http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/index/ en mlumphrey@flatheadreservation.org Copyright 2008 2008-11-17T17:40:32-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/resources_and_handouts/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/resources_and_handouts/#When:17:40:32Z Study Guide Questions (printable version of the guide that is also available on Moodle) Frederick Douglass Reading Schedule Nov 19 Wed: Hand out Study Guide Reading homework: Chapter 1: 17-21 Nov 20 Thurs: In class: Autobiographical paragraph on Moodle Write this today. Publish on Moodle during test tomorrow. Reading homework: Chapter II-III: 22-31 Nov 21 Fri: TEST: pages XXIII-31 Reading homework: Chapter IV-V: 32-39 Extra Credit: Douglass discussion on OurSpace Forum Do this on your own time before Monday. Nov 24 Mon: Reading Reading homework: Chapter VI-VII: 40-48 Nov 25 Tues: TEST: pages 32 - 48 Reading homework: Chapter VIII-IX: 49-58 Nov 26 Wed (Early Release) Dec1: Mon: Reading homework: Chapter XI: 88-99 Dec 2: Tues: Appendix: 100-106 Romanticism 2008-11-17T17:40:32-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/american_romanticism/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/american_romanticism/#When:03:17:04Z Longfellow poems (printable PDF) The Arrow and the Song I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend. The Arsenal at Springfield This is the Arsenal.  From floor to ceiling, Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms; But front their silent pipes no anthem pealing Startles the villages with strange alarms. Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, When the death-angel touches those swift keys What loud lament and dismal Miserere Will mingle with their awful symphonies I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, The cries of agony, the endless groan, Which, through the ages that have gone before us, In long reverberations reach our own. On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman’s song, And loud, amid the universal clamor, O’er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. I hear the Florentine, who from his palace Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din, And Aztec priests upon their teocallis Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent’s skin; The tumult of each sacked and burning village; The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns; The soldiers’ revels in the midst of pillage; The wail of famine in beleaguered towns; The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, The rattling musketry, the clashing blade; And ever and anon, in tones of thunder, The diapason of the cannonade. Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, With such accursed instruments as these, Thou drownest Nature’s sweet and kindly voices, And jarrest the celestial harmonies? Were half the power, that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts: The warrior’s name would be a name abhorred! And every nation, that should lift again Its hand against a brother, on its forehead Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain! Down the dark future, through long generations, The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease; And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, I hear once more the voice of Christ say, “Peace!” Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War’s great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise. The Children’s Hour Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day’s occupations, That is known as the Children’s Hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. A whisper, and then a silence: Yet I know by their merry eyes They are plotting and planning together To take me by surprise. A sudden rush from the stairway, A sudden raid from the hall! By three doors left unguarded They enter my castle wall! They climb up into my turret O’er the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape, they surround me; They seem to be everywhere. They almost devour me with kisses, Their arms about me entwine, Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine! Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, Because you have scaled the wall, Such an old mustache as I am Is not a match for you all! I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down into the dungeon In the round-tower of my heart. And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in dust away! The Day is Done The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me That my soul cannot resist: A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain. Come, read to me some poem, Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day. Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time. For, like strains of martial music, Their mighty thoughts suggest Life’s endless toil and endeavor; And to-night I long for rest. Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start; Who, through long days of labor, And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies. Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer. Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away. The Fire of Driftwood Devereux Farm, near Marblehead We sat within the farm-house old, Whose windows, looking o’er the bay, Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold, An easy entrance, night and day. Not far away we saw the port, The strange, old-fashioned, silent town, The lighthouse, the dismantled fort, The wooden houses, quaint and brown. We sat and talked until the night, Descending, filled the little room; Our faces faded from the sight, Our voices only broke the gloom. We spake of many a vanished scene, Of what we once had thought and said, Of what had been, and might have been, And who was changed, and who was dead; And all that fills the hearts of friends, When first they feel, with secret pain, Their lives thenceforth have separate ends, And never can be one again; The first slight swerving of the heart, That words are powerless to express, And leave it still unsaid in part, Or say it in too great excess. The very tones in which we spake Had something strange, I could but mark; The leaves of memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark. Oft died the words upon our lips, As suddenly, from out the fire Built of the wreck of stranded ships, The flames would leap and then expire. And, as their splendor flashed and failed, We thought of wrecks upon the main, Of ships dismasted, that were hailed And sent no answer back again. The windows, rattling in their frames, The ocean, roaring up the beach, The gusty blast, the bickering flames, All mingled vaguely in our speech; Until they made themselves a part Of fancies floating through the brain, The long-lost ventures of the heart, That send no answers back again. O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned! They were indeed too much akin, The drift-wood fire without that burned, The thoughts that burned and glowed within. The Landlord’s Tale (Paul Revere’s Ride) Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, “If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light, -- One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up and to arm.” Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war; A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar, And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street, Wanders and watches with eager ears, Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore. Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade, -- By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the moonlight flowing over all. Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, In their night-encampment on the hill, Wrapped in silence so deep and still That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread, The watchful night-wind, as it went Creeping along from tent to tent, And seeming to whisper, “All is well!” A moment only he feels the spell Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread Of the lonely belfry and the dead; For suddenly all his thoughts are bent On a shadowy something far away, Where the river widens to meet the bay, -- A line of black that bends and floats On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse’s side, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns! A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet: That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, Kindled the land into flame with its heat. He has left the village and mounted the steep, And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; And under the alders, that skirt its edge, Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. It was twelve by the village clock, When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. He heard the crowing of the cock, And the barking of the farmer’s dog, And felt the damp of the river fog, That rises after the sun goes down. It was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon. It was two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, Pierced by a British musket-ball. You know the rest. In the books you have read, How the British Regulars fired and fled, -- How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farm-yard wall, Chasing the red-coats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load. So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm, -- A cry of defiance and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo forevermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere. The Village Blacksmith Under a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. His hair is crisp, and black, and long, His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate’er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun is low. And children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing-floor. He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter’s voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother’s voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his haul, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes. Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night’s repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought. My Lost Youth Often I think of the beautiful town That is seated by the sea; Often in thought go up and down The pleasant streets of that dear old town, And my youth comes back to me. And a verse of a Lapland song Is haunting my memory still: ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, And catch, in sudden gleams, The sheen of the far-surrounding seas, And islands that were the Hesperides Of all my boyish dreams. And the burden of that old song, It murmurs and whispers still: ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ I remember the black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea. And the voice of that wayward song Is singing and saying still: ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ I remember the bulwarks by the shore, And the fort upon the hill; The sunrise gun with its hollow roar, The drum-beat repeated o’er and o’er, And the bugle wild and shrill. And the music of that old song Throbs in my memory still: ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ I remember the sea-fight far away, How it thunder’d o’er the tide! And the dead sea-captains, as they lay In their graves o’erlooking the tranquil bay Where they in battle died. And the sound of that mournful song Goes through me with a thrill: ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ I can see the breezy dome of groves, The shadows of Deering’s woods; And the friendships old and the early loves Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves In quiet neighbourhoods. And the verse of that sweet old song, It flutters and murmurs still: ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ I remember the gleams