Certificate for Approving the Dissertation

Home , Captivity narrative, Elizabeth Marsh, Oroonoko, Slave narrative

MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School

We hereby approve the Dissertation

Sonya Christine Lawson Parrish

Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

______Director (Dr. Katharine Gillespie)

______Reader (Dr. Susan Morgan)

______Reader (Dr. Whitney Womack-Smith)

______Graduate School Representative (Dr. Carla Pestana)

ABSTRACT

“HAVING THE LIBERTY OF MY MOUTH”: SPEECH ACTS, POLITICAL AGENCY AND THE TROPE OF FEMALE CAPTIVITY IN THE BRITISH ATLANTIC, 1634-1832

by Sonya Christine Lawson Parrish

This dissertation investigates the way in which the trope of female captivity provided a community-based forum where female political agency could be observed. The project asserts that the study of captivity in literature must transcend national boundaries in order to draw attention to the fluid exchange of people, goods and ideologies that was a historical reality during the long eighteenth century and the agency afforded women in their own community networks. I argue that female captivity became a common trope in the long eighteenth century in an effort to mimic the way women vocalized agency in their circum-Atlantic community structures by assenting and dissenting to dominant political ideologies. My examination of the speech acts performed by representations of female captivity reveals the importance and proliferation of the trope in literary production, the ways political discourse disseminated throughout communities operating within a circum-Atlantic context, and how female captives, both real and fictional, voiced a political agency that was authorized by their community audiences. The trope of female captivity proliferated in the long eighteenth-century British Atlantic in an effort to have community audiences observe and condone discursive methods of female political agency within patriarchal political structures.

“HAVING THE LIBERTY OF MY MOUTH”: SPEECH ACTS, POLITICAL AGENCY AND

THE TROPE OF FEMALE CAPTIVITY IN THE BRITISH ATLANTIC, 1634-1832

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of English

Sonya Christine Lawson Parrish

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2012

Dissertation Director: Dr. Katharine Gillespie

Sonya Christine Lawson Parrish

2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION Communities of Captivity………………………………………………..………………….1-20

CHAPTER ONE Life, Liberty, and Love: Consent and Denial in Republican Communities……………..…21-51

CHAPTER TWO Saintly Sinners: Confession in Protestant Communities……………….………………….52-90

CHAPTER THREE Lying Ladies: Deception in Kinship Communities………………..….……………….…91-126

CHAPTER FOUR Civil Tongues: History-Making in Communities of Civility.…………………………..127-157

CONCLUSION Captive Heroines………………………………………………………….…………….158-163

BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………………………………………………………….164-173

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DEDICATION

To Mom and Roger – I wish you could read this.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Miami University has been a place where I have become a better scholar, teacher, and individual. I’ve made connections here that will last a lifetime, learned more than I ever imagined, and grew in ways that often leave me amazed. There are many people that could be acknowledged in this section, so many that space will not allow me to do so properly. However, there are a number of people without whom I would not have completed this project.

I would first like to thank Dr. Katharine Gillespie, my dissertation chair and mentor. From my first year in the program to the present, she has challenged me to continually think critically and push my understanding of literature in new and interesting directions. Her guidance and support through every phase of my doctoral process was invaluable. I can only hope to one day be as good of a scholar, teacher, and mentor as she is.

My project would also not be what it is without the help of my committee members. Dr. Susan Morgan, Dr. Whitney Womack-Smith, and Dr. Carla Pestana offered much support and encouragement. They are lovely ladies who have made me a better scholar.

I would not even have a dissertation, or completed a Ph.D., without the love and support of my family. All of them have been instrumental. I would like to especially thank my father and brother, Robin and Shannon Lawson, for their care, support, and encouragement throughout my life. I am who I am because of these two amazing men. I would like to also thank my husband, Rob, for always reassuring me that I could actually do this.

My life in general, and Oxford in specific, would be a cold place without my friends. Sarah Hope and Brent Guffey, although not physically here always, have forever been with me in spirit. I met Aurora Matzke, Jonnetta Woodard and Paul Sorensen on my first day on campus and would not have remained sane without their ability to make me laugh, allow me to vent, or their unwavering endorsement of who I am as a person, teacher, and thinker. I cannot thank you enough for this. Life would also have been a lot more boring without José de la Garza- Valenzuela, who shared many a drink, cry, and shenanigan throughout the years. Likewise, the Tavern and Butch Night crews have helped me stay fairly mellow in the last few years of this process.

I’m thankful everyday for these people, who continually prove that kindness, encouragement, and laughter are alive and well in the world.

Introduction Communities of Captivity “Shall I go on? Or have I said anough?” John Milton, Comus John Milton’s 1634 masque, Comus , details the captivity and eventual release of The Lady, an aristocratic young woman held in bondage by the hedonistic and sexually aggressive title character. Fixed to a magical chair and threatened with sexual corruption and ruin by Comus, The Lady must rebuff her captor with the only power she is free to employ: her voice. By using her speech to counter the arguments of the evil prince the Lady creates both time for her rescuers to find her in the dark woods of Wales and a space in which to vocalize arguments on moral issues ranging from the proper use and distribution of wealth to the importance of religious virtue and chastity. Left only with her voice, it is precisely this voice that saves the Lady and establishes her agency within a captive context, as it is the Lady’s “mere moral babble” (ln. 807) that Comus condemns and that carries the crux of the political, moral, and social arguments Milton attempts to assert throughout his masque. At the same time, the Lady does not exist in a political or social vacuum . Performed at Ludlow Castle in 1634, this particular masque was commissioned to celebrate the Earl of Bridgewater’s placement as Lord President of Wales. The drama itself takes place in Wales, where the Earl’s actual children, playing the parts of the Two Brothers and the Lady, must confront and escape the sinful magical prince in order to return to their father. The aristocratic community at the center of Milton’s drama forms a solid connection between the character of the Lady and the real world in which the performer lived; however, Milton’s social and political commentary connects the Lady as a character to the rising conflict between the ruling aristocracy and middle/lower class virtues founded in Protestant reform and republican values. The Lady is not only a member of one community in a real sense, but also represents the creation of a type of community in England, one which formed around religious and political ties rather than bloodlines and locality. This shift in the idea of what creates community is facilitated by The Lady as captive, laying a foundation for the trope of female captivity as a literary space where bonds of community and political commentary could be joined.

The Lady of Comus exemplifies the community-based female political agency that is articulated by representations of female captivity from the mid-seventeenth century to the early nineteenth, and such representations dominated the print culture of the British Atlantic World during the long eighteenth century. From true narrative accounts to the rise of the novel, scenes of women bound and confined dominated the literary landscape. Representations of women in such a state, controlled by their kidnappers and lacking basic freedom, would appear to uphold patriarchal political structures. The prevalence of religious or moral discourse, as well as the representation of racialized captors would also seem to bolster such claims. My interest lies in the way these tales, fictional and factual, also represent women speaking of and for themselves, telling or writing their stories in such a way that their voices emerge to interrupt attempts at homogenous discourse. It is in this space, between what was vocally acceptable and what captive women said, that particular formations of female political agency can be delineated. This project will investigate the way in which the trope of female captivity provided a community-based forum through which female political agency can be observed. There are two central questions that drive such an investigation. First, how did female captivity operate as a trope in the British Atlantic World during the long eighteenth century? Second, how did this particular trope reveal a community-centered realm in which women exercised a form of agency in a time when most considered women to be unable to insert themselves into public discourse? Speech act theory, and specific forms of speech acts often used in tales of female captivity, will serve as a theoretical catalyst for answering these central questions. An investigation of the speech acts used by captives will reveal the importance and proliferation of the trope of female captivity, the ways in which public, specifically political, discourse disseminated throughout British Atlantic World communities operating within a circum-Atlantic context, and how representations of female captivity voiced a form of female political agency that was received, legitimated and understood by the captive’s community. However, in order to investigate female captivity in such a way, its position as both a trope and a representation must be better defined. Captivity as Representational Trope In reference to literature, the term trope applies to a common motif or theme recurring in a given work. A trope, by this definition, is conceptualized as a recurrent image or linguistic device that comes to mean more than itself, or acquires meaning outside of a literal expression of itself. In the eighteenth century, the term trope was used almost exclusively in a rhetorical sense

to denote a linguistic practice in which a play on words is used to signify something other than a standard definition of the terms employed. Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Letters of 1783 defines a trope as “a word's being employed to signify something that is different from its original and primitive meaning; so that if you alter the word, you destroy the Figure” (146). Combining the contemporary and eighteenth century definitions of this term, the idea of a trope encompasses both a thematic and spoken turn in which a figure (spoken, written, or actual) represents something outside of itself. This idea of representation is also important, as a representation does not signify an original, but rather a stand-in. Applied to the concept of female captivity and its prolific use in the long eighteenth century, the trope of representations of female captives holds within it the lived experiences of actual females captured and confined for particular reasons and the idea that such women could be understood as representations which expresses meaning outside of themselves. Although the lived experiences of captivity is important, this project seeks to understand captivity as a literary and linguistic device that conveyed meaning beyond such a narrow scope. The trope of female captivity in this context is understood as the use of a captive female figure in a text as a motif or metaphor to represent the point in political structures where women asserted their vocal agency. The trope metaphorically connects actual captive bodies to the captive position women seemed to hold in relation to political discourse. Factual or fictional representations of female captives underscored the fact that despite attempts to confine female political discourse, the vocal agency of women was impossible to fully control. By revealing the idea that minds and mouths could not be stifled, the captive female displayed the political agency available to women at this time. This formulation of captive agency counters a majority of past scholars who discuss the role of the captive female in political structures; however, it does follow the course of a number of works that discuss the possibility for agency and community found in captive experiences. Starting with Richard Slotkin’s 1973 Regeneration Through Violence , contemporary literary scholars more often than not focus on the ways in which captive women are employed by the state to bolster national concerns and tow the party line through a consideration of lived captive experience. Following the standard interpretive understanding of captivity established by Slotkin, Rebecca Blevins Faery’s 1999 work, Cartographies of Desire , maps the cultural production of race and gender onto the body of the female captive, asserting that colonial

American notions of nation, race, and gender were both created and reinforced through narratives of female captivity. Juxtaposing tales of white female captives such as Mary Rowlandson with welcoming native princesses such as Pocahontas, Faery articulates a connection between chaste white female captive bodies, sexualized female native bodies, and the creation of racial and national identities in America. Faery’s argument concludes that female captivity narratives were presented to create American racial ideologies and specifically investigates how the captive female body participated in the formation of a particular nation- state. Extending the arguments of scholars such as Faery to include questions of female vocal agency would establish a relationship between language, representations of captivity and the political position of women. Additionally, such standard consideration of female captives offers little discussion of the connection across different communities within the British Atlantic World. Most scholars position tales of female captivity primarily as they relate to the formation of a particular nation-state, such as the United States of America, as if any one nation was an independent and concrete entity at this time. Such limited investigations ignore the circum- Atlantic connections that operated within the British Atlantic World; connections that render the trope of captivity as an extra-national phenomenon which subverts the idea of nationhood as well as other ideological constructs within public discourse. While the majority of scholars concerned with stories of female captivity tend to focus on particular national formations and traditions, some scholars have begun the process of investigating captivity either as it relates to particular communities or as it operates on a transnational level. Tara Fitzpatrick’s “The Figure of Captivity: The Cultural Work of the Puritan Captivity Narrative” does not solely make a claim regarding the Indian captivity narrative in America, but focuses instead on how these renditions of captivity formed and supported specific political and social formations within the Puritan community of New England. Instead of making a national claim, Fitzpatrick’s work is centered on a community-based approach that extends into other Protestant religious formations similar to New England, while also highlighting the ways in which the captive was “a narrative figure designed to maintain and enforce boundaries [but which] came instead to explode them” (21). Within this framework, the insistence on looking at how the Puritans used tales of captivity to support their community, rather than how Puritan captivity narratives stood in for the American nation as a whole, exposes how specific communities used and viewed the captive female in ways that could

transcend the nation. This approach to the captive female as community-builder rather than nation-builder privileges the community space wherein transnational relations and exchanges actually took place and demonstrates how women shaped their home communities, and thus the wider world. Nancy Armstrong has, over the past twenty years, made a strong case for the connection between American renditions of true accounts of female captivity and the captive experiences that continually occur within the eighteenth-century British novel. Texts such as The Imaginary Puritan and “Writing Women and the Making of the Modern Middle Class” argue that the female captivity narrative, stemming from the publication of Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, was the necessary precursor for the rise of the English novel, as such narratives provided plot points for renditions of females held captive and created a form of female discourse based on a relationship between the writing individual and a community as audience. By making such connections, and disregarding the critical claim that she had “gone native” (Landry 45) by taking a matter considered to be within the confines of British literary history and connecting it explicitly to colonial endeavors around the Atlantic, Armstrong helped instigate a critical exploration into the ways in which representations of female captivity traveled across borders, and through circum-Atlantic exchange, effected politics, culture, and literature. Michelle Burnham’s Captivity and Sentiment also focuses on the literary influence of the captive female body within a long-eighteenth-century transatlantic context. Positioning female captivity within the confines of both British and American concepts of sentimentality, Burnham uses the postcolonial theories of Mary Louise Pratt and Homi Bhabha to examine how community identity was created through these empathetic female figures. This work locates the captivity narrative as a space where the contact between transatlantic community-building and marginalized peoples both reinforced and undermined the idea of what it meant to be part of America or Britain. Burnham argues that the sentimental discourse inherent in the captivity narrative works in two ways. As a mode for the expression of culture-crossing, this discourse enabled captive women to articulate a transgressive position in relation to the liminal space created between their captive community and their home community, thus forming an independent female agency. However, Burnham maintains that the invocation of sentimentality allowed such transgression to be masked by audience tears, instigated at the insistence of male editors wishing to hide the agency of female captives. By relying on a sentimental discourse

prevalent in America and England, Burnham’s argument stresses the exchange of discourse and ideology around the Atlantic, an exchange that mandated language use and the ways in which women could access such language. Kate Chedgzoy’s Women’s Writing in the British Atlantic World: Memory, Place and History, 1500-1700 offers a small account of how one captivity narrative, Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and Goodness of God , works within a wider Atlantic print culture. Chedgzoy’s study provides a methodological structure for scholars interested in how particular ideas and images flowed across the British Atlantic World, creating a system of exchange that superseded and disrupted the imagined isolation and independence of the nation. The central claim is that women, as traditional bearers of memory, used such access to create personal histories that were influenced by and influential within British Atlantic culture. By making such a claim she creates an investigation that overturns dominant critical assumptions such as the importance of national systems within this period or the idea that women had no agency in a completely patriarchal social structure. By focusing on both women’s texts and the wider work of memory, Chedgzoy employed a methodology that challenges general literary constructions of the nation. Her approach furthered pushed the boundaries of future scholars interrogation into the way texts and ideas operated in a circum-Atlantic context. The work of scholars such as Armstrong, Burnham and Chedgzoy are the critical and methodological basis for my investigation. Using speech-act theory to intervene on the ideas of such critics, I will articulate a relationship between the way captives positioned themselves through language, the establishment of communities around the Atlantic in which women enacted speech (such as Protestant religious communities or communities based on kinship exchange) and the formation of a female political agency. As speech acts are both performative and gendered, these captives used gendered understandings of the world to articulate both assent and dissent to dominant cultural and political formations - including issues such as race, domesticity and religion where women were allowed to participate openly in collective conversations regarding these topics. Modifying Burnham’s claim that agency is only found within the liminal spaces created through the crossing of borders, my assertion is that agency is achieved through the expression of both agreement and critique. The words of the female captive, whether autobiographical or fictional, acted as a point at which the cultural production, consumption, and purpose of the speech of the captive became paramount to interpretations of

the captive experience. Such representations of captive experiences gave women the means to comment on issues ranging from the subservient position of women within particular governments to concepts of civility and civilization. The female captive became a figure of great political and social importance and a culturally-defining literary trope. These narrative representations used the experience of border crossing to enable and authorize a female political speech act which explicitly questioned ideologies that attempted to foreclose women from participation in discourse not formally or overtly available to them. In order to better understand the agency available to women at this time, as well as the ways in which communities functioned in the long eighteenth century, a further investigation of the British Atlantic World system and its specific relation to representations of female captivity in this period is necessary. British Atlantic World Communities In their introduction to The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 , David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick give specific parameters to this circum-Atlantic system. They claim: Shared language and law, as well as political participation and loyalty to the Crown, bound together societies that claimed a common identity or political liberties, although the local variations in each of these things made that common identity unstable. Reinforced by trade and kinship connections, however, these connections did constitute a distinctively British Atlantic. (“Introduction” 3) From this definition, the British Atlantic can be viewed as the English-speaking world bordering the Atlantic Ocean which was connected social, economically, and politically at one time or another with the British Empire. In reality, this system mainly encompassed Britain, parts of Canada, the American colonies (and later the United States of America), and the British West Indies situated in the Caribbean. With this geographical outline comes the social connections of these diverse spaces solidified through shared language, cultural customs, political ideologies and economic trade. As Armitage and Braddick claim, discrepancies and variations within this system did arise across locations, but the overarching cultural, political, and economic connections worked to solidify allegiances and commonalities despite these differences. This is a circum-Atlantic world in which local sites established and maintained connections and exchanges creating communities based upon common thoughts, language, actions and customs. It is important to note the idea of a circum-Atlantic world differs from a transatlantic configuration of exchange and growth. Stemming from Joseph Roach’s Cities of the Dead , the

term circum-Atlantic denotes an exchange that occurs between various locations around a unified center. While transatlantic scholarship posits a study of comparisons regarding the specific interactions between two different nations or points across the Atlantic (most typically between England and America), the idea of a circum-Atlantic British World maintains a unified zone of contact, in this case the Atlantic Ocean, where influences crisscross and form a interconnected social system without a clear beginning or ending point. For Roach, “Of all the fictions that summon people together as a community, the concept of nation is the most labile” (115), as the nation is a tenuous community in comparison to the exchange network created within a circum- Atlantic context. Such a conception of the world highlights circular exchange, a process that centers on fluidity rather than the static transmission between two distinct locations on a map. With a circum-Atlantic approach, the conception of nation-formation also becomes questionable, and we begin to see the world not as a fixed map with determined borders, but a malleable entity in which ideas, customs, and politics are exchanged in an effort to create transnational or super- national communities of commonality. While circum-Atlantic communities flourished in the long eighteenth century, many scholars and theorists still position the creation of the modern nation-state within this same historical period. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities played a pivotal role in initiating studies regarding the formation of nations at this moment. Anderson posits that the creation of nationhood occurs through the formation of what he terms an “imagined community” (6). The “imagined community” bound unknown people together as a collective along national and political lines in order to create a unified social body which would support and align themselves with a nation. This idea of nationhood is not a matter of birth or blood, but rather the collective acceptance of symbolic forms of culture, such as flags or songs, which instill within an individual particular notions of belonging and allegiance and connects the self to strangers who share the same cultural identifications. In a colonial setting, a theoretical understanding of constructed national identity can account for the fealty Englishmen and women felt as they traveled outside of England’s borders and into the broader Atlantic World, as well as the pressures people experienced when confronted with new cultural formations, new national identities, and new narratives. Anderson saw the creation of such communities as founded in language, and his conception of print capitalism as a spurring force in the creation of the modern nation privileges written language as the means through which common culture is transmitted.

Anderson states that “Through […] language, encountered at mother’s knee and parted with only at the grave, pasts are restored, fellowships are imagined, and futures dreamed” (154). Language learned and transmitted bound communities together and created real bonds between people that sustained lasting political and social relationships. Anderson’s ideas concerning imagined communities of common interest and ideals is valuable, as is his assertion of the importance of written language in the creation of such communities; however, the use of these two concepts to solidify national structures seems lacking. Nations where shaped and created at this time, yet the circum-Atlantic circulation of ideas, politics, and culture ensured that transnational communities of commonality also arose. Nation building was an important project in the long eighteenth-century, but nations were not the only things being built. Communities across national borders were also constructed; communities which shared ideological concepts that joined them just as firmly as conceptions of national identity and patriotism. These are imagined communities outside of the nation, ones in which social and political connections formed despite national affiliation. As imagined communities, it is a common written language that helped form the bonds necessary to maintain social, political and ideological connectivity. Communities based in a common written language and sharing political and social identities sprang up around the British Atlantic World despite the efforts to create coherent and concrete national boundaries. As part of this shared print culture within communities, representations of female captivity connected and helped create communities throughout the Atlantic. While past scholars have used captive women to show the creation of stable nations, it is imperative that these figures also be seen as a source of community and ideological formation that works beyond the confines of the nation. In “Perceiving Low Literature: The Captivity Narrative,” Linda Colley maintains that captive experiences can show scholars the myriad forms of community in existence within and beyond the nation, as “at no time, in the British Isles or anywhere else, was there simply one culture and structure of sentiment at work.” (204). The fact that “Captivity narratives have been persistent, protean, [and] profusely distributed over time and place” (200) reveals that the trope of female captivity was used in a variety of ways, within a variety of communities, in an effort to form a connective identity within circum-Atlantic structures. If the trope of female captivity was simultaneously pervasive and empowering, how did this trope come to have power or authority within any given community, and how did such

representations use language to reveal the female political agency that could be acquired in these communities? Systematic Assent, Speech Genres and Community Formation In order to investigate how political agency could be found within the trope of female captivity, defining such a term is useful. Although many critics discuss its uses, permutations, and power, very few offer up a solid definition of female political agency. In a general way, I would like to define female political agency as a woman’s assertion of opinion or thought without overt punishment and the ability or right to act for herself within the political realm (or areas explicitly connected to the political realm) through speech and deed. This means that female political agency asserts itself by offering a woman the space, power, and means to think about, comment on, and engage with the political and social system in which she lives. By placing such agency within deed and speech, this also implies that a woman with female political agency has an audience that is receptive to or mindful of her various actions within the community’s recognized and established political order. In discussing the idea of subjectivity for early modern female writers, the editors of Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects emphasize the point that agency is about the historical moment, as “the possibility of multiple agencies, specifically within discrete historical moments and according to the logics of various discourses and localities” (5) allow scholars to consider agency with an eye toward specificity. Although these editors are focused on an earlier cultural period, the idea of viewing multiple forms of female political agency through specific historical and community- based understandings of discourse and culture easily map onto the long eighteenth century. To have political agency, then, is to have a voice that is heard and understood within a specific social system connected to a specific political network, historically situated within a specific cultural moment in a certain community. Working from this definition, female political agency in the long eighteenth century must be identified in connection to the way in which communities perceived women and their voices at this time. The trope of female captivity and its use in expressing such agency relies upon the way arguments were made and perceived for their community audiences, as well as the ways in which speech and writing intersect to create such communities. Wayne Booth’s concept of systematic assent is helpful here, as it explains how women in this period explored traditional discourses open to them while also pushing the limits of what was allowable. In Modern Dogma

and the Rhetoric of Assent , Booth claims that in order to have a solid foundation for an argument, people must begin by agreeing to certain socially acceptable belief structures (such as religion, social or political organization, or commonly held scientific beliefs) before disagreeing with ideas in which the audience would accept debate. This is his foundation for the idea of systematic assent, a term used to describe the ways in which an argument begins with community common ground pertaining to particular cultural beliefs, causing the audience for an argument to believe its validity initially until they are dissuaded by their own life experiences (144-151). With systematic assent, a community agrees to be receptive to arguments that are based in shared cultural and social understandings of the world around them. According to this view, speakers can make a claim that will be received by their audience as long as they base such a claim within the confines of a certain pre-established belief structure. Booth illustrates this in his text through a consideration of how we live our lives. Daily, we as people agree to believe others in order to interact and thrive in the world. We do not automatically doubt, but rather automatically assent unless we have specific reasons to question the position or intention of another. Systematic assent is presented here as a rhetorical mode of argument and the experience of life that reveals “a willing assent to the process of making an intelligible world with […] fellow creatures” (105). By working together, establishing and maintaining common sets of belief and modes of knowledge, a community creates a basis upon which people can interact productively and create the world as they see it. Booth’s ideas of systematic assent have not been explicitly connected to feminist theories of agency in the long eighteenth century, but similar ideas have been expressed in a variety of scholarship. Ashley Tauchert’s “Writing Like a Girl” hits upon similar points when she argues that women’s writing in the eighteenth century reveals “a moment at which subjectivity gains voice in a social exchange of meaning” (57), emphasizing the social aspect of writing within the community and the ways in which women as writers and speakers within texts must contend with the dominant modes of discourse available in order to gain agency/subjectivity. In her introduction to Conspiracy and Virtue , Susan Wiseman explains the ways in which women access political discourse through a process that strongly resembles systematic assent. She asserts that women were not the exception to modes of argument or rhetoric despite their exclusion from certain types of discourse, as all writers or speakers must use the discursive and

linguistic tools accessible in a given place at a given time: “Sharing with men the available ways of thinking about the political world, women comment on the world as it appears to them and use the interpretive categories ready at hand” (24). This argument, although not citing the idea of systematic assent, closely mirrors the assertions made by Booth. While Wiseman is writing exclusively about the seventeenth century, her arguments extend into the discursive practices and realities of the long eighteenth easily as her ideas echo Booth’s assertion that all forms of good argumentation must follow the guidelines of access, availability and community belief that define the process of systematic assent. The use of Booth’s theories within a context concerning female political agency in speech and writing would only be beneficial and appears to fit well within the current scholarly discussions surrounding such issues. By explicitly placing Booth’s theories within this context, a much clearer picture of how community belief and mode of argument shaped public discourse generally, and the trope of female captivity specifically, emerges. In the long eighteenth century, as in any period in which communities form the basis of society, writers who wished to argue about anything, whether religion, economics, culture, or politics, first established a common ground with their audience and made their claims based on that shared value system. This allowed authors the room to assent to particular beliefs while deviating or arguing against other issues. Booth claims that with this method of argument, people who might not normally have a voice in a community can gain entry to public discourse through “a common faith in modes of argument,” (150) or the established conventions of argument maintained and agreed upon by a given community. Taking the idea of systematic assent and applying it to representations of female captivity allows readers to see the ways in which these women developed their own female political agency. They wrote or spoke about the areas of life in which they were believed to have some authority or power, such as domesticity, religion, or interactions with various races, and used such instances to make arguments regarding political ideas in the British Atlantic World. Nevertheless, the common print practices of the long eighteenth century and the means through which women entered the literary marketplace has caused past scholars to hesitate when discussing issues of authorship, argument and agency within captivity texts. When writing about tales of female captivity and agency, a scholar must contend with past assertions regarding this genre, particularly the claim that male editorial interventions within

such works make the authorship of captivity texts hard to define. For decades critics have discussed the relevance of studying a figure such as Mary Rowlandson as an author or speaker within her narrative when it is known that a male editor not only framed her tale, but could have had editorial influence on its production. While questioning the authorship of female captivity narratives is a valid method for discussing issues of production within strict social systems, my investigation understands captivity as both a trope and a representation. The focus is on representations of speech, how such speech acts are performed by the women speaking in these texts, and how representations reveal female agency. It is important to remember that captivity narratives are not the only texts that work with the trope of female captivity as novels at this time also employ the trope in a variety of ways. In defending her own scholarly use of multiple genres in the study of female political discourse in the seventeenth century, Susan Wiseman maintains that “exclusion makes figural language, myth, narrative, and poetry crucial modes of political expression” (9). This argument favors viewing multiple genres in a political context because the exclusionary methods of discourse forced women, and people representing women as subjects, to use literary devices in order to express the particular ways in which women were included in the political sphere. Whether written or edited by men or women, or presented as autobiographical or fictional accounts, the trope of female captivity rests upon the acts of speech committed by the representations of captive females within the text, as the trope itself also represents how exclusionary politics offered certain avenues of inclusion for female political agency. Writing as representational speech acts may seem like a contradictory idea; however, the nature of language both written and spoken inherently points to the connection between language and action. In Literature as Communication: The Foundations of Mediating Criticism , Roger D. Sell asserts that the foundational element of all language is an impetus toward interaction between speaker and hearer, which extends itself into the relationship between writer and reader based on the “orality of literate culture” (84). Sell asserts the orality of writing creates active speech in any given text, particularly in the long eighteenth century, as “writers active in literate cultures still wrote to be read aloud well down into the nineteenth century” (84). Because of the oral basis of all writing, the shared language structures and purpose of both spoken and written words, speech acts and interaction are central to both linguistic modes. Sell claims “Such catalysts for interaction work in the same way for writing, including literary writing, as for

speech. When they are being put there by a writer […] then what is taking place is a form of interpersonal activity” (88). Although Sell does not specifically use the term speech acts, his reference to activity and connection is a nod to this theoretical idea. Sell’s arguments highlight the fundamental connections between speech and writing based in language, which allows voice and the power of the speech act to create specific “interpersonal activity,” thus effecting community formation, belief, and action. Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories shed light on the idea of representational and written language as speech, as well as writing/speech as a community process of engagement. A number of scholars concerned with captivity have directly and indirectly discussed the importance of Bakhtin’s ideas of polyglossia and heteroglossia within literary works which present a captive female. Most notably, Christopher Castiglia’s Bound and Determined uses Bakhtin’s notion of social heteroglossia to describe the linguistic and generic function of womanhood in captivity romances written in the nineteenth century. Castiglia maintains that the agency found in captivity is not achieved through creating a new type of utterance, but is revealed when two contending and already existing forms of utterance are presented together, displaying an inherent conflict in what was often considered homogenous discourse. Within these novels that work within the trope of female captivity, Bakhtin’s formations highlight how the heteroglossia inherent in novels themselves allow representations of captive women agency within the text. Castiglia highlights this process, stating “Heteroglossia serves in the captivity romances not to replace one view or/from womanhood with another […] rather, it seeks, by putting two often conflicting depictions of women side by side, to question whether ‘womanhood’ can ever be definitively fixed in literature” (133). Castiglia’s argument that heteroglossia explains the fluid nature of the construct of womanhood through captivity romance novels allows him to posit a female agency centered on conceptions of femininity invoked by female writers working with the trope of female captivity; however, this formulation seems to extend beyond Castiglia’s limited use of the theory. As a trope presented in language, in both novels and autobiographical accounts written by men and women, the representations of captive females hold within themselves the ability to speak in a way that enables political discourse beyond just how women are understood or defined in a particular time. Heteroglossia, understood by Bakhtin as “the problem of internal differentiation [and] stratification” (67) inherent within all language systems,

underscores the multi-vocality of written language and the power it holds in expressing various views on a given subject, even for women presented as speaking within a captive situation. Nonetheless, as the polyglossic nature of language systems, both national and transnational, have been well established, it is important to also remember Bakhtin’s discussion of such systems rests upon the idea of language and speech as representational within written discourse. This idea of representation will expand an understanding of the trope of female captivity and its inherent nature within written discourse. In “From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse,” Bakhtin begins with a discussion of written language as a representation of spoken language, which posits that such a system both mimics and creates discourse within a given language. For Bakhtin, written language is “the image of another’s language and outlook on the world simultaneously represented and representing” (45). Written language is “represented” in the real fact that it is presented on the page and observed by an audience, given a place and a position within a text. It is “representing” in that it mirrors spoken language outside of the text, conforming to standard socio-linguistic systems and containing the same power and process of spoken utterances. Writing represents speech the way it is used in the world, thereby conforming to the same speech-act structures that are vocalized. A literal voice is not needed to commit a speech act as the representation of voice on a page functions in the same way. This idea of representation extends to women themselves, as Tauchert maintains when she writes about the eighteenth-century advancement in “early scripts of female consciousness” (57). These “scripts,” or representations of the lives, speech and/or subject position of females within all genres at this time, mimic reality in such a way that whether autobiographical or fictional, a woman within a text speaks and acts as an individual subject mirroring the real world experiences, discourses, politics and culture of a given moment and place. However, represented/representing language and the scripts which create a female subjectivity within a written text work only so far as what is represented or scripted is formulated as speech that functions in the outside world. Bakhtin underscores the importance of representations and reality, stating “images of language are inseparable from images of various world views and from the living beings who are their agents – people who think, talk, and act in a setting that is social and historically concrete” (49). Representations of speech only carry meaning as a speech-act when they actually represent a real social and historical situation, extending the spoken social discourse of a given community onto the written page. For

representations of female captivity, this means that the women speaking must adhere to the social conventions of actual speech to be properly represented. Here Bakhtin’s ideas of representation combines well with Booth’s idea of systematic assent, as representations of female captives must conform to community standards to be both true representations of speech and to present political agency in a way that is acceptable for a given audience or community. Scholars Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse, although working from a different theoretical framework, have come to similar conclusions regarding writing as speech and its connection to agency in their text The Imaginary Puritan . They use Foucaultian theories of discourse and power to discuss the emergence of the author-figure as a creator of meaning and shaper of society in the long eighteenth century. Armstrong and Tennenhouse maintain that writing begins to supplant actual speech as the dominant discourse in communities by mid- seventeenth century, privileging the written over the spoken. They firmly establish a connection between speech and writing, stating “A speech community gives way to one from which writing not only establishes the model but also poses as speech, as thought, and by way of speech and thought, as human nature itself” (214). Although they do not explicitly cite the theoretical assertions of Bakhtin, the formation presented works from similar assumptions, mandating that representational speech in written form is explicitly connected to speech uttered in reality, even becoming as powerful as speech to a given community at a certain point in time. The Imaginary Puritan additionally connects the ideas of writing as speech, community building and representations of female captives by discussing the impact of the Indian captivity narrative on the eighteenth-century British novel. In the final chapter of this text, Armstrong and Tennenhouse discuss the influence of Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative on Samuel Richardson’s Pamela . For these scholars, Pamela expresses how Rowlandson’s creation of a writing, individual female became the foundation for English fiction. While these scholars point to a link between the trope of female captivity, the creation of circum-Atlantic communities of exchange, and the fundamental importance of speech within this process, they also by-pass the ways in which the trope of female captivity could foster a female political agency within communities. The Imaginary Puritan posits that Mary Rowlandson specifically had a substantial affect on the formation of the English novel because of her position as a solitary writer; however, they ignore the myriad ways in which captive females were represented and disseminated throughout literary works in the long eighteenth century and how such representations invoked a

political discourse that revealed the depths and possibilities of female political agency at this time. Combining the theories of Booth and Bakhtin with the investigation of various literary scholars, a much larger view of the trope of captivity and its importance in the long eighteenth- century becomes apparent. The trope of female captivity extended throughout the British Atlantic World and such a proliferation of women bound had a meaning beyond the real experiences of captivity at this time. My argument, which builds upon Booth’s theory of systematic assent and Bakhtin’s ideas of representational language in writing, maintains that through a process of agreement and critique, the written representation of the female captive became a metaphorical device that afforded women the means to use particular speech acts to insert themselves into the male-dominated political discourse of various circum-Atlantic communities. As Armstrong and Tennenhouse claim that the written supplanted the spoken word, becoming the bearer of both knowledge and community, I argue that this form of written utterance shaped communities and thus the wider British Atlantic world through an adept use of discourse and speech acts. By voicing tales of captivity and return, women inserted themselves into political discourse and achieved agency within the confines and structures of their particular communities, making female political agency both acceptable and accessible throughout the eighteenth-century Atlantic. As The Lady of Milton’s Comus illustrates, representations of women in captivity did more than just show the captive experience; they endeavored to speak out on pertinent political and social issues within their communities despite, and often because of, their real and metaphorical captivity. Captivity, Community and Speech In order to investigate the ways in which the trope of female captivity offered female political agency, I will examine specific forms of circum-Atlantic communities where particular types of speech acts were continuously employed by representations of female captivity. The four speech acts discussed in this study are the acts of consent/denial, confession, deception and history-making. Each will be discussed in a specific historical context that will underscore the ways in which captive figures used such acts to foster female political agency within their communities. Chapter One, “Life, Liberty and Love: Consent and Denial in Republican Communities,” maintains that republican circum-Atlantic communities positioned political agency and

participation through the speech act of consent. The trope of female captivity explored the social dimension of consent for women, explicitly connecting the captive’s consent or denial of marriage and sex with the political realities of vocalized consent in participatory community structures around the Atlantic. I assert Charlotte Lennox’s The Life of Harriot Stuart and Mary Prince’s slave narrative are prime examples of how the trope of female captivity employed consent by drawing on the issue of marriage to demonstrate the function and realization of female political agency. I also argue, by applying an analysis of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Jemima Howe’s Indian captivity narrative, that sexual virtue achieved as a result of denial was another access point for political critique within the trope. The investigation into these four literary representations highlights the fact that a discursive reality existed within circum-Atlantic republican communities which presented women as having the same natural rights to consent in political discourse. Chapter Two, “Saintly Sinners: Confession in Protestant Communities,” focuses on Protestant circum-Atlantic communities’ uses of the speech act of confession to sustain a religious-political discourse and agency. As a result of confessional acts, representations of female captivity in literary texts asserted their access to and knowledge of the religious-political structures of their community, offering themselves as exemplary emulation figures. For these female captives, the speech act of confession presented Biblical and experiential knowledge to their audiences while critiquing particular religious and political doctrines in their communities. Through analyzing Mary Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and Goodness of God and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela , I maintain that such female captives present personal affliction within their moments of confession to position themselves as morally righteous religious-political figures. I then explore the way Hannah Swarton’s Indian captivity narrative employs the confession of communal sins to enter into the religious-political debate surrounding the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the British Atlantic. The examination of these texts supports the central argument of the chapter: the trope of female captivity used confession to express how women in Protestant circum-Atlantic communities gained political agency by asserting their religious knowledge and moral superiority. Chapter Three, “Lying Ladies: Deception in Kinship Communities,” posits that during the long eighteenth century, kinship networks created communities around the British Atlantic. While these kinship systems appeared to control the social, political and economic use of the

female, captives employed deceptive speech acts in order to give themselves the ability to name and define their own bodies. By lying for security or in order to escape, such literary representations within the trope exposed the way deception was exercised to disrupt kinship exchanges and create agency. Analyzing the Indian captivity narrative of Jean Lowry and the Barbary captivity narrative of Elizabeth Marsh, I argue that the exploitation of community-based racial assumptions and perceived sexual threats, which authorized deceptive speech acts, allowed female captives to assert the right to control their exchange in and outside of their kinship systems. I then examine how Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess and Mary Smith’s Indian captivity narrative uncover female political agency through the act of the lie in order to allow the captive’s escape. All four examples reveal transgressive speech acts condoned by a home community, that when enacted outside of captivity, offers political agency by mandating access to and jurisdiction over the commodified female body. Chapter Four, “Civil Tongues: History-Making in Communities of Civility,” explores how the act of creating history in speech operated based on ideas of civility in circum-Atlantic communities. Communities created the dichotomy of the civilized/uncivilized by circulating shared codes of manners and discourse. In the trope of female captivity, captives drew on the speech act of history-making to breakdown this binary. With an analysis of Susannah Johnson’s Indian captivity narrative, I argue that the moments when the captive used her account of personal history to question what is and is not considered civilized rendered the act a moment of critique where female political agency can be observed. Looking at Sophia Lee’s The Recess and Susanna Rowson’s Reuben and Rachel , I assert the trope of female captivity present in historical romances created a female-based counter-history which expressed the negative effects of historical moments on women, thus allowing the captive access to political agency based on a critique of established civil binaries. These textual investigations underscore the chapter’s central assertion that the act of history-making in speech allowed female political agency within the critique of community-established structures of civil behavior. The conclusion, “Captive Heroines,” examines the trope of female captivity as it was presented in the popular medium of comic books in the twentieth century. Emphasizing the continued persistence of the trope from the long eighteenth century British Atlantic to the globalized modern world, I analyze the way Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta engages with the same issues of female political agency in transnational contexts using the speech acts offered by

captives. This connection between the modern and early modern use of the trope of female captivity leads to a detailed reassertion of my project’s overarching argument: the trope of female captivity proliferated in the long eighteenth-century British Atlantic in an effort to have community audiences observe and condone discursive methods of female political agency within patriarchal political structures.

