The Sovereignty And Goodness Of God

She rode through the wilderness with rain pouring down and thunder all around her. She rode faster and farther to reach her father's men. When she got there she brought four hundred soldiers back and passed out from exhaustion. She helped stop the british from moving forward through the towns.

As a devout Calvinist, Rowlandson believes her journey through captivity is a test wrought by her God. Her deep desire to prove herself to her God comes through clearly in several situations which

Mary White Rowlandson was a colonial woman in America who was captured during the King Philip’s War by the Native Americans. While she was captured, she was held for eleven weeks, and then after she was released, she wrote A Narrative of the Captivity and restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, which is also known as The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. During these weeks, she experienced physical abuse, starvation, and saw many friends, and her youngest daughter Sarah killed. This story is considered to be one of America’s first bestsellers when it was first publish in 1682. Mary was born in 1637, in England and moved to present-day New England when she was a child. Growing up her father helped found the town of Lancaster, and was one of the wealthiest men there. In 1656 at the age of 19, Mary married Reverend Joseph Rowlandson. Together, the couple has four children, three of which survived infancy. When the war broke out between the Native Americans and the English settler, Mary and her kids were captured.

As a devout Calvinist, Rowlandson believes that her journey through captivity is a test wrought by her God. Her deep desire to prove herself to her God comes through clearly in several situations that ultimately define her

The place of a woman was believed to be within the home taking care of her husband, the home and raising the children on a full time basis. In this sense, Mary Rowlandson fulfills her family’s and society’s expectations of her as a female.

Similarly, to today, women were crucial in the Colonial Period, however, women were looked upon differently as they are today. In the 1600s and 1700s, women had many things happening around them, but for the most part they were kept busy at home, hidden from the world (Myers 1). Life in Colonial America was very difficult. The early women were expected to help the men in a variety of hard labor tasks in order to survive. As time passed, the lives of the colonial women took on the traditional roles of women (“History of the First 13 Colonies and Life in the Colonial Period” 1).

The published journal, “Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” by Mary Rowlandson, was about her abduction from the only home she ever know and how she dealt with her situation. After watching her nephew, sister, as well as other close family members, be killed right in front of her eyes, Rowlandson held onto her sanity by writing and sharing her story. That story would one day be published and be shared with many women who, in the Puritan faith, respected due to its reverence towards God. However, Marilyn C. Wesley’s criticism, “ Moving Target: The Travel Text in A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson”, suggested that Rowlandson changed as a person throughout her travels unlike women at the time would have done. She suggests that Rowlandson spoke her feelings and emotions throughout her whole journey, though most women at the time would choose to stay quiet and show love for God. Since men in this time saw women as background characters many of them thought Rowlandson’s narrative was out of place for women to speak her thoughts, no matter what they were.The ideas Marilyn Wesley showed in her criticism “ Moving Target: The Travel Text in A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” were valid points considering that Mary Rowlandson had a strong faith and continued to prosper through her hardships with the natives, therefore, making her a model disciple of the Puritan community.

The evidence from the narrative in many ways could characterize this work as a text in which the narrator (Mary Rowlandson) realizes her mistakes in the past and redirects her life accordingly. This is not true in the case of Rowlandson, to be more specific her experiences and interaction with the Indians do not challenge her Puritan ideologies, but rather confirms and strengthens them. When the narrator returns to her former lifestyle she in no way demonstrates any new knowledge from her experience, but rather returns home with the same degree of ignorance that she had before her captivity. Rowlandson also contradicts herself in

Henwood argues that Mary Rowlandson is well aware of the “complexities and contradictions of Biblical voices” (Henwood 171) and is only using those biblical references to express the anger and frustration she is feeling while she is in captivity.

In the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, women’s rights was a hot topic. Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker are two women with two views that somewhat agree about this topic, with the goal of finding a way to use the limited resources that they have for the good of others. They particularly use women of their time period as the major examples in their essays. But it all comes down to this. Walker in her essay “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens” agrees with Woolf that women’s abilities were scarce and that we need to look harder for their contributions, along with challenging Woolf’s writing of “In Search of a Room of One’s Own” that women in her day were able to use them more efficiently than in Woolf’s day in her mother’s garden.

In Valerie Martin’s novel, Property, the reader is drawn into the engrossing story of Manon Gaudet and her life on a Louisiana sugar plantation in 1828. Manon lives a life full of bitterness as the wife of a plantation owner, a man whom she completely detests. Interestingly enough, the husband is never named, he is always referred to as just her husband which I believe reveals the fact that their relationship is not one of love but one of power. She rejects the stereotypical idea of a wife of the time and often outright refuses to preform her “wifely duties”, such as bearing his child. While the story is seen through Manon’s perspective, we also see much of Sarah’s life, who is Manon and her husband’s slave. Sarah is living an unhappy life because she has been continually abused by Manon’s husband and forced to conceive his child. As we can see, both women are living unhappy lives for different reasons; however, the reasons begin to assimilate over time. During the whole of the novel, Martin captures the readers attention and allows them to place themselves in the shoes of Manon and truly resonate with her beliefs in the world. By focusing the novel on the story of two women who are the “property” of one man and who are actively in pursuit of their freedom, it requires the reader to truly acknowledge the lack of power and privilege women had in the 19th century.

You as well! I was very happy for you finding a Church--my fellow Southerner friend. Do you have an accent yet? If you have the North Eastern accent you must know the extent of my persecutions when I go to see my brother in Minnesota

She was determined to plot the perfect revenge. She spent years trying to find something to use against those who had wronged her. She refused to dream, and she would not come out from her war room. She was gone.

God has put such significance and value in the creation of a human being. In no way does he take lightly or disregard human life when taken. He values and handcrafts all human life. In Ephesians 1:4 it says “He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (25) This further proves that He planned each and every creation ever made and expects them all to come to fruition when being born and living the life God wanted them to live. God explicitly and on many occasions’ talks about the importance and value of life. Psalm 139:13 “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb.” (26) God formed the inward parts and knitted his creation together, this detail and precision shows that how much work, time, and patience goes into all the stages of the baby before during and after its birth. God repeatedly shows in the bible that He loves all of his children and plans for them to be born. Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”(27) God knew the baby before it was born and there is no doubt that he wants to see the creation after it is born also.

Jacques Bossuet the writer of “The Theory of Divine Right” lived from 1627 to 1704. He was known by many as a famous public speaker and a vivid scholar. He believed that kings ruled by divine right, and that monarchy was the political system intended by God. Monarchial government is the most natural, tough, and from that the sturdiest. It is also most against to separate, causing dreadful evil of states, and the main cause of their ruin. Which gives us the meaning of this quote, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” This to me means that a kingdom, city, or home cannot function if they are not all in agreement of one thing. Therefore, the city and realms should act in a nature of uniting their selves. Families logically coalesce into a government appropriate for them. Single leaders have more union than two or more leaders together. The four characters or assets essential to royal authority, start with the royal authority being sacred meaning that the king is sanctified and to attempt to kill them is sacrilege. Secondly, royal authority is paternal and its correct character is goodness. We have seen that kings take the habitation of God, who is the factual father of the human race. Third, it is absolute which means it is not weakened in any way. Lastly, it is ruled by reason meaning it has purpose. The responsibility to care for the people is the establishment of all rights that