and glooms that dart Across the schoolboy’s brain; The song and the silence in the heart, That in part are prophecies, and in part Are longings wild and vain. And the voice of that fitful song Sings on, and is never still: ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ There are things of which I may not speak; There are dreams that cannot die; There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, And bring a pallor into the cheek, And a mist before the eye. And the words of that fatal song Come over me like a chill: ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ Strange to me now are the forms I meet When I visit the dear old town; But the native air is pure and sweet, And the trees that o’ershadow each well-known street, As they balance up and down, Are singing the beautiful song, Are sighing and whispering still: ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ And Deering’s woods are fresh and fair, And with joy that is almost pain My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were I find my lost youth again. And the strange and beautiful song, The groves are repeating it still: ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ Nature As a fond mother, when the day is o’er, Leads by the hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor, Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead, Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know. There Was a Little Girl There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid. The Witnesses In Ocean’s wide domains, Half buried in the sands, Lie skeletons in chains, With shackled feet and hands. Beyond the fall of dews, Deeper than plummet lies, Float ships, with all their crews, No more to sink nor rise. There the black Slave-ship swims, Freighted with human forms, Whose fettered, fleshless limbs Are not the sport of storms. These are the bones of Slaves; They gleam from the abyss; They cry, from yawning waves, “We are the Witnesses!” Within Earth’s wide domains Are markets for men’s lives; Their necks are galled with chains, Their wrists are cramped with gyves. Dead bodies, that the kite In deserts makes its prey; Murders, that with affright Scare school-boys from their play! All evil thoughts and deeds; Anger, and lust, and pride; The foulest, rankest weeds, That choke Life’s groaning tide! These are the woes of Slaves; They glare from the abyss; They cry, from unknown graves, “We are the Witnesses!” The Wreck of the Hesperus It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughtr, To bear him company. Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in the month of May. The skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South. Then up and spake an old Sailr, Had sailed to the Spanish Main, “I pray thee, put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane. “Last night, the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!” The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he. Colder and louder blew the wind, A gale from the Northeast, The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm, and smote amain The vessel in its strength; She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, Then leaped her cable’s length. “Come hither! come hither! my little daughtԨҨr, And do not tremble so; For I can weather the roughest gale That ever wind did blow.” He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast. “O father! I hear the church-bells ring, Oh say, what may it be?” “‘T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!” -- And he steered for the open sea. “O father! I hear the sound of guns, Oh say, what may it be?” “Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!” “O father! I see a gleaming light, Oh say, what may it be?” But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That savd she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow’rds the reef of Norman’s Woe. And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. The breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck. She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull. Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, Ho! ho! the breakers roared! At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes; And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman’s Woe! Romanticism 2008-11-17T03:17:04-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/embedding_quotations_in_a_paragraph/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/embedding_quotations_in_a_paragraph/#When:02:26:39Z Online Handout: How to incorporate quotations (PDF) Example: How to incorporate a quote into a paragraph Steps to getting an A on this paragraph 2008-11-10T02:26:39-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/incorporating_quotations_into_a_paragraph/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/incorporating_quotations_into_a_paragraph/#When:02:20:30Z Quote a short passage of that states the point you are agreeing or disagreeing with. Your paragraph should follow this format: [Sentence 1: topic sentence] Thoreau praises living close to nature, but he doesn’t go far as to camp out in nature. [Sentence 2: Lead-in to the quote] He writes about building his house, and the fact that it protected him from the elements. [Sentence 3: A sentence that includes the quote] “I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July,” he says, “as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain . . . .” [Sentence 4: Tell why you include this quote] As you can see, he was careful in the way he constructed his house, and he did wish to be protected from the elements when necessary. [Sentence 5: Expand on your point by adding more information to strengthen the support] It is also interesting that he did not actually move to the woods until this house was ready for him to live in. [Sentence 6: Reminder of how this relates to your main idea] So it is apparent that while he loved nature, he wasn’t willing to live in a cave, or even a tent. Notes about including quotations: 1. As you think about integrating quotations, keep looking for ways to be more concise and lively: First Draft: In The Prince Machiavelli states that the general requirement of a prince is to “endeavor to avoid those things which would make him the object of hatred and contempt.” Revision: In The Prince Machiavelli states that a prince should “endeavor to avoid those things which would make him the object of hatred and contempt.” 