Chapter 1 Life, Liberty, and Love: Consent and Denial in Republican Communities “For when any number of Men have, by the consent of every individual, made a Community, they have thereby made that Community one Body” John Locke, Two Treatises of Government Republicanism as a political concept was nothing new in the long eighteenth century. Stemming from Roman roots, the notion of a republican political system had woven its way across history, cropping up throughout Western political thought in an effort to define notions of liberty and egalitarian impulses within a wide variety of governments. Ancient and medieval political philosophers such as Cicero and Machiavelli continued the transmission of a republican tradition, in turn influencing the political philosophy of the long eighteenth century promoted by writers such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine and Jefferson. As revolutions (both bloody and bloodless) were waged across the British Atlantic World, many people turned toward republicanism in an effort to form new community systems in which the rights of man became an important and centralizing aspect of community dynamics and participation. However, these republican communities founded across the West were not completely egalitarian in nature. The republican tradition itself more often than not attempted to foster a process of inclusion through exclusion, a practice that negatively affected many within communities steeped in republican ideology, such as the Jewish population in post-revolutionary France 1 or the slave population of the new American nation. One group often theoretically considered excluded from republicanism in communities across the Atlantic World were women, a pattern stemming from the founding myth of republicanism itself: the rape and suicide of Lucretia. The myth of Lucretia is just one of many tales that helped republican formations appear to be inclusive to male citizens at the expense of the broken and dead body of a woman. In Chaste Thinking: The Rape of Lucretia and the Birth of Humanism , Stephanie Jed asserts, “From the perspective of the legend’s transmission, we can begin to see this rape not as an

1Ronald Schechter’s Obstinate Hebrews maintains that Jewish emancipation in France was much less about the Jews and much more about making republican France look like an inclusive institution while it continues to exclude huge numbers of the population from political participation. Citing the fact that only approximately twenty-five hundred Jews through France would be eligible for citizenship under this decree, he identifies this political move as being an act to maintain the appearance of equality rather than giving equality, making it far more symbolic than politically viable.

inevitable prologue to Rome’s liberation but a historical figuration, formed and reformed to serve various interests and needs in different historical moments” (6-7). With scholars such as Jed, Ian Donaldson and Melissa Matthes 2 examining the relationship between the stories told about women within republican discourse and women’s inclusion within republican systems, a pattern emerges that reveals how often women were excluded from political participation in an effort to create a patriarchal republican community. Despite the significance and prevalence of scholarly inquiry that examines how republican ideologies oppressed women, it is important to remember that women were agents within their home communities and were allowed access to particular forms of political discourse that dominated republican relations in the long eighteenth century. While the tale of Lucretia was told and retold in an effort to suspend female political agency, the representations of female captives circulating throughout the Atlantic at this time highlighted the ways in which women could and did participate in republican political discourse and gained agency. The trope of captivity offered a space in which women could give voice to their place within republican communities as well as the ways in which consent, a dominant idea within republican political thought, was a domain socially open to women in such communities. British Atlantic Republican Communities Defining what makes a community republican in nature is important within the confines of this particular study. Thinking strictly in terms of political organization, republicanism is often conceived as a way of organizing a government that assumes a rule by many, usually through an election or legislative process which gives those termed citizens more freedom and control over their own rule. As a political theory, it implies a government founded on ideas of liberty and the natural rights of people (even if such rights are not fully actualized in reality). While these are basic definitions of republicanism, in order to have and accurate view of the ways in which republican communities existed in the long eighteenth century, a more nuanced look at both the meaning and history of republicanism at this time is imperative. To fully understand what republican communities were in this period is to understand a more complex interpretation of republicanism. The basic definitions aside, a community did not necessarily need to be part of a concrete and established republican government in order to foster republican political values. Phillip Pettit, in Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and

2 Donaldson’s The Rapes of Lucretia (1982) and Matthes’ The Rape of Lucretia and the Forming of Republics (2000) both make strong arguments regarding the specific resurgence of the Lucretia myth in the eighteenth century, particularly in connection with Rousseau and the French Revolution.

Government , defines this political theory not as a strict adherence to a particular political organization, but rather as a system of thought or an approach that could be harbored within any political organization. The concepts of freedom versus unfreedom, or domination versus non- domination, are the central ideals that make any form of government a republican regime: Being unfree does not consist in being restrained; on the contrary, the restraint of a fair system of law—a non-arbitrary regime—does not make you unfree. Being unfree consists rather in being subject to arbitrary sway: being subject to the potentially capricious will or the potentially idiosyncratic judgment of another. Freedom involves emancipation from any such subordination, liberation from any such dependency. It requires the capacity to stand eye to eye with your fellow citizens, in a shared awareness that none of you has a power of arbitrary interference over another. (5) This formulation illuminates the essence of republicanism within the long eighteenth century. As a political thought, it was far less about the organization of a particular ruling structure and far more about the degree to which a citizen was free or unfree from apparently arbitrary control by another citizen or ruler. Republicanism, then, did not rely on democracy whole-heartedly. While democratic nations did begin to spring up around the Atlantic in the long eighteenth century, it was not necessary in order to foster a republican community. Pettit explains this also, stating: While the republican tradition finds value and importance in democratic participation, it does not treat it as a bedrock value. Democratic participation may be essential to the republic, but that is because it is necessary for promoting the enjoyment of freedom as non-domination, not because of its independent attractions: not because freedom, as a positive conception would suggest, is nothing more or less than the right of democratic participation. (8) Democracy as a concept does not sustain the republican impulse. Democracy may need republican concepts in order to function as a democracy, but republicanism is not as dependent on democratic organization. Pettit’s formulations make an argument for viewing republicanism as a concept that can exist in various forms of government across time and place rather than occurring only in the confines of a particular government organization. Republicanism by this definition is solely about non-domination and liberty in relation to a government in which the

citizens can enact such freedom. In order to be a republican community it was not necessary to be within a democratic national structure. It only required citizens within a community to conceive of their relationship to their government as one predicated upon liberty and the absence of arbitrary rule. Although the republican impulse stems in large part from the Roman tradition of thought, British history and political events prior to and within the long eighteenth century are largely responsible for the establishment of republican communities throughout the British Atlantic World. Most notably, the English Civil War and the establishment of the English Commonwealth in the mid-seventeenth century had a major impact on the promotion and reliance on republican forms of political thought in the long eighteenth century. The revolutionary beginnings of a republican impulse in the British Atlantic were further extended by the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolutions, respectively. Historian Eliga H. Gould’s essay, “Revolution and Counter-Revolution,” argues for viewing these three revolutionary moments within a circum-Atlantic framework, particularly as they relate to the spread of political rights and theories throughout the eighteenth century. Gould’s argument maintains that while many see the revolutions as a break with Britain, such encounters and wars helped establish a bond that was not completely dependent upon national structures or politics. Gould asserts that “the British nation was a polity ‘forged’ by war and revolution, however, it was one whose libertarian underpinnings commanded broad allegiance” (222). While not officially pointing to the republican roots and responses to such revolutionary actions, Gould’s argument bolsters the claim that republican communities formed despite of and within various national and local formations. The connectivity of republican ideals fostered by revolutions created communities around the British Atlantic that were not bound by ties of nationhood, but by ties of republican concepts of liberty and freedom created and sustained by revolutionary engagement. Because of these revolutions, the British Atlantic World was not strengthened solely under a single government system, but rather through a way in which governments began to be conceived of by their citizens in relation to the freedoms promised during and after government reorganization or outright revolt. While the revolutions throughout the British Atlantic did much to unify republican communities, popular political philosophers provided additional connections throughout the system. The thinker most often associated with revolutionary ideas and the emphasis of the rights

of man in government organization is John Locke, specifically his Two Treatises of Government . First published in 1690, Two Treatises formulates a theory regarding the natural rights and liberty of men and the relationship men (or more aptly citizens) should hold to their government. This work, although not immediately popular upon its first appearance, did become an important text in the continual arguments for the merits of liberal and republican political thought. 3 Locke set forth an idea of community cooperation and organization that was predicated upon concepts of unity and mutual benefit. Central to this reorganization of political relationships between citizen and state is the concept of consent. Consent, in Lockean terms, is the foundation of any polity of liberty, and it is exactly this issue of consent that both unified republican communities around the Atlantic World and offered women a voice in republican formations which were often thought to deny their participation. Consent as a Political Speech Act Consent to a large extent is the epitome of what J. L. Austin terms a performative utterance. To consent is to both agree to something in language (be it written or spoken) as well as to perform that agreement with actions that correspond to the utterance. To either deny or give consent to a specific issue also gives the speaker a certain amount of power if the answer is recognized and upheld within the parameters of the speech act. In contemporary political discussions, the idea of consent as a speech act is most often related to legal issues such as sexual assault and federally endowed human-subject research. These political issues mix the moral and the legal, as consent as an act arises in areas where people must acknowledge and vocalize a particular stance within a given situation. In the long eighteenth century, this mix of the moral and the political became apparent in the various ways in which members of republican communities discussed and enacted consent in speech. John Locke’s theories regarding consent in Two Treatises of Government claimed this particular performative utterance as the founding act for all governments in the known world, bridging the gap between speech acts and political actions. Locke asserted that government is only formed through an individual’s consent to be governed, as “Men being, as has been said, by Nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this Estate, and subjected to the

3 Debate continues in regard to whether Locke should be considered a proponent of liberalism or republicanism. Although I am aware of the arguments surrounding this issue, my basis for placing Locke within a republican context is supported by Phillip Pettit’s assertions in Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government , which maintains that liberalism and republicanism share a common theoretical bond that do not make them mutually exclusive concepts within a given political philosophy.

Political Power of another, without his own consent” (330). The formulation of consent as the foundational force behind all systems of government in general, and republican practices in particular, centralized the act of consent within politics. Locke’s insistence on relating consent and politics spread across the British Atlantic World system. Gillian Brown’s The Consent of the Governed traces the legacy of Locke’s political philosophies within colonial America and the early republican era while claiming that such theories emerged all around the Atlantic. Focusing specifically on the concepts of consent within Locke’s work, Brown asserts that the idea of political power and right deriving only from the consent of the governed was “A commonplace in the British imagination” (4) throughout the eighteenth century. From these British roots, the idea of consent travelled across the sea along with other republican models of citizenship and rights. Consent became the backbone of such discourse, and republican communities that began to appear took this speech act seriously within their political discourse and actions. It is important to note that as the issue of consent became paramount within republican community formations, the political and philosophical importance of public opinion began to rise. Intimately connected to the idea of consent within political thought is the idea of opinion, as consent was expressed best through the opinions of citizens. David Hume’ 1756 essay, “Of the First Principles of Government,” offers one pertinent example of opinion and consent used interchangeably in the eighteenth century. Discussing a government’s general ability to retain control of a people, Hume states “As FORCE is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded” (32). While this assertion may seem to contradict the theory of Locke, it is actually in step with the importance of consent. Here the term consent is replaced by opinion, not because they have differing definitions within this context, but because they operate under similar meanings. Hume insists that opinion of either interest or right is the backbone of all governments, and this opinion operates along an axis of consent and denial that is formulated by Locke. Good opinion secures government because it is the consent of the governed, while bad opinion could lead to revolutions, much in the same way Locke asserts that revolution is necessary when consent is denied or stifled. As the issue of consent became related to the voicing of opinion, the overt vocalization of opinion became the barometer for political consent within republican communities. Whether in written or spoken form, opinion and acts of consent became the means through which citizens in

these communities could assert their republican rights to their rulers, be they at home or abroad. However, opinions and consent both vary, as did the ways in which various individuals within a republican community were allowed access to particular modes or topics of consent. Although there are many different groups where consent was controlled by republican impulses, this study focuses on the voices available to women at this time. Consent as a political issue may have been denied to women by particular types of citizenry within republican communities, but consent as a speech act within the realms of love, marriage and sex were considered the providence of women in the long eighteenth century. Women could not overtly assert their political consent or denial in an acceptable way within republican communities; however, the social aspect of consent connected women to issues of government rule while giving them a common belief from which to extend their female political agency. By adhering to the ideas of systematic assent, women who discussed consent or denial in the areas where their authority was not challenged were able to express ideas of consent that could extend beyond prescribed limits. Scholars such as Gillian Brown argue that “the fact that some individuals, because of gender or race, do not get to embody and manifest any cultural authority exposes the partiality in the operation of consent” (125). While such arguments may hold true in relation to racial exclusion or within the realm of overt political discourse, women held cultural authority in a number of areas which allowed their use of consent or denial to be transferred into a form of female political agency. Certain political philosophers extolled consent as the right of men and men alone; however, the text that made consent a central issue within political discourse also offered women an entrance into both social and political aspects of consent. Locke defines marriage as a “Conjugal Society […] made by a voluntary Compact between Man and Woman” (319). Both man and woman must consent to marriage and both must also consent to be governed, so that the voluntary act of consent or denial is extended to all people and given a prominent place in the way in which community governments were established and maintained. When women consented to marriage or sex within the confines of captivity, the idea of consent itself became connected to issues of freedom and choice, two of the foundational elements of a republican politic. The trope of female captivity intersects with the republican community discourse on consent and freedom in an effort to express the ways women did have voice in the community and overtly acted out their consent or denial within captive situations regardless of threat or

menace from captors. The use of this trope allowed captive consent to become a metaphor for the republican communities attempted exclusion of women from political discourse. Nonetheless, much like the reality of political discourse within a community, the consent of the captive could not be successfully controlled or stifled even when the consequences appeared dire. Captive Consent There are two dominant ways in which consent/denial are continually referenced in representations of female captivity within republican communities. The first is through the act of consenting or denying marriage. In Charlotte Lennox’s The Life of Harriot Stuart and Mary Prince’s slave narrative, the narrating female captive within the text positions herself against political and social structures through her consent or denial to marriage. It is through these scenes in which women voice their privilege to choose their marriage partner that a connection between the consent to marry and the consent to be governed by a particular structure is expressed. The second instance of consent/denial used within representations of female captivity is the captive’s attempts to consent or deny the sexual advances of their captors. Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Jemima Howe’s captivity narrative show women using words to deny the sexual advances of their captors and express how closely these words relate to prevalent political commentary and result in solid political action. The issue of consent and denial within these texts which employ the trope of female captivity exemplify how republican impulses lead to a female political agency based in the dual political and social issues of marriage and sex, as representations of female captives in the British Atlantic expose the fact that while women appeared to hold precarious positions within republican communities because of the political discourse of exclusion, their role as wives, fiancées and potential sexual partners in such communities enabled their access to the republican discourses of liberty and consent. All of these instances position consent as a verbal expression and reveal the natural political rights of women, resulting in examples of female political agency. For consent to function as a speech act within the trope of female captivity, it must be representative of a choice made by such captives. In order for consent to be a true act (in the sense that it functions as an act and is not a falsified or coerced instance of consent) it must be facilitated by an actual choice made by the individual consenting. In “Understanding Acts of Consent: Using Speech Act Theory to Help Resolve Moral Dilemmas and Legal Disputes,”

Monica Cowart positions choice as the central issue that defines consent as a speech act which must always function along an axis of both the ability to choose and to express such choices in language. “Willingly giving one’s permission implies that the agent had a choice to make […] Therefore, an act of consent can only be defined as such if the agent also had the opportunity to forbid the act, but simply chose not to. In essence, I can only be said to give consent if I could have also potentially denied consent” (514). It may at first seem contradictory to contend that the issue of choice is paramount within a framework that involves captivity; however, the fact that captives are given a choice, and exercise such choices, underscores the cultural authority women had in the realms of marriage and sex. By showing captives performing consent in language in reference to these social institutions, the author’s employing the trope of female captivity assert that women’s voices, inside and outside of captivity in both a real or metaphoric sense, have social and political power within the republican communities that value consent as a political action. However, as women could not vocally assert their political consent or denial in an acceptable way, the social aspect of consent, specifically as it pertained to marriage and sex, connected women to the political aspects of this issue while giving them a common community belief from which to extend their female political agency. Adhering to the ideas of systematic assent, women discussed consent or denial in the areas where their authority was not challenged and were able to express ideas of consent that could extend beyond the limits that were prescribed. Captive Marriage Locke’s equation of marriage as a consensual arrangement shows how marriage as an institution was employed as a political metaphor to discuss the vital role consent and denial played within republican communities, and the use of marriage within narratives became a space where women’s political voices could be easily observed. Although speaking primarily about Restoration era England, scholar Victoria Kahn explores the importance of the marriage contract metaphor to political discourse as well as its use in fiction written in this time period. Kahn asserts the use of the marriage contract metaphor in Restoration romances as a point through which authors made political commentary, explicitly connecting the ideas of social and political consent. As Kahn claims, this metaphor works in literature only because it was so prolific in political discourse. The conflation of political relationships to those of the marriage bond made the use of marriage within literary texts a thinly veiled metaphor that echoed the ongoing

political discourse of the time. The most interesting factor regarding the use of marriage as figurative language is the idea that it held within itself vast and contradictory arguments for a variety of political stances. While political groups began to discontinue allusions to the marriage contract because of this ambiguity, its use in literary texts expanded precisely because of this fact. She states, “Almost by definition, then, marriage contracts posed questions regarding the relation of coercion and consent, conflicts regarding obedience to one’s own conscience and one’s superior, whether one’s father or husband” (534). The ability for the marriage metaphor to extend so easily into the realm of the metaphorically political and to tackle such issues of consent, choice, and allegiance allowed marriage to represent an array of positions and beliefs within a wide variety of communities. While Kahn’s arguments highlight the use of this metaphor within Restoration England, her assertions clearly extend to republican communities existing around the British Atlantic World throughout the long eighteenth century. To ground consent within the realm of marriage facilitated the captive female’s political agency and exposed the power speech had in enabling women to become political agents in the long eighteenth century. Additionally, the use of the marriage metaphor within the trope of captivity drew attention to the process by which social and political consent merged for women within this particular area. By focusing on captives who did or did not consent to marriage while in captivity, authors revealed the ways in which marriage in the long eighteenth century could be seen as either a domineering or liberating action. Female captives in such texts, given the choice to consent or deny marriage, underscored the social and political implications of such choices while enforcing the idea that even captive women (in reality or metaphorically) had the natural right to consent. Works such as The Life of Harriot Stuart and Mary Prince’s narrative are prime examples of how the trope of female captivity employed consent through the issue of marriage to demonstrate the ways in which female political agency functioned and thrived around the British Atlantic. Charlotte Lennox’s 1751 debut novel, The Life of Harriot Stuart Written by Herself , is a text that nicely exemplifies many of the pertinent issues in this study. Receiving little scholarly attention in comparison with her more famous novel, The Female Quixote , Lennox’s first novel has mainly been used by scholars to discuss the little known facets of the author’s life. Believed to be partly autobiographical and partly fictional, Harriot Stuart has a critical history that is overwhelmingly centered on the life of Charlotte Lennox rather than the adventures of the

novel’s heroine. 4 As this present study focuses solely on the trope of female captivity, the debates surrounding the nature of Lennox’s life are not important to the discussion here. However, Susan K. Howard’s essay “Identifying the Criminal in Charlotte Lennox’s The Life of Harriot Stuart ” is helpful as it offers a reading of this text in connection with the Indian captivity narrative tradition. Terming this use of the Indian captivity narrative as a new “literary convention” (137) within the confines of the novel, Howard argues that Lennox utilized convention in an effort to use the established European civilized/savage dichotomy against itself and expose the “civilized man’s savagery” (141) inherent in hierarchical relations between European men and women. She goes on to claim that the power of such novels and narratives was in allowing women the space to “make sense of their feelings of imprisonment” (147) on a literal and figurative level. While Howard’s argument is a valuable link in investigating the trope of female captivity present within this often overlooked novel, her argument hits upon a point that needs further illumination. The argument that women were prisoners in both a real and a metaphorical sense in connection to their relationships with men requires that an identifiable, imprisoning mechanism be discussed. What Howard fails to investigate, and what I would like to discuss further, is how the issues of captivity, consent and marriage are interwoven in this text, and many others that employ the trope of female captivity in this time period. Texts which drew on the trope of female captivity as it connected to marriage and consent not only pointed out the ways in which consent to marriage could be seen as an imprisoning practice, but also the ways in which consent or denial of marriage connected female captives to a particular mode of political agency. Harriot Stuart is presented as an epistolary rendering of Stuart’s life written by herself and intended for a female friend, establishing female speech as dominant. Consent to marriage and sex abound in the text, and the ways in which Harriot negotiates her power to consent reveals the ways in which women were represented as using speech acts to gain female political agency. The first issue of consent comes early in the novel, as Harriot falls in love with the dashing Captain Belmein, but Belmein’s father refuses the match and Harriot’s father refuses as

4 Scholarly studies concerned with the autobiographical nature of Harriot Stuart include Phillipe Sejourne’s The Mysteries of Charlotte (1967), Dale Spender’s Mothers of the Novel (1986), and Susan Kubica Howard’s introduction to the 1995 reprint of Lennox’s novel. While scholars continually disagree on the validity of such autobiographical claims, the contestation still encompasses the majority of critical attention devoted to this particular text. Thorell Porter Tsomondo’s The Not So Blank “Blank Page” (2007) discusses this critical debate and its impact on scholarship surrounding the work at length.

well. Mr. Stuart then tries to force Harriot into a marriage to the detestable Mr. Maynard, but just before she is to be married without her consent Belmein captures her, dressed as and accompanied by a group of Mohawks, in the hopes to have her consent to a clandestine marriage with him. She refuses his advances and escapes with her honor and virtue intact. Upon being recovered by her brother after her escape, she receives a letter from her father, who is overjoyed by her refusal of her captor/lover: “It is not enough to tell you, my dear child, that I approve your conduct: I shall love and esteem you the better for it as long as I live. You may depend upon the promise I now give you, that you shall suffer no more uneasiness upon Mr. Maynard’s account. I could wish, indeed, that gentleman was less disagreeable to you; but since you know so well how to maintain the honor of your family, I will wave the consideration of your interest, to leave your inclination absolutely free.” (57) In this instance, Harriot’s power to deny consent, which had previously been disregarded by her father, is the one thing that saves the honor of herself and her family. Her denial in her speeches to her original lover is the means through which her power of consent is finally recognized by her father. This act reveals the fact that the power to consent had always rested in Harriot herself, as it was her actions while a captive separated from the men who attempted to control her that establish consent for or against marriage as her prerogative in speech and deed. While she refused marriage to her first love, she claimed he did not save her from an unwanted marriage, as Harriot asserted, “I never would have been the wife of Maynard: I would have avoided that misfortune without consenting to a flight, which must irreparably wound my reputation” (47). Harriot’s first encounter with love, marriage and captivity show consent was a complicated issue for women at this time. Locke’s assertions maintain that all people have the power to consent within themselves as free and independent humans, but Harriot’s father’s inattentiveness toward her consent to marriage in reference to Maynard stresses the expectation that women were to relinquish their consent to the will of the men in their lives. Harriot’s negotiations between consent and denial in this instance not only illustrated that she alone had the true power to consent to marriage, but also that the acts of consent or denial for a woman led to freedom. Because her father saw her denial as paramount and right within her captivity, he relinquished any claim on that power. Harriot is then recognized as having the freedom to

consent or refuse, and this recognition leads to a realization that she is an independent, sovereign subject with natural rights. Claiming her independence and freedom, Harriot’s speech and actions gave her agency and position within the private space of the community, but because marriage is a private and legal matter, it also extended her into the political spaces often regarded as being closed to women. Her consent and refusal in marriage exposed how consent is inherent for both men and women, and can extend to political and social spaces in the community. The fact that her first lover/captor, the man that she refused, is the son of the governor of the American colony in which she resides also illuminates this claim. By refusing him, she is refusing a connection to his father and by extension the government which he represents. Consent to or denial of marriage ties Harriot to the political workings of the colonial system and exposes her inherent freedom to consent/deny and critique government, as she continually comments on “the governor’s avarice” (29) in connection to his immediate refusal of her as a daughter-in-law, establishing that greed is a mark of his political associations. The fact the Harriot’s father refuses the match because his own pride is wounded by the governor shows that Harriot takes a political stance in deciding to maintain a connection to her father rather than forging a new relationship with the governor’s family. While the governor showed a continued “inveterate malice” (30) toward a possible connection between his son and the officer’s daughter, this malice, related “in very disrespectful terms” (29), exposed to Harriot the loyalty denied to her by her ruling government, making her choice to consent or deny an issue both of love and politics within the torrid relational web encompassing her, Belmein, the New York governor and her father. By siding with her father against the connections offered by the governor’s son but also opposing her father in his wish for her to marry Mr. Maynard, Harriot asserts her right to choose her marriage partner for herself, regardless of the consequences or her status as a captive female. Thorell Porter Tsomondo’s The Not So Blank “Blank Page:” The Politics of Narrative and the Woman Narrator in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century English Novel discusses Harriot Stuart at length in connection to issues of narrative authority for female narrators. While the argument of Tsomondo’s text centers around issues of narrative technique and genre, a number of assertions made within the work apply to the issues of consent, marriage, captivity and agency discussed thus far. In particular, Tsomondo maintains that at the heart of Harriot Stuart is a

conflict between the patriarchal strictures of chastity and virtue and the presence of a female resistance to these social constraints. Stated succinctly, “On the one hand, Lennox writes a tale of female virtue tried and vindicated, a story undeniably observant of patriarchally [sic] authorized guidelines […] At the same time, one detects in Lennox’s rendition signs of resistance to the cultural demands of the patriarchal script” (41). Tsomondo’s assertions extend not only into the realm of narratology, but also to the issue inherent in this scene of captivity. The fact that Harriot simultaneously fulfills and ignores the wishes of her father in this instance reveals that consent is the hinge on which Tsomondo’s revelation of acceptance and resistance operates. Harriot is forced to obey her father only so far, as long as her consent is fully recognized, which underscores the fact that as a member of a republican community, she has the right to acquiesce and deny where she sees fit in connection to those that supposedly rule her life. Just like a political leader, Harriot’s father only is to be obeyed as long as Harriot consents to his demands. Mr. Stuart’s social power over Harriot does not trump her community-established rights to liberty, and her vocal assertions of her power to consent and deny marriage affirms the political agency women have within a republican system. While marriage may be the metaphorical captivity that critics such as Howard discuss in connection to Harriot Stuart , this particular instance of marriage and captivity argues that consent or denial in a social setting mimics the political liberty and voice offered women within republican-based communities. Lennox’s text may contradict issues of marriage as captivity in certain ways, but this is by no means the only representation of marriage within the trope of female captivity. Additionally, fictional representations of captivity were not the only areas where marriage metaphors were used. It is important to note that captivity was a reality for many women in the British Atlantic World at this time. Whether captured by American Indians or Barbary pirates, women faced the dangers of real captive situations in everyday life. One captive reality that affected a large section of women at this time was slavery. While slaves, women of African descent were exposed to harsh realities and treatment, all while enduring a legalized captive existence. The experiences of slave women, written and spoken, were circulated around the Atlantic World just as their bodies were circulated through the slave trade. The 1831 slave narrative, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave , is an autobiographical account of one women’s experience of captivity in slavery, and within this account the voicing of consent

and the institution of marriage serve as a spring board from which Prince can assert herself within a republican community and establish her right to liberty. In many ways, the creation of the British Atlantic and the sustained popularity of the captivity narrative were facilitated by the British Atlantic slave trade and the slave narratives later produced by the Africans forced within this system. 5 From the early seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, British involvement in the slave trade accounted for approximately fifty percent of the slave traffic across the Atlantic. The rapid economic boom of Barbados and other colonies in the British Caribbean post 1625 marked the rise in British investment in the institution of slavery and made the British plantation model of slavery the template for all slave- holding communities in the Atlantic region (Oldfield 489). On the other hand, the British Abolitionist movement was influential in the Atlantic, and the abolition of the slave trade and the general institution of slavery in England marked the beginning of the decline of slavery throughout the British Atlantic World. 6 Much of the debate surrounding slavery at this time is not surprising if one considers the influence the republican tradition had within various communities around the British Atlantic, as ideas of liberty, natural rights and justice were continually constructed and revised to include only certain subjects who could be deemed citizens. While white men were often considered the sole bearers of republican rights and liberty on a broad scale, arguments were continually made to include marginalized groups excluded based on gender, race or ethnicity. Connecting a slave tradition with the republican tradition dominating many slave holding (and condoning) communities in the British Atlantic World reiterates the inclusion through exclusion process often found at the heart of republican discourse. These debates also fuel the ways in which scholars today consider a person as captive within this system. Although scholars more often than not focus on the experiences of white women in captivity, it is important to remember that slave narratives employ the trope of female captivity to express very real and institutionalized instances of captivity that appeared to flourish in the long eighteenth century. In fact, one is hard pressed to find a slave narrative, authored or

5 Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic comments at length on the connection between a circum-Atlantic community and the slave trade system established in the early modern era, which he argues is the driving force behind the creation of the modern world as a whole. 6 The acts of British parliament that effectively ended slavery throughout the Atlantic regions of the British Empire were the Abolition Act of 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

dictated by a man or woman that does not include extensive commentary regarding the treatment of female slaves within the system. Scholars such as Rafia Zafar and Michelle Burnham have linked slave and captivity narratives, but few insist on making such a connection standard practice. 7 To discuss captivity in connection to the British Atlantic during the long eighteenth century without commenting on representations of slavery is to ignore a harsh historical reality and the important general literary impact of the slave narrative. Both the historical realities of slavery and the slave narrative are often discussed as concerns only for African Americanists, while history and literature mandate that such institutions and texts participated in a far more fluid process of exchange and influence that had a much broader effect on the on the New and Old Atlantic World. Taking a wider look at the impact of the slave narrative in the British Atlantic World, while not confining it solely to the question of race, broadens both the conception of the trope of captivity and the influence of the institution of slavery in a wide variety of areas in eighteenth century life. In a general sense, most scholars dealing with slave narratives highlight the importance of writing in connection to the ideas of liberty and humanity associated with these texts. Henry Louis Gates, Jr asserts that learning and the demonstration of such learning is the foundation and force behind Enlightenment-era slave narratives, as “the production of literature was taken to be the central arena in which persons of African descent could establish and redefine their status within the human community [because] Black people, the evidence suggests, had to represent themselves as ‘speaking subjects’ before they could begin to destroy their status as objects, as commodities, within Western culture” (2). Although the main assertion is that writing ability and literacy helped connect African slaves to a Western humanist tradition, the emphasis on “speaking subjects” within this argument should not be overlooked, nor the more contemporary feminist/womanist scholarly belief that experiential knowledge is just as valid as classical or cognitive knowledge. 8 Gates asserts that in order to establish an African slave connection to the

7 Rafia Zafar’s We Wear the Mask explicitly connects an African American slave narrative tradition to a white American captivity narrative tradition while Michelle Burnham’s Captivity and Sentiment (1997) includes a chapter that outlines the ways in which Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl operates within the same liminal cultural frame as other works often grouped together as captivity narratives. 8 Feminist theories dealing with epistemology have investigated the importance to experiential knowledge since the 1970s. Mary Jeanne Larrabee’s “‘I Know What a Slave Knows:’ Mary Prince’s Epistemology of Resistance” (2006) clearly outlines the history of divergent epistemological theories, including feminist standpoint theory, in order to illustrate the importance of knowledge gained through experience in Prince’s narrative specifically and slave narratives in general.

Enlightenment, former slaves had to physically write their own texts, asserting their knowledge and thus their Cartesian connection to humanity. However, it is important to note that Gates struggles with the link between the oral and the written in Black Atlantic slave texts while he attempts to assert the dominance of writing over speaking or literacy over experience. The struggle within Gate’s analysis concerning Atlantic slave narratives of the eighteenth century is both a struggle against the continual assertion of Cartesian logic and knowledge as well as the ways in which written and spoken language are often viewed as distinct entities. If, as outlined in the introduction, the written and the spoken are valued as the same within a language community, the voice of the slave written by him or herself or dictated to an editor can be viewed as equally valued. Such equal value given to language in all forms makes a strong case for also valuing community-based experiential knowledge within a given text. Mary Prince asserts “I know what a slave knows” (11) while also discussing her steps toward literacy, thereby exposing the mixture of voice, experiential knowledge, and education that make up a slave’s story of captivity. Mary Prince’s slave narrative is a recitation of the story of her life as a slave to a female abolitionist. Within the rendition, Prince reveals the multiple horrors of the institution of slavery, including horrific scenes of violence, all in an effort to promote the cause of freedom. The avowed purpose of the narrative is to present the reality of slavery in an effort to abolish the institution and gain freedoms for the African descendents forced to live a life of captivity, as “All slaves want to be free - - to be free is very sweet” (23). In relating the story of the slave, Prince also relates the stories of her various masters, and her narrative abounds with commentary regarding their behavior in light of a republican idea of liberty and freedom. Within this commentary, Prince discusses white marriage and slave marriage, effectively juxtaposing her liberty or confinement with that of her masters. By focusing on marriage and consent to marriage in the text, Prince reveals the natural rights of liberty and humanity that are held by slaves in an effort to argue that the captivity of slavery is unnatural within republican communities. In order to establish her eventual marriage as a true act of consent and freedom, Prince first establishes the confinement marriage in general can inflict on women in all walks of life. The harsh marriage between her first master and mistress is related at the beginning of the narrative:

My master […] was a very harsh, selfish man; and we always dreaded his return from sea. His wife was herself much afraid of him; and during his stay at home, seldom dared to shew her usual kindness to the slaves. He often left her, in most distressed circumstances, to reside in other female society, at some place in the West Indies of which I have forgot the name. My poor mistress bore his ill- treatment with great patience, and all her slaves loved and pitied her. (1) Unlike The Life of Harriot Stuart , Prince’s narrative begins with a real account of marriage as a form of captivity for a white woman. Her mistress’s treatment is “harsh” even by the reckoning of a slave that is exposed to violence and aggression on a regular basis within her own captivity. Here, it appears that she and her mistress share a form of captivity, although on a different level. She may be white and free, but the mistress is regularly moved about and mistreated to the point that that those in bondage “pitied her” despite their own position as captives. By relating this story of a white marriage, Prince is establishing marriage as a possible form of captivity and thus attempting to relate her experiences as a slave to those women who feel confined within their marriages. Such a rhetorical move is emphasized in an effort to establish empathy in an audience that Prince wishes to persuade. Marriage at this point, used as a clear form of captivity for the wife, is not viewed as a consensual or freeing action. There is no choice presented for the mistress who must endure the harsh temper and treatment of the master on an similar level with her slaves, at least as Prince positions the situation in her rendition of this marital relationship. However, this is not the only representation of marriage given within the text. Prince herself marries a free black man while she lives as a slave owned by Mr. and Mrs. Wood. In describing her marriage, she clearly recounts both her consent to the union and the effect it had on her master and mistress: Some time after I began to attend the Moravian Church, I met Daniel James, afterwards my dear husband […] When he asked me to marry him, I took time to consider the matter over with myself, and would not say yes til he went to church with me and joined the Moravians. […] We were joined in marriage, about Christmas 1826, in the Moravian Chapel at Spring Gardens, by the Rev. Mr. Olufsen. We could not be married in the English Church. English marriage is not allowed to slaves, and no free man can marry a slave woman. When Mr. Wood heard of my marriage, he flew into a great rage […] Mrs. Wood was more vexed

about my marriage than her husband. She could not forgive me for getting married, but stirred up Mr. Wood to flog me dreadfully with the horsewhip. I thought it very hard to be whipped at my time of life for getting a husband - - I told her so. (17-18) In this passage, Prince asserts her right to consent on a variety of levels. First, she claims to consider her marriage proposal, and even reveals a few stipulations that accompany her consent. The fact that she does evaluate the offer of marriage exposes that she has the power to consent to this relationship and that no person (including Daniel or Mr. and Mrs. Woods) can either force or overrule her answer to the proposal. The most revealing aspect of this passage, however, is her consent despite established law or captive force. She readily admits that she and Daniel are wed even though it is contrary to English law. As a slave she is forbidden by the legal system to enter into marriage, presumably because as a slave she is legally denied the right to consent to any type of contractual agreement. She ignores this legal mandate and marries regardless, underscoring that the fact that as a human with natural rights law cannot hinder her ability to consent within a republican community. Because there is an established way in which the slave and freeman can bypass this law, it appears clear that the community in which she lives acknowledges her right to consent even if the law forbids such action. By saying yes and proceeding with the marriage ceremony, Prince freely asserts her right as a consenting individual within a republican community, particularly the republican right to openly defy a political system that is tyrannical or in breech of natural human rights. The reactions of Mr. and Mrs. Woods further this assertion of rights, as they are unable to undo the consent that Mary has given. In the face of verbal abuse and the threat of physical violence, Prince vocalizes her consent directly to Mrs. Woods and declares clearly that her right to consent to marriage is not void because of her position as a captive slave. This argument is intensified in the text by the fact that Mary continues to remain married in spite of the anger of her master and mistress. Prince’s narrative brings to light her position as a bearer of republican notions of individual freedom through her act of consenting to marriage. Because both the law and her masters/captors cannot stifle her consent to marriage, Prince is established as an individual with the power to consent. Her ability to consent to marriage can then be extended to her powers of political consent, as her marriage itself is a political action because of its disregard for the social and political power of the law. Unlike the

first marriage discussed in the text, Mary is not made a prisoner through her union with Daniel. On the contrary, Prince asserts her own freedom and political agency through her marriage while a slave. The horrors of slavery and the lack of freedom within slavery cannot be ignored, but Prince exposes at least one way in which slaves can act as free individuals within a republican community. The History of Mary Prince argues that for a captive slave, marriage offers a way in which female political agency can be clearly voiced and enacted even as the institution of slavery and the political backing of the slave system would maintain that slaves have no access to any form of political agency or rights. At first glance, The Life of Harriot Stuart and The History of Mary Prince are extremely different texts. One is presented as fiction and the other is clearly autobiographical. One details the fictional hardships of a white woman in America and England as the other exposes the horror of a black female slave in the Caribbean. Although these and many other disparities exist between the two texts, the fact that both use the trope of female captivity to comment on the ways in which consent to marriage exposes female political agency within their communities is an important link. As both the fictional Harriot Stuart and the real Mary Prince voice their consent or denial to marriage within their differing experiences of captivity, both illustrate that regardless of a woman’s status as a captive, be it a real or a metaphorical instance of confinement based on gender position within a community, women have rights to liberty and political voice if they live within a community that is founded upon republican values. Captive Sex In order to bridge the gap between consent, republicanism, sex and marriage in this chapter, it would be beneficial to discuss one of the most famous fictional female captives in the long eighteenth century, Pamela Andrews. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela , first published in two volumes in the winter of 1740, recounts the trials of a poor servant girl sexually harassed and kidnapped by her rakish master, Mr. B. Telling her story through letters to her parents, even after she knows they will not have the opportunity to read these productions, Pamela defies the sexual advances of Mr. B in words to his face and words on the page, and this verbal resistance is one of the most striking features of Pamela’s story. While critics such as Thomas Keymer claim her “resistance is passive at best,” it is also acknowledged that “Pamela’s reluctance to act is far outweighed by her readiness to speak and write” (vii). What is central in such claims is that past scholars refused to acknowledge speech/writing as a form of active resistance that could

enable agency. However, within the confines of this project, it is exactly Pamela’s speech that enables her agency while in captivity. Pamela herself assert this fact in a conversation to Mr. B, claiming “And what is left me but Words? And can these Words be other than such strong ones” (210). She finds strength in the words she uses in writing and speech while a captive, and it is interesting that the trope of female captivity is used here to mark the important recourse women have to words when confronted with the sexually licentious nature of rakish men. Pamela’s strong words are used continually in an effort to deny Mr. B’s lust for her, effectively withholding her consent to a sexual relationship with a man far above her in wealth and rank. Both a real captive in his household and a metaphorical captive to his social and political power, Pamela returns to her words to assert that despite her captive situation, Mr. B’s power ends when it is her consent that is required. When offered a position as his kept mistress, Pamela’s reply enforces her ability to consent and deny and expresses her resistance to a social and political power that would attempt to strip her of that republican right. “I know, Sir, by woeful Experience, that I am in your Power; I know all the Resistance I can make will be poor and weak, and perhaps stand me in little stead: I dread your Will to ruin me is great as your Power: Yet, Sir, will I dare to tell you, that I will make no Free-will Offering of my Virtue” (190). In spite of a number of violent threats and failed rape attempts by Mr. B, Pamela’s words win in the end, effectively turning the aristocratic libertine into a convert to her virtue. By the second volume of the novel, Mr. B has pledged a pure love and devotion to the virtuous captive and even marries the woman without hesitation despite her rank and wealth. With her marriage Pamela exclaims “My Prison is become my Palace” (349), and her refusal to consent to sex leads to a virtuous consent to marriage, a release from her captive circumstances, and an elevation in social and economic status that asserts her moral immobility led to a real social, economic and political mobility through a free choice in marriage. As a person within a republican-based community, Pamela’s captivity allows her to voice her denial regardless of social distinction or economic power, and in so doing she proves her agency as a republican citizen with the right to consent or deny sex or marriage based on her virtue. This question of virtue and right, however, is the central crux of issues of captivity and sexual consent within republican communities. As new concepts of gender roles and spheres of influence based on gender emerged, what was deemed socially and morally acceptable in terms of female sexuality became more confined. Karen Harvey’s “The Century of Sex?” outlines a

trend in historiography that marks the long eighteenth century 9 as the specific turning point for changing concepts of gender and sexuality, most of which revolved around reimaging female desire as passive rather than aggressive. Harvey contends that this trend was especially prevalent in literature at the time, claiming that “Print culture [… as] social policy constructed femininity as victimhood, and masculinity as sexual irresponsibility” (910). Tim Hitchcock echoes these arguments in his essay, “Redefining Sex in Eighteenth-Century England,” by asserting that changing concepts of what was considered standard sexual activity also changed definitions of what was considered normal, masculine and feminine within sex, citing a move away from mutual pleasure to a more phallo-centric sexuality focused on penetration only. Hitchcock claims “From being perceived as sexually aggressive […] women became sexually passive, their bodies a receptacle for the newly important sperm” (78). Both Harvey and Hitchcock seem to assert that the establishment of spheres of influence relegated women to a subservient role in the masculine/feminine relationship while changing concepts of “proper” sexuality bolstered such social and political thoughts. What neither Harvey nor Hitchcock comment upon is the idea that the sexually passivity expected, which created a seeming culture of victimhood, was often socially mandated by moral concepts of virtue and chastity at this time. To be a proper, chaste, and moral woman was to deny sexual desire and passively rebuff the sexually aggressive advances of men who just could not control their desires. This connection between virtue and female sexuality is something that is also important to the republican tradition. The rape and suicide of Lucretia, the founding myth for the Roman Republic and republicanism in general discussed earlier in this chapter, highlights this connection. Lucretia’s virtue mandates that she does not consent to the sexual advances of the tyrannical Prince Tarquin; however, this same virtue appears to mandate her suicide after she is raped. For Lucretia, sexual virtue is paramount regardless of her status as a victim to both sexual and political tyranny. This myth appears to foreclose consent for women in a republican system, as their consent is not required and their virtue is not dependent upon consent or denial to a sexual act. The myth itself appears again and again throughout history in various republican communities, which would point to the idea that women may be used to create a republican system but could not fully participate in such a system; however, Lucretia is not the only female

