanied by complementary designs that fill out the allegorical consciousness… In sum, allegorical technique fuses an iconography that can evoke powerful identifications with a host of techniques that continually shift one’s attention from image to interpretation” (273).
Thus, using Hariman’s interpretation of allegorical theory, we compare the form and function of Rowlandson’s narrative with that of Job to determine the amount and degree of allegorical correlation. If the two texts parallel each other in terms of plot and function, then my hypothesis is supported, namely, that Rowlandson’s narrative is a Joban allegory.
In order to explore the archetype of the Joban allegory, it is beneficial to know some important things about the story of Job. The Book of Job is the eighteenth book of the Bible and is contained in the Old Testament. The story of Job can be considered as the suffering of God’s innocent, chosen servant and his deliverance. Job’s story begins in the Book of Job,
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of the men of the east. And his sons went and feasted in their houses, every one his day; and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them. And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, I t may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually (Job 1:1-5).
Job was obviously an honest and very righteous individual. He was not only admirable in his spiritual qualities, but he had also amassed a small fortune by some productive means which indicates he was also a wise and industrious individual as well. There was a certain uneasiness about Job, however, that always kept him very anxious about his uncertain future. Job did not know how uncertain his future was about to become. His story continues,
And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house: And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them: And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house: And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. Then Job arose and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:13-22).
Thus, through what seems to be a series of impossible unfortunate events, Job has lost everything imaginable. Job’s life gets even worse later on in the story when he becomes infested with disease. To make matters worse, he has three friends come to comfort him who, in turn, accuse him of being punished for unrighteousness. Kate Cochran discusses Job’s suffering in her article, ‘When the lessons hurt’: The Third Life of Grange Copeland as Joban Allegory,
Through all the different sections of the Book of Job, Job is intent on proving two points, both to his comforters and to God: his punishment is capricious, callous, and unjust; and his innocence is righteous and undeserving of punishment. What Job and his comforters fail to realize is that Job’s punishment may not in fact jibe with traditional doctrine; that is, Job may not have done anything to warrant such suffering… For God does not say that Job did deserve such suffering, only that He is omnipotent. Job learns that righteousness does not make for reward, but that punishment may allow for wisdom. Therefore, Job learns that suffering can be constructive rather than destructive. If one allows the suffering to alter point of view, broaden perspective, or offer alternate ways of making meaning, then suffering acts not to destroy the self but to build it (79).
In the end, Job is finally delivered and vindicated above all those who formerly opposed him. The story serves to illustrate that the righteous suffer innocently and unjustly at times, but always persevere if they are able to keep their integrity.
Rowlandson’s captivity narrative fits the model of Joban allegory. Rowlandson was a devout Puritan, had prospered in their settlement, and had obviously not given much thought to being decimated by a band of Native Americans. Rowlandson writes, “When we are in prosperity, oh the Little that we think of such dreadful Sights” (11). She lost everything that she held dear: her home, a little girl, her other children and relations, and her freedom. She writes,
To add to the dolefulness of the former day, and the dismalness of the present night, my thoughts ran upon my losses and sad bereaved condition. All was gone; my Husband gone, (at least separated from me, he being in the Bay; and, to add to my grief, the Indians told me they would kill him as he came homeward,) my Children gone, my Relations and Friends gone, our house and home, and all our comforts within door and without, all was gone (except my life,) and I know not but the next moment that might go too (12).
Thus, Rowlandson, like Job, had lost everything to bandits (the Indians for Rowlandson and roving bands of Arabs for Job) and a series of other unfortunate events. Neither Rowlandson nor Job had any comfort during their disastrous times, Rowlandson commenting, “…one Indian would come and tell me one hour, And your Master will knock your Child in the head, and then a second, and then a third, Your Master will quickly knock your Child in the head. This was the Comfort I had from them” (14). Job had three miserable comforters of his own who served to worsen an already inconceivably horrid situation. Job bewailed his condition saying,
Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived… Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter of soul; Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures; Which rejoice exceedingly , and are glad, when they can find the grave? (Job 3:3, 20-22).
Rowlandson wrote along the same vein, “…my Son Joseph unexpectedly came to me; we asked of each others welfare; bemoaning our doleful condition, and the change that had come upon us” (21).
Rowlandson’s narrative would not truly be a Joban allegory without a great (and Divine) deliverance. Rowlandson attributes her deliverance to “Providence” (43) and commented, “And the goodness of God was admirable to us in our estate; in that he raised up compassionate Friends on every side to us” (45). This is much the same ending for Job, for it is written,
And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came there unto him all his bretheren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house… So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning” (Job 42:10-12).
In this manner both Rowlandson’s captivity and that of Job are resolved. Wrong is righted, place and estate are restored, and equally grateful Rowlandson and Job are once again in a place of favor.
Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, when reduced to its basic elements, thus serves as a Joban allegory as it has matched all facets of the Joban archetype with perfect congruency. In her narrative she, the dutiful servant of God, was a prey for the enemy, lost all but her life, suffered at the hands of merciless comforters, and was eventually redeemed and restored by Divine intervention. While it may seem to be an oversimplification, it must be noted that the very basic elements of each story’s plot, do overlap and follow the same pattern and both function to advise the audience of the divine providence of God. Therefore, both form and function in both texts, on that basic level, are equal, and thus allegorical.
Rowlandson’s own motives, though she never specifically indicated that this story was to serve as an allegory, can be surmised. Rowlandson, viewing her life through the filter of a Bible-based upbringing and ultra-religious environment, may have been somewhat subconsciously revisionist about her account. The effects of stress on the human brain and psychological function have been well documented in that memory is often distorted and synthesized unconsciously by victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. These two things could have led Rowlandson to unconsciously equate her account with that of Job. Doing so specifically with the Joban archetype vindicates her captivity experience and elevates her status, at least in her own mind, to that of God’s chosen, suffering, and delivered servant. Rowlandson even ends her narrative with Moses’ proclamation to the Israelites at the Red Sea, “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord” (48). Thus, Rowlandson’s own allegorical consciousness shines through her work adding to the evidence that this text fully functions both in spirit and letter as a bonafide Joban allegory.
Works Cited
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