2. Make sure your quotations fit grammatically into the paragraph. They can’t simply be stuck in anywhere. Like any other elements of writing, quotations must be incorporated so that the sentence as a whole makes grammatical sense. For example, a quotations that’s an independent clause must not be spliced onto another independent clause: First Draft: Hawking is at heart a scientist, “I think there is a universe out there waiting to be investigated and understood.” Revision: Hawking is at heart a scientist: “I think there is a universe out there waiting to be investigated and understood.” 3. Useful words for introducting a quotation: suggests implies testifies to indicates argues (that, for) shows demonstrates supports underscores 4. It’s important to explain what it is about the quote that you want the reader to notice. What’s your point? The revision does a much better job of helping the reader make sense of the quotation and how it helps the writer’s arugment: First Draft: Iago says to Othello, “Who steals my purse steals trash; . . . / . . . / But he that filches from me my good name / Robs me of that which not enriches him / And makes me poor indeed” (3.3.157-61). Revision: Drawing Othello further into his web, Iago suggests that public embarrassment would be intolerable: “Who steals my purse steals trash; . . . / . . . / But he that filches from me my good name / Robs me of that which not enriches him / And makes me poor indeed” (3.3.157-61). Iago, of course, is utterly contradicting his earlier declamation to Cassio on the folly of reputation (2.3.256-61). Grammar and Usage Guides 2008-11-10T02:20:30-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/note_to_fellow_writers/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/note_to_fellow_writers/#When:05:59:37Z There’s an old saying among writers: “There’s no such thing as good writing. Only good-rewriting.” Ernest Hemingway once confided to George Plimpton during an interview that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms 39 times before he was satisfied. Why so many rewrites? Plimpton asked. Because, Hemingway responded, he wanted to get the words right. Please work on revising your essays before I grade them. Start with your ideas. Can you state your main point in a single, clear sentence? If not, you haven’t brought your thoughts into focus yet, and if you’re thoughts aren’t focused it’s inevitably that your essay will wander around with no clear sense of what it’s trying to accomplish. Is each paragraph really a paragraph, organized around one idea which is stated in a clear topic sentence? Have you cut out unnecessary padding, so each sentence is sharp and lean and clear? Have you proofread, to make sure that every sentence really is a sentence, and that your paragraphs are smooth with a rhythm that’s easy to follow? Have you spell checked? Here’s the checklist I will use to grade your essay: Proofreading Checklist Ideas and organization Somewhere in the first paragraph, I state my thesis in a simple, direct sentence. My thesis expresses an opinion rather than summarizes the story or states something that is simply factually true. The body of my essay consists of three or four reasons that “prove” my thesis or examples that support it. Every paragraph has a topic sentence which states the main idea of that paragraph. Everything in the paragraph relates to that topic sentence. The points are organized in a way that a reader can easily follow the argument. Style Every sentence is clear and graceful. Most sentences have active verbs rather than “being” verbs, such as “is,” “was,” “were,” “are,” etc. My nouns are specific rather than vague or abstract. (“tree” is vague; “willow” is specific֓trouble” is abstract; the death of her daughter is specific) Conventions and Usage Every word is spelled correctly. Every sentence is complete (no fragments). I have no fused sentences or comma splices. I’ve changed run-on sentences with too many jumbled together ideas into simpler sentences. Possessive nouns have apostrophes. Conjunctions have apostrophes. Proper nouns are capitalized, and every sentence begins with a capital. Class Logistics 2008-10-28T05:59:37-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/phs_photo_gallery/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/phs_photo_gallery/#When:06:41:29Z Find more photos like this on OurSpace 2008-10-25T06:41:29-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/intr/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/intr/#When:21:08:42Z Handouts: The basics of poetry meter, with model poems Poetry Meter Handout Writing Your Own Poem “Where I’m From” Assignment: Write a “where I’m from” poem 2008-10-23T21:08:42-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/photo_club_surveys2/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/photo_club_surveys2/#When:22:38:14Z 2008-10-16T22:38:14-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/photography_club/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/photography_club/#When:15:48:50Z *Sierra Pete (883-0576) pow-wow4life@hotmail.comLeslie Brower (676-3365) *Jordan Gochis (883-4224 or 261-6283) monkeychunks_91@hotmail.com *Mary Wiedrich (883-5398) peppersam18@yahoo.com *Jake Walsh (270-3308) bigamus_jakeamus@yahoo.com *Melissa Cisneros (871-1566) m.cisneros1039@gmail.com *Amanda Berens (270-3562) Bayportsleuth@yahoo.com *Chastity Biggers (212-7512) wiccan_girl_lashante@yahoo.com *Sierra