9 Harvey defines the long eighteenth century as the period between 1650 and 1850. Although these demarcations do not specifically match the definition established in this study, the tradition of historical criticism that Harvey investigates do apply to the early seventeenth century as well.

figure employed to comment on women’s place within republican communities. Representations of female captives also appear, making a different argument regarding how consent to a virtuous female sexuality and republicanism offered women a place within the republican tradition of liberty and political agency. Aphra Behn’s 1688 Oroonoko in many ways mirrors the republican tradition of Lucretia. The central female captive, an African slave named Imoinda, willingly sacrifices herself toward the end of the text. Killed by her slave husband Oroonoko, Imoinda agrees to die in an effort to preserve her virtue from the punishment sure to follow Oroonoko’s failed rebellion. Like Lucretia before her, the idea of consent is only connected in this instance to her preservation of honor, as she consents to die in an effort to preserve her virtue. Yet, Imoinda’s experiences as a sexual captive to the King of her African nation in the first volume of the text exposes her political agency based on republican notions of consent that are present even within an absolute monarchy. Notwithstanding the fact that Imoinda remains a captive in one form or another throughout the majority of the text, or the sacrifice she makes of herself at the end of the text to ensure her virtue in the eyes of her husband, she continually uses speech to deny sex to the male captors and political leaders that would attempt to stifle her consent, thus revealing the place female speech has within the political system. Even as a loyalist writing in the English Restoration, Aphra Behn still drew from a republican tradition in political thought, but Behn’s republican impulses were steeped in a strong belief in the political power of monarchy. Scholarship abounds concerning Behn’s stance as a republican or anti-republican as it pertains to Oroonoko . Warren Chernaik’s “Captains and Slaves: Aphra Behn and the Rhetoric of Republicanism” firmly asserts Behn’s connection to a classical republicanism which “echo the rhetoric and the concerns of seventeenth-century republicans” (97) such as John Milton. On the other side of the argument, Elliot Visconi’s “A Degenerate Race: English Barbarism in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and The Widow Ranter ” claims that Behn’s political disillusionment in an English society that valued republicanism over monarchy resulted in her rendition of Englishmen as savages in the New World. These two works exemplify the scholarly debate surrounding the place of republicanism in Oroonoko ; however, the political and social reality of Behn’s world deserves a more nuanced understanding of her place within a republican tradition. To claim that Behn and Milton are comparable in their representation of republicanism is an extreme exaggeration of Behn’s stance within the

republican debates of late seventeenth century England. At the same time, to completely refute the idea that Behn had any interest or relationship with republican ideology is to ignore the way in which republicanism had insinuated itself into British consciousness by this point in time. A more apt consideration of the place of republicanism within Oroonoko would encompass an understanding of the way republican ideas concerning liberty and an individual’s place within political structures had come to influence all aspects of political thought in England, including those of royalists during the Restoration. Richard Kroll’s essay, “‘Tales of Love and Gallantry’: The Politics of ‘Oroonoko,’” comes closest to investigating the place of republicanism within Behn’s monarchical politics. Kroll openly agrees with Visconsi, stating Oroonoko was written as “a warning to the nation about the dire consequences of limiting the king’s power or rejecting him altogether” (578), which is a sound argument if one considers the royal representation of Oroonoko as a character and the moral consequences visited upon those characters in the text who refute his claim to a kingly or royal status. The equation of Oroonoko with the British monarchy works as a critique concerning the way in which monarchy is suppose to properly function, extending the commentary of the text not only to the British public but to the monarchy itself: “ Oroonoko is meant to function as a politically normative as well as, by the same token, an advisory text: the ideal of heroic kingship serves to legislate what the monarch is and what he should be” (582). This inherent evaluation of monarchy in Behn’s text highlights the fact that what a monarch should and could be had drastically changed due to the republican notions associated with the English Civil War and the Commonwealth. Although these political revolts and structures had failed, and monarchy had returned to England, it is clear that even royalists had been affected by the republican tradition that spread throughout England in the mid- seventeenth century. Behn and Milton might not be too similar in their relationship to republicanism, but it is true the Behn was politically influenced by a republican ideology that was propagated by radical republicans such as Milton. As Kroll eventually recognizes in his essay, “in the late seventeenth century, English royalism, far from being absolute in principle, could be a sophisticated theory about how power should be distributed in the state” (587). Such a claim drives to the heart of the place of republicanism within Oroonoko . It is clear that Behn sees royal claims to government as central within an effective political system, but at the same time, the monarch in charge of such a government must also be willing to function as a proper monarch with proper concern for

the liberty of his or her people. Oroonoko’s character exemplifies a heroic and righteous monarch that should lead a government; however, the African King from the first volume of the text represents the devastation and tyranny that can occur under an absolute monarch who disregards the natural and legal rights of his people. This is the point in which Imoinda’s captive speech becomes central, as her pleas to her king/captor demonstrate the way in which a good public should properly obey or defy their king when their liberty or consent are jeopardized within a particular political regime. Even as a staunch royalist, Behn still sees certain human rights as central, and as she existed within a community that valued monarchy and republican ideals, her use of the trope of female captivity in Oroonoko becomes her attempt to effectively blend the monarchical and republican values dominant across the British Atlantic World during this period. Imoinda is introduced to the narrative as a love interest for the heroic Prince Oroonoko while the two are still in Africa. After being secretly married, Oroonoko leaves Imoinda to lead a battle and it is during this time that the King, who is also Oroonoko’s grandfather, becomes infatuated with the beautiful Imoinda. Because she cannot reveal her secret marriage in fear of the retaliation that would befall Oroonoko, who did not seek the King’s blessing, Imoinda cannot help but obey the King’s summons to be a concubine in his court. Unbeknownst to Imoinda or Oroonoko, the King had already heard of the relationship between the two, and despite laws and custom that would stop even a king from breaking marriage vows, he decides to ignore the information given to him in order to satisfy his lust for the maiden. He rationalizes his actions solely through his reliance on the absolute authority of his position, as Oroonoko and Imoinda’s relationship “gave the old King some Affliction; but he salv’d it with this, that the Obedience the People pay their King, was not at all inferior to what they pay’d their Gods: And what Love wou’d not oblige Imoinda to do, Duty wou’d compel her to” (17-8). Like Tarquin before him, the African King as an absolute monarch becomes tyrannical and positions himself above the laws of the land in an effort to satisfy his lust. While he acts as a tyrant, Imoinda still complies with his demands as far as virtue can allow in an effort to remain a good subject to her King. Summoned to bathe with the King, Imoinda prepares to protect herself from his advances with the only weapon she has at her disposal while a sexual captive: Imoinda, all in Tears, threw her self on the Marble, on the Brink of the Bath, and besought him to hear her. She told him, as she was a Maid, how proud of the

Divine Glory she should have been of having it in her power to oblige her King: but as by the Laws, he cou’d not; and from his Royal Goodness, wou’d not take from any Man his wedded Wife: So she believ’d she shou’d be the Occasion of making him commit a great Sin, if she did not reveal her State and Condition; and tell him, she was anothers, and cou’d not be so happy to be his. (18) The King rages and denies her claim to marriage, but his refusal to believe her remarks only underscores her attempts to be a good and lawful subject under his tyrannical rule. Although she does not reveal the name of her husband, she clearly appeals to the King’s goodness and the laws of their land. Her refusal to consent to her place within the harem of the King, which is what positions her as a captive, is a refusal only because of her position as a law-abiding subject. The King’s disregard for the rights of her and her husband make him a bad monarch in the text as he refuses to uphold republican ideals of liberty within law. Imoinda manages to retain her virginity while captive to the King because of her ability to speak freely when forced to lay with him. “[The King] found that, however she was forc’d to expose her lovely Person to his wither’d Arms, she cou’d only sigh and weep there, and think of Oroonoko; and oftentimes cou’d not forbear to speaking of him […] But she spoke not of a Lover only, but of a Prince dear to him, to whom she spoke” (21). As a tyrant, the king still keeps Imoinda captive; however, her powers of speech to show the denial to his sexual advances, the royal glory of Prince Oroonoko, and the righteousness of the laws of his kingdom allow her to remain virtuous while in captivity. The King’s tyranny never truly ends in the text, as he eventually sells Imoinda into slavery because of her sexual relationship with Oroonoko, but his tyranny never leads to the satisfaction of his sexual desire for the maiden because of her ability to express her denial and her good citizenship while his captive. Imoinda’s tale does not lead to a release from captivity, and her story eventual ends in tragedy far from her African home. Nevertheless, her first captivity illustrates the proper behavior for a good monarchical citizen as she negates the power of her monarch only in an effort to uphold republican liberties and the laws of a kingdom. The African King is continually portrayed as a bad monarch, the converse of his noble grandson, and thus makes Imoinda’s acts of sexual refusal not an issue of disloyalty but an instance of attempting to uphold the righteousness of royal law. By explaining her lack of consent within the terms of law and juxtaposing the goodness of Oroonoko with the actions of his king/grandfather, Imoinda

manages to effectively employ her consent and her political agency even in an absolute monarchy. This power is extended into her life as a slave in the New World. When his master tells him the story of a beautifully intoxicating slave woman named Clemene, and before he discovers she is really Imoinda, Oroonoko wonders why his master does not just satisfy his sexual desire through rape. Trefy admits, “when I have, against her will, entertain’d her with Love so long, as to be transported with my Passion; even above Decency, I have been ready to make use of those advantages of Strength and Force Nature has given me. But oh! She disarms me, with that Modesty and Weeping so tender and so moving, that I retire, and thank my Stars she overcame me” (47). When Oroonoko and the reader discover that Clemene is Imoinda, neither are surprised at her ability to remain virtuous in light of her position because of her ability to verbally refute the African King earlier in the text. She may be like Lucretia in her sacrifice toward the end of her tale, but Imoinda’s use of law and righteousness in her verbal exchanges with her various captors show that her consent is still important in tyrannical situations. Imoinda consents to the government she is under by complying with her King’s commands, but also by denying his demands when they are antithetical to the ruling laws of the government. The sexual threats endured and escaped by characters such as Pamela and Imoinda may be fictional experiences, but it should be remembered that the threat of sexual assault was a reality for many women, and especially for those real captive women. Jemima Howe’s captivity narrative, published in Boston in 1792, in an autobiographical account of one woman’s captivity among Indians and the French during the Seven Years War. Howe recounts her experiences and hardships among her initial Indian captors, and in spite of enduring hunger, separation from her children and the threat of violence that dominated this period of her captivity, it is not until she is sold to a French family in Canada that the threat of sexual assault becomes prevalent. She avoids an assault on her virtue only though her conversations with a French governor. By asserting her right to consent or deny the sexual advances of her captors to a political figure, Howe claims a female political agency while still a captive of war, thus maintaining her republican rights during and after her captivity. Critically, Jemima Howe’s narrative is most often read as a testament to the affliction of mothers separated from children while in captivity or as a testament to the antagonistic

relationship between Indian captors and English captives. 10 In White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier , June Namias presents Howe as “a coy and flirtatious captive who might have had a little fun” (93) in an effort to present the possibilities offered to white women to explore their sexualities while captives. Even though this presents Howe as an agent attuned with her sexual desire, Namias does not mention the fact that the sexual advances of her captors are presented as unwanted within Howe’s narrative. Christopher Castiglia’s Bound and Determined offers a scholarly account of Howe’s experiences with sex in captivity that takes her refusal to consent into account. Castiglia claims that at first glance, Howe’s text and her body seem to be commodities passed from man to man, whether in her captive experience or in publication; however, Howe shows that the voice and agency of the captive “emerge in her critique of her treatment by both white and Indian men […] and in the very act of narrating her experience” (80). Because Castiglia uses Howe’s narrative as a framing example of the voice and agency available to white captive women in general, he does not expand upon the idea of consent and critique that he touches upon in this brief assessment of her narrative. Further investigation and analysis of the instance of sexual threat endured by Howe help support the general assertions Castiglia makes regarding her text and underscores the female political agency expressed in the trope of female captivity when a captive woman stands up and affirms her republican rights to consent or deny. In this narrative, Howe is abducted from her American colonial home in Vermont by Indians and eventually sold to the French in Canada as a prisoner of war. While a captive here, she is placed as a servant to a French family, where she is sexually harassed by both the father and son. She claims: The good old man himself, who considered me his property, and likewise a warm and resolute son of his, at the same time, and under the same roof, became both excessively fond of my company; so that between these two rivals, the father and the son, I found myself in a very critical situation indeed, and was greatly embarrassed and perplexed, hardly knowing many times, how to secure my virtue, and the good esteem of the family in which I resided. (15)

10 Michelle Burnham’s Captivity and Sentiment (1997) discusses at length Howe’s connection to captive females’ experiences with separation from their children. Ann M. Little’s Abraham in Arms (2007) gives an extensive account of the way in which Howe’s narrative exemplifies the tense cultural relationship between white women captives and their American Indian captors.

Howe’s denial of both sexual suitors places her in a precarious position as she is a captive in the family who ostensibly has few rights or recourses within the household. The fact that she admits that the male head of the household considers her “his property” exposes the dangerous position she is in. Viewed as his property, the man surely would have no consideration for her right to deny his desires. Her status as a captive does not mean she denies her own right to consent but only that others may not recognize her natural rights. Her difficulty comes in deciding upon a course of action that will clearly assert the validity of her consent. Because she discusses the issue of virtue within this initial confession of threat, Howe draws upon the wider British Atlantic World’s understanding of female sexuality and position in politics and society. Her vulnerability, like Imoinda’s, is apparent in a way that signals to her republican community that her liberty is threatened in reference to both her physical captivity and her ability to consent. She is saved further discomfort and embarrassment, however, by the interference of the French colonial governor: The Governor de Vaudreuil being made acquainted with the condition I had fallen into, immediately ordered the young and amorous Saccapee, then an officer in the French army, from the field of Venus to the field of Mars, and at the same time also wrote a letter to his father, enjoining it upon him, by no means to suffer me to be abused, but to make my situation and service in his family as easy and delightful as possible. (16) Howe’s denial of sexual advances calls the governor of the French territory to action. This action not only ensures her safety, but is the impetus behind the son being placed in a war zone. By relying on her freedom to deny, Howe has a direct link to the governor as well as a hand in the military mandates of the state. Her consent is valued to such a degree that it is positioned to be above the consideration or safety of the men in the family in which she resides as a captive. Her denial has very real social and political consequences, which gives her female political agency within this narrative and the historical moment which produced it, as it was recognized by a political figure and resulted in political actions. This resulting political action mimics the Lucretia myth, as it is only after Lucretia tells her story of rape that the men in her presence are forced to overthrow Tarquin and establish the first republican government. The differences, however, are very important. Howe lives to tell her tale, so that the loss of virtue does not spur political action, but only the threat to a virtuous woman. Because she tells a tale that has such

political consequences, Howe’s agency within her republican community is validated through her words and her consent, which produce real political action without requiring her sacrifice. Howe’s relationship with the governor does not end with this episode, as he also helps her free her daughter from Indian captivity when she tells him she fears she will marry one of her captors. The continual interaction between this particular female captive and the leading political figure in the region calls attention to the fact that within the trope of female captivity, a woman’s status as a captive does not foreclose her access to political agency or action. Even as a prisoner of war, Howe was able to defend her republican notions of liberty and consent in a different community than her own, which in turn upheld her rights and liberties within the republican community. If her republican rights were not hindered while she was captive, they are surely not deniable when she was a free woman. The story of her real life experiences, released approximately thirty-five years after the incidents occurred, made a clear connection between the rights she had as a captive and the rights she had access to as a citizen in her own community. Both Imoinda and Howe connect to the myth of Lucretia, but unlike the Roman figure, both women appear to access a female political agency that is denied in the earlier story. While both rely on issues of virtue and sexuality that in many ways required a passivity in women throughout the British Atlantic World in the long eighteenth century, both also use this reliance on virtue to give themselves a moral standing within their republican communities. This moral standing was important to not only connect with an audience that would understand female sexuality in such terms, but also imperative for allowing their audiences in republican communities to acknowledge their rights to liberty and consent. Lucretia’s perceived loss of virtue mandated her suicide in order to create a republican community as Imoinda and Howe’s maintenance of their virtue proved that they had a right to participate in communities that were founded upon republican ideals. By assenting to established social codes regarding female sexuality, these captives could convince their communities that their sexual consent could extend into the political realm. Captive Republicans The discourses surrounding marriage and sex in the British Atlantic of the long eighteenth century were clearly more open to women than overt republican political discourse. By using the access to discourses on marriage and sex offered by their communities, women

represented within the trope of female captivity exposed their female political agency. Whether they used marriage as political metaphor, as in The Life of Harriot Stuart or The History of Mary Prince , or sexual virtue as a connection to political commentary as seen in Oroonoko or the narrative of Jemima Howe, representations of female captives exposed to their republican audiences that they had the same natural rights to consent as male citizens. The trope of female captivity created an opening through which the political agency of women was explored in relation to republican ideologies of consent and liberty. The captive females may have been bound to a particular place or person, but their republican rights were still available and valid. John Locke claimed that a group of people create a social and political compact of consent only when “agreeing together mutually to enter into one Commuity, and make one Body Politik” (276-7). Communities centered on republican ideals had to take such considerations to heart, and the trope of female captivity was used to show that a true republican community exists only when the voices of all people are heard and acknowledged. By voicing and thereby enacting consent, captives both fictional and real inserted themselves into the political foundations of republican communities and asserted their female political agency within these spaces.

Chapter 2 Saintly Sinners: Confession in Protestant Communities “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Romans 10:10 Protestantism flourished in the long eighteenth century, particularly in the British Atlantic World. As religious groups spread from England outward, they carried the beliefs of their original home communities with them, bringing Protestant concepts of God, faith and morality around the Atlantic. Encounters with various other systems of faith and the growth in religious freedom of choice allowed the English brand of Protestantism to grow into a more complex and diverse structure of belief. Carla Pestana, in Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World , illustrates how the rise of migration from England to the myriad points throughout the Atlantic created a network of Protestants who shared a common belief structure, stating “Expansion established a broadly shared culture that united believers from different Protestant churches […] into a common Anglophone spiritual orientation” (6). The spread of Anglophone Protestantism, instigated and maintained by British expansion in the Atlantic, allowed Protestant communities to connect through shared religious belief rather than national affiliation. From Anglicans to Morvarians, and the multitude of faiths in-between, Protestants in the British Atlantic relied on belief to form communities which, while practicing diverse forms of the faith, could band together and unite because of particular common standards and practices through the porous boundaries of any given nation. As Pestana later claims, such communities endured throughout the long eighteenth century, even after war and revolution, because “the cultural commonalities ensured that the religious connections and shared experiences carried on” (218). The shared system of faith that accompanied the expansion of Protestantism in the Atlantic guaranteed that people from diverse areas became communities allied through religious faith and understanding. At the same time, the spread of Protestantism was both instigated and affected by the political powers of the British Atlantic World. The political implications of particular religious affiliations made it clear that an individual’s membership in a particular church had more than just a spiritual impact on their life. The English monarchy attempted to transplant the Church of England in their colonial holdings in the hope of consolidating power in their ever-growing

empire. Congregationalists, feeling pressure to conform to the Church of England’s political power in the homeland, began to establish settlements in North American colonies such as Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, in an effort to escape what they felt was the oppressive hierarchy of the monarch-ruled Church. Slave-holding colonies in the Caribbean attempted to both employ and withhold religion in order to maintain the political and social control of their slave populace. In all these forms, and many others, it became increasingly clear that the ways in which Protestantism was conceived in the long eighteenth century was deeply connected to the ways in which people executed and controlled political power. Women at this time held both confining and liberating positions within the Protestant system of complex structures that housed religion and politics. Although it was still generally observed that women should be seen and not heard in the Church, a position often backed by numerous Biblical quotations, women did gain the freedom to lead and speak in church settings in various protestant sects, such as Quakerism, served as popular prophets and mystics, such as the well known Fifth Monarchist Anna Trapnel, and as both martyrs and afflicted in legal proceedings stemming from religious conflict, such as the executed Quaker Mary Dyer or the numerous young women who served as afflicted accusers during the Salem Witch Trials. However, this was also a time when women across Europe were still being executed for witchcraft, and one vocal woman in the New World, Anne Hutchinson, was banished for her attempts to exert a certain amount of control in her religious community. Despite the apparently contradictory treatment of women in this realm, a number of scholars today specifically point to religious engagement and expression as a valid avenue for women to achieve freedoms and voice in their communities. Phyllis Mack’s “Religion, Feminism, and the Problem of Agency: Reflections on Eighteenth-Century Quakerism” confronts the ways in which religion, although often viewed as constraining in the present day, was the mode through which many women in the past found access to agency. She asserts “In the history of Western culture, it was devout Christian women who demonstrated the greatest degree of agency” (147), and it was precisely their access to religion that allowed women to become agents in their home communities through the shared belief structures that connected Protestantism in the British Atlantic of the long eighteenth century. Patricia U. Bonomi’s Under the Cope of Heaven further outlines the specific forms of agency given to women within these religious structures, claiming that during the long eighteenth century Protestantism enabled women to hold place and position within their

communities. She argues that “Besides spiritual refreshment, religion offered women of energy and intellect an outlet to the wider world, as well as opportunities for self-expression, personal growth, and even leadership” (107). Although women appeared to walk a fine line between saint and sinner during this period, their engagement in Protestant community practices of faith offered them a space to enact agency in a way that was more widely accepted because of its religious connections. Representations of female captives navigated this complex religious-political system in order to assert their female political agency. Protestant female captives, whether held by “hellish natives” or “scheming papists,” used the shared religious beliefs of their home communities to position themselves within the religious-political discourse dominant in such places. By focusing on their godliness and moral superiority through the recitation of past sins or afflictions, these representatives were able to enter into religious discourse. The entrance into religious discourse allowed the captive to find political agency in the Protestant communities where politics and religion melded. Protestantism itself created the space for believers to become vocal and active members of their communities, spaces which women found and used in order to gain agency. One space used by women revolved around the process of confession. Tales of captivity themselves are often crouched in terms of confession, particularly when dealing with female captives. In these instances, the captive female confesses to her audience, laying out both the details pertaining to and the religious implications of her time spent in captivity, in order to make amends to God for past sins or praise his divine grace for her deliverance. In highlighting the process of confessing the sins both committed by and against captives to their community audiences, the trope of female captivity relied on egalitarian concepts such as the priesthood of all believers to successfully exploit religious discourse, thus exposing the agency available to women in the Anglo-Protestant communities of the long eighteenth century. British Atlantic Protestant Communities It should be remembered that there was not one form of Protestantism in the British Atlantic World of the long eighteenth century. Sectarian divisions and conflicts amongst Protestants could be as heated as those between Protestants and Catholics during this era; however, there are standard belief structures that united even the most radical or traditional Protestants across the Atlantic. While divisions between Anglicans, Baptists, Quakers or Puritans may have been great, the basic beliefs that connected each group grounded diverse

communities in a standard system of faith. The shared belief structures of Protestants stretched across national affiliations and borders. In discussing Protestantism and travel writing in Europe and the Making of England , Tony Claydon argues that Protestants around the Atlantic and across Europe bonded over belief despite local or congregational differences, particularly in their shared differences from Catholicism, stating “Areas that had escaped Rome’s control had common features, and there were bonds which held them together […]. Most of our guides wrote as if non-Catholic Christians had a shared identity, which demanded sympathy and support for those in other lands” (52). The beliefs shared by each group, which created this common religious identification, included, but were not limited to: a tripartite idea of God, adherence to the concept of the priesthood of all believers, personal salvation and/or damnation, a connection between literacy and spiritual awareness, and the supremacy of the Bible. While each denomination may have varying conceptions of such beliefs, the fact that each shared a general and common understanding of these standards of faith worked to unite Protestants despite their affiliation with a specific form of Protestantism. These similarities did not erase the persecution that many suffered at the hands of fellow Protestants, such as the Quaker executions in Massachusetts in the mid-seventeenth century, but the similarities did allow for common beliefs to arise that solidified and connected Protestant communities around the Atlantic. The concept of religious unification despite conflicting conceptions of religious practice is better understood if religion in general during this period is more clearly defined. Pestana, in her introduction to Protestant Empire , offers a definition of religion that is helpful to both an understanding of common faith and the ways religion functioned in general in the long eighteenth century: “Religion” is […] the shared understanding of what modern westerners think of as the supernatural world [….]. The shared understanding shapes a community’s beliefs about its relationship to the spiritual, whether the spiritual is understood to be interwoven with or distinct from the natural world. Commonly held views serve as the basis for a community’s religious system, providing a set of institutional practices and relationships that structure the social world in which people operate. Looking at how religion worked in the lives of individuals opens up a common ground among different faiths. (11)

By Pestana’s definition, religion is conceived as a spiritual concern that not only connects an individual to a supernatural power outside of one’s self, but also connects the individual to a community that shares common beliefs in the supernatural world. In a fluid exchange of belief and ideas, the individual and the community create a standard of faith which continually shapes the individual and the social structures of the community. Although this definition does not explicitly state that political concepts are shaped and formed based on religion, the emphasis placed on social structures and institutions would clearly place political organization as a social construct affected by community faith and belief. Earlier in her introduction, Pestana states that governments worked from a “commonly held assumption about the necessity for religious unity in a political polity” (7), an assumption which is predicated upon the idea that religious belief mandates both attitude toward and adherence to a political regime. In a Protestant British Atlantic community, the specific form of religion at work shaped the way people interacted with members of their community as well as the institutions affiliated with the community, regardless of the specific denominational affiliation. Commonly held beliefs amongst various groups formed the individual and the community in connection to over-arching Protestant assumptions about the supernatural and the social world around them. With this conception of religion as a community venture, the idea of a shared system of beliefs that united Protestants into a fluid yet continuous community across the Atlantic World becomes clearer. In her essay, “‘Though I am a Stranger to you by Face, yet in Neere Bonds by Faith:’ A Transatlantic Puritan Republic of Letters,” Alison Searle brings to light a literary exchange that occurred in the long eighteenth century between renowned religious figures from varying Protestant denominations. Underscoring the continual flow of information around the Atlantic World, particularly as it was connected to religious and political discourse, Searle asserts that the exchange of letters that occurred between such figures as John Eliot, John Woolbridge and Richard Baxter created a community across the Atlantic bound by common faith in particular religious and political ideas and connected through the literary exchange of religious debates and theories. She asserts that the ultimate goal of this republic of letters was to create “an international, nondenominational community” (279). Searle claims this was particularly sustainable in the Protestant communities of the long eighteenth century because of “a shared network of theological convictions, reading and family connections [and] a spiritual interiority that found expression in a passionate commitment to fellowship and the social transformation of

local communities” (305-6). Although Searle’s argument posits a transatlantic exchange of letters that privileges England and New England, the idea that there was a commitment to creating and maintaining ties to various Protestant communities around the Atlantic through literary exchange can be easily construed from this claim. The argument for a connected community through Protestant literacy is also presented in Bonomi’s Under the Cope of Heaven . When discussing the religious antecedents to political rebellion, Bonomi asserts that in the colonies “Americans who had not directly experienced the conflicts of the Stuart Years [leading to the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution] found their religious and political attitudes being shaped by English writers who had” (195). In essence, the exchange of letters and printed texts, prompted by both distance and the reliance on literacy within Protestantism, helped facilitate circum-Atlantic religious exchanges which created shared community beliefs and attitudes between varying Protestant faiths in multiple locales throughout the long eighteenth century. Bonomi’s example of the print exchange of ideas surrounding religious and political dissent highlights the way in which politics and religion where overtly connected during this period. To see the extent to which politics and religion were mingled, one only has to look at the large amount of legislation passed in the long eighteenth century which dealt with religious issues. 11 While it is true that the establishment of the United States of America at the end of the eighteenth century specifically called for a separation of Church and State, it was impossible to fully secularize politics at this time, as countless founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence exemplifies through the use of overtly religious ideas and discourses. In England, Anglicanism was headed by the ruling monarch and standard political theory held that a united religion would consolidate political power, as Richard Brown maintains in Church and State in Modern Britain, 1700 – 1850 , stating this idea of the need to unify religion and political allegiance “legitimized actions, particularly by the state and was an expression of the cultural hegemony of those in authority” (92). In colonial New England, prominent male religious figures often held political office. In Scotland and Ireland, church affiliation and membership was connected to political power and prestige. All of these examples underscore the idea that religion and politics were thought of in tandem throughout the eighteenth century.

11 A list of such legislation within England alone includes, but is not limited to: The Act of Uniformity (1662), the 1st and 2nd Test Act (1673 and 1678), The Toleration Act (1689), The Blasphemy Act (1698), and The Quebec Act (1774).

Politics and religion were closely intertwined, but this was not a new phenomenon in the long eighteenth century. The mixture of religion and politics had a long history in England, and one that was often bloody. At the same time, religion permeated most institutions during this period. Christopher Hill’s The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution reminds readers that the Bible influenced all facets of English life throughout the seventeenth century, essentially functioning as “their point of reference in all their thinking” (34). This reference point did not disappear at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and it should not be forgotten that John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government is a Biblical refutation of political ideas derived by Filmore’s political interpretation of the Bible. Such Biblical prominence in the political theories of the day draws attention to the interconnected nature of religion and politics. As Hill argues, “Semantic usage had political consequences” (177), and in the Protestant British Atlantic World, what one said about the Bible or religious doctrine was an indicator of their political and religious positions in a particular community. Religion was known, discussed and defended, as were politics, and Protestant belief that adhered to the supremacy of the Bible assured that politics and religion worked within the same discursive system. Because of this overt mixture of religion and politics, the position of women in connection to spiritual matters was complex at this time. As previously discussed, some specific women in specific situations and in connection with specific types of Protestant denominations gained agency and voice within their religious communities. Although the positive representation and involvement of religion was not completely universal, the shared beliefs of the communities themselves helped position women as bearers of Christian light, and as such women were filled with the ability to lead and serve as examples for their communities. This does not mean that the conflict regarding what women could and could not do within religious discourse was ever fully resolved. While the concept of the priesthood of all believers enabled women to achieve moments of agency, it was often in direct opposition to the avowed standard practice within such communities. Marilyn J. Westerkamp explains this predicament well in a Puritan context, stating: The Puritan perception of God and God’s relationship to humanity, as experienced through conversion and acknowledged in the priesthood of all believers, opened the way for a flourishing of the spirit among individuals. At the same time, the society envisioned by Puritans was one characterized by a

communal spirit and a hierarchical order. […] Thus, Puritan leaders in old and New England confronted the self-proclaimed authority of females […] and found themselves emeshed in an irreconcilable conflict between the social demands of order and control and the spiritual possibilities of conversion and revelation. (572) The conflict, recognized by Westerkamp, is the dual belief in a personal relationship with God for all individuals and the patriarchal need for order and hierarchy. What occurred within Puritan society, then, is a conflict between the voicing of female belief, male and female systematic assent to the standard religious beliefs of the community (such as a belief in the priesthood of all believers) and the enforcement of a male dominated political and religious system of rule. Westerkamp’s assertions do not hold just for the Puritan communities of Old and New England, but reveal a conflict that occurred around the British Atlantic World at this time. Women, as members of a Protestant church and upholders of the faith, had a certain religious right to agency and voice; however, this directly conflicted with dominant patriarchal social structures. This meant some women had voice and agency while others did not, depending upon how they sought to enact agency within their home communities. The discursive web surrounding hierarchical religious and political views made female negotiation of the system difficult, but not impossible. Within such communities, women had access to a set of speech acts that could uncover their agency within their religious and political system such as forms of preaching, profession of faith, and confession. The protestant form of confession in particular enabled women to vocalize their past deeds in a way that allowed them to become knowledgeable and righteous religious examples in their communities. Representations of female captives speaking to a Protestant audience used the act of confession as a way to both cement their position as rightful bearers of religious discourse while asserting their female political agency by becoming emulation figures for their religious-political communities. Confession as a Political Speech Act Confession is a common trait in the trope of female captivity, particular when used in texts circulating in Protestant communities. In a certain way this speech act can be seen as an act inherent in all representations of female captivity, which normally revolve around a female captive confessing her story to an editor-mediator or a general reading public. The forms of confession I will investigate, however, are distinct acts of confession connected to explicit moments when relating a portion of the captive’s experience is marked by confessing language.