Kohler (887-2869) wanna_prince@hotmail.com *Sydney Plant (887-2874) shinypingrl@hotmail.com *Jazmin Auld (849-5734) native_girl1777@hotmail.com *Katie O’Brien (471-6537) kobrien@compuplus.net Ceylon Brown Kate Finley (883-3286) Josie Benedetti (880-0721) Amanda Umphress (883-0010) Gentlespiritnu@aol.com Danielle Kinyon (471-2125) daniellekinyon@hotmail.com Mycal Bailey (471-1799) foidikinda.girl@hotmail.com Aspen Many Hides (207-9701) ad_luvs_sb@hotmail.com Alexa Cline (229-0211) lexi_dancer2olo@hotmail.com Rebecca Costilla (253-9745) hayden_chirstensenlover@hotmail.com Veda Mathias (849-5699) Mariah Hamel (250-2596) mjhamel3@hotmail.com Josie Benedetti Jenni Reilley (253-9630) hottie_tottie182@hotmail.com Laura Brandeis (887-2733) plastic_flower@hotmail.de Later: Caitlin Mahoney kayak-freak906@hotmail.com Officers President Vice President Secretary Treasurer Exhibitions Director Interests Classes 16 Guest Speakers 9 Studio work 20 Shows/Exhibits 20 Field Trips 20 Community Service 14 Sharing 18 Photoshop 13 Fund Raising 18 Staged 1 Nature 16 Journalism 11 People/Portraits 17 Art 18 High School 11 Family 7 Black&White 1 Class Logistics 2008-10-06T15:48:50-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/did_you_join_the_photography_club/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/did_you_join_the_photography_club/#When:00:29:13Z Melissa has create a MySpace Group for Photography Club. We can use it to upload photos for sharing and for general discussion & networking. It's here: http://groups.myspace.com/phsphotoclub We will also use a Google Group for email messages and to organize basic materials (notices of events, minutes of meeting, membership list, announcements, etc.). Use the form below to join: Subscribe to PHS_photo Email: Visit this group Extra Credit 2008-10-06T00:29:13-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/moodle_link/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/moodle_link/#When:05:55:38Z Here’s a link to the moodle site: http://www.umphrey.net/classes/ Several people have told me the drop-down menu at the top of this page doesn’t work on their home computer. It would help me if people would check it, and if it doesn’t work, send me an email telling me which browser they are using. (To find out which browser you are using, go to the HELP menu, then click ABOUT. . . To email me, use this link: http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/main/contact_mlu 2008-10-02T05:55:38-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/the_crucible1/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/the_crucible1/#When:04:58:40Z By the time we finish studying this play, you will be expected to turn in the following materials: A. A completed study guide for the entire play: crucible-study_guide.pdf B. A “conflicts” graphic organizer for Act One: Crucible-act1-conflict.pdf C. A “changing status” graphic organizer for Act Two: Crucible-act2-status_changes.pdf D. A “motivation” chart for Act Three: Crucible-act3-character.pdf E. An “action/explanation” chart for Act FourCrucible-act4-character.pdf In addition, you will need to write a 500-word essay about the play. Your essay should answer one of these questions: 1. How does Proctor’s major dilemma change in the course of the play? 2. How does Reverend Hale change during the play? 3. Compare or contrast the role of Abigail Williams with that of Elizabeth Proctor. 4. Which three characters are most to blame for the injustice that takes place in Salem? 5. Discuss Elizabeth as a symbol of truth. In addition to the essay itself, you will need to turn in: A. A completed “plot to theme” worksheet: http://www.flatheadreservation.org/images/phs/From_Plot_to_Theme-story_analysis.pdf Here’s a sample worksheet that I filled out: http://www.flatheadreservation.org/images/phs/Notes_and_analysis_of_Crucible-truth_and_lies.pdf B. A thesis/outline worksheet: http://www.flatheadreservation.org/images/phs/thesis-worksheet.pdf List of Characters Crucible-act4-status_changes.pdf Crucible-act4-character.pdf Crucible-act3-status.pdf 2008-10-02T04:58:40-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/phs/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/phs/#When:05:12:01Z 2008-10-01T05:12:01-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/phs1/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/phs1/#When:00:15:27Z 2008-10-01T00:15:27-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/makeup_procedure/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/makeup_procedure/#When:04:01:13Z Makeup Sheet NAME____________________________________Dates Absent_________________________ Things that need to be made up: ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Date Makeup Completed and Turned In__________________________ The makeup is ☐ Attached to this sheet ☐ Turned in online. Specify which website (Moodle, etc.)________________________ ☐ Other – Specify___________________________ Guideliness: Unexcsed absences, no makeup is allowed. For excused absences, you have one day for each day you were absent to get makeup done. It is your responsibility to find out what you missed, either by checking the website or asking a classmate. Normally, class time will not be available for makeup. You need to make arrangements to do it before school or after school. Makeup for classes takes priority over extra-curricular practice. Makeup that is turned in late will be graded down 10% each day. When you return from being absent, you should immediately (1) Get a makeup sheet from the out basket at the front of the room (2) Find out what you missed, either by checking the website or with a classmate. Write down on the makeup sheet what is do be done. (3) Make arrangements to come in after school to make up tests, watch videos, or do other work that cannot be done at home. Write down on the makeup sheet the time when you will do the makeup (4) When the makeup is finished, put the date the work was completed on the “Makeup Sheet”, staple to it anytthing that needs to be handed in, and put it in the “makeup” outfile. These will be used to update Powerschool. Printable Copy of Makeup Sheet (PDF) 2008-09-30T04:01:13-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/proofreading_checklist/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/proofreading_checklist/#When:18:58:48Z Proofreading Checklist Ideas and organization ☐ Somewhere in the first paragraph, I state my thesis in a simple, direct sentence. ☐ My thesis expresses an opinion rather than summarizes the story or states something that is simply factually true. ☐ The body of my essay consists of three or four reasons that “prove” my these or examples that support it. ☐ Every paragraph has a topic sentence which states the main idea of that paragraph. Everything in the paragraph relates to that topic sentence. ☐ The points are organized in a way that a reader can easily follow the argument. Style ☐ Every sentence is clear and graceful. ☐ Most sentences have active verbs rather than “being” verbs, such as “is,” “was,” “were,” “are,” etc. ☐ My nouns are specific rather than vague or abstract. (“tree” is vague; “willow” is specific֓trouble” is abstract; the death of her daughter is specific) Conventions and Usage ☐ Every word is spelled correctly ☐ Every sentence is complete (no fragments). ☐ I have no fused sentence or comma splices. I’ve changed run-on sentences with too many jumbled together ideas into simpler sentences. ☐ Possessive nouns have apostrophes. Conjunctions have apostrophes. ☐ Proper nouns are capitalized, and every sentence begins with a capital. Printable PDF version of “Proofreading Checklist” Forms 2008-09-29T18:58:48-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/photography_club1/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/photography_club1/#When:20:09:51Z The Photography Club’s website is here: http://groups.google.com/group/phs_photo If you haven’t received an invitation to join, please send your name and email address to me. To send a message to all members of the group, send to: phs_photo@googlegroups.com (you have to be a member of the group for this to work). September 26, 2008 The first meeting of the Photography Club was held. Mr. Umphrey gave a survey, to see what people were interested in doing. This is how many people expressed interest in which activities: Training and classes: 16 Guest Speakers: 9 Studio Lighting: 20 Doing Shows and Exhibits: 19 Taking Field Trips: 20 Doing Community Service: 14 Sharing Photos with each other: 18 Learning Photoshop: 13 Fundraising: 18 Creating “staged” photos: 1 This is how many people expressed interest in various types of photography: Nature/wildlife/landscape: 16 Journalism: 11 Portraits/People: 17 Artistic Expression: 18 High School Life: 10 Family Life: 7 Black & White: 1 We agreed to begin with some classes during the meeting period, with the first class to be held on October 10. 2008-09-26T20:09:51-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/the_crucible_essay_topics/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/the_crucible_essay_topics/#When:15:33:01Z Discuss the role that grudges and personal rivalries play in the witch trial hysteria. How do the witch trials empower individuals who were previously powerless? How does John Proctor’s great dilemma change during the course of the play? Compare the roles that Elizabeth Proctor and Abigail Williams play in The Crucible. Why are Danforth, Hathorne, and the other authorities so resistant to believing the claim that Abigail and the other girls are lying? What kind of government does Salem have? What role does it play in the action? Analyze Reverend Parris. What are his motivations in supporting the witch trials? Discuss the changes that Reverend Hale undergoes in the course of the play. What is your perception of the girls’ allegations in the play? Do they really believe in witchcraft or are they fabricating the events? Discuss Miller’s treatment of women in The Crucible. Discuss how the themes of The Crucible make it both universal and enduring. At the end of the play, John Proctor recovers his sense of goodness by tearing up the confession that would have saved his life. Given his character and the events which have led up to this moment, do you find this act believable? Fully explain your response. What three characters are responsible for the trials and why? How does The Crucible portray justice or injustice? Compare the character of Elizabeth Proctor to that of Mary Warren. What value systems does each represent? Discuss Elizabeth’s reaction to John’s infidelity. Is she being unreasonable? Examine Elizabeth Proctor as a symbol of truth. How has her husband “paid for” this truthfulness? What motivates Elizabeth to lie? Is a good name more important than the truth?  Handouts, Before 1800 2008-09-26T15:33:01-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/story_analysis_worksheet/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/story_analysis_worksheet/#When:15:24:48Z Story Analysis Worksheet Worksheet filled out for The Crucible From Plot to Theme Story Analysis Worksheet Plot: What happens? Theme: What significance does it have? Forms 2008-09-26T15:24:48-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/five_fatal_mistakes/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/five_fatal_mistakes/#When:03:07:38Z Grammar and Usage Guides 2008-09-25T03:07:38-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/rowlandson_invention_secular/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/rowlandson_invention_secular/#When:03:02:39Z by Bryce Traister. Source:Early American Literature 42.2 (Spring 2007): p323(32). (12703 words) Full Text :COPYRIGHT 2007 University of North Carolina Press At the end of the Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682), Mary Rowlandson tells us that since returning