Confession can be viewed as a matter of form within these texts; however, certain moments appear more confessional than others. The moments analyzed within this chapter are portions of the text when a female captive is explicitly relating specific past experiences to a community audience in an effort to either become the arbitrators of a community-based moral code of conduct or to forge stronger community bonds based on common belief structures. The points in the text when a women who has been a captive turns to a specific audience and declares past wrongs (committed by or against the captive) in an effort to achieve a particular goal are the moments that hold the strongest acts of confession as they pertain to subject formation, and consequently, the formation and implementation of a female political agency. Protestant views of confession in the long eighteenth century show the ways in which agency could be derived from the voicing of past sins. While confession in a religious context is often thought of as the province of Catholics; however, Protestant preachers also promoted the act of confession for religious edification and absolution. Cotton Mather, one of the most famous and prolific ministers in New England during this period, discussed the necessity of confession in one’s relationship with God in his 1692 sermon “Fair Weather.” Lamenting the fact that most people forsake both public and private forms of confession of sin, Mather states “O that many Repenting Sinners would in their Separated Hours, of the deepest humiliation and Supplication before God, Examine themselves by this Glass; and Confess, and Renounce all of these Abominable Things, with a Believing Reliance upon the Lord Jesus Christ, for the bestowal both of Pardon and of Power against them all” (9). Although in this instance Mather is calling for private confession for the benefit of a personal relationship with God, his insistence on the power of confession to connect one to divine forgiveness and power unearths the idea that Protestants still believed the act of confession was a powerful tool that enabled religious edification, absolution and helped cement the personal relationship with God expounded in the Protestant idea of the priesthood of all believers. Similarly, the Irish Anglican Bishop William Sheridan devoted an entire chapter to confession in the text Several Discourses , which highlights the ways in which Protestants should use confession despite its association with Catholicism. Sheridan claims that while many argued the practice of confession, particularly in public, was “favouring too much of Popish Superstition” (36), it was an important part of the Christian experience, as “God himself called to the performance of this duty” (44). Sheridan asserts that private confession to God is good

practice, but that public confession is also necessary to edify oneself and their fellow congregants both in the recitation of sin and the refutation of such practices in the future, claiming “Let the World take notice of our Sin, so it may also of our Repentance” (49). Additionally, Sheridan argues that “palpable and notorious Sins require publick Confession” (49), and even goes so far as to claim private acts of confession are not as certain to achieve absolution from God as public renditions of past sins or wrongs. For Sheridan, confess gains religious power and purpose through voicing it to an audience of believers in order to instruct Protestants in both the reality and repentance of sin. A prayer written by the reverend William Basset, published in 1757 and titled “Solemn Act of Confession and Intercession,” calls for confession to be given aloud once a week. The prayer reads “I confess, O Lord, what thou knowest already! – But I confess it – to manifest thy Justice, and to glorify thy mercy” (3-4), mandating that confession should be given in the form of public prayer in order to glorify God and expose the workings of Godly justice. In the examples given here, and in others expounded by Protestant ministers throughout the long eighteenth century, both public and private forms of confession are given credence in religious practice, marking this idea of confession as different from Catholic modes. While Catholics saw confession as working only through a mediator (the priest who has the power to absolve), Protestants amended concepts of confession to give power to those confessing by making it an act that directly relates them to God. The public aspect of Protestant forms of confession serves as educational and worshiping practice only, as it allows the person confessing to teach other believers through recitation of sin, affliction and forgiveness. It was a private act between the confessing individual and God, but one made in a public space so as to teach others what a true relationship with God should be. In the insistence on edification through confession, the Protestant confessing in the long eighteenth century is not being forced into a subservient role in relation to power, but rather gains power and agency by confessing for the instruction of his or her community audience. The eighteenth century context of Protestant confession and its connection to individual agency is mirrored in twentieth century theoretical debates on the subject. Confession as a speech act, particularly in relation to its effect on individual agency, has been most notably theorized by Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek. In The History of Sexuality, Volume I , Foucault uses the speech act of confession to express how voicing sexuality has been

used as a means to control power and knowledge throughout Western history. For Foucault, confession confines the person confessing, submitting that individual to the bounds of overt power structures created to control the subject. Confession is “a power that constrains us” (60) and submits the individual to “the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console and reconcile” (62). Foucault outlines the implications of this process, stating: The agency of domination does not reside in the one who speaks (for it is he who is constrained), but in the one who listens and says nothing; not in the one who knows and answers, but in the one who questions and is not suppose to know. And this discourse of truth finally takes effect, not in the one who receives it, but in the one from whom it was wrested. (62) Foucault’s evaluation of confession, clearly outlined here within religious and judicial terms, is a process through which the confessing subject is formed by outside forces that consume, manipulate, and interpret the confessed language. Within these theoretical considerations, Foucault asserts that the confessing subject losses all agency in the process of confessing, as the power to define individual sovereign subjecthood rests not in the speaker but in the listener who interprets and controls what it spoken in this moment. If Foucault’s assertions are upheld, no moment of confession could reveal political agency, female or otherwise, because all moments of confessions are instances of power exerted on the subject in an effort to control individual agency and desire. Such claims could be seen as operating within the British Atlantic World at this time in Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian , in which Effie Dean’s confession upon her arrest for infanticide is taken down by court officials before she is put into jail. Only recounted in the narrative through the official’s use of that confession at her trial, this “declaration of the panel or accused party […] was the evidence that bore hardest upon her case” (223), leading to Effie’s conviction and death sentence. Although she escapes execution through the political entreaties of her sister Jeanie, Effie’s confession was still the tool through which the sexual desires and acts of the captive female were confined and punished by the dominant power structures in place within the setting of the novel. Butler, however, explicitly disagrees with Foucault’s claims regarding confession. In her essay, “Bodily Confessions,” she asserts that this speech act does not submit an individual to a controlling power as The History of Sexuality maintains, but rather enables a person to enact

sovereign subjecthood through the use of language. Butler argues that the point of confession “is not to ferret out desires and expose their truth in public, but rather to constitute a truth of oneself through the act of verbalization itself” (163). Confession here is a form of creating the subject through the exchange of language that takes place within this speech act, as the confessing language works as a specific type of utterance which is “a speaking that is before another, and obliquely, to another, a speaking that presumes and solicits recognition” (165). In contrast with Foucault, Butler does not see the confessing/confessor relationship as disavowing agency, but rather a speech act in which individual agency and desire can be accessed effectively. The dialogic nature of confessional speech creates agency in the confessing subject and the listener because “if saying is a form of doing, and part of what is getting done is the self, the conversation is a mode of doing something together and becoming otherwise; something will be accomplished in the exchange” (173). By emphasizing the dialogic nature of language in general, and confessional language in specific, Butler views the speech act of confession as a relationship in language that enables an individual subject to claim deeds and desires, all of which constitute agency for that subject. Her use of Antigone within this essay as an example of the power of confession also points to the fact that political agency becomes accessible through confession. 12 Slavoj Žižek’s critique of Foucault’s model of confession in The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology is similar to Butler’s, however, he chose to discuss this theoretical model not just as it relates to subject formation, but also in connection to the ways in which subjects enact resistance to political power. Offering a nice summation of Foucault’s argument, Žižek focuses on what he calls “the disciplinary/confessional mode of power” analyzed in The History of Sexuality , stating that Foucault’s main claim within this text is that resistance to power is never possible because the subject attempting to resist is always created within and through the power dynamic forcing discipline or confession. He asserts “the whole point and strength of [Foucault’s] forceful argumentation lies in his claim that resistances to power are generated by the very matrix they seem to oppose,” (299) thus making all forms of political resistance connected to confession empty and ineffectual because they are produced and

12 Although I would disagree with her analysis of Antigone in this context, it should be noted that Butler maintains that there is no access to a specifically female political agency because women become masculinized upon enter into political discourse. In this instance it seems that Butler privileges overt political agency and discourse and does not consider the other ways in which women employ various feminine discourses in order to become political agents.

condoned by the very processes they attempt to resist. Such a synthesis of Foucault’s use of the mode of confession underscores the fact that Foucault does not see a possible means for achieving political agency or resistance through the exchange of language which occurs in the act of confession. Žižek, however, completely undermines Foucault’s claim by asserting that within the act of confession, the exchange that occurs is a predetermined cause that has an undetermined effect. He argues that while confessional modes are controlled and mandated by the dominant political powers-that-be, these forces have no way to control the internal effects of confession (or discipline) on the individual subject doing or hearing/witnessing the confession. Explaining this cause-and-effect conception of the political power of confession, Žižek states: [Foucault] precludes the possibility that the system itself, on account of its inherent inconsistency, may give birth to a force whose excess it is no longer able to master and which thus detonates its unity, its capacity to reproduce itself. In short, Foucault does not consider the possibility of an effect escaping, outgrowing its cause, so that although it emerges as a form of resistance to power and is as such absolutely inherent to it, it can outgrow and explode it. (303) The overarching point Žižek’s claim reveals is that although power controls and solicits confession, power has no way to control the result of such confessions for the subject. It is the process of vocalizing the confession so that it becomes a force unleashed and uncontrollable and the excess of effect of the voiced confession that makes it a space where both an individual agency can be achieved and a resistance to political power can be enacted. By combing Butler’s and Žižek’s theories, confession becomes an act of creating ones self through the dialogic reality of language while offering a resistance to power because of the effect such language has on both the speaker and the listener. In creating the self, confession also has a hand in creating the political agency of the self, allowing that subject into the political discourse of a community and opening a space where a resistance to political power is achieved through confessing one’s “sins” in a shared community space. If The Heart of Midlothian is considered from this theoretical angle, then the confession of Effie controls her captive body and its desires for the political powers; however, Jeanie’s response to Effie’s confession is an uncontrolled effect that leads her all the way to the Queen of England in an effort to save her sister. Effie is confined and forced to confess, but her language effects the actions and language

of Jeanie to a point where she confesses to her Queen her reasons for seeking a pardon for her sister, creating a female confessional dynamic opposed to the political power inherent in Scottish infanticide law and giving herself political consequence and agency in the process. Jeanie is also “Strengthened in a mind naturally calm, sedate, and firm, by the influence of religious confidence” (291), which connects the dialogic act of confession with shared Protestant belief structures prevalent at this time, consequently producing a situation in which confession acts upon the Godly subject by creating space for political agency and subversion through either speaking or hearing the confession. The Heart of Midlothian , although at first appearing to uphold the assertions of Foucault, in fact calls those same assertions into question when the captive’s sister (a captive herself to thieves at one point in the novel) is spurred by the legal confessions of Effie to subvert the political powers of the Scottish courts. Because the trope of female captivity relies heavily on the act of confession, the meaning of confession within this context becomes exceedingly important. The most dominant instances of confession revolve around issues of affliction, and often occur when female captives confess to their readership their past sins or the sins of others as Godly justification for their captive situation. Mary Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and Goodness of God and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela use the confession of personal affliction to situate themselves as religious messengers and interpreters for their audiences. Hannah Swarton’s narrative of captivity relies on a similar process of confessing affliction, but does so in order to expose the price paid for community sins. In the instances discussed within this chapter, it is the act of vocalizing confession that enables the trope of female captivity to insert women into male dominated religious discourse through the notion of affliction. Such captives rely on old religious beliefs to create new religious interpretations to political and social issues. As Sylvia Brown argues in her introduction to Women, Gender, and Radical Religion in Early Modern Europe , “When a believer radically reimagines her relationship with the divine – giving God feminine attributes, for instance, or asserting unmediated access to divine wisdom – she necessarily reimagines her relationship with others and with the world. She occupies a potentially new place with respect to culture, authority, and history” (2). The confessional acts of representations of female captivity, particularly when related to concepts of affliction, give them new areas of “divine wisdom” to assert their knowledge and expertise, thus giving their voices authority within the religious (and by extension the political) discourse of the time. Focusing on female morality and religious

experience in larger communities, the confessional acts of the representations of female captives in the long eighteenth century facilitated female political agency by underscoring new areas of female authority and knowledge in the religious-political arena that prevailed in Protestant Atlantic communities. Confessions of Captivity Confession, within the confines of the trope of female captivity, enabled female political agency through the rendition of affliction. As a religious idea, the concept of affliction held major sway in Protestant communities throughout the British Atlantic World. As sentimental discourse in the long eighteenth century became more popular, affliction was used to highlight the moral superiority of those who suffered at the hands of others. By confessing their sins, and sins committed against them by others, representations of female captives used affliction to insert themselves into the political and religious discourses of their communities, promoting a view of such captives as righteous and knowledgeable. Affliction worked to make the confessions of captives an act centered on religious knowledge and moral understanding, thus giving the afflicted captive a place of prominence within the religious world in which they lived. Affliction Although most often discussed in a religious context, the concept of affliction had a general influence on ideas of morality throughout the majority of the eighteenth century. Affliction does stem from Biblical accounts of God testing the faithful, such as the trials and tribulations of Job, but the idea of affliction as Providence extended into more secularized discourses of the day, including late eighteenth century novels concerned with issues of sensibility. What the religious and secularized uses of affliction have in common are a concern with physical and/or emotional pain as a sign of moral superiority and righteousness. Secular and religious uses of affliction inherently spring from a religious source, and the prevalent influence of Protestantism across the Atlantic World meant that affliction was a common belief shared among a wide variety of people in various locales. Affliction, as it is conceived within a religious context, deals mainly with the belief that God tests those close to him in order to reinforce faith and an individual’s (or community’s) reliance on God. At the same time, affliction was often perceived as punishment for past sins and as a way for sinners to atone for past misdeeds. While discussing the way Anne Bradstreet presents affliction in her poem “Upon the Burning of Our House,” Allison Giffen defines

affliction as “a loving chastisement from God” (4). Analogous to the idea of tough love, this definition of affliction popular in Protestant communities posited that suffering was brought by God to both punish sin and offer a chance at redemption for the sinner. Those who were sinful achieved a type of reconciliation with God through affliction. Whether the present pain of past sins was great or small, individuals attributed a cause and effect relationship to affliction, citing the specific reasons why God would choose to inflict pain or sorrow. On a community level, the misdeeds or lax behavior of an entire group of individuals was often called out as the cause for mass forms of affliction such as war, famine, or epidemic. Despite the view of affliction as a process of punishment, many Protestant denominations of the long eighteenth century, particularly sects such as the Puritans who adhered to a more Calvinistic model of Protestantism, considered affliction a blessing from God as it offered proof of God’s concern for an individual (or community). In discussing the concept of affliction offered by Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, Carlo Rotella reinforces the connection between affliction and heavenly election, stating “To live without affliction was to live at the margins of the Lord’s attention” (48). Often citing the Biblical example of Job, who was afflicted by God so that God could prove his love and care for him, many in the long eighteenth century British Atlantic were religiously compelled to look on suffering and hardship as a harsh example of God’s love. The religious implications of affliction, whether viewed as punishment or election, had a single purpose: to bring a person closer to God. Affliction, then, asserted that an individual would be morally superior after suffering, as the hardships would make one more aware of God’s grace, power, and forgiveness. Novelistic discourses of the long eighteenth century connected the religious concept of affliction to general moral concepts of suffering as a means to prove moral superiority for characters in various novels. Heroines in novels of sensibility, from Pamela Andrews to Evelina, suffer countless humiliations and pains within their respective novels as a marker for their superior morality. Patricia Mayer Spacks’ “Oscillations of Sensibility” discusses this idea at length within a wider argument regarding the differing genre conventions for male and female literature of sensibility, stating “Eighteenth-century female novels of sensibility […] differ from their male counterparts most obviously by emphasizing the situation of the afflicted rather than the responder of affliction. In such works, female victims typically suffer endlessly and ingeniously, revealing their virtue by their acceptance of what Providence dictates” (505). Like

the religiously afflicted, the female characters in novels of sensibility that suffer do so to show their superior status as bearers of morality. Novels employing sensibility and/or sentimentality connect trials and hardships to ideas of righteousness, as those individuals who accept suffering have the ability to become shining examples of virtue, morality and spiritual growth and understanding. However, this secularization of affliction is not completely divorced from religious doctrine and Protestant faith, as it is the initial religious ideas of morality that mandate what heroines of sensibility would find moral or immoral, as well as what would be considered affliction. British Atlantic Protestant communities exported affliction as proof of moral authority, affecting how morality, religion and suffering where connected in discourse throughout the long eighteenth century. Female religious experiences, the naturalization of feminine virtue and the reliance on female examples of moral Protestant conduct illustrate that affliction was a common belief women could use to insert themselves into the political discourse of their religious communities. By emphasizing a relationship with God through the confession of affliction, representations of female captives exposed a moral superiority that was parlayed into positions of knowledge and interpretive power in their home communities. The Personal The majority of texts that employ the trope of female captivity adhere to the concept of individual or personal affliction as a revelation of moral superiority and spiritual awareness. Affliction is often central in these texts, because it is through the idea of being a chosen survivor that a female captive is allowed entrance into religious discourse to begin with. Affliction paves the way for moments of confession, because it is only through confession that a person begins to reveal past sins that would warrant a need for punishment and absolution. The connection between affliction and confession of sin in the trope of female captivity is most obviously seen in female Indian captivity narratives produced by Puritan women in New England. These narratives, filled with didactic discourse for an overt religious-political community, are a space in which moments of affliction and confession are presented by female captives as a way to position themselves as exemplary moral and religious figures in their communities. Their voices, recounting their trials and their religious knowledge, offer them political agency in a Protestant community that mixed religious leadership and understanding with social and political power. No figure of female captivity within this specific type of community was more popular or more widely read than Mary Rowlandson.

Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and Goodness of God was originally published in Boston, then in London, in 1682. The text recounts Rowlandson’s eleven week captivity among a band of united Indian tribes from New England in 1675 during King Phillip’s War. The book went through three editions in its first year alone, becoming the first bestselling work published in the British American colonies. Since its fifth edition in 1720, the story of Rowlandson’s captivity has never been out of print in the United States. Because of its popularity and continual printing, Rowlandson’s work is the captivity narrative most often discussed by scholars. The majority of scholarship concerning Rowlandson has more often than not focused on the ways in which Rowlandson as a Puritan captive upheld the ideological concerns of her religious community while in captivity. 13 However, scholarly investigations such as Michelle Burnham’s Captivity and Sentiment and Christopher Castiglia’s Bound and Determined offer readings of Rowlandson that contradict views of the captive female as constantly subordinate to the religious-political leaders in her home community. Burnham argues that Rowlandson’s narrative exemplifies the hybridity inherent in the captivity narrative genre, particularly in relation to cultural identity and subjectivity. For Burnham, the transgressive force of Rowlandson’s narrative, the thing which gives her agency after its telling, is how her Puritan subjectivity changes through contact in liminal zones with the Indian Other. She claims, “This Puritan Englishwoman’s extended habitation within the radically alien culture of her Indian captors necessarily makes her narrative a history of transculturation and of a subjectivity under revision” (13). Similar to Burnham, Castiglia claims that Rowlandson achieves agency through her narrative because of her extended contact with Indians, who make her aware of the exchanges which take place in regard to her body and the bodies of others. Castiglia asserts Rowlandson offers a critique of Puritan society’s hierarchical concepts of race and gender in her home community by focusing on the economics of the body, ultimately “assuming agency over the dispossession of her identity” (52) in Puritan society by becoming economically savvy as a captive. While Burnham and Castiglia open the door for discussions of agency within Rowlandson’s text, it is important to note that neither reads the use of typology by Rowlandson as another avenue toward female political agency for the captive. Jill E Anderson, in “Tomes of Travel and Travesty,” recognizes the process of systematic assent Rowlandson uses to insert

13 This critical evaluation of Rowlandson’s work was popularized by Richard Slotkin in Regeneration through Violence (1973), but can also be seen in works such as June Namias’ White Captives (1993) and Rebecca Blevins Faery’s Cartographies of Desire (1993).

herself into the religious and political discourse of her community by “engage[ing] in the double discourse of confirming patriarchy and fighting within and against it” (431). Although it is not central to her argument, Anderson does briefly hit upon the point that religious discourse is not only essential to Rowlandson’s acceptance in her community, but is a voice she assumes in the narrative that enables her access to power and agency in such a community. Anderson claims “in the very act of writing her narrative, Rowlandson enacts an agency which was unavailable to most of Rowlandson’s female contemporaries,” while “with almost ministerial expression, Rowlandson offers herself as clairvoyant to God’s plan” (444). Although not explicitly connected in her critique, Anderson expresses the idea that it is both the writing and the writing about religious topics that offers Rowlandson agency. While publication and acceptance mark her as different from her female counterparts in Puritan New England, it is the “ministerial expression” of her text that enabled access to the political discourse of the community. The emergence of Rowlandson as a ministerial figure is instigated by her experiential knowledge of divine grace through her affliction. Her confession of affliction then becomes the mode through which she becomes an agent in her community, teaching others what sin and God’s grace can do through the recitation of her lived experiences. Rowlandson’s use of the confession of affliction in her narrative grounds her use of religious discourse, as it is through confessions of sin and affliction that Rowlandson demonstrates both a cognitive and experiential understanding of Protestant religious belief. Jules Zanger’s “Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrative as Confessional Literature” explores the use of confession in this particular representation of female captivity, albeit with different conclusions. Zanger asserts that Rowlandson’s narrative “function[s] doubly, as a testimonial to ‘The Soveraignty [sic] and Goodness of God,’ but also as a confession of sin that, paradoxically, is both public and private” (143), an argument that contends the confessional mode used in the narrative is a private, personal struggle over subjectivity that is played out in the public realm which is reinforced by Puritan ideological assumptions. Zanger’s contention is that Rowlandson’s moments of confession of sin are private moments made public so that she could attempt to make sense of her inevitable questioning of God and Puritanism. Although Zanger’s critique places thoughtful emphasis on the moments of confession enacted in the narrative, the idea that Rowlandson could knowingly use confessional modes existent in her home community to gain agency and position is disregarded. Within the current consideration of both affliction

and confession, I argue that Rowlandson uses the confessional mode not to separate herself from her community and its beliefs, but to gain privilege within a religious community in which Protestant beliefs and spiritual knowledge enabled political participation and agency, even for female captives. The political agency given to Rowlandson through the confession of affliction is an agency that derives from the power of the minister in British Atlantic Protestant communities. Within such communities, ministers were called upon as religious, social and political leaders. The power of the minister within long eighteenth century was far reaching, as Patricia Bonomi contends when discussing the position of the Church in home communities. She claims “Churches were social and political as well as religious centers, with the elders and the clergy providing not only basic services but leadership in community formation” (218). Bonomi’s assertion highlights a fact of life in communities where religion and politics were intertwined; namely the fact that those who held religious power were also far more likely to hold political power than other members of the community. As Protestants trusted their clergy with their religious instruction they also trusted such people to instruct and guide them through the political workings of a community. Ministers were used to endorse all forms of religious, social and political understanding within their world, and this endorsement, and the agency it afforded, is plainly considered in “The Preface to the Reader” which accompanied Rowlandson’s confessions of her captive affliction. Although signed anonymously “Ter Amicam,” the preface that opens Rowlandson’s narrative is most often attributed to Increase Mather, a highly influential minister and political figure in New England at the time of the narrative’s publication. 14 The Preface works on a number of different levels in order to introduce the text, verify its legitimacy, and authorize Rowlandson in her attempts at public religious discourse. As Neal Salisbury asserts in his introduction to the Rowlandson narrative, “The preface is an elaborate effort to legitimize Rowlandson’s appearance not simply as a female author but also as a woman offering her direct, unique perspectives on the experiences of God’s grace in her own life” (46). The process of legitimization offered by Mather is achieved because of his understanding of the religious and

14 There is no definitive proof that Increase Mather is the author of this preface, but the relationship he had with the Rowlandson family coupled with his known efforts to publish Rowlandson’s work and his prominence in the community lead many scholars to name him as the author. Neal Salisbury’s introduction to Rowlandson’s work in the Bedford publication of the text makes a strong case for citing Increase Mather as the author of the preface.

political power of the clergy and his use of such to signal the audience in their effort to be instructed by Rowlandson. The preface begins by relaying the historical facts of the Indian attack on Lancaster, but then moves quickly to the personal affliction related in the narrative to follow. The author states “The most solemn and remarkable part of the Trajedy, may that justly be reputed, which fell upon the Family of that reverend Servant of God, Mr. Joseph Rolandson , the faithfull pastor of Christ in that place” (64). First highlighting the afflictions of Rowlandson’s husband, a clergyman, Mather is asserting the rightful power of the clergy to instruct by example and knowledge. Such power derives from the Biblical knowledge and dependence of the community in which the minister acts as a scholarly intermediary in matters of religion. Harry S. Stout’s The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England asserts that the Protestant emphasis on literacy, which may initially appear to take power away from the clergy, in fact emphasized a need for ministerial intervention for interpretation, as “the more avidly people read their Bibles the more they depended for understanding and direction on the superior knowledge and resources of the minister” (32). However, the Preface transfers this ministerial “superior knowledge” from the husband to the wife, proclaiming the work to follow as “a Narrative of the wonderfully awfull, wise, holy, powerfull, and gracious providence of God, towards the worthy and precious Gentlewoman, the dear Consort of the said Reverend Mr. Rowlandson ” (64-5). Joining affliction and herself explicitly with her husband, and highlighting her husband’s religious power in the community, the author connects the lived experiences of Mary Rowlandson with the power of clergy that her husband enjoys in the community. While it may appear (and very well could have been the intention) that authorization is occurring through masculine appropriation and connection, the Preface is actually giving Mary Rowlandson access to agency by making a parallel between the knowledge and power of her husband/minister and her personal experiences in captivity. Further attaching ministerial power and authority to Rowlandson the captive, the author of the Preface relates the means through which the narrative came to be presented to the community. He states “though this Gentlewoman’s modesty would not thrust it into the Press, yet her gratitude unto God made her not hardly perswadable to let it pass, that God might have his due glory and others benefit by it as well as herself” (65-6). Mather’s claims here not only relate Rowlandson’s modesty in publication, but more importantly call upon the narrative’s instructive power, a power that Rowlandson herself is imbibed with because of her connection to

ministerial public power. This is underscored again shortly following the justification of publication given by Mather, who states “Let such further know that this was a dispensation of publick note, and of universall concernment, and so much the more, by how much nearer this Gentlewoman stood related to that faithfull Servant of God” (66). By continually referencing Mary Rowlandson’s ties to the Reverend Joseph Rowlandson, the author is calling on the power of the clergy to authorize her captive tale. In so doing, Mather is making a claim (whether intended or inadvertent) which gives Rowlandson agency because she comes to speak and instruct the public in a similar manner as her minister-husband. The difference between Reverend Rowlandson’s ministerial power and Mary Rowlandson’s agency in the text is that she uses personal experience, through the recitation of confession of affliction, to gain status and a voice in her community. The confession of sin and affliction, although apparently authorized by and connected to male ministerial power, allows Rowlandson access to an agency which is like that of a minister, but which differs because it is derived not only from Biblical knowledge but also personal experience and understanding. In Mary Rowlandson’s narrative of her experiences, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God , she commits her initial act of confession when reflecting on her first Sabbath day spent in captivity: The next day was the Sabbath: I then remembered how carelessly I had been of God’s holy time: how many Sabbaths I had lost and misspent, and how evilly I had walked in Gods sight; which lay so close unto my spirit, that it was easie for me to see how righteous it was with God to cut off the thread of my life, and cast me out of his presence for-ever. Yet the Lord still shewed mercy to me, and upheld me; and as he wounded me with one hand, so he healed me with the other. (74) 15 By confessing past sins, Rowlandson is detailing why God chose to afflict her with captivity; however, her act of confession to her Puritan audience also cements her as a subject within the community. She is writing about religious experiences, which was one of the open forms available to women in language at this time, and specifically relates her religious experiences and opinions. Rowlandson details how she suffered, but also how this proves that she is loved by God. Her actions may cause her punishment, but the community reading this narrative has to

15 All spelling and italics presented in quotations from Rowlandson are from the original text.

recognize that the lesson she is imparting about staying true to the rules of the Sabbath to avoid affliction is being transmitted from an individual subject with first-hand experience in this area. By recounting sin, she privileges herself in the eyes of God and her Protestant community, making herself the confessor, judge, and interpreter of sin. As a Puritan woman in the American colonies in the long eighteenth century, Rowlandson would have been expected to be the arbitrator of religion in her household for the benefit of her children and servants and to instruct such people in religious matters. As she herself proclaims that the purpose of the narrative was “To declare the Works of the Lord and his wonderfull power in carrying us along” (82), her community (the “us” she declares the Lord works to support) is to be instructed and enlightened by her narrative, including her act of confession. Because this confession, and the instructive power it holds, is crouched in a discourse acceptable for women, her speech act, and therefore her sovereign and instructive power gained from confession, is supported by the common belief structures of her community. This early passage marks the point in the narrative in which Rowlandson confesses to sin in order to justify her affliction and teach the community a moral standard, but it is only after she is returned from captivity that the true nature of her affliction is confessed to her audience. Rowlandson sums up the lessons learned while a captive and attributes meaning to her captivity. She begins this ending segment by confessing: I can remember the time, when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts, whole nights together, but now it is other ways with me . When all are fast about me, and no eye open, but his who ever waketh, my thoughts are upon things past, upon the awfull dispensation of the Lord towards us; upon his wonderfull power and might, in carrying of us through so many difficulties, in returning us in safety and suffering none to hurt us. I remember in the night season, how the other day I was in the midst of thousands of enemies, & nothing but death before me: It is then hard work to perswade myself, that ever I should be satisfied with bread again. (111) This passage begins Rowlandson’s confession of how she had been changed by her captivity in remarkable ways. Unlike others in her home, even her minister-husband, she is ever aware of the Lord. To claim she is sleepless while others sleep is to confess not to insomnia, but to a realization that God causes both pleasure and pain for those that he elects. Her affliction clearly

brings her closer to God, as in the night hours her eyes remain open along with “his who ever waketh,” thus admitting to her audience that she has a special connection to the Lord because of her suffering. While this passage envisions a clear connection between God and the female captive, it is also a moment of edification for the audience, as Rowlandson tries to explain the dual nature of God (loving and vengeful) to her readers. She is not only connecting to God, but exhibiting a nuanced understanding of God as both “awfull” and “wonderfull” to a community that would see both the scourge and love of God as ultimately benevolent actions. In the end, her doubts about food are thinly veiled metaphors regarding her personal relationship with God, who she must both blame and love for her affliction. Her connection to God and her experiential understanding of affliction place her in the same privileged position as the minister, as she becomes a figure that her community can look to for religious and political guidance because of the agency derived from publicly relating her experiences. A mix of humility and hubris follows in the text, particularly when she begins to recount her superior knowledge of affliction itself. Her closing paragraph details her understanding of affliction and its meaning in relation to her experiences: Before I knew what affliction meant, I was ready to sometimes wish for it . When I lived in prosperity […] I should be sometimes jealous least I should have my portion in this life, and the Scripture would come to my mind, Heb, 12.6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every Son whom he receiveth . But now I see the Lord had his time to scourge and chasten me. The portion of some is to have their afflictions by drops, now one drop then another; but the dregs of the Cup, the Wine of astonishment: like a sweeping rain that leaveth no food, did the Lord prepare for my portion. Affliction I wanted, and affliction I had, full measure (I thought) pressed down and running over; yet I see, when God calls a Person to any thing, and through never so many difficulties, yet he is fully able to carry them through and make them see, and say they have been gainers thereby. And I hope I can say in some measure, as David did, It is good for me that I have been afflicted . (112) Rowlandson’s confession here revolves around both the admission of sin, in the form of her past jealousies, and the admission that she was specially chosen by God for a higher understanding of affliction. Before she knew what affliction actually meant, before she had experiential

knowledge of tribulation, she wished to be afflicted because her Biblical knowledge made her understand affliction as a blessing from God. However, as she was afflicted in a particularly harsh way from her point of view, Rowlandson confesses her original misconception of affliction. While she ends with the hope and belief that her affliction will strengthen her faith in the Lord, the reality of affliction took a toll on her. God eventually saved and restored her, but not without consequence to her understanding of life and religion. As she details her more complex understanding of both affliction and God’s relationship to humanity, Rowlandson still holds her specific experience as paramount. Others may be sick or suffer in small amounts, but God chose her for an exceptional amount of affliction. By her Protestant reckoning, the amount of affliction she experienced sets her above those that “have their afflictions by drops.” Being elected to particularly harsh suffering shows God’s love for her, as the Biblical quote given in the passage proves. If affliction is reserved for those whom the Lord loves, then logically a person that has been excessively afflicted must then be excessively loved. She claims she hopes to learn a lesson from her experiences, but in reality she has learned so much that she becomes religiously superior to those around her who have not had her familiarity with God. By confessing her past jealousy and the suffering that ensued, Rowlandson becomes an expert on affliction in her religious community. The expertise gained placed her in a position of power in relation to others that have not dealt with the Lord in such a way. Some may have suffered sickness or poverty, but Rowlandson’s captivity among “hellish Indians” means she has a more comprehensive understanding of God’s relationship with the individual soul. As the preface asserts, “not the generall but particular knowledge of things make deepest impressions upon the affections” (66), which proclaims the confession of experience in affliction as ultimately more edifying and powerful than general ministerial understanding of such religious concepts. Here, the experience of female captive marks Rowlandson as a possessor of knowledge that cannot be learned but must be lived, and this places her in closer proximity to the workings of God than ministers (such as her husband) who have not lived the captive experience. Consequently, when speaking of her captivity in these moments of confession, her recitation of Biblical quotations displays a knowledge based on literacy that puts her on par with Biblical scholars in her community. Her Biblical literacy is displayed again and again in the text, and her understanding of Biblical characters such as David and Job enables her to relate to the Bible on

two different levels. Unlike some ministers in her Protestant community who may only know the Bible, her knowledge of the Bible coupled with her experiences of excessive affliction make Rowlandson an example of moral-religious knowledge for every person in her community. Her confessions of captivity tell a tale that is to be understood as exceptional, placing her knowledge above others. In this regard, Rowlandson becomes teacher and example, a captive female who uses her confessional act of voicing experience and religious understanding to teach and shape an entire community. The power Rowlandson takes in this instance provides her female political agency in a world where religion and politics mix to form the foundation of social institutions. As Harry S. Stout argues, “the state existed to wield power in the interest of gospel purity” (21), a purity that was both determined and enforced by the ministers in Protestant communities because of their power to interpret Biblical sources and religious doctrines for a literate community. Rowlandson speaks in the text directly to members of such a Biblical community, and this speech, which highlights her interpretations of sin and affliction, enables her to appear in a privileged position in the Protestant religious-political community in which she lives. Turning from Rowlandson to Richardson, Pamela offers another example of how the trope of female captivity allows the captive to voice ministerial religious power while in, and even after, captivity. Scholars have posited the connections evident between Rowlandson’s narrative and Richardson’s sentimental novel in the past. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse in particular argue for a reading of Pamela in connection to Rowlandson’s tale of Indian captivity in The Imaginary Puritan . They assert that “ Pamela is a captivity narrative” (211) which favors the creation of an individual authorial consciousness in the same way as Rowlandson’s earlier text. The argument by Armstrong and Tennenhouse is maintained in the service of creating a causal relationship between the New England captivity narrative and the English sentimental novel, stating that the English novel stems from tales of captivity; however, such an interpretation lacks a certain amount of nuance in the face of the overwhelming use of representations of female captivity across the literary spectrum. Armstrong and Tennenhouse underscore a connection that is less about causality and more about the invasive nature of the trope of captivity in this time period. Rowlandson’s narrative came before Richardson’s novel, but is not necessarily the cause of the rise of the English novel. Both just utilize the trope of female captivity in their texts as others did before and after their publications.

Pamela sheds light on the sentimental use of captive affliction discussed earlier in this chapter to reveal the virtue, and ultimately the religious superiority, of the female captive. Affliction, and the confession of such, is the central mechanism through which the reader comes to understand the moral righteousness of Pamela in the text. In “The Trial Narrative in Richardson’s Pamela : Suspending the Hermeneutic of Happiness,” Vivasvan Soni hints at the importance of affliction in this particular novel. Soni uses Pamela as an example of what he terms a trial narrative, which he posits is a literary genre that structures a series of harsh tests for a character which culminates in the achievement of a good event or goal. He claims that this emerged in the eighteenth century because this period was when people began to question the epistemological concept of happiness, as the passing of such trials equates to the proof of character virtue, not necessarily proof of continued happiness. Soni claims that Pamela’s ultimate lesson as a character was “to interpret the events in her life not as hardships that add to her unhappiness but as trials that say something about her regardless of her happiness” (9). While Soni attempts to distinguish trial narratives from Christian providential tales by claiming religious tales don’t take into account issues of happiness, it is apparent that the trial narrative discussed is reliant upon issues of affliction used in sentimental discourse, which extend from religious concepts in Protestant communities. The trials and hardships which prove Pamela’s virtue are moments of affliction, and the concern of affliction is always to prove the moral and religious superiority of those afflicted by God, even within sentimental novels. Although the trials of affliction that Pamela suffers extend throughout the first volume of the novel, one incident in particular calls attention to this affliction through a religious experience of confession. While captive to Mr. B and Mrs. Jewkes in Lincolnshire, Pamela commits to exercising a form of “private Devotions” (140) because she is unable to attend church on Sundays. Mrs. Jewkes attempts to goad Pamela into singing a psalm for her, which Pamela refuses. But remembering psalm 137, Pamela decides to re-write the captivity of the Israelites to reflect her captive experiences. She creates the following revision of the psalm: I. II. When sad I sat in B------n- My Joys and Hopes all hall, overthrown, All watched round about, My Heart strings almost And thought of ev’ry absent broke, Friend, Unfit my Mind for Melody, The Tears for Grief burst out. Much more to bear a Joke;

III. IX. Then she to whom I Prisoner Ev’n so shalt thou, O wicked was, One, Said to me tauntingly, At length to Shame be Now chear my Heart, and brought; sing a Song, And happy shall all those be And tune your Mind to Joy. call’d That my Deliv’rance IV. wrought. Alas! said I, how can I frame My heavy Heart to sing; X. Or tune my Mind, while thus Yea, blessed shall the Man be inthrall’d call’d By such a wicked Thing! That shames thee of thy Evil, And saves me from thy vile V. Attempts, But yet, if from my Innocence And thee, too, from the D – l. I, ev’n in Thought, should (140-2) slide, Then let my Fingers quite forget The sweet Spinnet to guide.

VI. And let my Tongue within my Mouth Be lock’d for ever fast, If I rejoice, before I see My full Deliv’rance past.

VII. And thou, Almighty, recompence The Evils I endure, From those who seek my sad Disgrace, So causeless, to procure.

VIII. Remember, lord, this Mrs. Jewkes , When with a mighty Sound, She cries, Down with her Chastity, Down to the very Ground!

The re-writing of this particular psalm is noteworthy, as it is a psalm that was re-written by authors such as Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a way for expressing ideas of political alienation.16 In Pamela’s revision, the first two stanzas of the psalm detail the sadness of her captive state, as well as the oppression of the affliction she is under. Her “Tears for Grief” (140) express both her affliction and abundance of sentiment while a captive. The third and fourth stanzas highlight a specific form of affliction she endures, namely the taunting of Mrs. Jewkes, her immediate captor in this situation, who wishes her to “Tune [her] Mind to Joy” although her captive affliction would bar such an emotional shift. Pamela then moves on to vows of punishments that should follow if she succumbs to the sexual advances of Mr. B or remains in captivity, going to far as to ask for the “Tongue within my Mouth, / Be lock’d for ever fast” if she should forget her afflictions in captivity and become a happy captive in the house of wickedness. Verses seven through ten discuss the hope of God’s deliverance from such affliction, as well as a wish for the salvation of Mrs. Jewkes despite her “vile Attempts” (142) and general wickedness. Overall, the revised psalm represents not only Pamela’s desire to escape captivity, but also the moral and religious lessons she has learned from her captive experience. The affliction represented is confessed in the form of the psalm, which as a Biblical form itself is a direct address to God. This psalm expresses Pamela’s confessions of captivity, penned as a confession to God to express the affliction she has endured and her commitment to moral and religious superiority in spite of (or maybe particularly because of) her captive state. The wider religious and political implications of Pamela’s psalm do not become fully apparent until later in the text, when Mr. B demands a reading of this psalm in front of a group of ladies from the neighborhood, Pamela’s father, and the reverend Mr. Williams the Sunday before their wedding. Pamela at first protests this public reading, refusing to sing it herself and forcing Mr. B to read it aloud. When protesting, Mr. B proclaims that she has nothing to fear from this public exposure, as “These Ladies know a good Part of your Story; and, let me tell you, what they know is more to your Credit than mine; so that if I have no Averseness to reviving the Occasion, you may very well bear it” (316). Mr. B’s assertion here exposes that Pamela’s story is not only known, but has become a credit to her virtue and morality. The ladies at the house

16 Hannibal Hamlin’s “Psalms Culture in the English Renaissance: Readings of Psalm 137 by Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton and Others” gives a solid overview of how this particular song served various political purposes in England’s early modern period.

know Pamela’s story and look forward to a moment to praise what they see as Pamela’s “Genius and Accomplishments” (318) through her revision of Psalm 137. What follows is an interesting recitation of Pamela’s personal confession of affliction. Mr. B asks Mr. Williams to read a verse of the common translation of the psalm, which was the popular musical translation from the mid-sixteenth century used in Anglican services well through the eighteenth century. Mr. Williams proceeds to read aloud one or two verses from the common book, which is then followed by Mr. B’s reading of Pamela’s parallel verses. Interjected between the recitations are comments from the audience, all of whom praise Pamela’s wit and virtue in her creation. The few scholars who have discussed the revision of Psalm 137 in Pamela most often focus on this second scene of public recital and its connection to religious and political power within the text. Michael Austin’s “Lincolnshire Babylon: Competing Typologies in Pamela’s 137 th Psalm” argues that because Mr. B reads the psalm aloud to an audience, this act gives him power to reinterpret Pamela’s captivity, making it an ultimately positive event because it ends in their marriage. He claims “This second [rendition of the] psalm assures us that everything that has happened in the novel so far is part of God’s ultimate plan for Pamela’s happiness” (512). Austin’s argument maintains that because Mr. B reads the text aloud he retains control of its meaning for the audience; however, this argument forgets that the captive example within the psalm text, and the novel itself, is alive and present for this rendition. The reading in Pamela’s presence, as well as the accompanying praise of the text, is much more about Pamela’s virtue proven through the private and public confession of affliction evident in her written speech, if not her actual voice. The comments that accompany and follow the reading of Pamela’s psalm also emphasize her ministerial power and political agency. Nancy Armstrong’s Desire and Domestic Fiction also underscores the importance of the second appearance of Pamela’s psalm in the novel; however, Armstrong’s reading gives power and agency to Pamela in this instance and reveals the religious and political implications at stake in this section of the narrative. She states: If, at an earlier moment in history, the translation of the Bible into English transferred moral authority from the church to the state, then here was an equally significant shift in the structure of power in England. Pamela’s verse translates the historical and political meaning of the “common translation” of a psalm into terms at once personal and universal. This is to mark symbolically a shift in

moral authority from the male institutions of state to the head of household. Furthermore, although it is Mr. B who gives voice to the new language of morality, he must read Pamela’s writing in order to do so. […] The shift in Pamela’s verse to the first-person pronoun transfers moral authority from a domestic framework to the framework of female subjectivity, which is surely to wrest such authority from the male institutions of church and state. (150) In this reading, Armstrong claims that Biblical translations have, since the Protestant Reformation, become a political tool in a continual struggle between the Catholic Church and the Protestant state. From this view, Pamela’s revision of the English Protestant psalm becomes another transition in political power, marking her as a moral authority in her Protestant community because of her Biblical knowledge. The authority of the Bible becomes the interpretive and creative authority of Pamela, in much the same way that the King James Authorized Version of the Bible in 1611 served not only to create a standard English translation of the text, but to cement Protestant state power in the King. 17 In a world where the King is the head of the Anglican Church, which is an arm of the Protestant state, Pamela’s repurposing of a sanctioned musical version of psalm 137 places her within a religious-political discourse that extends from the Anglican minister all the way to the king of England. Armstrong’s argument regarding the political power of this reading is important, and stresses the connection between Biblical translation and political power; however, she does not take into consideration the one audience member and commentator to the text that makes this political and religious power shift apparent: Reverend Mr. Williams. While reading aloud the “common translation” of the psalm and listening to Pamela’s translation, Mr. Williams continually interjects his thoughts on the worthiness of Pamela’s verse. When the reading begins, Mr. Williams appears to be slightly patronizing toward Pamela’s psalms, commenting that the captive’s version is “Mighty sweet” and “Very pretty” (318); however, this attitude changes when Pamela attempts to stop the reading of her final four verses: “O pray, Madam, said Mr. Williams , let me beg to have the rest read, for I long to know who you make the Sons of Edom, and how you turn the Psalmist’s Execrations against the insulting Babylonians ” (319). It is not just a curiosity at the invention within the new psalm that spurs Mr. Williams to this

17 David Daniel’s The Bible in English provides an in-depth history of various English Bibles, including the creation of the King James Authorized Version in 1611, along with the social and political uses of each.

exclamation, but a desire to hear more and understand something from these new verses. In this moment, the Anglican minister becomes the student of Pamela, wishing to learn from her re- created verses something new regarding the meaning and application of the common psalm. In a similar way to the Preface of Mary Rowlandson’s narrative, the exclamation of Williams at this moment fully authorizes the moral understanding and Biblical knowledge of the captive’s confession of affliction while simultaneously shifting power from the minister (in this case Mr. Williams himself) to the words and knowledge of the representation of female captivity. The shift that this instigates accentuates the power and political position behind new translations of the Bible, and as the Anglican minister gives way to the one-time captive and servant in the areas of moral superiority and knowledge, the female captive becomes the focal point and mediator of a religious power that is mandated by state politics. The Bible is never just a religious text, but always also a political tool within Protestant communities in the long eighteenth century. Pamela re-writes the English Bible to confess her captive experiences of affliction and in doing so acquires a political agency that has been part of the process of English Biblical translation since the sixteenth century within all Protestant Atlantic communities. The Communal It is a well known theoretical assumption that the force that most often brings a community together is the realization of a shared enemy. An Other beyond the border of a community invites solidarity and connections that cannot be achieved solely from looking within. In the case of the Protestant Atlantic British communities of the long eighteenth century, this force from without that created stronger bonds from within was Catholic France and the political and military conflicts that persisted between Britain and France from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Tony Claydon, in Europe and the Making of England , argues that such military conflicts are the core of the bonds that persisted between Protestants across the known world at this time, stating “Military conflict, then, drew Protestant Europe together. Even though unequivocally religious wars were rare, the fact that Protestants in particular places had been endangered and that other Protestants had helped them was seen as confirmation of an underlying solidarity” (58). While this argument focuses solely on the European connection between Protestants, both sides of the British Atlantic unified within these conflicts. Colonial British holdings in North America were particularly affected by such

conflicts, as many of the battles that raged throughout the eighteenth century did not occur on European soil but within the contested territories of the colonies. Protestant British Atlantic communities formed ties through their struggle against the French Catholics, and these ties made such communities stronger. As Linda Colley asserts in Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 : Time and time again, war with France brought Britons […] into confrontation with an obviously hostile Other and encouraged them to define themselves collectively against it. They defined themselves as Protestants struggling for survival against the world’s foremost Catholic power. They defined themselves against the French as they imagined them to be, superstitious, militarist, decadent and unfree. (5) Within these bonds forged by military, political and religious conflict with French Catholics, the Protestant communities of the British Atlantic turned to narratives of war to bolster their claim to righteousness. These narratives often employed the trope of female captivity to further unite communities in the affliction endured by women captured by Catholics. At the same time, the use of confession of affliction became less about personal sin and suffering and more about the affliction of entire communities. The representations of female captives caught by Catholics confessed to give themselves political agency that was predicated upon the continued conflict between the French Catholics and the Protestants of the British Atlantic World. Hannah Swarton’s narrative of Indian and French captivity, first published as an appendix to one of Cotton Mather’s sermons in 1697, recounts the female captive’s experiences following the attack on Casco Bay by French and Indian fighters in the spring of 1690. This conflict with the French in North America, termed The War of the Grand Alliance in Europe and King William’s War in the colonies, was instigated by the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which dethroned the French-sympathizing Catholic King James II in favor of the Protestant William of Orange. Swarton’s narrative follows the model of the Indian captivity narrative established by Rowlandson but has not had the longevity enjoyed by The Sovereignty and Goodness of God , and scholars have written little on the narrative itself. The two critical points most often discussed in relation to Swarton’s tale of female captivity is the rhetorical invention of Cotton Mather and the way in which the text attempted to bolster Protestantism through anti-Catholic

propaganda. Both critical evaluations dominate the scholarly interest on Swarton, as few offer any further critique on the narrative. In relation to the authorial interference of Cotton Mather, most scholars contend that the tale of Hannah Swarton, although presented in the first person, is in large part Cotton Mather’s creation 18 . The historical figure of Hannah Swarton existed, and was held as a captive among Indians and the French; however, many assert that the tale itself, while based in reality, was highly manipulated by Mather’s pen because of its extensive citation of the Bible and Protestant doctrinal arguments against Catholicism. While critical discussions concerning the “true” author of a text are valid, it is irrelevant to the discussions framed within this study. It is interesting to note, however, that the debates surrounding the authorship of Swarton’s narrative hinge on the assumption that a Protestant woman, raised within a Puritan community that adhered to the concept of the priesthood of all believers, would be incapable of offering biblical and doctrinal arguments against Catholicism. As presented earlier in this chapter, it is fairly easy to establish that Protestant women in captivity displayed astute and thoughtful Biblical interpretations and knowledge during this period. Whether Mather or Swarton was the author of this narrative, it is clear that the text relies on the trope of female captivity, and because of its first-person structure, privileges the voice of a representation of female captivity within its pages. The captive female is the speaker of the text, the voice that relays both the confessional act and the religious force of the narrative, which is the object of study in this particular context. As for the critical discourse surrounding the anti-Catholic message within the text, a perusal of the narrative makes this point very clear. While Swarton is initially captured by Indians, it is her test of faith in the homes of her civilized French captors that offers her the most dangers during her captive experiences. Scholars point to this struggle between France and England, or Catholics and Protestants, as the argumentative impetus of the narrative. In Captives , Linda Colley asserts that the majority of the Swarton narrative works to prove to her audience “that she had successfully preserved her national and religious identity” (151), an identity that Colley maintains is forged through circum-Atlantic ties to both Britishness and Protestantism in the long eighteenth century. Ann Little’s Abraham in Arms agrees with

18 The most extensive scholarly consideration of the Swarton narrative, Lorrayne Carol’s “‘My Outward Man:’ The Curious Case of Hannah Swarton” (1996), promotes this view of Mather as author of the text, as does the introductory remarks to the narrative presented by Alden T. Vaughn and Edward W. Clark in their collection of Indian captivity narratives, Puritans Among the Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption, 1676-1724 (1981).

Colley’s assertion regarding the necessity to reaffirm identity in the Swarton narrative, although the religious angle is stressed far more heavily within this critique. Little claims that the Swarton narrative served two distinct and powerful purposes upon its publication, to “stir up the emotions of the New England reading public to hear of the allegedly barbarous methods of French proselytizers, [and give] Swarton and Mather the opportunity to demonstrate the steadfastness of her faith and prove herself a worth model for other New Englanders to emulate” (133). Although not highlighting this fact in the majority of her critique, Lorrayne Carol, in “‘My Outward Man:’ The Curious Case of Hannah Swarton,” calls this particular female captive “both [a] sinner and means of redemption” (53) in the eyes of her Puritan community upon the publication of her narrative. This continual critical evaluation of the Swarton narrative points to the importance of religious discourse and doctrine within this text, as well as the ways in which such religious discourse was tightly bound to the political workings of her community. However, these critics ignore the fact that while Swarton comments on the difficulties she encounters from her Catholic captors, she also highlights the sins of her Protestant community in an effort to edify her audience. While it is true that Swarton becomes a galvanizing figure in a British Atlantic Protestant community that identifies itself against the French Catholics, this representation of female captivity achieves such a feat not only through demonizing the French, but also pointing out to her community their own sins. It is not simply anti-Catholic sentiment that provides the force of Swarton’s narrative, but the combination of such sentiment with a harsh critique of her own community in relation to differing Catholic and Protestant practices in North America that gives this representation of female captivity political power and agency in the text. For Swarton the religious discourse of her captivity narrative, achieved through both confession of sin and affliction, allowed her access to female political agency within her wider Protestant community, but only because she confessed the community process of affliction in relation to their religious and political practices. Hannah Swarton’s captivity narrative mimics Rowlandson in many respects, but one clear difference divides the two: while Rowlandson contended only with the heathenish ways of her Indian captors, Swarton used her faith to rebuff both the Indian and French. Crouched in confession and affliction, Swarton used her interactions with Catholics Indians and French citizens to position herself as a Protestant religious authority. Her first moment of confession,

the point in which she details her past sins as logical reasoning for her afflictions, reveals her sins as not purely individual, but rather communal. She reflects on herself and others by stating: I desired to consider all of my sins for which the Lord did punish me, so this lay heavy on my heart that I had left the public worship and ordinances of God where I formally lived to remove to the north part of Casco Bay where there was no church or minister of the Gospel. And this we did for large accommodations in the world, thereby exposing our children to be bred ignorantly like the Indians and ourselves to forget what we were formally instructed in, and so we turned our backs on God’s ordinances to get this world’s goods. But now God hath stripped me of these things also so that I must justify the Lord in all that has befallen me and acknowledge that He hath punished me less than my iniquities deserve. (150- 151) Swarton may situate this confession in the singular, but an understanding of her sin implicates herself and her entire community, the “we” Swarton references in her confession. She is not just discussing her personal misuse of the Sabbath, as Rowlandson does in her narrative, but is rather pointing to the religious misdeeds of every Protestant within her isolated community who forsook religious fellowship in an effort to “gain large accommodations in the world.” By confessing her sin, she is confessing and exposing the sins of everyone living in Casco Bay. The personal confession becomes communal; however, the affliction suffered by Swarton cannot be equally shared by her community. Because of this affliction, Swarton has the power and prestige to call forth the sins of herself and others in order to be instructive. In this captive affliction, God endows Swarton with tribulation that marks her as having superior moral and religious understanding when remembering and interpreting her experiences. Swarton’s afflictions in the narrative are often marked by religious persecution because of her Catholic captors. In an accusatory moment for Swarton, she details the religious conversion of her Indian mistress, revealing, “My Indian mistress was one who had been bred by the English at Black Point and now married to a Canada Indian and turned papist. And she would say that had the English been as careful to instruct her in our religion as the French were to instruct her in theirs, she might have been of our religion. And she would say that God delivered us into their hands to punish us for our sins” (150). The revelation of her Indian captor’s connections to Protestantism is a direct rebuke to the general Protestant disregard for

missionary work with the Indians, as Swarton maintains that “our sins” have brought such affliction upon her. Although raised in a Protestant community, her mistress was never religiously included, which later led to her defection to Catholicism. Swarton tells this tale in an effort to show the folly of her religious community. By not making a strong effort to convert Indians as the French Catholics have, Protestants in the New World were directly responsible for the large amount of Indians converted to Christianity turning to Catholicism. God delivered Swarton into the hands of her mistress for sins of the community in this instance, not personal faults. It is then Swarton’s job to call out the sins of the group so that her Protestant audience can learn something from her experiences of affliction, whether it is to remember the importance of fellowship or the necessity of securing Indian converts to Protestantism. The recruitment efforts of the Catholics are discussed continually in the narrative, as Swarton was pushed toward conversion by the French Catholics at various points. Although these civilized individuals treated her better than her previous uncivilized captors, Swarton soon faces the persuasive dangers of priests and nuns, who offered her “many threatenings and sometimes hard usage” (154) when she refused to convert. However, it is within these encounters that Swarton reveals her superior understanding of Protestant religious ideas and concepts. She continually argued with her captors/persecutors, and rebuked the tenants of their faith with Biblical argument. She recalls: For their praying to angels they brought the history of the angel that was sent to the Virgin Mary in the first of Luke. I answered them from rev. 19:10 and 22:9. They brought Exodus 17:11 of Israel’s prevailing while Moses held up his hands. I told them we must come to God only by Christ, John 6:37,44. For purgatory they brought Matthew 5:25. I told them to agree with God while here on earth was to agree with our adversary in the way, and if we did not, we should be cast into hell and should not come out until we paid the utmost farthing, which could never be paid. But it’s bootless for me, a poor woman, to acquaint the world with what arguments I used. (154) Contrary to her closing comment, this extended example of her Biblical knowledge and ability to debate proves as “a poor woman” she is a bearer of superior moral and religious understanding. The fact that she rebuffs all arguments and upholds the Protestant faith while a captive positions her as an emulation figure for her entire community. Her arguments, because they are detailed,

can be mimicked when others face similar circumstances. Her affliction in captivity is harsh, but brings her to a better understanding of her religion and reveals her to be someone who can lead by example. The fact that Swarton’s captivity occurred within the confines of a conflict between Protestant and Catholic communities ties her explicitly to the political workings of the British Atlantic World at this time. These conflicts were instigated by European dynastic struggles, religious conflict on the Continent and North American colonial expansion. As a female captive in this first colonial manifestation of European warfare, Swarton upholds her loyalty to both the British Empire and its Protestant roots. A prisoner of war, she is implicated in a far-reaching circum-Atlantic political system. Because she was able to use confession to point out the sins of herself and her community, as well as argue against those with political power over her while a captive, Swarton’s afflictions in captivity expose her political agency in a world where religious and imperial conflict was dominant. Her first-hand encounters with the French and their forceful religious efforts mark her as an example of moral superiority to a Protestant community that defines itself through a binary with the French Catholics; however, her confession of community sins that helped bolster the position of French Catholics in the New World gives her political agency through a critique that would hit close to home. During this time, the Protestants defined themselves by not being Catholics, but Swarton’s confession of community sin reveals that the Protestant community must do much more in order to fully defeat the French Catholics who threaten their religious and political world. Confessions of Protestantism Protestantism, while freeing men from the perceived tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church, did much to free women within their religious communities. The trope of female captivity was employed in a Protestant religious context in order to display the ways in which the religious freedoms and beliefs upheld in Protestant communities led to female political and religious agency. The confessions of these representations of female captives enabled this revelation, as the concept of affliction allowed female captives to achieve a sense of moral superiority and Biblical knowledge in communities where such traits lead to access to political discourse. Protestantism stretched far and wide across the British Atlantic World in the long eighteenth century, and women grasped onto the egalitarian beliefs within this particular form of faith to insert themselves into the religious-political discourse of their home communities.

Captive women confessed their sins, and the sins of others, to Protestant audiences, and while audiences focused on the revelations of their afflictions, these women gained political agency by positioning themselves as moral exemplars and religious authorities at home and abroad.

Chapter 3 Lying Ladies: Deception in Kinship Communities “And, after all, what is a lie? ‘Tis but the truth in a masquerade.” Lord Byron, Don Juan , Canto XI While communities around the British Atlantic World were forged through political ideas or religious affiliation, as discussed in the previous chapters concerning republicanism and Protestantism, bonds were also cemented across borders through more material concerns. The exchange of women and goods that form the basis of kinship systems also functioned in this period. A network of kinship exchanges worked to solidify political and social institutions around the Atlantic World; a solidification which was based upon the exchangeability of women as materials within the marriage contract. While consent, as discussed earlier in connection to republicanism, became a component that could free women to make their own decisions regarding who they would or would not marry in republican communities, the idea that the marriage of an eligible woman was an affair that concerned the entire community in which she lived still held weight. Marriages between families and communities had broader social and political consequences, particularly when such marriages created bonds of kinship or fraternity across boundaries. In the British Atlantic World where the trade in people as property (i.e. slaves) was still a large and vibrant economy, the concept of exchanging marriageable women for political or social security was still prevalent. However, this exchange in women also revealed the economic and political power of the female body. Such a revelation allowed women to use their exchange value in ways that would ensure political agency for themselves. By focusing on the way the female is physically perceived, defined and used within the confines of a particular kinship community, women were able to utilize the material and economic acceptance and access to their bodies in order to gain agency within such systems. Representations of female captivity often made deft maneuvers in order to secure their bodies from harm while in captivity; however, this action gave them access to the political power the female body itself held. In the trope of female captivity, it is a given that the female captive holds a certain amount of economic, political and social capital. While it is true male captives also held exchange value in the kinship system, their value was determined in far less sentimental and

sexualized ways. Without the implementation of sentimental and sexual discourses in regard to female captives, the threat faced for both the captive and community in such instances would not be as paramount or pervasive. The trope of female captivity underscores the importance of physical material, and when the representative female captives functioning within this trope realize this value themselves, they come to use it in an effort to gain security, freedom, and political agency in and outside of their captive situation. In these instances, the power to define the value, exchangeability or function of the female captive is the power that allows such bodies to work within the kinship system itself. Through defining their own bodies and affirming their exchangeability, representations of female captives gained political agency in British Atlantic communities where kinship systems provided political, social and economic security and benefits. Female captives could achieve this through a number of different actions, such as controlling the amount of food they did or did not eat while in captivity, but in the realm of speech acts, the act of deception was the most prevalent tool in their effort to represent, define and benefit through the use of their own bodies. By using deceptive speech, representations of female captivity gained the right to define their own bodies and mandate how they would be circulated or exchanged within their kinship communities. Through deception, female captives found a voice that could strip the power to define from the men who would benefit from kinship exchange and took it for themselves, thus acquiring a female political agency that was dependent upon women’s abilities to name and control themselves within British Atlantic kinship communities in the long eighteenth century. Kinship in the British Atlantic World Kinship, and the exchange system it fosters, has been discussed in a myriad of disciplines, beginning with anthropology. Claude Lévi-Strauss, in his work The Elementary Structures of Kinship , introduced theories of kinship exchange systems in the twentieth century. Stemming from an anthropological study that reached across two continents, Lévi-Strauss advanced a theory of community formation and growth that was founded upon marriage. This theory, termed the kinship system, posited that social organization in primitive and civilized societies were organized through marriage as an exchange of goods, fostering alliances and social connections that were lasting only because of the inclusion of actual human bodies that would make one group related to another through marriage. This concept of marriage is founded

on the exchangeability of women, as Lévi-Strauss asserts they are/were “the most precious category of goods” (61) that could be given from one group to another. The vision of the kinship system promoted by Lévi-Strauss hinges upon two main ideas. The first is that the exchange of gifts or goods is the foundation for political and social order. In a material world, what is given and taken, and the value of such items, mandates one community’s relationship to another. Lévi-Strauss claims “Goods are not only economic commodities, but vehicles and instruments for realities of another order, such as power, influence, sympathy, status and emotion; and the skilfull game of exchange […] consists in a complex totality of conscious and unconscious manæuvres in order to gain security and to guard oneself against risks brought about by alliances and rivalries” (54). In this summation of the true value of goods, it is apparent that exchange is not just about economic security, but rather becomes a system through which social and political power can be achieved and reinforced through various communities coming together for the trade of particular goods that, because of social, political or cultural ideologies, hold more than just a material value. The second idea, which creates the kinship system itself, posits that women are exchangeable commodities. In this assertion, women lose the value of their bodies for themselves and become valuable to the community-at-large, as it is their exchange value instigated between one man to another (father/brother to husband) that creates a social and political bond between communities. Lévi-Strauss asserts that it is the marriage exchange which “provides the means of bringing men together” (480), a bond fostered on the exchange of women as “woman herself is nothing other than [a] gift, the supreme gift among those that can only be obtained in the form of reciprocal gifts” (65). With kinship presented in such a way, it is apparent that social and political organization develops through an exchange of goods, and women become the ultimate form of goods in a system where their agency is denied in an effort to build male bonds of alliance and security. From a feminist prospective, inherent in the original idea of kinship is the social and political oppression of women. Gayle Rubin takes up this analysis in her influential essay “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex.” Rubin begins by defining kinship systems not as a list of relatives, but rather as complex system of categories, statuses, and alliances that form social organization itself and is not simply dependent upon who is related to whom. This makes sense in light of Lévi-Strauss’s continual assertions that kinship is a

community venture that bonds all men together. However, this bond between men is exactly what Rubin wishes to expose in her discussion of kinship. She claims that as gifts women lack access to any benefit or agency from their own exchange. It is only men who reap the rewards of the kinship system. She argues: If it is women who are being transacted, then it is the men who give and take them who are linked, the women being a conduit for a relationship rather than a partner to it. […] If women are the gifts, then it is men who are the exchange partners. And it is the partners, not the presents, upon whom reciprocal exchange confers its quasi-mystical power of social linkage. The relations of such a system are such that women are in no position to realize the benefits of their own circulation. As long as the relations specify that men exchange women, it is men who are the beneficiaries of the product of such exchange – social organization. (37) Through such an interrogation of the kinship system, Rubin pinpoints the locus of oppression for women within this very exchange. Because social organization, which includes power in all its political, social, economic and cultural forms, is bound by the exchange of women-as-gifts, women themselves lack all ability to access the powers social organization gives to the men-as- givers. However, Rubin does maintain that this system is a social construct, which implies it is not a universal given and could be overturned or subverted in an effort to give women access to agency. For Rubin, kinship, with its anthropological, economic and psychoanalytic permutations, may explain “the mutual interdependence of sexuality, economics and politics” (58) which exist in the world, but the fact that it is always in the end a social construct leaves room for change. Women are exchanged and exchangeable, but Rubin acknowledges that it is a social system that does not have to exist, or possibly even work properly at all times. Judith Butler’s Antigone’s Claim augments the assertion that kinship systems can be subverted because they are inherently social and historically situated constructs. Butler maintains kinship systems cannot be separated from the political workings of the state, which means that kinship is never universal, but always socially configured and determined. Because of this fact, the kinship system can be subverted, or even completely overthrown, in light of its ties to social norms and values, as at any given historical moment a figure can disregard the social and historical norms and thus escape the parameters of the kinship system. Butler uses the figure of Antigone, both in her appearance in Greek drama and as a theoretical metaphor for

people such as Hegel, Lacan and Irigaray, as an example of a figure who manages to subvert the kinship system because of her disregard for the social, political and historical norms that ground the system in a specific time and place. At the end of her text, Butler sums up Antigone’s importance to an understanding of kinship as constructed and ultimately open to subversion, stating: If kinship is the precondition of the human, than Antigone is the occasion for a new field of the human, achieved through political catachresis, that one that happens when the less than human speaks as human, when gender is displaced, and kinship founders on its own founding laws. She acts, she speaks, she becomes one for whom the speech act is a fatal crime, but this fatality exceeds her life and enters the discourse of intelligibility as its own promising fatality, the social form of its aberrant, unprecedented future. (82) Antigone, then, serves as a figure of subversion not only because she actually subverts the kinship laws of her community by never truly being daughter or mother, but because her actions expose the malleability of kinship itself. Butler’s use of Antigone highlights the historical and social construction of kinship as well as the ways in which such a system can be subverted. Because of her gender one may assume that she holds no power in the kinship system because she would just represent a gift to be exchanged. However, her actions show that she defies such a system and becomes a political agent by working against the system that would attempt to deny her agency. Through the analogy of Antigone, Butler reveals that the kinship system is always open to subversion, as at any moment a women-as-gift can become more than the sum of her exchange value, or disregard her exchange value altogether, and present herself as a subject in language and action with the ability to assert her political agency in her community. Ruth Perry investigates the relationship between kinship and eighteenth-century British literature in Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748-1818 . Perry’s main argument is that kinship in eighteenth-century fiction turned from stressing the biological family one was born into to stressing the family one created through marriage alliances. While this analysis does not fully discuss the political consequences and uses of kinship within the period, or the ways in which kinship maintained circum-Atlantic community formations, Perry’s emphasis on the sexual commodification of the female within the

eighteenth century kinship network represented in fiction of the period highlights the idea that women were exchanged within a kinship context in order to confer economic, social and political power on the men who were participants in the exchange. Women in and outside of novels became the ultimate gift in the exchange of both material and power, consequently marking the female as commodity only, as “the commodification of persons repeatedly embodied by beautiful heroines for whom male characters were willing to pay immense sums and/or to forgo any dowry or portion, in combination with the eroticization of wealth achieved by making all fictional heroes handsome and rich [helped realize] the commercialization, in short, of sexuality” (240). Perry is claiming that the commodification of the female and the idealization of wealth and beauty in men combined to create a market in sexuality that mandated what was and was not economically viable for women in particular, or at least what was acceptable in order to maintain exchange and use value, resulting in what she asserts was a “deep interpenetration of economic and sexual motives” (242). Perry’s arguments regarding the effects of kinship systems in the real world and the world of the novel in the eighteenth century show that such systems worked within and outside of representation in order to create a social and political network that was dependent upon women on the marriage market. However, Perry also brings to light an important distinction in ideas of kinship central to the eighteenth century British Atlantic World. In the introduction of her text, Perry discusses the actual constitution of the eighteenth century family, a family not dependent entirely upon blood but more so on proximity and mutual concerns. Perry states, “Nuclear families were embedded in relationships of mutual aid and cooperation within an extended kin network” (16). This argument maintains that the kinship system of the eighteenth century had a more porous idea of the construction of the family. Servants, borders, or anyone connected to a specific household through residence or social dependence could be considered part of the family and thus participate in that family’s specific kinship network. It was not a family of blood, but more a family of social, economic and political connection that controlled the kinship systems of the long eighteenth century British Atlantic. This point was emphasized also in Naomi Tadmor’s “The Concept of the Household- Family in Eighteenth Century England.” Tadmor’s contends that the nuclear family, while in existence in the eighteenth century, was not the main concept of family understood by society at this time. Family was classified as the household and included all people living in the space of

the home at any given moment. This household-family structure included any and all who not only resided in the house, but were under the control and authority of a particular house patriarch, which extended the idea of family outward beyond blood. As Tadmor argues, “the boundaries of these household-families are not those of blood and marriage; they are the boundaries of authority and of household management” (120). From this perspective, the kinship system of the long eighteenth century was more dependent upon authority than blood, a dependence that was also constituted through the amount of social, economic and political power a head-of-house held within the wider community and the home. This household-family extended the parameters of the kinship network so as to afford men more control over more female bodies that became exchangeable commodities for their patriarchal social, economic, political, and familial benefit. 19 While the construction of the eighteenth century was more porous and less dependent on blood, the concept of duty and marriage also appeared to be changing. Marriage choice was central in a number of novels in the eighteenth century, and critics such as Ruth Perry maintain that this apparent transition from the consanguineal to the conjugal connection of kinship allowed women more freedom in their choice of marriage partners, which ultimately results in more choice within the kinship network itself. While it is true that love marriages became more prevalent during the course of the long eighteenth century, this does not mean that social, economic, political and familial pressures did not mandate who a woman could or could not love to begin with. 20 Nicole Eustace’s “‘The Cornerstone of a Copious Work:’ Love and Power in Eighteenth-Century Courtship” explains the ways in which, despite the appearance of love marriage choices at this time, women and men still conformed to a social, economic, and political standard that mandated who was and was not an acceptable match. Analyzing several public love letters between courting couples, Eustace argues that the eighteenth century concept of marriage and family was an amalgam of competing notions of love and duty to a given community. Love discourse became more prevalent in the long eighteenth century, but this did

19 While Tadmor’s emphasis on authority and control more often than not would benefit the men within household- families, critics, such as Ann Van Sant in her essay “Historicizing Domestic Relations: Sarah Scott’s Use of the ‘Household-Family,’” use Tadmor’s claims to assert access to an egalitarian kinship structure in which female friendship and connection could hold power within the family. 20 This point has been particularly stressed within discussions of republican ideas of love and marriage at this time. June Namias’ White Captives and Jan Lewis’ “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic” explicitly address this apparent ideological contradiction between marriage choice and republican social responsibility for women.

not mean that men and women forgot their duty within their particular kinship network. Eustace claims “The open assertions of love and devotion that developed in eighteenth-century courtship were not transparent, distinct from negotiations of economic and social status, or devoid of connotations of power” as “love and power were intimately connected” (518). Marriage and its connection to power was not severed in the face of the rise of love matches, but only became less transparent within the marriage transaction. As people began to speak more of love and its importance to marriage, they did not forget the economic, social and political factors that would make a marriage acceptable to every person within a kinship system, not just the two people being married. 21 Through all of this, women remained commodities within the kinship systems of the long eighteenth-century British Atlantic World. The position as material for exchange gave them value within the system, but not agency. Agency within kinship came only to those that perpetrated the exchange of female bodies; however, this male political agency derived from the gifting of women was also predicated upon the male’s ability to correctly define and control the female body in question. Because definition and control also supplied agency within the system, women could access this political agency through their ability to name and control themselves within the wider commodity market. This was achieved through deception. The act of lying about or deceiving someone in connection to the female body opens space within the transgression of the lie to define and name one’s body for one’s self. Deception, and specifically the speech act of lying that goes with such deception, then provides female political agency in kinship systems of the long eighteenth century British Atlantic World by enabling women to label and manage themselves, wresting the political and economic power of kinship away from men who would control their exchange. Lying as a Political Speech Act In terms of performative utterances, the falsity of a statement does not hinder an utterance from performing an action. Austin asserts as much in How to Do Things with Words , explicitly defining performative utterances as “not merely, saying something but doing something, and not a true or false report of something” (25). The truth or falsity of a statement is not the issue at

21 It is important to note that Lawrence Stone’s influential study of family structures in early modern England, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 , establishes the eighteenth century as the moment when affection replaced patriarchal kinship concerns within constructions of the family unit. However, Stone’s assertions lacks a consideration of the complex play between duty and affection that Eustance asserts or the shift in kinship focus and power argued by Perry.

hand when discussing performatives, as Austin asserts, but it is rather that words are performing an action regardless of the fact or fiction behind the statement. In this way deceptive speech acts are valid performatives if they act upon or cause the desired action in an audience. Kang Lee gives a solid definition of lying as a speech act in her essay “Lying as Doing Deceptive Things with Words: A Speech Act Theoretical Perspective.” She states: Lying is a unique form of speech act. Lying, like other speech acts, has both the intentionality and conventionality components, but it differs dramatically from other forms of speech acts in terms of the specifics of the intentionality and conventionality components involved. With regard to the intentionality component, lying is a communicative act wherein there is a discrepancy between what is intended and what is believed by the speaker (the speaker intends to say what she or he does not believe). (180) This definition of lying as a speech act reveals several important points to the analysis of lying as a political act. Lying, because of the intention of the speaker to deceive, is not required to conform to fact or a communal assumption of truth in communication like other speech acts. The lie is a speech act specifically because it is intended to be false by the person speaking, and thus acts upon the listener and the speaker in a particular way because it is an untrue assertion. This has political consequences within community formations because the lie holds different meaning and power for the speaker than it does for the listener. The discrepancy between speaker/listener meaning produces a communal form of power for the speaker, as the speaker becomes the arbitrator of meaning for the listener because of deceptive intention and the actions that result from such speech. This definition of lying is expanded, or more fully comprehended in connection to systematic assent, when belief is taken into account. David Simpson’s “Lying, Liars and Language” makes this point clear in presenting his definition of lying as a speech act to include the effect of intentional deception on the listener. He asserts that people “don’t lie about […] belief, but we intend to deceive regarding it” (624). The crucial position belief holds in relation to lying is further explained when Simpson asserts the importance of performance in the act of lying. “We present our belief to the one whom we lie, and we present it openly, in the sense that we intend to give them reason to think, through features of context and manner, that we intend them to recognize the presentation of belief” (625). With this definition of lying, the act is

predicated upon the belief systems of a listener as well as the performance of belief in the speaker. As Simpson asserts, “A lie is performed” (626), but this performance is determined ultimately by the standard belief structures of a community inherent in a listener. Lying, then, requires the intention to use systematic assent in a deceptive way in order to perform a believable lie for the listener. Paul Faulkner’s “What is Wrong with Lying?” extends these assertions made by Simpson, also highlighting the importance of audience belief in the act of lying. For Faulkner, lying uncovers what both the speaker and the listener believe in a particular community context, as “What a speaker says and does is always evidence for what he believes – even a lie is evidence of certain attitudes – and in offering access to a speaker’s beliefs, his utterances and actions always provide an audience with evidence for how the world is in some respect” (540). Faulkner’s claims reveal that the belief of both the speaker and the listener are present in the lie, even as the lie attempts to deceive. Central to the speech act of lying is an understanding of community standards of belief, a certain use of systematic assent, even as these belief structures are used to undermine other beliefs or standards within the community because of the intention to deceive. The deception itself offers a transgressive or opposing belief, which both uses and reveals the original belief in the transgression. The transgressive revelation of the act of lying is especially pertinent to discussions of women and their relationship to deception in speech. Harriet Goldhor Lerner’s The Dance of Deception: Pretending and Truth-telling in Women’s Lives discusses the need for deception for women within oppressive community formations. In order to do this, she insists on using the term “pretending” rather than lying, but in terms of an intentional deception in speech, the two words hold the same definition. However, this use of “pretending” reveals a need to deceive in order for women to operate with particular communities. She claims: Our failure to live authentically and to speak truly may have little to do with evil or exploitative intentions. Quite the contrary, pretending more frequently reflects a wish, however misguided, to protect others and to ensure the viability of the self as well as our relationships. Pretending reflects deep prohibitions, real and imagined, against a more direct and forthright assertion of self. (14) Pretending underscores the community belief and performance inherent in lying for women as they work to become freer or more viable members of a restrictive community. For women

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within such communities, the act of lying becomes understandable, and often anachronistically forgivable, when faced with the harsh historical realities women lived through in certain places at certain times. Women participated in the speech act of lying in the long eighteenth century British Atlantic World in order to gain political agency in a time and place where to have a lie believed reveals both an astute understanding of community beliefs and a successful performance of these beliefs for an audience. Lying as a political speech act becomes clearer when considering the myriad definitions of lying offered above. However, long eighteenth century concepts of lying in the British Atlantic World must be considered to truly see how women used systematic assent to assert their political agency through this particular speech acts in kinship communities. The majority of both political and religious works at this time that deal with the subject of lying condemn it wholeheartedly, asserting that it was not acceptable at any time. However, this is not the universal understanding of lying. There were a number of writers who asserted that there were particular times in which lying was acceptable. One such instance is Robert Moss’ sermon “The Nature of Truth and Falsehood Consider’d.” While Moss maintains that the majority of instances of lying are condemnable, he does offer several instances in which lying is not transgressive to the community, but rather forgivable. As he claims lying is “a notorious Abuse of the natural Talent of Speech,” he also admits “I can’t but think, that ‘tis both lawful, and laudable to misinform, or misdirect” (337) when a person refuses to reveal all their thoughts to another, when a person has secret and secure business with another, or when a person’s life is in danger. There are similar assertions made within the discourse regarding lying that circulated in the British Atlantic World at this time. Lying was condemned often in the long eighteenth century but there were many writers and communities who believed that lying was acceptable within specific situations and with regard to specific people inside and outside of the community. The acceptance of lying in certain situations is observable in the trope of female captivity in kinship communities, and deception has even been presented as a necessity for most representations of female captives by a number of critics. In trying to justify the deceptive actions and speeches of captives, Michelle Burnham states “the captive’s deception is implicitly innocent, and it is innocent because it is legitimated by the condition of captivity itself” (58). This justification for the act of deception is rendered by Burnham as a means to assert why a captive would lie, but Burnham ignores the important connection between the captive lie and the