from captivity, she does not sleep well at night: 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 awful dispensation of the Lord towards us; upon His wonderful power and might, in carrying of us through so many difficulties, in returning us in safety, and suffering none to hurt us. (365) Memory and its reconstruction as confessional and spiritual autobiography have not yet released her from the grip of a traumatizing past. To be sure, it is not at all clear that Rowlandson intended her text to fulfill the expurgating function assigned to female autobiography in modern life-writing criticism. Nor can it be said unequivocally that her text attempts primarily to reassert her part in English or female community. These two distinctly modern understandings of life-writing depart from the genre of seventeenth-century “spiritual autobiography,” even as we can provisionally observe that her narrative’s memorial reconstruction of her often harrowing captivity implies a desire to understand and thereby contain that past in the past. (1) As a mental portrait, however, the passage sketches an itinerant mind roving from the narrative present ("I can remember"), to the remote past of unconscious life ("used to sleep quietly"), back to a present radically different from that past ("but now it is other"), and then back to a past identified as a haven from the turmoil of her sleepless present ("my thoughts are on things past"). It is in her past that her “redemption” took place; it is in her past that the “wonderful power and might” of God exerted itself on her behalf; it is to that past her mind returns when left alone in the nocturnal present with a God who, like her, does not seem to sleep much. And what is the noise that Mary Rowlandson, even in the comparative tranquility of her redemption, cannot switch off? As any insomniac knows, it is the knowledge, first, that everybody else is asleep. In her condition of wakefulness, the insomniac registers her difference from unconscious community as a simple matter of Being-Awake. Mary Rowlandson’s “restoration” is imperfect; her sleeplessness registers the incompleteness of her redemption, testifying simultaneously to her desire to thank God for her rescue from captivity, and to her ongoing spiritual search for the assurance that God’s wondrous power has indeed provided for her restoration to English community, if not for her spiritual redemption. The need to resume her place within her community thus remains unfulfilled, as the “restored” woman’s nocturnal watch renders her extraordinary at precisely the moment when it is the ordinariness of life she craves. She remains self-consciously singular when absorption into community is the goal. Additionally, as Susan Howe observes, “[w]hen Mary Rowlandson can’t count sheep, she lets counter-memory out” (125). Rowlandson’s insomnia gestures to a gap between exemplary and extraordinary experience: between her representative role as redeemed sufferer and her unique identity as a traumatized individual whose memories remain, to borrow a term from Cathy Caruth, “unassimilated” (4). The experience Rowlandson must claim as her own--the experience, we might rather say, that claims her--to some extent refuses the terms of hermeneutical assimilation. Extraordinary individuation follows from traumatized consciousness. Her text, therefore, only partially assumes the communal hermeneutic of pious exemplarity. In the grip of a persistently individuated trauma, she dissents, however inadvertently, from the directives of pious imitability Increase Mather defines as the interpretive horizon of this text. (2) The text, if not its author, refuses to consent to the terms of representation established either through the orthodox interlocution of Increase Mather, or through the biblicist typology of lob, to name two of the more prominent hermeneutical frameworks within which this text most obviously invites itself to be read. The stubbornly personal life of Mary Rowlandson persists alongside its desired abstraction into the demonstrable terms of Protestant devotional pedagogy. To gloss the text’s 1682 title: the text’s secondary title, the Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, refuses to subordinate to its titular abstraction, The Soveraignty and Goodness of God. (3) One of modernity’s truths is that few of us cannot understand the psychological extremis experienced in the condition of insomnia, and it is modernity’s recognition of Mary Rowlandson as one of us that will serve as this essay’s largest claim. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God represents human suffering in a recognizably modern vocabulary of human psychology, which is to say that even as her text displays the Protestant inheritance of affliction’s divinely purposive nature, it gestures suggestively toward a modern--indeed, secular--understanding of the human encounter with pain and trauma, “a human condition,” Talal Asad has recently observed, that modern “secular agency must eliminate universally” (67). In the Protestant-Calvinist framework, affliction becomes meaningful within a rendering of saintly perseverance, whereas modern secularity defines human suffering as the definitive challenge to modern civilization. Under Rowlandson’s narrative control, personal suffering stubbornly resists its translation into the Protestant allegory of divinely appointed affliction. As the salvational narrative of redemptive suffering stalls, the religious epistemology both defined and sustained by afflictive meaning begins looking like the more secular account of suffering in which pain’s metaphysical ambitions falter. This is not to argue that what I am calling Rowlandson’s “invention of the secular” replaces a wholly religious with a wholly secular epistemology: far from it. With Asad, I suggest in this essay that Rowlandson’s text neither adheres to nor radically breaks from a wholly religious pre-modern