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community endorsement of the lie, as this transgressive act should always be remembered in relation to the suppression of particular community beliefs in the interaction between the lying captive and the sanctioning home community. An act of verbal deception for a captive, although going against normal community standards and expectations in language, is forgiven by the community because of the captive’s experiences and afflictions in captivity as well as the need to secure women within the kinship system. In many ways, such deceptive acts are encouraged in order to facilitate the release, ease, and survival of captive women. Captive women assent to the discourse of deception in order to return home, and in doing so deceptive language is sanctioned by the community at large. Because deception is a transgressive action, whether sanctioned or not, it inherently holds within it space for female captives to perform a certain level of political agency that would not be expressed without such transgressive acts, and calls into question circum-Atlantic communities founded on kinship systems which create inter-social and trans- political connections based on exchange value and use. Captive Deceptions The transgressive action of the lie is condoned by the community reading works dealing with the trope of female captivity in order to achieve an outcome desired by both the community and the captive, namely the security or escape of the female body from her captors. This is where the political agency of the female captive, and by extension all females within the kinship communities of the long eighteenth century British Atlantic World, is fully exposed: the representation of female captivity lies about her body to secure it from harm or to escape from captivity, but in so doing she displays the general female ability to define her exchange value within all kinship systems through the act of lying. Whether in an effort to secure their bodies or escape captivity, female captives deceive their captors using the terms of their kinship community in order to navigate the system in a way that produces an outcome desired by the captive and places her in a position of power in relation to the exchange and commodification of her own body within the kinship system. Securing the female captive most often relies on lies regarding availability. This includes lying about pregnancy and marriage eligibility in order to escape bodily injury or unwanted male attachments. In texts such as Jean Lowry’s Indian captivity narrative and Elizabeth Marsh’s Barbary captivity narrative, the female captives represented in the texts lie about their status as exchangeable commodities in order to secure themselves from the unwanted marital advances of

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their captors or to secure the basic safety of their bodies in general. Through deceptive acts to secure herself, the female captive comes to define that body and the ability to define such material gives the captive political agency through the act of deception. In an effort to escape captivity, lies regarding availability offered the representation of female captivity an amount of control over herself, which would be improbable without the act of the lie. Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess and the Indian captivity narrative of Mary Smith both use the lie as means for escape, and although each produces a very different outcome, they both reveal how the trope of female captivity underscores transgressive actions which expose possible avenues for female political agency within kinship communities. In both examples of how deception is used in representations of female captivity, either through securing herself physically or escaping captivity through the use of lies, the way the female body is constituted in the text highlights the political agency that is acquired through deceptive speech acts. How the bodies of captives are defined, who performs the act of definition and how such bodies are used within the trope of female captivity exposes agency and political engagement within specific kinship communities. Captive Security Efforts to secure the female captive from physical harm are standard within the trope of captivity, and the captive herself was given latitude in regard to the practices she should choose to employ toward such efforts. This is one of the reasons that the transgressive act of lying was condoned by community audiences; it was seen as imperative to secure the commodified body of the female captive and its exchange value within the kinship community, so acts normally frowned upon were overlooked or even encouraged when in danger. At the same time, these efforts could easily be applied to situations and spaces within the home community itself. Using deceptive speech meant that deception was possible and achieved desired results. The deployment of transgressive acts of lying in order to solidify political and social norms for representations of female captivity in British Atlantic kinship communities centered, more often than not, around issues of race. The British push to spread across the Atlantic World prior to and during the long eighteenth century meant that these white, Western Europeans began to encounter people around the world who were not white. Native (North and South) American Indians, Africans (in both the Mediterranean and Sub-Saharan regions), Near Easterners and Asians were encountered in this push around the Atlantic for the British, and such encounters produced a solidified racial hierarchy in the minds of the white British people that excluded large

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groups from participation in the political and social systems within established British Atlantic communities. The desire for racial purity and superiority mandated that interracial sexual relationships be strictly prohibited, at least as far as it concerned white British women and non- white men. Rebecca Blevins Feary discusses this sexual taboo in relation to American encounters and beliefs in Cartographies of Desire , stating, “The taboo against sexual contact between white women and dark men has historically been one of the most rigid and powerful in American culture, deeply marking our literature, politics, psychosexuality, and social arrangements – the whole extent and fabric of American life” (180). Such an assessment of the racial barriers erected from the beginning of colonial encounters in North America are indeed true, but it is a mistake to assume or assert that colonial America was the only location where such taboos were created and enforced. Across the British Atlantic, in every colony or community where white men held sway, the taboo against sexual encounters between white women and non-white men were firmly established and permeated the social and political landscape of such communities. With racial hierarchies firmly entrenched at this time, it is no surprise that securing the captive from harm and defending the kinship structures of the British Atlantic World highlighted issues of racial contact, corruption, and sexual threat. Representations of female captives were depicted as guarding themselves not only from socially or politically inferior matches, but also racially suspect participants in the kinship system. Through either the exchange of the female in unauthorized ways or the threat of miscegenation, non-European captors loomed as a particular threat to the kinship communities established at this time. Jean Lowry’s A Journal of the Captivity of Jean Lowry and Her Children and Elizabeth Marsh’s The Female Captive describe the perceived danger to the white female captives were assumed to face from the physical and sexual threats of non-European male captors while also instigating and authorizing the deceptive acts of these captives in their attempts to secure the purity and position of the white woman. While the racial prejudices of the British Atlantic World condoned the actions of Lowry and Marsh as necessary for the maintenance of the value of their white female bodies, these narratives also show how the trope of female captivity used racial assumptions in connection to kinship networks to depict the ways real women used the transgression of the lie to establish their bodily safety, and ultimately their political position in their communities. The narrative of Jean Lowry’s captivity has been woefully underrepresented in historical and literary scholarship; an oversight that does little justice to a text that combines issues of race,

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captivity, motherhood, kinship, religion, and politics. 22 Jean Lowry, a captive during the Seven Years War, lies about her pregnancy in order to ensure her life while in captivity and before being exchanged between the Indians and the French. As was a common belief at the time, Lowry asserts that she and her unborn child would be killed by her Indian captors if they discovered she was pregnant, which was reiterated in the narrative as her greatest fear upon first being taken was “my being big with Child, and knowing that it was the usual Indian Manner, to kill every Woman they took in that Condition” (4). 23 In this fear, Lowry admits to lying to her captors about her pregnancy: [The Indians] did indeed suspect me, and spoke somewhat concerning my Condition. But what reply I made, cannot now recollect; I’m only sure that I made conscience of Lying, but indeed its like enough there was an Endeavour to deceive them in the Answer I made, by concealing as much as I could my Pregnancy; Neither can I blame my conduct in my Circumstances at that Time, when I consider the divine Direction unto the Prophet Samuel “When God appointed him to go to Bethlehem and Annoint one of Jesse’s Son’s to be King instead of Saul” I. Sam. xvi. 2. &c. But leaving such disputes to such, as God has qualified for them, I proceed in my Narration. (4) Although the deceptive speech act is not rendered in dialogue or even fully detailed, it is positioned as an act in language. Lowry contends she “made conscience of Lying” in all her replies to the Indians, being fully aware that the intended purpose of such lies was to deceive them in her pregnancy status. These lies seem to work, which fulfills her performative utterances, as the Indians no longer question her about her pregnancy after this point in the narrative.

22 There are no singular studies regarding the Lowry captivity narrative and the narrative itself, if mentioned at all, is only seen in scholarship in passing references or footnote citations. The exception to this is Daniel Marston’s The French-Indian War, 1754-1760 ; however, this offers only a superficial recapitulation of the narrative itself without much analysis on the significance of the text. 23 Although the mistreatment of pregnant women among Indian captors was not universal, the belief that a pregnant body was in great physical danger while in captivity was still pervasive. This is partially do with a number of popular Indian captivity narratives that promoted the idea, such as Reverend John Williams’ The Redeemed Captive, Returning to Zion (1707), which described the killing of no less than six pregnant women while Williams was a captive, and Mary Rowlandson’s detailed description of the torture and murder of a pregnant captive at the beginning of her fourth remove.

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She justifies her deception in religion and uses Biblical citation to validate her lies. In 1 Samuel 16, the prophet Samuel is told to lie by God himself. Verses one through five explains this call for a lie as recourse to save Samuel’s life from the wrath of King Saul: And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons. And Samuel said, How can I go? if Saul hear, he will kill me. And the LORD said, Take an heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the LORD. And call Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will shew thee what thou shalt do: and thou shalt anoint unto me [him] whom I name unto thee. And Samuel did that which the LORD spake, and came to Bethlehem. And the elders of the town trembled at his coming, and said, Comest thou peaceably? And he said, Peaceably: I am come to sacrifice unto the LORD: sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice. And he sanctified Jesse and his sons, and called them to the sacrifice. (260) Using typology to justify her own actions, Lowry asserts that God not only condones, but commands the use of the lie in situations in which the righteous may be faced with death. Lowry is showing her community that to lie on certain occasions is not only right, but is righteous in the eyes of God, an equation that the belief structures of her community would not refute with such evidence before them. This is also a moment of instruction, as she superficially pawns the righteousness of lying in particular circumstances off “to such, as God has qualified for them,” while her previous arguments position her as an authority thus qualified by God. Although her assertion of her deception qualifies this as a confessional act much like Rowlandson and Swarton, the later exchange of her pregnant self to the French also exposes the complex issues that could arise when using the female within a kinship gift exchange. Approximately a month and a half after her initial capture, the Indians give Lowry to the French at Fort Venange. This exchange is explicitly for political and social purposes, as at the French fort she was “made a Present of unto the Commanding Officer” (13) by her Indian captors. Issues of kinship systems and exchange illuminate the process undergone here, as the woman was exchanged from one captor to another in order to facilitate both social and political unity. As she was a “Present,” she was offered up as a way in which the males within this specific

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system could unite. However, because of her deceptive utterances, the female exchanged was not rightfully understood. In lying to her captors, Lowry’s pregnancy is not mentioned in the exchange and her condition caused many issues for the French. Her birth caused havoc in the fort, as there “was not another Woman in the place” (14) to help with her labor, a fact itself facilitated by the idea of women functioning only as politically-valuable material. The racialized sexual threat presented in Lowry’s narrative is not as overt as other narrative accounts discussed later in this chapter, yet the issue of race is still prevalent within this representation of female captivity. Lowry explicitly asserts the physical threat to herself while captive to Indians and implicitly presented is the ever-present sexual threat Indian men appeared to be to white female captives at this time. The circulated belief that Indian captors would kill pregnant women was not the only believed threat to white females captured by the North American dark Other. As June Namias asserts in White Captives , “The ‘wild’ or ‘savage’ Indian, even when he did not strike or make sexual overtures to Anglo-American women, became one who ravishes – a fearful part of the colonial imagination” (89). Past captives, such as Mary Rowlandson, blatantly maintained that they were offered no sexual threat or insult while in Indian captivity; however, such assertions did not overshadow the general belief that an Indian was, by savage nature, “one who ravishes,” a racially suspect threat to the purity of white womanhood. Lowry’s account lacks any specific or overt reference to sexual threat by the Indians, but because she was exchanged as a bodily commodity as a woman, she was continuously in danger from sexual threat, especially in regard to the racial assumptions promoted in reference to Indians. Because of her status as a commodity, Lowry is explicitly exchanged as a gift to fortify male social and political bonds that existed outside the standards of British Atlantic kinship communities, especially as it connected Indians, who were perceived as racially inferior, with Catholic Europeans, who were perceived as religiously inferior, through the exchange of a British, colonial, Protestant, white, female body. However, her deceptive speech acts make this a questionable gift as her pregnancy later complicates the lives of the men she was intended to serve and unite. In this way, Lowry’s deceptive acts not only interrupt the kinship system established by the Indians and the French, but also call into question the very nature of female bodily exchange for social and political purposes. As Lowry lies about her condition, the exchange her body creates is tainted to a certain extent. This taint within the kinship exchange is

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both accepted and expected, however, because Lowry is being used as a commodity outside of her own kinship community and in relation to the dark Other represented by her Indian captors. Her lies are acceptable to her audience because they thwart the efforts toward exchange and unification of two social and political groups condemned by British Atlantic communities. The idea that Indian male captors would benefit from the exchange of a white woman play into the racial prejudices of the day, as does the justification of Lowry’s lies, but such lies in the face of Indian captors also renders Lowry’s lies, or lies which similarly misinform about the female body, possible in other instances where race and bodily harm are not looming. What Lowry’s tale reveals is the ability of all women to lie about their bodies in condoned and condemnable ways, and Lowry’s manipulation of the kinship system outside of her community point to the ways in which kinship communities in the British Atlantic World could also be disrupted by such deceptive speech acts. Because Lowry lies about her physicality, this shows that women have the social and political power to represent the ways in which patriarchal male social and political systems view such women. If Lowry can lie and be believed, and if her lies are sanctioned by God, then what is to stop other women from disrupting their exchange within the kinship system on similar grounds? Lowry’s political agency is revealed through her deceptive speech acts because she, in the end, becomes the person responsible for her bodily representation in language within the male dominated kinship system and such deception is sanctioned by the systematic assent and belief structure of her home community. The issue of race comes more obviously to the forefront in the Barbary captivity narrative of Elizabeth Marsh. Published in 1769, Marsh’s The Female Captive: A Narrative of Facts which Happened in Barbary in the Year 1756, Written by Herself remains the only autobiographical account of female Barbary captivity to ever be produced. 24 As such, this text holds a unique place within the pantheon of captivity literature; however, the ramifications of this text, particularly in light of kinship systems and racial hierarchy, is dependent upon the general popularity and understanding of Barbary captivity narratives in the long eighteenth century. Barbary captivity, specifically captivity by Barbary political powers in the Mediterranean region

24 The Barbary captivity narratives of Mary Velnet (1806), Maria Martin (1818) and Eliza Bradley (1820) were three popular female captivity narratives; however, a number of scholars have proven that these three works were entirely fictionalized. Khalid Bekkaoui’s introduction to Marsh’s narrative and Paul Baepler’s introduction to the anthology White Slaves, African Masters discuss the fictional nature of these three accounts at length.

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along the coast of Northern Africa, was a very real and global threat at this time. The instances of Barbary captivity during the long eighteenth century far out number any other form of foreign captivity, with scholars estimating that up to 1.25 million British Atlantic citizens were held captive in Barbary states from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century. 25 The high rate of British captivity in this region, coupled with the dominate racial hierarchy established throughout the British Atlantic World, made Barbary captivity tales exceedingly popular during the long eighteenth century and worked to further cement the prevalent racial assumptions and ideologies of the period. As Paul Baepler explains in his introduction to White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives , “the narrative of captivity in Africa translated local issues of race and slavery onto a removed setting that had been made exotic by European lore about the ‘Dark Continent’” (26). Baepler’s argument draws attention to the process through which narrative discussions of such distant lands and people exposed and reinforced the racial issues of the day, making Barbary captivity tales one of the means through which social and political power based on racial exclusion was maintained in communities that had daily interactions with a racially diverse populace (such as those in the North American colonies) and communities that did not (such as those in England). Although both men and women were held captive in this fashion, and thus exposed to an inversed racial hierarchy that threatened their ideas of white superiority, more men than women were taken, as most captives were captured at sea in merchant and naval vessels - ships which boarded few women passengers. This is one reason why male-authored Barbary captivity narratives dominated, but women were also captured and there is another reason why only one woman provided an autobiographical account of her time spent as a captive in North Africa. Scholars who have studied the Barbary captivity of women in this period calls attention to the fact that racialized sexual threats were often the reason why women refused to produce accounts of their time spent as captives during this particular period and within this specific captive situation. 26 Khalid Bekkaoui’s introduction to his reproduction of the Marsh narrative discusses this racialized sexual threat at length, stating “Christian women’s encounters with Moors

25 Such a number is acknowledged as a rough estimate in Linda Colley’s text The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History . In Captives , Colley makes a more conservative claim regarding the eighteenth century, asserting that around approximately 20,000 British citizens were Barbary captives during that specific time period. 26 Linda Colley’s Captives interestingly maintains that while it was traditional to not discuss the sexual threat of Barbary captivity for British women, British men often discussed their own rape experiences while in North Africa. She estimates that for every instance of discussed heterosexual sex in such narratives there are five appearances of homosexual encounters (128).

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inevitably renders them rapable, sullies their body and soul” (26), which in his assertion inevitably “expresses fear of white female[s] being penetrated by foreign masculinity, underscoring the need to keep the body of the European virgin unavailable to the alien Other” (31). Paul Baepler makes a very similar claim to Bekkaoui, arguing “If female captives became part of [a…] seraglio 27 , then the survivor would be forced to recount her rape – something we rarely see in Indian captivity narratives – or her willful violation of the racial/sexual boundary or of her vigorous defense against imminent sexual violation” (11). The claims of both Bekkaoui and Baepler bring to light the fact that the threat of white female sexual contamination is at the heart of the issue concerning a lack of narrative accounts of British Atlantic women in Barbary captivity; however, their claims fall short of fully explaining why this racial-sexual threat was so powerful at this time, as the threat of rape was not solely present within Barbary captivity, or even captivity in general. Taking into account the rules of the kinship system in communities around the British Atlantic World in the long eighteenth century, the threat to the white female body in these captive situations becomes not a threat to that particular woman in a world where race and sex had very real social consequences, but exposes the fact that the female was viewed as a social and political commodity used within kinship exchange. To be sullied body and soul, as Bekkaoui claims, was to be excluded from further exchange in the kinship structure, thus leaving the white men supposedly in power over white women with a commodity that would after such a point lack any exchange value in the kinship market. Furthermore, the ability of a non-white man to hold power over the material exchange of a white woman meant that such men had, at least in theory, a means through which to enter the political and social power structure maintained by the kinship system. In such a world rape or even consensual sexual activity held consequences not only for the captive woman but for the political and social system connected by kinship. The sexual threat for white women in Barbary captivity, as well as its relationship to British Atlantic kinship communities is exposed in Elizabeth Marsh's narrative. Marsh, only nineteen-years-old and alone onboard a ship filled solely with men, is taken captive by Barbary corsairs from Morocco. Although there is no initial sexual threat to Marsh, a fellow traveler and captive first reveals such a threat to the young woman as Marsh claims he “seemed to delight in

27 Traditionally, the word seraglio refers to the living space occupied by women in Turkish houses, be they wives or concubines within the household. In the Barbary captivity tradition, this term is often used in reference to the concept of the harem and entails the sexual connotations related to that word.

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terrifying me with Stories of the Cruelties of the Moors, and the Dangers my Sex was exposed to in Barbary” (47). With the introduction of such sexual dangers, Marsh agrees to allow her friend, Mr. Crisp, to represent himself as her brother while they are captive, all in the hope that such a relationship would save her from sexual threat. While the position of brother over sister did mandate a particular amount of authority within kinship communities, such a relationship in Barbary captivity seemed to have little hold because of Marsh’s own bodily value. Marsh and Crisp soon hear hints that the Moroccan ruler, Sidi Muhammad, was desirous to meet the beautiful white female captive. A Spanish slave, Don Pedro, suggests that Crisp and Marsh amend their pretend relationship from that of brother and sister to husband and wife in order to save Marsh from Muhammad’s sexual threat, stating to the two captives, “I can assure you, is his despotic Power, that, if she is at all preserved from being detained in the seraglio, it must be by the means above proposed” (63). With such an assertion from the slave, Crisp then urges Marsh to agree to the farce and she inevitably does so, stating, “My Friend, seeing me afflicted by their Conversation, addressed himself to me in a very pathetic Manner, begging me to be assured of his Honour, and that no Conduct of his should ever give me the least Cause of Offence: That he only wished to preserve and deliver me safe to the Arms of my afflicted Parents. […] I thought it most prudent to submit to their Judgment” (64-5). With the switch in deception from brother/sister to husband/wife, it becomes clear that the power dynamics within the kinship system are important not only to the British captives, but the Moroccans as well. As brother, Crisp would have some say in the bodily exchange of Marsh, but as husband, the man who already accepted and owned Marsh, he would have absolute control over her and would have to be considered by anyone who would threaten her sexually. Moreover, claiming marriage would mean that Marsh was off the market, so to speak, and could not be viably exchanged for any social or political reason, even by the ruler of a country. However, Sidi Muhammad does not appear convinced by the marriage story circulated by Crisp and Marsh and demands that the female captive assert the story to him herself. The first time Marsh encounters the ruler is on the day that she and her fellow captives arrive at the palace. He requests a lone interview with Marsh in a private chamber, and it is here that she first fully asserts her deception. I was soon followed by the Prince, who, having seated himself on a Cushion, inquired concerning the Reality of my Marriage with my Friend. This Inquiry was

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entirely unexpected; but, though I positively affirmed, that I was really married, I could perceive that he much doubted it, from his frequent Interrogations, as to the Reality thereof. He likewise observed, that it was customary for the English Wives to wear a Wedding Ring; which the Slave informed me of, and I answered, that it was packed up, as I did not choose to travel with it. Truth was always my first Principle, but Self-Preservation, I hope, will plead my Excuse, and, especially, at such a Juncture. The Prince, finding that I persisted in my Story, questioned me no further, but gave me Assurances of his Esteem and Protection. (80) Marsh recounts her deception of the prince in this initial encounter, emphasizing her insistence despite repeated interrogation as well as the additional amendments required for her deception. She lies about being married, but in order to do so properly she must also embellish the lie, explaining away her lack of a wedding ring when she is asked about it on the spot. The prince, in his persistence, reveals his concern regarding the eligibility of Marsh. His insistence and continued questioning show his doubt of her marriage, but he does not directly contradict her story. Instead, he indirectly contradicts her claim in a way that requires her to add lie upon lie in order to uphold her deception, and by extension, secure herself from his advances. Muhammad’s concern over her marriage is positioned as part of his “Esteem and Protection” of the female captive in his charge, but because the issue is marriage, and he shows a persistent desire to prove her marriage to be a deception, it is understood that the prince wishes to form a relationship with Marsh that would only be acceptable if she were a free woman, an unclaimed commodity on the kinship market. The explicit connection between the female body and material possession is overtly explored when Marsh is forced to lie to the prince a second and final time. Soon after her first lone visit to the palace, Marsh is once again summoned to appear before the prince. At this time she is presented in the company of the women of Sidi Muhammad and shown the beautiful goods housed in the palace itself, such as a tea set made from fine china that was presented to the prince as a gift from the Dutch. Her admiration for the palace itself and the goods within impresses the prince and leads to her most insistent act of lying. I greatly admired everything I saw, which pleased the Prince exceedingly; and he told me, by Means of the Interpreter, that he did not doubt of my preferring, in

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Time, the Palace to the confined Way of Life I was then in; that I might always depend on his Favour and Protection; and that the Curiosities I had seen should be my own Property. I thanked him for the Honour he did me; but that, as I was very happy in a Husband, who was my Equal in Rank and Fortune, I did not wish to change my Situation in that Respect, and, whenever it was agreeable to him, I would take my Leave. He looked very stern at my Answer, and made me no Reply. (88) This interchange brings commodities and materials to the forefront. As Linda Colley observes in The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History , “it is primarily in terms of surfaces and commodities, and their seductive power, that Elizabeth Marsh describes this second palace encounter” (73). Truly, it is the fine tea set, the palace gardens and architecture, and the beautiful closes of the women in attendance that Marsh features during her second palace visit, but the seductive power of material wealth is not the only issue at hand in this scene. Under the surface the issue becomes the commodification of Marsh herself, how she is exchanged in a kinship system, and her value within that system in her home community. The prince’s joy in her admiration of his material wealth displays his desire to possess Marsh as well. The fact that his “Curiosities” would be classified as her own if she were to inhabit the palace appears to imply that he seeks a relationship founded on marriage and not just sex. While the sexual threat to Marsh still looms large, the realization that the prince wishes to marry her is even more threatening, as it would place her forever out of her own kinship system and give Sidi Muhammad a white British woman that could position him as a social and political player in British Atlantic kinship communities. While Colley does not overtly relate Muhammad’s political desires with his desires for Marsh in The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh , she does historically position the ruler as a man concerned with making ties throughout the Atlantic, stating he was known at the time as “a man preoccupied with extending his influence in the Islamic world, of which he and Morocco were a part, and with developing and exploring connections with widely different regions of the Christian West” (68). Such an historical evaluation of the Moroccan ruler, coupled with his implied proposition of marriage to Marsh, clearly shows that the prince sees the female captive not just as a beauty he could possess sexually, but as a tool he could employ in order to gain political or social connection to the West.

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Marsh’s continued lie also reveals her evaluation of the situation at hand. She realizes the intentions of Sidi Muhammad and her own possible role as product in a British Atlantic kinship community. She remains polite yet firm with the prince, and while continuing her lie, underscores the political and social position she should maintain within her own community. She lies about having a husband, but also insists that Crisp is her “Equal in Rank and Fortune” (80). This assertion implies that the prince is not her equal. While it is obvious that his wealth would place him above her in issues of “Fortune,” his dark Otherness also explicitly places him below her in “Rank,” as her social position as a white female is higher within her own kinship system because of his race, despite Muhammad’s royal title. Marsh cannot become the commodity of the Moroccan prince, as she asserts that her value and position is determined in a system that would forever exclude his admittance. Marsh’s act of lying provides her female political agency in this very instance, as she becomes a reminder of her own social and political value even in the company of a prince, albeit one that would hold a precarious position in the minds of most communities in the British Atlantic. She values herself above the man that would take her, and in so doing reveals that she is indeed valued politically and socially at home despite the fact that the kinship system would attempt to stifle her control of her own value. In the end, the prince cannot disprove her lie and agrees to free all of her fellow captives, thus providing recognition for Marsh’s own estimation of her value, her insistence on calling upon and upholding the value she places on her own body, and the agency such an act uncovers. The realization revealed by the act of deception is further explored when it is covertly juxtaposed to the way women were traditionally valued and exchanged in Morocco. Upon leaving the city where the prince resides, Marsh and her pretend-husband Crisp wait to be escorted back to their home community. It is at this time that Marsh comes to understand the position of women in marriage in Morocco. I was alone, the next Morning, and extremely melancholy, when the Sound of Moorish Music drew me to the Window; I saw a great Croud, and, inquired into the Meaning thereof. I was informed, that it was the Procession of a Moorish Wedding. The Bride was invisible, it being the Fashion of the Country to conceal such Persons from public View; the Vehicle wherein she was inclosed resembled a Garland, not unlike that our Milk-maids carry on a May-day, decorated with Flowers and other Ornaments. In a little Time after this, the Bridegroom followed,

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on a Mule richly caparisoned, with a Moor on each Side, fanning him, to keep off the Flies; they went a slow Pace, with a Bind of Music before them; and the lady, as I heard, was not above twelve Years of Age, and, in all Probability, had never seen the Man she was married to, until that very Day. (105) In The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh , Linda Colley interprets this small section as a moment that exposes Marsh’s precarious position in her own community. She asserts “Too much of Elizabeth Marsh’s account of this Asfi wedding procession evokes joy and celebration, and is suggestive more of envy than of censure” (86). In light of Marsh’s assertions of her own value and position to the prince himself, there seems little of joy or envy in this section. It is a far more apt assertion that in her rendition of a Moroccan wedding, Marsh makes an implied comparison between her favorable position in her kinship community and the Moroccan bride’s unfavorable position at that very moment. Marsh begins her silent comparison by deeming the bride “invisible” (105), which is a telling choice of words. Invisibility implies both being unseen and being unable to change that situation. Because the bride is invisible, she cannot be seen and can do nothing in order to be seen, which means that she has no control or say in the proceedings that Marsh witnesses. This is juxtaposed with the “Milk-maids” Marsh mentions in reference to the outward appearance of the bride’s vehicle. Unlike the invisible bride who is unseen and apparently inconsequential, the reference to May Day participants emphasizes the high visibility and community engagement of eligible women within her kinship community. Such women in the British Atlantic, maidens who openly engage in community events which mark them as eligible within Marsh’s kinship system, are seen and can see, something that the Moroccan bride lacks even prior to her wedding, as Marsh states she more than likely “had never seen the Man she was married to, until that very Day” (105). Marsh herself has seen and has been seen by her future husband, none other than the pretend-husband Mr. Crisp, who she marries at the end of her narrative. Unlike the Moroccan bride, Marsh chooses her husband and assigns value to herself, giving her a political consequence and agency that the young bride in the procession she witnessed clearly lacks. It is not envy that permeates the rendition of the Moroccan wedding, but rather a realization of her ability to choose and be chosen in a system that would seem to foreclose such an option. The dark young bride saddled by the custom of her kinship community is rather pitied by the female captive, a woman who through contact with a prince discovers her agency and

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value through the act of the lie. Marsh acquires female political agency because she comes to name her own value and position within her kinship network, a transgressive action that is facilitated by her sanctioned yet transgressive act of lying. Captive Escape Although the security of the woman is paramount in representations of female captivity, a desire for security through escape is often present. In such instances, escape from one’s captors often instigates a recognition of exchange value and kinship awareness in the female captives themselves. What becomes apparent is not only that women wish to escape their bondage, whether fictional or autobiographical, but also that women who effectively construct their escape often do so through a manipulation of the kinship system. In Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess , the captive heroine Melliora uses a deceptive speech and the power of her guardian/lover and brother within their community’s kinship network to affect a fairly amicable escape from her aristocratic captor. On the other hand, escape did come with a human price, as it is represented in Mary Smith’s narrative of her 1814 Indian captivity. Using the familiarity of kinship exchange values, Smith manages an escape through a deception that leads to the murder of her captor by her own hands. Although these two representations vary widely, both explore the relationship between female understanding of kinship, deception, and a desire to escape which effectively places the definition of female commodification and bodily value and use in the hands of the captive, thus enabling these women to control their own circulation within various kinship networks. Haywood’s Love in Excess , first published in 1719, has undergone a revival in scholarly attention in recent years. While Haywood and her contribution to the rise of the novel was ignored by critics and scholars for centuries, recent work has brought Haywood’s canon, which was widely popular during the first half of the eighteenth century, into the critical conversation. 28 This particular novel, classified mainly as amatory fiction, works within the confines of the trope of female captivity in relation to issues of sex and marriage in the long eighteenth century. Drawing on the position of the captive female in specific, and the female in general, this text works through deceptive speech acts to realize the sexual and social desires of the main heroine

28 Scott Black’s essay, “Trading Sex for Secrets in Haywood’s Love in Excess ,” nicely reasserts Haywood within the history of the development of the English novel. It also offers a solid summary of its past critical history, explaining that, until recently, issues of gender and concepts concerning what was and was not valued as literature were the most prevalent reasons for Haywood’s earlier exclusion from scholarly discourse.

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of the text, Melliora. She concocts a scenario in which the power of the kinship system itself helps effect her escape, wielding that power which men would hold over her in an effort to achieve her own sexual desires and escape her captive situation. By using both deceptive speech and the kinship position of men, Melliora exerts her own desires over those of her male captor and causes a resolution in the novel that upholds both her needs as well as those of the men who would control her body and its exchange. As amatory fiction became more popular at the beginning of the long eighteenth century, female authors gravitated toward this genre in an effort to assert female desire into literary, social and political discourse. John Richetti discusses this female reinvention of the romance in The English Novel in History, 1700-1780 and argues that the amatory fiction of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century represented a shift from romantic emphasis on honor and duty to a more libertine concept of sexuality which, in the end, attempted to exalt the ordinary life and concerns of women in society over the aristocratic concepts often depicted in romances prior to this point. Such an argument concerns issues of kinship at this time, as the sexual desire of the female heroine in amatory novels often butted against the social and political workings of the kinship systems which endeavored to control the use and circulation of the female, and all of these issues revolve around sexual concerns. Richetti states “The heroines, in their emotional and sexual intensities, embody a naturalized and universalized humanity; their seducers enact the mechanical sexuality granted them by an archaic structure of rank, privilege, and prerogative” (21). In these instances, the heroine stands in for humanity in its actual form while the seducers represent the social and political constraints placed on humanity, which in dealing with sex and marriage at the time boils down to kinship communities and the masculine power derived from this system. However, Richetti maintains that these heroines work to expose “a political resistance to masculine constructions of the feminine” (22), and in so doing, they manipulate the political power of the kinship system in order to fulfill their own humanity and sexual desire. Understanding the combination of sexuality and politics within this novel is imperative to understanding the way in which Haywood represents the female political agency available in kinship communities. Critics such as Rosalind Ballaster, in her work Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740 , may contend that “Haywood’s greatest innovation in the field of amatory fiction was to revitalize the representation of a desiring conflict into social, rather than party political, myth” (157); however, assertions that separate the social and political

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realm ignore the fact that in most political communities, and particularly those that were based on kinship structures, the social and the political were meshed explicitly in connection to female desire, sex and marriage. Toni Bowers highlights this connection between politics and female desire in her essay, “Collusive Resistance: Sexual Agency and Partisan Politics in Love in Excess. ”29 Bowers maintains that contradictory to Ballaster’s argument, Haywood infuses her novel with political context and connotations through the representation of a female sexual agency that is both virtuous and transgressive in nature. Bowers’ argument is dependent upon the depiction of Melliora as a sexual agent in the text and one that is not condemned for such an agency by her community or the reading public. Bowers states “Melliora emerges as a surprising kind of female protagonist: a woman who declares sexual desire for a married man (her guardian, no less) and yet remains a paragon of virtue. Female virtue and sexual agency, even of the most transgressive kind, are not mutually exclusive options” (57). Bowers leaves room for a female political agency based on sexual transgression. However, even within this brief quote, the nature of the sexual/political agency at stake becomes apparent, as Melliora’s love, D’Elmont, is “her guardian, no less,” and as such has the right to determine and set her exchange within the kinship system. Because Melliora loves the man that is in control of her commodification and exchange, she uses the kinship structures of her community in order to escape her captivity, secure herself from marriage to an undesired man, and end with her desired marriage to D’Elmont. Although Melliora does not have to deal with the threat of sexual, racial contamination that threatens the other representations of female captivity presented in this chapter, her efforts to escape captivity and return to her rightful position within her home kinship network instigate her transgressive use of the lie as well as her revelation of female political agency within her kinship community. These transgressive speech acts used by Melliora are limited in scope and pertain only to her captivity at the end of the novel. Melliora loves D’Elmont, but feeling responsible for his wife’s death, she places herself in a convent. There she meets the Marques D’Sanguiller, who falls madly in love with her despite his engagement to her friend. After she rejects the Marques, he devises an elaborate plan to kidnap her and holds her in captivity with the condition that she will be freed once she agrees to marry him. Serendipitously, Count D’Elmont and Melliora’s brother, Frankville, seek refuge at the Marques’s estate after fleeing Italy, not knowing that

29 In “Locke, Haywood, and Consent,” Jonathan Brody Kramnick also connects the sexual, social, and political in Love in Excess by arguing that this text answers Locke’s philosophical hesitation regarding tacit consent by representing it as something written on the mind and the body of Melliora throughout the work.

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Melliora is a captive there. When she hears that her love and her brother are in residence with the Marques, Melliora uses a deceptive speech to D’ Sanguiller to secure herself from a forced marriage and return to her true love. After revealing herself to D’Elmont and alluding that she has a plan for her escape, the Marques greets his male guests the next morning in complete happiness and unaware of imminent folly. He relates to D’Elmont and Frankville the story of his capture of Melliora and her confessions to him the previous night: Hopeless to obtain the heart of my adorable, I found means to make myself master of her person , and by making no other use of the power I had over her, than humbly sighing at her feet, convinced her my designs were far from being dishonourable; last night, looking at me, with more kindness than she had ever done before, ‘My lord,’ said she, ‘your usage of me has been too noble, not to vanquish whatever sentiments I may have been possest with to your prejudice; therefore since you have company in your house, who may be witness of what I do, I think I cannot chuse a fitter time, than this, to bestow myself, before them, on him who most deserves me.’ (260) The interpretation and happiness of the Marques is flawed, however, and soon Melliora’s plan is revealed when she is viewed by the guests. Frankville is left in utter confusion, the Count is enraged, and Melliora finally gives voice to her intentions, “‘I have kept my word, my lord,’ she said to the Marques, ‘this day shall give me to him who best deserves me; but who that is, my brother and Count D’Elmont must determine; since heaven has restored them to me, all power of disposing of my self must cease; ‘tis they must, henceforth, rule the will of Melliora, and only their consent can make me yours’” (261). In a clever turn, Melliora exposes herself to the men which have rightful control over her physically in their kinship community, her brother and her guardian, and forces D’Sanguiller to “obtain but their consent” (261) for his desires. Frankville and D’Elmont refuse their consent to the captive marriage and demand Melliora’s immediate release. Melliora’s body is secured by these men, and her captor has no choice but to give her back to those that have lawful control of her person, thus completely dismantling any realization of his desire. The Marques, although dumbfounded by this turn of events, was trapped in a deceptive speech act. Melliora never truly stated that she would marry him, only that she would consent to

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marry the man who was most deserving of her. Forgetting that Melliora, within the established kinship system, theoretically lacked the social or political power to give herself physically in marriage, the Marques falls prey to his own interpretation of her words. In his desire to hear what he wishes, he is effectively trapped by the female captive through her use of the two males who formally and socially control her exchange on the marriage market. Unable to escape captivity without the help of patriarchal social and political structures, she creates a situation through which males must compete for her, as she lies to the Marques about her new found revelation regarding his goodness and treatment of her. Knowing that neither her brother nor D’Elmont will ever condone a marriage to her captor, Melliora is freed by her lie about her feelings toward D’Sanguiller, the inferred interpretation the Marques takes from her words, and the placement of competing masculine rights to her body. By apparently submitting to the powerful position of the men that control her, Melliora is able to place herself securely in the protection of men who share desires similar to her own, thus successfully manipulating the political power of the kinship community in her own favor and escaping her captive situation. As it is only through her social and physical obligation to men that she can be freed from her captivity, she comes to understand her access to female agency, in either sexual desire or social and political recognition, is best achieved through a manipulation of the kinship system using deceptive speech and the channeling of the desires of men that correspond to her own. Through the transgressive act of lying, Melliora achieves freedom and the ability to attain her own desires. Subterfuge and transgression, the ends and means of the act of the lie which is inevitably pardoned because of her captive situation, authorizes Melliora’s positioning of herself within the kinship network. Published nearly a century later, in 1818, An Affecting Narrative of the Captivity and Suffering of Mrs. Mary Smith also details a female’s escape from captivity, but through a combination of deceptive speech and much more violent means. The violence present within the tale of Mary Smith is not an exceptional event within the realm of representations of female captivity. Many other female captives, real and fictional, effected escape through violent means. Hannah Dustan may be the most recognizably violent female captive, but stories of female escape through violent transgression have circulated for centuries and are found even in Biblical representations of female captives such as Ja'el and Judith. Michelle Burnham discusses these violent accounts in Captivity and Sentiment specifically in reference to the Hannah Dustan

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narrative. Burnham asserts that escape in Indian captivity narratives, or rather escape not instigated by male patriarchal actions or interventions, “was at once a heroic instance of female bravery and an often extraordinary act of female violence” (52). These actions are condoned because the community wishes for the return of the female within its kinship network, as Burnham claims, “The captive’s active violence is explicitly sanctioned by the violence she passively witnessed and endured, and it is more specifically sanctioned by the conditions of motherhood and threatened female sexuality” (53). Burnham’s assessment, however, fails to fully consider the moments of violence within the trope of female captivity as transgressive acts which function in the very same way as the act of the lie. The fact that the transgression of violence inherent in these forms of escape were condoned by the home community audiences, even as they performed condemnable acts of murder, is similar to the sanctioning of the lie for captive women; both are dependent upon the ability of a kinship system to ignore obvious social transgressions in an effort to sustain the value of women within their network. Although generally forgotten by scholars concerned with captivity, it is not surprising that the little scholarship available regarding the narrative of Mary Smith revolves around the violence in her narrative. In “Among the Indians: The Uses of Captivity,” Annette Kolodny argues that the strength of the Smith narrative lies in the sentimental depiction of captive suffering and escape through murder which leaves the home audience in rousing support of the political implications of the text, stating the violence of the Indians “justified Smith’s eventual fatal knifing of ‘the old Indian’ sleeping beside her, but more importantly, reinforced the narrative’s praise of Andrew Jackson”(189), who at the time was serving as a general in the First Seminole War. Christopher Castiglia makes a similar claim in Bound and Determined , citing Smith as an explicit example of how female captivity tales could be used to bolster political rhetoric, stating “Narratives of resistance and escape on one level became the propagandists’ dream” (31). However, Castiglia also argues that such narratives offer moments of clear female agency, in which “they questioned gender stereotypes” (32). While both Kolodny and Castiglia express the political potential within violent female captivity tales, both ignore the role the act of the lie plays in Smith’s narrative. In the tale of Mary Smith, the two transgressive acts of lying and murder cannot be separated and must be understood as working in tandem. Additionally, a consideration of her recognition within and use of her kinship community should be considered to better understand this graphic and dynamic rendition of female escape from captivity.

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The narrative of Mary Smith opens with a recitation of an Army regiment’s engagement with an Indian during the First Seminole War and the rescue of four captives, one of whom is Smith. Her tale of captivity is then recounted second hand and details the horrific deaths of her husband and her two daughters. Being alone in captivity, she is placed within the kinship network of her Indian captors, as an old Indian man saves her life in exchange for her body. It is at this moment that the narrator breaks off and Smith herself is represented in her own words. Her feelings regarding this exchange within Indian kinship is expressed as she explains her predicament by stating: I prayed for death, I heartily wished to be delivered from such merciless cannibals! but just escaped from torture, I was reduced to the necessity of becoming a prostitute in order to prevent the most cruel death but I had but little time to reflect, and that must be employed faithfully to resign myself as a victim to the barbarity of the savages was a dreadful thought, and to gratify the wishes of one of those vile monsters, was as I conceived, although shocking in the extreme, not quite so bad as to endure their savage torture, of the two impending evils, I was therefore induced to choose the least. (13) It should be remembered that at this point in her narrative Smith is both husbandless and childless, which essentially makes her a commodity once again in the kinship system. Within her home kinship community, she would be available for exchange once again because of the bloody atrocities she witnessed during her captivity. However, Smith is not in her home community; she is a captive in a very different kinship system. Within this Indian kinship network, she is also commodified, and it is only the value of her living body that saves her from the torturous death that befell her husband and daughters. The intervention of the older Indian does save her, but it is done so that he can have her body, using her to replace his dead wife. She agrees to this entry into the Indian kinship network through a logical presentation of the options presented to her: she could be become the squaw (wife) of the old Indian or die a painful and bloody death. While she chooses the path she sees as the least evil and life-threatening, she does not see her entry into Indian community kinship as a blessing. It is a taint, a sin in the eyes of her home kinship network, which is why she insists on referring to herself as a prostitute for having entered into the arrangement. Smith sees herself as lost within a kinship system she does not wish to enter, and it is only through the

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act of the lie that she can escape and ensure she is not forever tainted by her forced kinship connection. After she establishes that she chose a lesser evil, though it is evil nonetheless because it places her outside of her kinship system and into an alien kinship network, Smith uses deception to save herself from the impending sexual threat of the old man. After the lie, however, Smith reconsiders her position as captive and takes violent measures to escape both her captivity and her forced acquiescence into a different realm of kinship. She calmly retells her lie and the violence that followed, stating: I gave the old sachem to understand that I would cheerfully comply, and was conducted immediately to his wigwam, here I affected great regard for his person, but as I feigned great indisposition, begged of him to suffer me to remain in the situation I was then was until I should in some measure recover my health and spirits, to which, contrary to my expectations, he acceded. I began now to contemplate seriously upon my disagreeable situation, when the thought arose in my mind, that by killing this Indian, I might possibly effect my escape; […] I accordingly provided myself with an old scalping knife, which I found in the hut […] I took my knife and creeping with as little noise as possible to where the savage lay, plunged it in his bosom; he attempted to rise, but at that instant snatching his tomahawk from his belt, gave him a sever blow on his head, which I repeated until I was sure he was dead. (13-14) In this rendition, the lie is followed directly by the violent murder, presenting both transgressions as connected and necessary. Taken together, the speech act of the lie and the physical act of the murder are dependent upon the use of the white female body in ways that would not ordinarily be sanctioned in Smith’s home community. Because of her sexual threat, her endeavors to ensure her escape are condoned; however, it is these very endeavors that highlight Smith’s own political agency in her British Atlantic kinship community. Smith’s lie is a speech act, but it cannot be fully separated from the bodily performance that she uses in an effort to make her speech believable. It is truly an act of speech and body, as Smith “begged” with words to ensure her safety while also using her body as she “affected great regard for his person.” The speech act itself, the lie, is facilitated by the use of her body; a body that has been bargained for and won by the old man within his kinship network. At the same

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time, the combination of body and speech make the act of the lie complete, as it is not only in the speech but in the bodily action that the lie resides. Smith begs not for complete repast from her expected sexual duties as the new squaw for the old Indian, but only a brief interlude in order for her to regain her health. This is surely not completely a lie, but is a deceptive speech act when she feigns interest in the man with her body and implies with her speech that she will eventually “cheerfully comply” with his sexual demands in the near future. With the idea of murder, the combination of speech and body slip away, as the female becomes the sole instrument of escape and bloody justice. This, however, does not mean that the murder is solely an act of the body. It was imperative that speech and physicality function together to correctly perform the act of the lie, and the bodily act of murder would not be possible without the earlier speech act that established belief and trust in the old Indian. In this representation of female captivity, the speech act and the bodily action perform together to facilitate the desired effect for the female captive, namely escape from captivity and the sexual threat of the Indian. The belief that she would be prostituted, tainted as it were, and her desire to escape this taint at any cost, is instigated by the race of her captor. As a white female, she is thrust into what would be considered by her home community a racially inferior (and ultimately damaging) kinship arrangement. The murder, through transgressive in the extreme, especially for a white woman, is sanctioned because, like the lie, it is an act employed in the effort to save the white woman from the sexual machinations of an unjust and corrupting kinship match. Like Lowry and Marsh, Smith must contend with the racial prejudices that surround her captivity, but unlike the two previous captives, Smith is offered a direct threat to her white female virtue which in turn fully sanctions both her lie and her violent actions. While Lowry and Marsh must overtly apologize or rationalize their use of the lie in an effort to secure their bodies, Smith never once apologizes or rationalizes her act of lying or murder in order to escape the overt sexual threat looming during her captivity. June Namias, in White Captives , offers an explanation concerning the reason why Smith did not need to rationalize her acts to her home community. She states, “In both historical and fictionalized accounts of captivity, social sanctions approved of the most ‘unwomanly’ behavior, rather than allowing a woman to give in to sexual demands,” (94) which ultimately gave “white women sanction to use violence and license in the wild when white men [were] not around to protect them from the savage other” (96). Namias’ claims stress the extent to which home communities would forgive white women

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captives, as long as they protected their bodies from the defilement at the hands of the dark Other. Smith, unlike Marsh and Lowry, had a very direct assault on her white female purity, and it is easy to assume that had she not killed the old Indian man, he would have eventually had sex with her and thus tainted her forever, nullifying her exchange value within her kinship community. To protect herself and secure her escape from both the perceived forced prostitution to the old man in specific and her captivity in general, Smith’s lie and murder are fully condoned and praised by her community, leaving her free to recount her story without hesitation or apology. After the act of the lie and murder, Smith escapes from captivity for a number of days. Lost and hungry in the wilderness, she is eventually recaptured but is offered no further harm, and is very quickly rescued by the Army regiment. Smith’s acts, the speech act of the lie and the bodily act of murder, do not offer her complete escape, but her temporary escape does lead to better conditions for her and a quick rescue by white men. The fact that the white men do rescue Smith and return her from captivity is a sign that despite her transgressive acts she is allowed entry back into her home kinship system, presumably freeing herself for use as an exchangeable commodity once again. Yet, the very transgressive acts of her body, in both the lie and the murder, can never be erased fully. She dutifully saved herself from racial contamination in the eyes of the community, but at the same time she successfully used her body-as-commodity to free herself from an undesirable social and political kinship network. In her speech and bodily acts, Smith memorably reveals that the white female captive, or any white female, is not always a passive gift easily exchanged. The blood that she shed with her body, just like the lie that she spoke, reveals an agency that cannot be taken away just because she returns home. Her transgressions may be sanctioned by her British Atlantic kinship network, but her acts prove that she is not passive, and can have a bloody say in how, when, and where she is to be exchanged. Conniving Captives Lying is often presented as immoral and is an unsanctioned action within most communities. However, the trope of female captivity used the act of the lie in order to show how transgressive actions, condoned in certain instances while condemned in general, open a door for the transgression of kinship in British Atlantic communities during the long eighteenth century. Whether attempting to secure herself or allow for escape, the representations of female captivity discussed in this chapter reveal that the ability to define or control the body of the captive

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extends to the ability to define or control the general female within kinship systems. Through the lie, the captive woman secures or escapes undesirable situation. The lie, then, can be seen as a speech act that inside or outside of captivity allows the power to name and control in a political and social context, giving agency to women who employ this transgression. Jean Lowry, Elizabeth Marsh, Melliora and Mary Smith may have lied to secure their safety or escape their captivity, but the very fact that they lied enabled them to control their own bodies, a control that could be achieved through the act of the lie in any situation at home. The female political agency derived from the lie used within kinship situations is an agency that enables women to define and enforce their own value, making them not just passive gifts for exchange, but agents who could benefit from their bodies and shape the political and social landscape of their kinship communities by mandating how, when, why, and where their bodies would be part of a larger market.

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Chapter 4 Civil Tongues: History-Making in Communities of Civility “Civility costs nothing, and buys everything.” Mary Wortley Montagu While republican, Protestant, and kinship communities abounded in the British Atlantic World in an interrelated arch of individual and communal commitment to overlapping belief systems, there is one community within the long eighteenth century that could be said to bind together the three formations discussed thus far in this study. The concept of civility, both as an attitude toward social interaction and a connection between the citizen and the state, was a relational force which permeated most other formations in society. To be civil marked an individual as an active member of the wider British Atlantic community because to be uncivil was to be marked as racially, socially, culturally, and politically Other. This demarcation in communities of civility was founded in concepts of civil engagement with proper political regimes and ideals as well as the creation and implementation of the civilized/uncivilized binary which was one of the central, driving forces behind expansion and conquest across the Atlantic. In the British Atlantic World of the long eighteenth century, mandates regarding civil engagement with government and fellow citizens and issues of propriety worked to differentiate those who were civilized against those who were not, making a clear dividing line between individuals who could access the political and cultural power of the British Atlantic and those whose behavior situated them outside of circles of political and cultural influence and power. The myriad meanings of civility highlight the use of this concept as an exclusionary tool. From the sixteenth century onward, according to the Oxford English Dictionary , civility has meant “the position or status of being a citizen,” “the state or condition of being civilized,” and “the behavior or speech appropriate to civil interactions; politeness, courtesy, consideration” (“Civility). The three meanings of the single term create a triangle of power and privilege, as to be civil is at once to be identified as a civilized, mannered citizen within a particular community. Community mandates what is civil and uncivil, through political and social practice, so as to have the power to define at any point in time who is civilized and who is not. The community which has the power to create the binary opposition inherent in concepts of civility has the power to exclude any and all individuals who by the shared definition are automatically positioned

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outside of itself. Civility creates an Other against which the community unites and understands itself. This process is instigated by both political and social practice, as civility is contingent upon the individuals engaged relationship to the political powers of the community and other individuals within that community. As expansion across the British Atlantic grew within the long eighteenth century and more communities aligned with the imperialistic push came into contact with communities not politically and socially allied, civility became an important and automatic symbol for individuals to use in order to differentiate fellow community members from those who would have to operate outside the structures of British Atlantic community privilege. Racial affiliation and recognition was the most obvious indicator of the civility of an individual at this time, and it is no secret that British Atlantic communities of the long eighteenth century were united by their whiteness. Growing interactions with Indians, Africans, Near Easterners and any additional individuals Othered by the color of their skin made the concept of civility an important tool in instigating racial prejudices and divisions, which discursively appear to be understood by factors other than race. This push to distinguish cultural and racial differentiations enabled British Atlantic communities founded in civility to use the idea of the civilized versus the uncivilized to enact political policies which carried with them oppression and death to those deemed uncivil. However, it is important to note that such binaries were always fluid and dependent upon community belief and usage regarding what was civil at any given moment for social and political reasons. The trope of female captivity holds within it these markers of the civil and uncivil and many representations reinforce the dominant political and cultural ideals of their community. Mary Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and Goodness of God is a prime example of how female captives positioned themselves as civilized agents of their British Atlantic communities against the uncivilized instigators of their captivity. However, this acquiescence to dominant ideas which defined who was civilized and who was uncivilized was not universal. A number of texts within the trope of female captivity used their captive situations to explicitly put into question the racial and cultural structures of the binary. In order to do this, female captives had to rewrite community histories in order to break down the established social order. Through history-making in speech, the act of presenting a history which influenced and created understanding of past events, representations of female captivity were able to redefine civility in their communities,

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thus creating a female political agency founded on the cultural and political power of creating the parameters of civility. British Atlantic Communities of Civility Civility as a social construct is often promoted as a concept that endeavors to bring groups of individuals together. In “The Binds that Tie: Civility and Social Difference,” Cris Mayo asserts “Civility appears […] to smooth social intercourse and foster respectful dialogue in the hopes of binding people” (171). From this perspective, communities of civility seem to promote inclusion in a society that holds a shared foundation in civic and social behavior. However, this appearance of inclusivity is not the true force or reality behind civility. Mayo argues, within a framework of educational theory, that civility can undermine the goals of civil society by hindering changes of thought and practice in regard to dominant ideals, oppression, and discrimination. While these arguments are directed toward an educational model, they hold true for the wider political and cultural practices of civility. Mayo states, “Civility, in other words, is not the way people build close relations. Instead it is a way people can maintain civil and personal distance in order to appear to abrogate the very social and political distance that poses the problem for their relations” (171). This estimation of the actual meaning for communities asserts civility is a process that fosters exclusionary practices by creating artificial modes of distance which allow individuals to differentiate themselves from established Others. Mayo sees this as a continued process, as “Historically, civility has been a central mechanism for sedimenting social distinction” (171), thus continually asserting a binary between the civilized and uncivilized throughout modernity. In a British Atlantic World concerned with expansion, the ability to distinguish those who are members of a home community and those who are outside of community entitlements made civility a process of colonization to a large extent. Anindyo Roy’s Civility and Empire: Literature and Culture in British India, 1822-1922 follows this argument, maintaining that nineteenth-century British colonization in India used the concept of civility as a controlling force. Roy states “The power of civility lay in its ability to impose control or effect exclusion by establishing a normative code of imperial Britishness that operated on the variables of nationality, class, and gender” (1). Such an argument couples the concept of civility not only with race, but other intersectional issues of identity that helped mandate who would be included in systems of colonial power at the expense of the excluded; however, the focus solely on

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Britishness in India could be expanded. Those who identified with an Atlantic, Western ideal of citizenship which favored whiteness, wealth, masculinity, English language-usage, and a determined code of manners in relation to authority were considered on the right side of the civilized/uncivilized dichotomy. Britishness was a manifestation of this idea in the long eighteenth century, as was Americanness; however, national demarcation was not the major unifying principle. At the heart of this issue is white masculine relations with a racially stigmatized Other, and civility helped cement the maxim that white was right during this period. To know how to behave in public, and by extension to have the power to define how one should behave in public, within a political and social Atlantic community was often seen as the province of white men connected to authority through power, wealth, and/or influence, and those without the ability to learn structures of civility in a specific community were then ostracized. The use of racial binaries, however, must be understood within specific contexts, as how those in authority marked the civility or incivility of race was dependent upon particular social and political ideals. In “Civility, Barbarism, and Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter ,” Margo Hendricks urges scholars of early modern British literature to take a closer look at the connection between race and civility, as the issue of race was a vexed formation within broader concerns of nationality and loyalty. Hendricks asserts feminist and cultural critics must “theoretically and historically map the discursive and social practices that prompted seventeenth-century Englishmen and women to define themselves […] increasingly, in terms of race” (226). She goes on to claim “a genealogy of ‘race’ reveals that the concept has never had a fixed meaning, but has been variable” (229). The important point Hendricks reveals is the idea that race, as a construct, is determined only by the situations which construct it; therefore, the use of racial binaries to discuss issues of civility is contingent upon how particular political and social authorities can best stress difference as a tool of power. Hendricks underscores an often ignored facet of the use of racial binaries to construct concepts of civility; namely, the fact that such binaries affect both sides of the dichotomy. Hendricks asserts “As ‘race’ becomes imbricated in the geopolitics of early modern England, then the moral impetus of ideologies such as civility becomes a sailor’s knot, tightening its hold not on the American Indians but on the English immigrants” (238). Although this assessment pertains specifically to colonial/Indian relations in North America, as that is the focus of her essay, such an idea can easily extend beyond the English immigrating to Virginia. The use of

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racial binaries to construct ideals of civility not only binds those deemed uncivil because of their race, but also constricts those who would be seen as civil because of their whiteness. In essence, civility is constructed not to teach the racialized Other how to be civil, but rather to make sure particular groups retain their civility. This “sailor’s knot” results in constrictions for all within the binary, regardless of race, and effectively connects those who are protected by civility and those who do not receive the same social and political protections. The link between who could define civility and who could be protected by civility meant that those in positions of authority in the British Atlantic had the power to define the civilized and the uncivilized. J. M. Opal’s “Vengeance and Civility: A New Look at Early American Statecraft” argues that in the eighteenth century, civility was a marker of statecraft and foreign policy within European nations, and was particularly categorized by a disavowal of personal vengeance in favor of civil action. Opal explains “Civility or civilization marked the triumph of law, order, and commerce over violence, isolation, and revenge. It began with the repression of private vendetta – the imposition of the state’s police power – and culminated in a code of international conduct known as the law of nations. Under its terms, nations would act like the ‘polished’ beings they tried to raise” (61-2). In this argument, civility is presented as a force that directs both the individual’s relation to society and the nation’s relations in political policy. Civility is constructed, then, as a practice of both individual and political behavior. This concept of civility would seem to protect individuals from harm; however, it was specifically tailored to include only those deemed civil themselves. As Opal asserts “Against the dark-skinned and ‘lawless’ peoples of America and Africa, moreover, the law of nations had no relevance” (67). Considered uncivilized, people outside of the safety of communities of civility were open to barbarous treatment from the very individuals who openly condemned such behavior. However, this attitude toward what was civil and uncivil was in large part authorized by access to power through language, as civility itself was defined and acted out through discourse. As Anindyo Roy asserts, “‘Language’ and ‘civilty’ were tied through a shared space: both relied on hierarchies that invested individuals with different kinds of social and cultural authority” (6). Civility as a discourse allowed communities to distinguish those with authority and reified the established dispersal of political and social power. What should be said in a given social situation, as well as who could do the saying, meant civility ultimately gave only particular people entrance into community discourse. Mayo emphasizes this process by asserting, “Civilty

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works not only to repress expression in public, but to keep particular people out of public interactions and associations” (173). Including particular individuals while excluding those deemed uncivilized allowed the discourse surrounding civility to shore authority within pre- established community standards which were dependent upon power and privilege. This play between civility in discourse and access to political and social power was central to the idea of civility in the long eighteenth century British Atlantic World. Phillip H. Round’s By Nature and Custom Cursed: Transatlantic Civil Discourse and New England Cultural Production, 1620-1660 highlights this relationship. Round argues that first generation New Englanders performed within the discursive field of civility in order to represent themselves as a part of the metropolitan center of the growing British Atlantic World, which was conducted in an effort to gain access to political and social power. Within this argument, Round focuses on what he terms “civil conversation” (2) which he states: facilitated […] social and cultural transformations, emerging as the primary compromise discursive formation that allowed people form widely different positions within English culture to enter into dialogues about trust, civic order, gender, authorship, and cross-cultural negotiation – subjects that came to matter more and more as state formation and colonial expansion forced Englishmen to reconsider their relationship to centralized authority and New World settlements. (8) Communities of civility entered into “civil conversation” in order to have a stake in the discursive power civility held within a wide variety of political and social fields. “Civil conversation,” the process of relying on civility and discourse to access power, became a central mode for cementing hierarchies within communities around the British Atlantic. If a community participated in a process of “civil conversation” with other communities or promoted the process within itself, that community firmly entrenched the ideal of civility as central to all social and political endeavors. The centrality of civil discourse led to the idea that civil language marked authority within a given community. Michael J. Braddick’s essay, “Civility and Authority,” explores this idea by asserting that the roots of all political authority in the early modern British Atlantic can be traced through the material culture and performance of shared concepts of gentility and civility. As he asserts, “Political authority flowed from, and reinforced, social position,” (114) as

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“gentility was closely associated with the power to govern, with justice” (122). Within this assessment of the relation between political authority and social power, the reliance on standards of civility was paramount. Civility mandated who could say and do what within the social and political realm and acted as a basic signifier for those who held authority in a given community. Braddick maintains that “the exercise of political power was a cultural as much as a political issue” (120) in the long eighteenth century and civility was the tie that bound authority in both those areas. Access to civility and the use of civility provided power and prestige in the political realm because of its close tie to social conceptions of authority and vice versa, as civility itself functioned as a political mandate for treatment of the civilized and a social mandate to determine who was or was not civilized. Because civility was a social and political issue, it is important to understand the place of women within this discourse community. Throughout the long eighteenth century, countless conduct manuals promoted the ideal of the civil woman, and civility itself revolved around social encounter and practice. In this realm, the politeness and gentility assumed to be the touchstone of the feminine offered women entrance into the discourse of civility. Lawrence E. Klein’s “Gender, Conversation and the Public Sphere in early Eighteenth-Century England” argues that civility was what offered women explicit entrance into the discourse of the public sphere. Klein asserts that the standard notions of gender that promoted the idea of women as naturally docile, polite and compromising enabled women to enter public conversations as these same attributes were seen as cornerstones of civility. He maintains “English writers […] gave women a significant place in conversation and the larger process of civility” (108) because women were seen as “agents of politeness” (107). Because civility in a social sense was seen as a process of gentility, and women were categorized as the gentler sex, social civility was perceived as the natural province of women who could understand the mandates of polite society. Civility, as a linked social and political concept, then offered women access to political agency. Women were viewed as the bearers of polite social interaction, which by extension made them natural arbitrators of what was civilized and uncivilized within their communities. While white men still held the vast majority of political power and had the ability to instigate the punishment for those deemed uncivilized, women were socially, therefore also politically, responsible for defining the civilized.

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This is not to say that all women had access to the political realm through the discourse of civility. Social assumptions and prejudices regarding race and class still asserted which women could engage in public issues of civility. It should also be remembered that women who did have access did not always use such political agency to counter white male ideas of the civilized or uncivilized. However, the trope of female captivity offers examples of women who used the discourse of civility to redefine civilized and uncivilized within their communities. Such captives attempted to disrupt the binary through making history in their speech, revealing history-making as a speech act which offered personal interpretation of historical events as a mode of changing the historical record and community standards of belief in the British Atlantic World. History-Making as a Speech Act The making of history has, for many years, been qualified as a type of discourse which holds the capacity to create meaning, new avenues of knowledge, and establish power for those creating the history, those reading the history, or those groups or individuals who are the subject of history. Rarely, however, is history-making discussed as a speech act. Because history always constitutes a study of the past, it is regarded as a discourse that only comments on a given subject. Nonetheless, a full understanding of history as a process of knowledge production and a tool for the distribution of power would assume that this particular type of writing does, in fact, do something. To further explore history-making as a speech act, I will first consider some of the fundamental concepts surrounding speech-act theory itself and their relationship to history- making, followed by a theoretical consideration of what history does to an audience or community in its telling. Combining these two ideas will firmly place history-making as an act performed by an author which has an intended and real effect on the audience targeted in the writing. History-making is doing something with words, and what is being done is the systematic creation of community belief and memory. To begin a discussion of speech-act theory, it is important to go back once again to J. L. Austin. How to Do Things With Words succinctly lays out the formulation of speech as an action, or a process of doing something when speaking something. There are two key formulations in the definition of performative utterances that Austin highlights from the beginning of the text. Austin makes it clear that in order to be a performative utterance, which is the foundation of a speech act, an utterance must do more than simply say. He asserts that in order to be

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performative, “the uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action, which again would not normally be described as, or as ‘just,’ saying something” (5). Austin stresses this concept continually: a performative must not just say something, it must do something. What is being done by the performative must also be confined within appropriate circumstances and does not have to be a physical action. Austin asserts, “Speaking generally, it is always necessary that the circumstances in which the words are uttered should be in some way, or ways, appropriate, and it is very commonly necessary that either the speaker himself or other persons should also perform certain other actions, whether ‘physical’ or ‘mental’ actions or even acts of uttering further words” (8). Here, the idea of a performative is expanded so that it includes a myriad array of actions that are not just physical. A performative does something within a particular moment in time, creating an action in the audience or speaker which is instigated by the speaker. The three points stressed above are important to understanding history-making as a speech act. A performative does something within a specific moment by creating any one of a wide array of actions derived from the saying. History-making fits this criterion explicitly. First, it is always performed within a particular instance. History comes into being within a specific moment of time and is dependant upon that time only. The cultural, social, and political ideals of a certain period effect how history is produced at that time. Second, by creating knowledge and reifying or subverting ideological power within a specific culture, society, or political organization, history-making does something mental. Creating knowledge and/or power is not a physical action, but it is an act which does something on an ideological level. History is a tool of creation, which is always an action. That is what history-making does. It does not simply say something about the past; it creates a particular present through the act of speaking about what has past. The act of creation that is fundamental to history-making is referenced in François Cooren’s work within speech-act theory. In The Organizing Property of Communication , Cooren argues that by creating a theory of speech acts which involves theoretical assumptions regarding narratology, a new idea emerges in which speech comes to create and explain social organization as a whole. In this study, speech acts are described specifically as moments of creation, as “a speech act does something more than simply refer or describes […] it also literally creates the description it offers” (194-5). Cooren sees the act of creating as a mental process that results in individual relations, as “speech acts create not only situations, but also meditations between

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agents and recipients […] that meditation binds person […] to person […] and can be depicted as a real relation , though a discursive one” (195). Such individual relations then go on to create community itself in a discursive web of relationships and mental actions. Cooren asserts “Though each […] actant performs some specific thing, the conjunction of their respective actions creates a collective performance that surpasses what they could have accomplished separately” (197). Cooren’s formulation of speech acts as community creation works well with the concept of history-making as a speech act. History-making creates the description of history it presents, making both history and knowledge in its telling. It is also a mental activity, a “meditation,” created with the purpose of binding a particular group of individuals at a particular time under a banner of shared understanding of the past and the common beliefs such understanding would create, always within a discursive field. The writers of history combine with a particular community audience to create a specific version of the past that is to be shared and transmitted, creating not just individual relations to history but a community based in a shared knowledge and understanding of its past. Cooren’s speech-act theory bolsters the claim that history-making is both a speech act and a form of community creation and bonding. A further understanding of history itself would help solidify an understanding of history- making as a speech act. Hayden White’s Metahisotry: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth- Century Europe specifically argues for a view of history as a discursive field. Although there are issues with White’s text, such as his focus only on established male historians or his tendency to place all historical texts within tightly-defined categories based on prescribed forms, this work does offer an broader understanding of history-making as a action within discourse. He specifically defines history as a verbal act, stating history is “a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse that purports to be a model, or icon, of past structures and process in the interest of explaining what they were by representing them” (2). Additionally, he asserts that history is always dependant upon and situated within language, as “History, like the human sciences in general, remained indentured to the vagaries, but also the generative capability, of natural language” (428). This understanding of history positions the act as one bound to and occurring within language structures. History here also explains the past through representation, which constitutes a speech act through the presentation of the past in order to create an interpretation and understanding of that

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past for its audience. White discusses this action when he asserts “the historical work represents an attempt to mediate among what I will call the historical field, the unprocessed historical record, other historical accounts and an audience” (5). By this estimation, history-making works within a field of various different forms of knowledge, processed, unprocessed, or unknown, that positions the past for an audience in a particular way in order to achieve a particular effect in belief for a community. This connects history not only to a specific audience intended for reception, but the ultimate creation of a community through systematic assent to a presentation of the past. History-making as a speech act creates knowledge, which in turn creates belief and allows for the formation of specific, identifiable communities that share the belief. In making history, one creates community belief. In that creation of belief, particular ideological assumptions are also created that help establish rule within a community. History tells us what has been lost, what was done wrong, and also who should or could hold power in a community. This understanding of history-making sees it as an act of community creation through shared belief in past and present social, cultural, or political order. History-making is not only an important act in creating a common past, but also in creating common beliefs and community structures. Walter Benjamin explores this concept of history as creating power in his essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” positioning history as a tool for disengaging the powerful from there positions. Benjamin states: To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it […]. It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. […] The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. […] Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious. (34) Cast in negative terms, this assertion of history clearly relates that history-making is a tool for social, cultural, and political control. This is a logical extension of the previous discussion of history-making as a speech act. If history creates knowledge, belief, and community, then history-making is a process which ultimately creates ideological structures of power, dominance, and oppression within a given community.

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Various feminist scholars have begun to connect history, speech, and action in their assertions regarding women, particularly in the early modern and eighteenth-century British Atlantic. Devoney Looser’s British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820 argues women writers in the long eighteenth century engaged in various acts of history-making which redefined what was considered history. She states “women writers accepted, rebelled against, adapted to, and co-opted history’s generic parameters” (5) in an effort to insert themselves into historical discourse and enact change through history-making. Looser maintains that the entrance of women into the act of history-making forever changed what history would and could be in relation to classical versus modern modes of knowledge. The classical concept of history as annals expanded in this time period because of the effort of women writers, and historical discourse became rife with various subgenres such as memoir and autobiography that enabled women access without having to be classically educated, as “Modern history was read; if not studied” (10) by British Atlantic communities. Looser’s argument shows that women not only enacted history-making, but came to define history and its discursive elements for the British Atlantic at this time, thus taking political and social power away from the classically- educated community leaders. Kate Chedgzoy’s Women’s Writing in the British Atlantic World: Memory, Place and History, 1550-1700 asserts an understanding of history-making as an overt political and social action by women in order to create communities. Chedgzoy connects the female tradition of memory to the creation of history and political agency, asserting “the formation of textual sites of memory is at the heart of early modern women’s writing as a textual practice that is both personal and political. […] It is through the process and practices of memory work that women’s writing engages with and comments on the huge political and geographical changes of the period” (4). Chedgzoy maintains memory/history-making was “purposeful, intellectual, political and emotional labor” (9) undergone by women in an effort to shape community perception of specific moments and ideas as women in this period “strove to ensure the conflicts they lived through would be recollected by their societies in particular ways” (125). The argument presented by Chedgzoy specifically connects history-making and community engagement for women writers, placing the act of writing history as the act of creating community belief and knowledge about certain events.

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The assertions of Benjamin, Chedgzoy, and Looser leave room for expansion and subversion within history. If history is an ideological tool which creates power, the people allowed to create history then have a hand in the power dynamics of a particular community. Ultimately, history-making is a speech act because it creates knowledge and belief, which in turn creates communities and the power dynamics which structure them. Subversive forms of history- making are still speech acts; they just assert a different form of history that creates knowledge and belief counter to those generally held within a community. This is how the trope of female captivity enacts history-making. Representations of female captives create histories that counter traditional beliefs in their communities of civility, redefining for their audience what is civilized and uncivilized and explicitly critiquing social, cultural, and political structures that spout the concept of civility while being barbarous toward women and racialized Others. By engaging in an active process of history-making, female captive achieve political agency through creating and questioning community knowledge and belief regarding the assumptions of civility. The Historical and Civil Captive In many ways, representations of female captivity are about history on both a personal and community level. Scholars such as Linda Colley and Lisa Voigt have maintained that the overall representations of captivity dominant in the British Atlantic and the wider early modern world had a profound effect on the ways in which people viewed particular historical moments and conceived of knowledge and power. For such critics, using the stories of captives who were relating a small personal history can lead to insights into wider community and transnational events. In fact, Colley maintains that the entire purpose of her text Captives is to “use captive individuals and their tales to investigate and reassess far wider national, imperial and global histories” (12). At the same time, Voigt’s text, Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic , argues that tales of captivity not only brought about new knowledge of newly discovered lands and people, but also shaped the way in which knowledge was perceived by instigating the rise of experiential knowledge within European discourse prior to the Enlightenment. In this way, Voigt contends that “Captivity and exile can be an empowering, rather than a humbling, experience” (130), as it gave captives the form of knowledge that was becoming more and more powerful within Atlantic communities at this time. Although Colley and Voigt both favor male captivity narratives in their texts, the arguments that they make can easily be transferred to representations of female captivity. While

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critics have used captivity as a lens through which to investigate historical moments and events, representations of female captivity also engaged in a process of creating history. By writing about personal experiences within wider historical events, captive women assented to certain interpretations of history that were commonly shared by their communities of civility as they also critiqued the ways in which civility was often ignored when discussing or encountering racialized Others, particularly when communities of civility were engaged in military conflict or colonial expansion. History-making is not confined solely to communities at war or those engaged in acts of conquest, but it is in moments of international conflict and aggression that women could easily intercede within political discourse through the public desire for knowledge and interpretation of relevant events. These personal experiences become political in that they gave women access to the wider historical narrative and allowed them the space to express their own interpretations and opinions regarding the history of the British Atlantic World and the concept of civility. The acts of history-making in speech in these texts express the epitome of the feminist idea that the personal is the political. History-making functions on the same level as confession within representations of female captivity, as both can be seen as acts inherent to the trope as well as an act that reveals female political agency through the power to interpret. The community being addressed within the process of history-making is not a circum-Atlantic religious community, but rather a community concerned with civility even as they waged war in the interests of colonization and expansion. Susannah Johnson’s Indian captivity narrative highlights the process in which personal and community histories intersect in tales of female captivity and exposes how women gain the power to interpret political and social assumptions about what was and was not civilized through telling their histories within particular moments of conflict. By speaking not just about personal captivity but about the position of captives in general, the social position of racialized captors, and the horrors of war, captives such as Johnson make their personal histories representative of community events. They use the audience reception of such personal histories to make wider social and political arguments bolstered by their experiential knowledge. This form of history-making is an act of interpretive power that gave captive females political agency through the act of creating knowledge and questioning community belief. Viewed in another light, the act of history-making can be tied to the production of historical romances, which re-invent (or remake) history in an effort to expose female political

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agency already in place within established political constructs. Sophia Lee’s The Recess presents an alternate history of Elizabethan court culture in England, told through the life of fictional twin daughters of Mary, Queen of Scots. Susanna Rowson’s Rueben and Rachel refashions the history of Western expansion and colonization through the eyes of influential, though fictional, female captives. In these works, history-making is not just an act of fiction that involves making representations of female captivity central to specific historical constructions, but also functions as a refashioning of history that exposes the fact that women did have a place in history and did enact a female political agency that shapes communities of civility. Through historical romances, the representations of female captivity expressed the historical power and significance already inherent to women, thus accentuating the forms of female political agency available to all women. Whether history-making is factual or fictional, these acts of relating history demonstrate the historical and political importance of women in the long eighteenth century. Civil History In communities of civility, social and political ideas of who were and were not considered civilized mandated how a given person was treated, even in times of war. In creating history relying on personal accounts of their experiences, captive females could question these assumptions and treatments in relation to their own lives. One example of this act of history- making and its connection to female political agency is in Susannah Johnson’s captivity narrative, The Captive American; Or A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Johnson . Like many of the narratives presented within this work, this particular tale takes place during the French and Indian War, and as a representation of a woman who was an Indian captive and a French prisoner of war, the narrative presented a personal account of the afflictions experienced by individuals during war within communities deemed both civilized and uncivilized by her own community. In this narrative, Johnson not only detailed her personal sufferings (mainly at the hands of the French) but included her own critique of the place of captives in eighteenth century warfare. Although references to Johnson’s captivity narrative abound, scholarly focus on this particular tale are limited. More often than not, Johnson’s narrative is introduced in a peripheral manner, used to allow critics entrance into the binary divide of the civilized and uncivilized that occurs within the trope of female captivity. In Captives , Linda Colley opens her sixth chapter with a rendition of Johnson’s experiences, using this tale to draw attention to the global effects of the Seven Years War for Western nations. For Coley, Johnson’s captive march through parts of

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America, Canada, and England emphasized the transatlantic reach of war during the eighteenth century, stating her story was an example for the British Atlantic World which “revealed to Western states in a new way just what their fleets, manpower and precocious national cohesion might accomplish – if only they willed it” (171). The accomplishment Colley refers to is the spread of British influence across the globe, particularly as it pertained to colonization efforts. Although not overtly discussing the civilized/uncivilized dichotomy that established connections between the communities of civility, the very push for expansion relied heavily on such shared beliefs. For Colley, Johnson’s story of captivity exemplifies the lengths to which political powers of the British Atlantic would go to establish a unified form of civilization, even if she does not question Johnson’s own definitions of civilization or the impact such a representation had on community knowledge and belief structures. 30 Christopher Castiglia’s Bound and Determined offers an interpretation of the Johnson narrative which is contingent upon the idea of civilization, although an in-depth analysis of her narrative as a whole is still lacking. Castiglia, presenting a brief account of the Johnson captivity, asserts that the bulk of Johnson’s critique lies in an expression of “the skepticism of many captives regarding the values and efficacy of white men, especially in contrast to those of their supposedly inferior Indian counterparts” (66). While it is true that this representation of female captivity questions the belief structures established by white men, Castiglia ignores its connection to issues of civility and civilization. This reading of the Johnson tale presents an assertion more in tune with the narrative as a whole, but lacks the overt discussion regarding its connection to white men as questionably civilized versus the Indian as questionably uncivilized. Ian K. Steele’s work in both The Human Tradition in Colonial America and Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the “Massacre” asserts a study of the Johnson captivity which takes into account issues of civility and the civilized within the text. Before offering a small excerpt of the Johnson narrative for The Human Tradition in Colonial America , Steele claims that the force of Johnson’s narrative is her ability to see beyond normal community ties and value those outside of her culture. He states “She empathized with people across cultural divides, and her account challenges preconceived notions about the Abenaki, Canadian, and English peoples, indicating that the capacity for kindness was not the monopoly of any culture” (257). A more

30 June Namias’ White Captives uses the Johnson tale in a similar way. Namias presents a quote from Johnson at the beginning of her conclusion, using a very small section of the narrative as an example of the power of memory and familial connection. This use also explicitly disregards Johnson’s critique of civility in her work.

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harsh evaluation of Johnson’s commentary is presented in Betrayals , as he maintains “Susannah Johnson saw the treatment of captives in Canada not only as barbaric, but also as hypocritical” (17). Steele’s understanding of the Johnson narrative brings the issue of civility and civilization to the forefront; however, Steele never discusses exactly why or how Johnson’s narrative is able to offer critique. What is missing in this valuation is the way Johnson specifically positions those often thought civilized against those perceived as uncivilized, particularly in their manner and treatment of others. Generally speaking, one of the most remarkable features about Johnson’s narrative is her kind representation of her Indian captors, which she uses to juxtapose against her treatment in Canada by the French, who are kind only to the point in which her family’s money and credit run low. Subsequently, she and her family are thrown in jail until they are exchanged for French prisoners and sent to England. While this representation of the French was an accepted part of standard community language at this time, as shown previously in the earlier discussion of Hannah Swarton’s narrative, Johnson uses the systematic assent to such prejudices to make a startling and telling accusation about the dichotomy between civilized and uncivilized captors in war. She states: In justice to the Indians, I ought to remark, that they never treated me with cruelty to a wanton degree; few people have survived a situation like mine, and few have fallen into the hands of savages disposed to more lenity and patience. […] As they are aptly called the children of nature, those who have profited by refinement and education ought to abate part of the prejudice which prompts them to look with an eye of censure on this untutored race. Can it be said of civilized conquerors, that they in the main are willing to share with their prisoners the last ration of food when famine stares them in the face? Do they ever adopt an enemy, and salute him by the tender name of brother? And I am justified in doubting, whether, if I had fallen into the hands of French soldiery, so much affinity would have been shewn to preserve my life. (38-39) In condemning the French specifically for their barbaric treatment of prisoners of war, Johnson is by extension also commenting on the way in which such captives are treated by all civilized nations in the British Atlantic World. The key here is that within this speech, Johnson only names the French once, in reference to their soldiers. The audience may then assume that the

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entire preceding diatribe is directed at the French; however, the indictment seems far more general and could be a pointed argument against the way all captives are treated by civilized nations, even her own community. At the same time, by assenting to the standard representation of national prejudice regarding the cruelty of the French, Johnson is given space to account for and defend her Indian captors in the eyes of her community. They have “lenity and patience” and are the “children of nature” rather than the devilish fiends often depicted in female captivity narratives. Because the French can be counted as the overt villains of this narrative, Johnson uses a historical distrust against another nation to show her own community the good within Indian people and culture. By assenting to a standard historical view of the French during this war, Johnson has the leeway to question her own community’s political actions and prejudices toward Indians, which gives her a large amount of female political agency. Johnson’s writing of the narrative itself also becomes a political action pertaining to views of civility during times of war, as she recounts her captivity forty years after the event and historically situates the French and Indian War in connection to the American Revolutionary War and her experiences with that transatlantic conflict, stating “Although I have drank so largely from the cup of sorrow, yet my present happiness is a small compensation. Twice has my country been ravaged by war since my remembrance […] But now no one can set a higher value on the smiles of peace than myself” (71-2). Here, in her old age, surrounded by her children and grandchildren, Johnson asserts through innuendo and a presentation of her own affliction that the human price for political conflict and national war is too heavy a burden and not worth the cost. By placing herself historically, and marking herself as an observer of large historical events, Johnson is given the space to not only assent to standard interpretations, but include her own opinions regarding war and politics within her community and her own lived history. Years removed from her personal participation in British Atlantic political events, Johnson’s act in writing history gives her female political agency to present that history in a way that both assents to the standard community view of the past and adds her own interpretation of history through her personal knowledge and experience. Her disruption of standard beliefs regarding the incivility of Indians drastically calls into question definitions of civility and the uncivilized nature of white men during times of war. Like women before and after her, this act of

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personal and political history-making adds a new voice to the wider historical narrative, and positions the female captive as both an understanding and creating agent in history. Civil History Reimagined Now turning from “true” accounts of female captivity to fictional representation, it is important to establish the connection between fiction and history as modes of discourse. Because a text is fictional, or consciously adds fictional characters or elements to a historical narrative, the act of history-making is not automatically negated. In works of fiction dealing with history, confined within this study in terms of late-eighteenth-century historical romances, a writer is still presenting a form of history. This process is bolstered by the fact that history as a discourse already holds within itself an element of the fictional. Hayden White’s Metahistory makes this point clear, asserting: It is sometimes said that the aim of the historian is to explain the past by “finding,” “identifying,” or “uncovering” the “stories” that lie buried in chronicles; and that the difference between “history” and “fiction” resides in the fact that the historian “finds” his stories, whereas the fiction writer “invents” his. This conception of the historian’s task, however, obscures the extent to which “invention” also plays a part in the historian’s operations. (6-7) Through his continued use of quotation marks, as well as the general claim he asserts, White maintains the idea that history naturally has fictional elements. To tell any story, even those based on fact, is to construct a narrative in discourse that has to contain “untrue” facets, such as elaboration, characterization, or interpretative representation. Given this idea of history, one should not automatically discount historical fiction as not having a hand in history-making, as both fiction and history create meaning and knowledge in regard to the past. The creation of meaning and knowledge inherent in both history and fiction is the foundation of Beverley Southgate’s argument in History Meets Fiction . In this text, Southgate asserts that history and fiction continually intersect and overlap, all in an effort to create and sustain belief systems within particular communities. She states, “One reason for the enduring and close relationship between history and fiction – one reason for their fluctuating conjunctions and disjunctions – is that both are concerned essentially with the same task: with the construction of meaning , with making some sense out of what otherwise appears as the chaotic jumble of data that makes up human lives” (12). Southgate’s argument underscores the idea that meaning is

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central to both fiction and history, which is why history and fiction are so irrevocably linked. To present history within fiction is not to tell a lie about the past, but rather to create a new understanding of the past that has a real affect on the way people in communities understand themselves in a specific present. Because of the persistence of creating meaning in historical romances of the latter part of the eighteenth century, these texts in particular show a heightened awareness of the civilized/uncivilized dichotomy present within their communities. Relying on the trope of female captivity, both Sophia Lee’s The Recess and Susanna Rowson’s Reuben and Rachel; Or, a Tale of Old Times juxtaposes the captive experience in and outside of various sides of the civilized/uncivilized binary to create a new meaning of what should be classified as civility in their own communities. Although the issue of treatment according to race is only central to Rowson’s text, both still produce a model of civility that is a harsh critique of white, European culture in the British Atlantic World. From its publication in 1783, Sophia Lee’s The Recess has been critically viewed as a hybrid text most aptly classified as a gothic historical romance. Relating the lives of twin fictional daughters of Mary, Queen of Scots, this novel presents a critique of court culture and civility that is instigated by the twin women who had been captives for the majority of their lives. An epistolary novel told through multiple, unreliable narrators, The Recess presents a view of the civilized court culture of Elizabethan England as markedly uncivil while also asserting the importance of women within conceptions of the past. This play between civility and savagery which is central to the bulk of the text is vital to an understanding of how the trope of female captivity within historical romances offered space for female political agency. Scholarly discussion of Lee’s novel mainly revolves around the contention of genres, which results in various critics highlighting either the gothic/fictional or historical nature of the text as a whole. This contention has followed its evaluation from the beginning, as April Alliston notes in her introduction to the novel, stating “Reviewers welcomed Lee’s historical innovation in English fiction, even though they were made uncomfortable by it at the same time” (xvi). Since its publication, the contention between history and fiction has created much scholarly debate within the study of this particular novel. However, some critics have taken a more reconciliatory view of the text. Cynthia Wall’s essay, “‘Chasms in the Story’: Sophia Lee’s The Recess and David Hume’s History of England ,” argues the Lee intentionally used the unsettled

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and fictional nature of history itself through controlled deviances from Hume’s History of England to highlight the telling of history-as-fact and the telling of romance as historical fiction. She states “From its first publication […] Sophia Lee’s novel The Recess has been critically poised as a romance alongside or against fiction;” however, Wall sees this novel as a space where “Romance takes over history – or rather, turns over history – in order to reveal what did or could happen beneath its apparently settled surface, be it the confinement of women in history or the confinement of women from history” (21). Wall contends the place of historical knowledge in The Recess is the point in which textual critique occurs, as history is reimagined to include confined women as politically and culturally important figures. However, because narrative is contested within the presentation of the novel, it is also important to consider the relationship historical narratives have within novelistic forms from this period. Scott Paul Gordon adds an assessment of genre function to the critical conversation which helps one better understand the complexities of this novel. In The Practice of Quixotism: Postmodern Theory and Eighteenth-Century Women’s Writing , Gordon claims Lee used a quixotic narrative structure to create a generic trap in which readers came to see the constructed nature of narrative itself. In countering the historical mode of criticism regarding the text, Gordon argues “Lee’s novel does reveal a force from the past that persistently haunts its characters: the ghosts of narratives past. […] The Recess shows, however, that genres, like ghosts, persist from the past into the present and, although invisible, exert palpable effects on thoughts and actions” (118). Gordon’s claim favors a critique of Lee’s novel through an understanding of genre which includes the way in which genre and narrative itself can have a real effect on audiences. Combining the work of Wall and Gordon would offer a more nuanced understanding of The Recess . From this perspective, Lee used reimagined history as a narrative construct to create a space for women in the past and affect the way readers viewed both women and ideological issues such as civility. Lee’s reimagined history pivots around issues of the court, and her subversive strain is a critical assessment of the connection between court and civility. The evaluation of court culture present in The Recess goes against the established idea of the British court as the seat of civility in this era. Scholarship abounds concerning the civil nature of court culture in the long eighteenth century, and critics focusing on the work of Aphra Behn have done much to establish the political and social parameters of court culture in the binary construction of civility. Elliot

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Visconsi’s “A Degenrate Race: English Barbarism in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and The Widow Ranter claims the works of Behn directly comment on a royalist aesthetic and presents those opposed to the hierarchy and supremacy of court culture and governance as part of “a barbarous national character which prefers violence and personal independence to the mercy and moral prudence of kingly government” (673). He argues that Behn’s work pulls from dominant theories regarding the emergence of civil society from a violent pre-political state which exposed the dangerous and uncivil tendencies of late seventeenth-century Englishmen and women and their rejection of the ideals of absolute monarchy represented in established codes of civility, honor, and loyalty. Similarly, Jenny Hale Pulsipher’s “‘The Widow Ranter’ and Royalist Culture in Colonial Virginia” argues that Behn taps into the Atlantic royalist culture in her play, showing that good home and colonial subjects valued the hierarchy and ideals of the monarchy. She maintains this dramatic thread reaches beyond Behn and well into the eighteenth century, citing plays in pre-revolutionary America which equated loyalty to the crown with civility and honor for both the English and the colonial subject. Both Visconsi and Pulsipher establish an early political connection between civility and British court culture. Criticism of Behn’s work is not the only source for understanding the subversion instigated by captives in Lee’s work. In “Court Culture and Political News in London’s Eighteenth-Century Newspapers,” Ann C. Dean argues that newspaper circulation in the latter half of the eighteenth century did not remove the political and social standards of England away from court culture, but rather created a public which was very attune with and loyal to the workings of the British court. Dean claims newspapers “framed political information in terms derived from the court” (632), which created for the general public an idea of civil court existence where “courtly political life was imagined through the ideal of elegant conversation” (633). Dean does not specifically equate these newspaper constructions of court culture with issues of civility, but the idea of elegance in conversation fits in with discourses of civility and loyalty. Dean extends the assertions of Visconsi and Pulsipher into the latter part of the eighteenth century, showing that court culture was still seen as emblematic of civil behavior and standards from the beginning to the end of the long eighteenth century in various British Atlantic communities. The critique of court culture in Lee’s novel is provided almost exclusively by representations of female captivity. Captive and confined by those who love them or hate them at

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various points in the text, the twins Matilda and Ellinor must face a harsh world outside of their initial confinement in the recess. This underground bunker was where they were raised, separated from both their captive mother and the rest of the world in order to ensure their safety from the perceived wrath of Queen Elizabeth I. As captives for the majority of their lives, they were presented with a harsh view of the outside world. Matilda states: Every morning we met in a larger room than the rest, where a very venerable man performed mass, and concluded with a discourse calculated to endear retirement. From him we learnt there was a terrible large place called the world, where a few haughty individuals commanded miserable millions, whom a few artful ones made so; that Providence had graciously rescued us from both, nor could we ever be sufficiently grateful. (8) With this description, the captive women of the text are presented with a particular view of civilized culture outside their narrow confines. From the “discourse” provided by the priest, the twins are intentionally told that the world beyond their captivity is cruel and harsh. When trying to prepare the twins for their inevitable introduction to the world, and the English court in particular, their caretaker gives a harsh evaluation of civility in court culture. Unenvying and unenvied as now, may that moment find you none can avoid! Ah, how unlike the crimes and miseries of a court! There you can have no vice so injurious to yourself as sincerity; no merit, like hypocrisy. Love and friendship are unknown, and their names made use of but to entrap the unwary. Women that have beauty are destroyed by it, and all who have not are neglected. The gifts of man take place of the gifts of God, and money alone constitutes merit. – Ah, never! never! my dear girls, can you enough bless that indulgent Providence, which withdraws you from it! (14) From both their venerate priest and loving caretaker Matilda and Ellinor are introduced to the horrors of a supposedly civilized court culture. These lessons are learned in captivity, making confinement in this novel a blessing rather than a curse. However, the desire to be free – to see the place called the world – eventually overcomes the lessons learned as captives and the twins must leave their captivity in order to learn about, and comment upon, civility beyond their recess. Eventually caught in intrigues within the court, as she has to lie about her lineage in order to avoid persecution, Matilda states “I had now learnt to be beforehand with suspicion” (87)

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when in the presence of court members. Matilda must hide her lineage, her marriage to a court favorite and her contempt for court culture overall in order to survive outside of her original captivity, but does not suffer the true incivility of the court as her sister does. Ellinor, in detailing a past encounter with Queen Elizabeth I in which she was violently taken prisoner for her sister’s illicit marriage, relates to Matilda: Elizabeth gave way to that coarse violence which marks her manners. Is there a vindictive or opprobrious epithet she did not exhaust? […] Elizabeth finding threats and interrogations alike lost on a girl whose absent senses seemed to have wholly retired into her heart, now gave way to one of her violent transports; she threw a large book of devotion which lay by her on the table, with so good an aim, that it struck me on the temple, and I sunk senseless to the earth. This particularly violent recitation of the Queen’s behavior clearly positions the good and civil Ellinor against the aggressive and savage Queen. Queen Elizabeth I, a true historical figure, is re- valued in light of a fictional captive’s experience, and her civility is explicitly questioned. From her language, to the misuse of religious texts, to the ultimate use of violence, Elizabeth is presented as a decidedly uncivil lady, although as Queen she should be the standard and exemplary figure of civility for her community. Ellinor, passive and only inwardly critical at the moment of capture, is bullied by a woman who should be, according to standard social assumptions, above such violent transports. In this scene, Ellinor not only critiques the language of the Queen, but relates the events to specifically show the uncivilized nature of the leader of the English court. Throughout the text, Matilda and her twin encounter such scenes which continually reaffirm the lessons they learned as captives: the English court is only a mask of civility. In relating these violent practices of Elizabeth and asserting the need for constant subterfuge in order to ensure safety, the captive tales of Matilda and Ellinor reevaluate standard assumptions regarding Elizabeth I, and by extension offer a harsh critique of the civil practices of the English court. As a captive in the recess and to the Queen, Ellinor shows that some captivities are better than others, and a place away from the civilized world is preferable because of the violence and incivility present there. Ellinor’s experience with Elizabeth stresses the incivility in a civilized court, but Matilda’s closing remarks in the narrative point to the meaning behind the history-making acts of Ellinor’s speech. Presented as a letter to a virtuous friend, Matilda closes the narrative by asking

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her friend to visit her grave when she has passed, and “drop on it a few of those holy tears with which virtue consecrates misfortune; then raise your eyes […] and in a better world look for MATILDA” (326). The phrase “in a better world” is telling here, as is the fact that Matilda will once again be in the ground, the original seat of her happiness and captivity. In death, Matilda returns to a new recess of sorts, and no more has to suffer multiple misfortunes by the hands of a court culture that is suppose to be the epitome of civility. The better world of heaven is pitted against the evil world of civilized England, as Matilda envisions an eternal future that sees her far better off than she ever was in court. Such a closing statement reveals Lee’s creation of meaning in her rewriting of history: goodness is not found in the worldly endeavors of civilization, but only through moral righteousness and an adherence to godly principles of civility. That Matlida and Ellinor learned these principles while captives shows that freedom in the British Atlantic World did not always translate to positive experiences with civilization. In this estimation, the trope of female captivity was used to express the idea that, sometimes, being outside of what is considered civilization is the most civil space one could occupy. Like The Recess , Susanna Rowson’s 1798 novel uses a reimagined past to create meaning in the present, but on a much larger scale. Relating ten generations of women, all of whom are captives at one point, and spanning from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Rueben and Rachel presents a holistic view of European expansion that explicitly counters established ideas of civility as they relate to both women and various colonized races. The novel confronts racism, sexism and colonization as it occurred in the creation of a British Atlantic World, establishing an alternate historical narrative that positions both women and racialized Others on the right side of the civilized/uncivilized divide. Rowson’s work argues that the trope of female captivity as a central trope of history, and does so in an effort to show the political agency women had in the past and in her present. The critical evaluation of Rowson’s novel centers around two ideas. The first connects the text to Rowson’s didactic and pedagogical concerns. Patricia L. Parker’s Susanna Rowson , a biographical study, asserts that this novel clearly links with the textbooks Rowson wrote later in her career. She claims “Rowson combined the teachings familiar to a reader of her previous fiction with the historical subject matter that would later serve as basis for some of her textbooks, thus making this novel a transition between her fiction and her pedagogical work” (93). Parker also stresses that the pedagogical imperatives in Rowson’s work were directed specifically at

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women, as “ Reuben and Rachel thus surveys in fictional form the history of Western civilization, including many female characters to interest and to serve as examples for her young readers” (92). Marion Rust’s Prodigal Daughters: Susanna Rowson’s Early American Women makes a very similar argument regarding the instructive nature of Rowson’s novel. She asserts “ Rueben and Rachel forms an important link between [Rowson’s] teaching and her novelistic personas, highlighting how both endeavors aim at the creation of a specifically female community of student-readers” (277). The assertions of both Parker and Rust are not unfounded, as it is clear that Rowson uses history-making to create a space for women in the established historical narrative. However, offering a critique of the historical narrative is also an important part of this novel. The critical work of Christopher Castiglia and Carol Smith-Rosenberg epitomize the second trend in scholarly study regarding Rowson’s novel. Both essays concern themselves with nation-building, particularly as it pertains to Rowson’s use of female and Indian subjects in the text. Castiglia’s essay “Susanna Rowson’s Reuben and Rachel : Captivity, Colonization, and the Domestication of Columbus” argues that one must read the novel in light of the Indian captivity narrative genre because Rowson employs this model in order to find a place for women and other marginalized individuals within the new American nation. Castiglia claims “Unlike deployments of the captivity narrative that furthered a nationalistic zeal which ultimately disempowered women and people of color, Rowson used the captivity story to achieve for both groups liberties denied by more traditional stories of America’s past” (26). For Castiglia, the recreation of a past gave the newly founded America a story that included groups of people originally denied access to the rhetoric of nationality in the early republic. He asserts Rowson made the American past a captive’s story, which allowed for more inclusionary practices when constructing national character and defining what America and Americans were. Smith-Rosenberg’s argument runs along similar lines. Looking at Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative in connection to both Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly and Rowson’s novel, her essay “Subject Female: Authorizing American Identity” argues that Rowson used the captivity tradition in America to form a female American subject that was more egalitarian than her male counterpart. Smith-Rosenberg also specifically places this argument in the realm of issues of civility and cultural critique by women, stating:

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In appropriating the right to write, and to represent a white America, Euro- American women assumed the dominant male discourses of imperialism and social order. Since language is complex and ideology never simple, however, by the late eighteenth century, Euro-American women writers had also learned to subvert the very discourses they helped construct. […] Rowson’s Reuben and Rachel exemplifies such female authorization and resistance. (486) This evaluation of Rowson’s text falls in line with the argument of this chapter; namely that women used history-making in order to critique dominant community beliefs regarding civility. Smith-Rosenberg goes on to claim that in subverting this discourse of white male Euro- Americans, a new idea of civilization is formed for the nation. She claims “ Reuben and Rachel represents American Indians as nature’s noblemen and European men as savage barbarians who rape and murder, destroying families, indeed whole cultures” (499). The fact that the new arbitrators of civility presented in the novel are female gives political agency to women in the new nation, as “Rowson, assuming a European epic voice, presents women as authoritative political subjects” (497). Castiglia and Smith-Rosenberg highlight the important discursive and ideological shifts occurring in the novel, but do so from a decidedly American standpoint. To assert that Rowson is just creating a place for American women is to ignore the broad circum-Atlantic scope of the novel as well as the pervasive use of the trope of female captivity in the wider British Atlantic World. Captives were not just American, even in Rowson’s novel, and these assertions should be extended to include the Atlantic reality of communities of civility that is the critical force of the text. Additionally, the didactic nature of the novel asserted by Parker and Rust should also be included in this evaluation, as teaching women the true meaning of civility is a central aim of the novel. Rowson’s Reuben and Rachel uses the trope of female captivity in order to present the history-making acts of women, all in an effort to teach communities of civility that the white, male conception of what is civilized and uncivilized has been skewed by the established historical record. In her preface to Reuben and Rachel , Rowson lays out her didactic purposes clearly. She states “When I first started the idea of writing ‘ Tales of Old Times, ’ it was with a fervent wish to awaken in the minds of my young readers, a curiosity that might lead them to the attentive perusal of history in general” (38). Her audience is later specified and the idea of improvement is

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connected to the novel at the close of the preface. She asserts “For my own sex only I presume to write; and if hereafter one woman should think herself happier or wiser from the fruits of my endeavors, I shall be overpaid for the time or pains bestowed in writing and arranging them” (39). Rowson’s preface asserts that she wished to improve the minds of her female audience, specifically in regard to an understanding of history. To target this audience in a text which uses females as the lead examples of agents of history is to assume that women readers will see their own place and importance within the historical narrative. The issues of civility is also central to the novel according to Rowson’s preface, as she claims the female readers will “discover such an innate love of virtue, such a thorough contempt of vice, that the uncontaminated mind will contemplate with pleasure the beauty of the one, and shrink with abhorrence from the deformity of the other” (38). The novel proves that the difference between virtue and vice lie in acts of civility, and from the beginning most of the white European men are explicitly seen as uncivilized villains, particularly in their relations with dignified and civilized native Indian women. Because the novel deals with ten generations of women, all of whom are captive at one point and who come from a mixed racial background, the history-making and critique of civility within the text are manifold; however, one incident early in the narrative typifies Rowson’s use of the captivity trope to assert female political agency in the realm of civility. The first volume of the novel revolves around Columbia, the daughter of Isabelle and a direct descendent of Columbus leaving in confinement in England, being told the history of her family, and by extension discovery and expansion efforts by European men, by her mother, their maid Cora, and through a packet of letters collected and passed down through the generations of women in their family. In starting this monumental task of relating personal and global history, Isabelle asserts that Columbia must come to learn the lessons of the world. The narrative relates her purpose clearly, stating: “Oh! my daughter,” cried she enthusiastically, as her tears subsided, “whilst I glory in the qualities with which it has pleased Heaven to endow your mind and person, I cannot but tremble for your future fate; for to possess superior beauty, sense or genius, is but to excite the wonder of the ignorant, and the envy of little minds, whilst those who are wise, or great in their own conceit, will wound your

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feelings wit contempt or ridicule, which your own good nature and sensibility will not permit you to retaliate.” (50) Isabelle’s exclamation to her daughter condemns the harsh nature of the world outside of her confinement, and echoes the lessons learned by Matilda and Ellinor in The Recess during their initial confinement. In presenting the world of civilized men in such a manner, Isabelle is instructing her daughter in the ways of a world that sees vice as virtue and disregards its own mandates of civility. Isabelle, Cora (a captive herself at one point within the historical narrative presented), and the collected historical narrative then go on to tell the tale of Columbia’s family, starting with the discovery of the West Indies by Columbus. In this narrative, related through Columbus’s confined wife Beatina, there is an early example of the savagery of European men in regard to captive native women. Beatina’s commentary on her husband’s experiences in Hispaniola reveals the sad story of Bruna, a witty and beautiful native girl. She is presented as precocious and thoughtful, especially in her commentary regarding the differences between her culture and that of the European colonizers, as when Columbus would speak “to her of the customs and manners of the European world, she would laugh, and declare her own country manners were best; for she could not possibly think any duty obliged us to conceal our thoughts, or that any custom whatever could make it laudable to speak one thing and think another” (68). Bruna is represented as a rational individual, and one that sees the uncivilized nature of deceit within European social customs when compared to the honesty of her “uncivilized” manners and ideals. Bruna, because of her beauty, becomes the target of a deceitful and vicious European official, Diego, who eventually connives to leave her father destitute and hold the young Bruna hostage for his sexual gratification. Upon discovering what was done, Columbus attempts to intervene, but finds he is too late to save the civilized sensibilities of the young Indian. After being raped by Diego, Bruna is offered her freedom by the governor. The narrative details her response in affecting terms: At length he hesitatingly told Bruna, if that was her father, and she had forcibly been detained from him, she was now at liberty to return home. The poor girl stood for a moment the image of mute despair; then thus raising her hands and eyes to heaven, cried, “Home! No! never! Bruna is the daughter of the chaste

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Lilah, and was instructed by the wise precepts of her father, to prize her honour above her life. Their mansion was the dwelling of innocence, piety, and virtue; and never will their wretched daughter carry pollution thither.” Then turning toward her father, she made as though she would embrace him; but with a kind of involuntary shudder, shrunk from him, and drawing a dagger she had concealed in her bosom, plunged it in her heart. (70) Admittedly, this scene echoes the tale of Lucretia discussed earlier in this work, as the once chaste women offers herself as sacrifice in the name of virtue and honor. The tale of Bruna, like Lucretia, also leads to community revolt against the reigning government, as “The bleeding form of the lovely Bruna, the agonizing sorrow of her father, acted like a talisman on the minds of the people; and in a few hours the whole settlement was in a state of insurrection. Justice! Justice! was the cry” (70-1). However, there are two distinctions in this tale that markedly change the force of the narrative. Unlike Lucretia, Bruna is an unmarried Indian woman. Also unlike the Lucretia myth, the insurrection of the native population did not result in an overthrow of the Spanish colonial government or the establishment of a republic; instead, the native revolutionaries are quelled and the process of subordination and colonization continues. To present Bruna as a double of Lucretia is to automatically place her within the realm of civility. The comparative stories work upon a particular understanding of virtue and civilization, and the sad fate of Bruna instills the idea that the Indian woman within the history of Western expansion was a seat for virtue and civility against the barbarous behavior of white European men. The failure of the insurrection caused by Bruna’s virtuous suicide does not diminish the force of her civilized nature compared to the uncivilized and villainous Diego; rather, the inability to achieve freedom from an uncivil political and social order echoes the established historical narrative. The tale of Bruna displays in sentimental and dramatics terms the uncivil practices of established civilized society, and the native inability to escape the political force of savage European men becomes the death toll for civilized Indian society in the West Indies. Bruna, in her speech, establishes a righteous attitude toward civil conduct, and the transmission of this tale through generations of captive and confined females in Europe cements the act of history-making in this text. Columbia, surrounded only by other women who are confined and were once captives, understands the tale of Bruna as a humanized and sad historical account of colonization. Her personal family history creates an historical view of global events,

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positioning captive women as the center of civility in a world where an understanding of what is civilized and uncivilized is tainted by the discourses and ideology of savage white European men. Rowson asserts that history-making creates political space for women who have the ability to define for themselves what should be considered civilized and uncivilized in the wider world. The lesson for Columbia, and by extension her actual female readers, is that native and European women hold the keys to history, and by extension, the power of civility in their own communities. Coupled with the continued transmission of a women-center historical narrative, Rowson’s assertions regarding civility show that women had political agency as both historical subjects and creators of meaning in their communities. Civilized Captives Although women writers and captives often supported the ideological binaries established by their male counterparts, particular women chose to explicitly fight against such community beliefs. Through the use of history-making as a speech act, representations of female captivity in communities of civility used constructions or imaginings of the historical narrative to redefine what was considered civilized and uncivilized in their communities. By asserting both the virtue of racialized Others and the barbarous manners of European men and political leaders, these captive women created new meaning and knowledge in regard to constructs of civility. Such representations also show women had a voice and place within the historical narrative of the British Atlantic World. Both result in access to a female political agency based in the creation of meaning and knowledge for their communities. From this perspective, the lessons learned from true and imagined history reveal a British Atlantic community system where women functioned as arbitrators of political and social constructions of knowledge and power. History tells these tales, and captive women used history-making to ensure that such tales were not forgotten.

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Conclusion Captive Heroines “Having the liberty of my mouth, I soon made out to bite the bark in two with which he bound me, by which I found means to liberate myself” Abraham Panther, “Panther Captivity” “I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish…except one.” Alan Moore, V for Vendetta In the “Panther Captivity,” a one-time female captive is discovered in the deep woods of New England by two men. As she tells her tale, she reveals that it was her mouth that allowed her escape from a giant Indian, as she chewed through the bark binding her in order to kill her captor and escape with her freedom. She confesses her murder and subsequent life of isolation in the woods, stating “You are the only human beings who ever heard me tell my tale” (89). But they are not the only people to ever hear her tale. Her speech in the text, the revelation of her act of tongue, was published more than twenty times between 1787 and 1814 under varying titles. Although a fictional account, this representation of female captivity expresses the metaphorical importance of the mouth of the female captive; a tool which lead to both physical and political freedom within the trope of female captivity and in the wider British Atlantic of the long eighteenth century. However, it is important to note that the British Atlantic of the long eighteenth century did not mark the limits of the trope of female captivity in textual and cultural production. The eighteenth-century proliferation of representations of female captivity has had an impact on our present literary and cultural productions in many ways. From horror films to comic books, from music videos to current political reality, the idea of the captive still holds a particular place within communities established in the British Atlantic World during the long eighteenth century. Many literary critics concerned with captivity, such as Burnham and Castiglia 31 , have connected past scenes of captivity with current literary and cultural productions, expressing the relevance of studying older instance of female captivity. Late twentieth century textual production employs this trope still, and a look at more contemporary sources reveals that the speech acts of captives

31 Michele Burnham’s Captivity and Sentiment ends with a discussion of the captive female as represented in Terminator 2 while Christopher Castiglia’s Bound and Determined explores both the Patty Hurst autobiography and The Exorcist as twentieth century manifestations of female captivity.

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garnered female political agency in a wide variety of areas. One such latter representation is Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta . A short comic book series published by various comic book companies in England and America from 1982 to 1988, V for Vendetta is a dystopia set in a fascist England, in which the mysterious political vigilante V attempts to disrupt the British government and bring an end to the tyranny of the state. His efforts are assisted, both willingly and unwillingly, by Evey, a young woman who accidently gets caught up in the political intrigue. Although set and written in the twentieth century, this comic series expresses the prevalence of circum-Atlantic communities and literary exchange even in this period. The publication history shows that, as a comic, V for Vendetta participated in a transatlantic literary exchange. Additionally, Allan Moore himself cites the growing circum-Atlantic conservative political community of the Thatcher/Reagan era as the driving force behind the social critique within his comic. Writing the introduction to the trade paperback in 1988, Moore cites the presence of Thatcher in office at that point still and his perception of the continually growing force of conservatism as a hopefully-false harbinger of “an unbroken Conservative leadership well into the next century” (6). This politically conservative circum-Atlantic community, both in 1981 and 1988, was the reason Moore wrote his dystopia, offered as both a commentary on and warning regarding the possible implications of a world in which the “press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS,” police increasingly relied on “rotating video cameras” to capture the moves of citizens, and governments around the Atlantic, using rhetoric and law, “expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality” (6). Moore’s insistence on the growth of communities of conservatives around the Atlantic relies upon the continued prevalence of circum-Atlantic connections and exchanges. V for Vendetta , however, is a text which dissents from the ideals of such a community, and Moore uses the trope of female captivity explicitly to assert the power of political agency even within oppressive social constructs. In the middle of the narrative, Evey believes she is captured by the British government. She is tortured, verbally abused, and nearly forced to give a false confession of her time spent with V. While in this captivity, she comes across the letter of a woman previously occupying her cell. This memoir details the life and captivity of a woman named Valerie who was held prisoner because she was homosexual. The embedded narrative of this captive expresses her need to connect with someone outside of her cell and transmit her tale. Valerie claims she has lost everything in her captivity, but her speech-in-writing reveals what her

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captors cannot take from her. At the end of her memoir, she states, “I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish … except one. An inch. It’s small and it’s fragile and it’s the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us” (160). Evey is bolstered in her own captivity by this memoir, and states “I know every inch of this cell. This cell knows every inch of me. Except one” (160). Valerie’s memoir allows Evey to literally say “No” (161) to her captors, which eventually leads to her freedom. The reader finds that Evey’s captor is actually V, and the captivity was orchestrated in order for Evey to realize her own power within the oppressive political system. As Evey first rails against her treatment by V, he calmly explains that it was all for her freedom, stating “I didn’t put you in a prison, Evey. I just showed you the bars” (170). This is the turning point for Evey in the narrative, as it marks her move from reluctant to politically-active participant in the designs to overthrow the British government. Evey’s captive connection to Valerie frees her form the fake captivity of V as well as the metaphorical captivity she endures daily as a woman within the dystopic, fascist British state. V showed her the bars, but it is through her connection to Valerie that a captive’s voice is shown to have power and produces action. The audience learns later that the words of Valerie had a force and resulted in specific political action before Evey. Assuming the memoir of Valerie was also fake, Evey tells V “I believed in her. Without seeing her, I almost loved her, and she was never really there” (174). V then tells Evey the letter is actually real, written by Valerie when she was a captive in the cell next to V years earlier. He says “Valerie wrote the letter in her own hand, while she lived. I delivered it to you as it was delivered to me. The words you wept over were those that transformed me. Five years earlier” (175). Valerie’s voice not only affected the agency of another female captive, but was in fact the catalyst for the revolutionary actions of V himself, which is a solid political action based on her captive speech. This marks the end of V for Vendetta ’s use of the trope of female captivity and one of its most forceful arguments regarding female political agency in speech. Valerie’s “criminal” confessions echo the argument of the text, the idea that one person can change an undesirable political landscape. The “inch” Valerie and Evey keep in their captivity is their voice, their sovereign ability to say no to those in power, to fight against an oppressive political state with the power of speech. The inch revealed by a captive woman’s speech, to both a man and a woman, results in overt political action and agency as well as the discovery of voice for another female captive. While Evey only has to say no, it is

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Valerie’s confessional act that spurs Evey’s speech on, the catalyst Evey needed to find and maintain her own voice and join the political fight for the freedom of her community. V for Vendetta shows that twentieth century cultural production employed the trope of female captivity to exemplify the ways speech acts foster female political agency. The tales of Valerie and Evey have been transmitted to both comic book and film audiences and underscore the political path speech can reveal for women in captivity, be it metaphorical, fictional, or literal. Valerie’s “inch” echoes the concerns of representation of female captivity in the British Atlantic of the long eighteenth century. This “inch,” the space for female assent to and dissent from political and social norms, is continually expressed in a language which leads to action in and outside of texts, in much the same fashion as the works previously discussed in this project. In the long eighteenth century British Atlantic and beyond, female captives use their voices to enact resistance to political and social ideas within their own communities. The example of V for Vendetta also points to the pervasive nature of the female captive. In the long eighteenth century this translated into a print culture obsessed with stories of captive women. From novels to autobiographies, captives dominated the literary landscape and entertained the masses. This fact also highlights the idea of female captivity as a literary trope. Time and time again, the representation of female captivity, whether in fictional or non-fictional texts, comes to express more than her captive situation. Captivity was a lived reality in the long eighteenth century British Atlantic, but its representation did more than affirm this fact. In a metaphorical sense, the trope of female captivity exemplified the ways real women could fight through political and social confinement with their speech. From the Lady of Comus to the Lady of the Panther captivity tale, women in captive situations used the liberty of their mouths, their speech in writing, to escape, showing the wider world that female speech could enact political agency in various community settings. This project has endeavored to prove the reality of speech in writing. Speech acts do not have to function in oral situations alone, but can also be asserted in the written word. As writing is a representation of speech, the force of a given speech act is not negated because it is written down. Authors represent speech in their texts, and this represented speech has voice and the power to create action. The expansion of print culture in the long eighteenth century meant that speech in writing gained more power and prestige, becoming a dominate form of the speech act at this time. Uttered in writing, the speech acts of female captives held sway in a time and place

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where the written word was powerful and pervasive. Connecting the issue of speech in writing as action with Wayne Booth’s assertions regarding systematic assent shows that communities in the British Atlantic established shared belief structures and forms of knowledge that could be changed by women voicing both assent and dissent in writing. The focus on the British Atlantic stressed in this study also underscores the circum- Atlantic nature of both history and literature during this period. In a moment when Atlantic material exchange fueled a rising capitalist economy, goods and materials were not the only thing traded. Ideas, ideologies, values, and beliefs circulated around and across the Atlantic, creating communities founded in shared understanding. Claims based on modern national borders have dominated in the study of captivity within literature, with scholars focusing solely on specific forms of captive experience in particular nation-states, such as the persistent and narrow idea of the Indian captivity narrative as it relates to a uniquely American literary tradition. While such studies of captivity have highlighted the female agency achieved in the liminal cultural spaces of the captive moment, few interrogate the effect captivity had on political agency for women within their British Atlantic communities. My project asserts that the study of captivity in literature must transcend national boundaries in order to draw attention to the fluid exchange of people, goods and ideologies that was a historical reality during the long eighteenth century and the agency afforded women in their own community networks through the fluidity of their circum-Atlantic context. This dissertation stresses a fact that many scholars in various fields continue to disavow: women in the long eighteenth century did have access to political agency and enacted such agency on a broad scale. By applying the trope of the female captive in both autobiographical accounts and fictional texts published across the British Atlantic, women used speech acts as a means to articulate support and criticism of important political issues, such as social contract theory, the right of marriage choice, women’s position within religious formations and as religious leaders, the general use of the female body as social and political commodity, and the limits of civility. As these women wrote within particular communities, using community discourse to insert themselves into the political realm, they shaped ideas of writing, speech, and agency. The trope of female captivity proliferated in the long eighteenth-century British Atlantic in an effort to have community audiences observe and condone discursive methods of female political agency within patriarchal political structures. Because these communities were a

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cornerstone for the creation of a circum-Atlantic world, women not only participated in the social and political realm, but became agents who shaped the world in which they lived.

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