sensibility. Rather, her text’s simultaneous commitment to both representative and personal orders of suffering’s relation to meaning anticipates the relational structure of secular and religious identity in Western modernity: “The secular,” Asad maintains, “is neither continuous with the religious that supposedly preceded it ... nor is it a simple break from it.” Rather, the secular “brings together certain behaviors, knowledges, and sensibilities in modern life” (25). What is so gripping about Rowlandson’s confessional piety is not merely its religious intensity--her thoroughgoing self-abandonment to the incomprehensibility of her God, that is to say--but also the way in which this self-abnegation functions to assert the primacy of her interpretive and representational agency as a constitutive feature of religious authority in an “enlightened” eighteenth-century modernity. In the individuation of piety her text advances as the ultimate struggle of faith, Mary Rowlandson depicts a form of religious subjectivity entirely consistent with modern secularity’s purported consignment of religious life to the irrelevant marginality of individual and typically feminine “privacy.” Enveloped in the secular, we might say more broadly, is a letter written in the language of the sacred, and it is this thoroughly modern package that, somewhat paradoxically, carries religion into the episteme of an eighteenth-century modernity whose recognition of religion as its discarded other defines that modernity as a by-product of religious agency itself. Mary Rowlandson’s difficulty in assimilating her past experiences into her present thus becomes symptomatic of Western modernity’s understanding of religion as an unassimilable, because discarded, emblem of its past. (4) SECULARIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS Given the significant (and, for many, alarming) role of conservative Protestantism in contemporary United States federal politics, it may seem counter-intuitive, if not just dumb, to propose that we live in a secular world defined as such by the separation of organized religion and the constitution of the modern democratic nation-state. Yet theologians, historians, sociologists, and cultural theorists have been making claims of this sort for years now, and together they have contributed to what we have come to call the “secularization thesis.” It is a “fact,” Claude Lefort has recently argued of the modern, secular condition, that “religious beliefs have retreated into the realm of private opinion” (215). Religion’s retreat into “the private” more or less anchors most of the familiar narratives of the Anglo-European Enlightenment: the emergence of a civil society premised on human cognitive capacities and the rational “public sphere” rather than sacerdotal prescriptions and the incapacity of human effort to significantly alter the world or humanity’s relation to it; the ascendancy of the “individual,” particularly in the wake of Locke, and the emergence of a liberal subjectivity premised on notions of freedom, autonomy, democracy, and choice; and a new ethic of the “nation” fuelled by liberalism and by a mercantile, expansionist political economy. The “Protestant work-ethic” notwithstanding, none of these narratives of post-Enlightenment historiography requires the presence of God for their acceptance, and even Weber’s critique of Protestant Christianity’s complicity with capitalist labor theory reduces religion to little more than social allegory. These oft-retold bedtime stories of modernity’s edifice rising atop the ashes of a premodern religious zeitgeist hardly need rehearsing here, but one of the more recent versions of this narrative deserves a closer look. According to Jurgen Habermas and his many disciples, the steady decline of personal beliefs about God vitiated a comprehensive civic function of religion just as the political economies of Europe enfranchised increasing numbers of “ordinary” (i.e., male) citizens. Democratic self-awareness meant that increasing numbers of subjects and citizens understood political life to be separate from the smooth functioning of the civic sphere: that the function of the nation, in other words, was a separate operation from the exercise of political agency and debate, a separation that provided the conditions of openness, egalitarian speech, and rational discourse that would lead to the emergence of the democratic nation-state. (5) In the narrower field of early American studies, Michael Warner has extended the insights of Habermas to eighteenth-century Anglo-American coloniality, arguing that a burgeoning culture of print capitalism articulated a crucial vocabulary of republican political practice which, in turn, mediated the emergence of a public sphere in which individuals could imagine themselves “the abstract subject of the universal (political or economic) discourse” (63). In this reading, a public sphere predicated on the material conditions of print capitalism and republican political ideology could be said to have replaced a religious understanding of the transcendental, as “belief” in the new universality of print republicanism replaced a fading belief in the divine “unitary authority” (56) a religious culture both worshiped and required. The new public sphere and the older religious structure it replaced co-existed over the course of the eighteenth century, eventually leading to “a separation of church and state that would mark a key victory for the cultural forces of the public sphere” (58), and to a version of political subjectivity defined in opposition to this earlier, and now discarded, religious past. This version of the secularization thesis implies that modern culture’s symbolic order was a gendered one as well, and feminist critique has usefully identified some of the shortcomings of the Habermasian thesis. (6) One influential approach to the public-private dyad of eighteenth-century cultural politics has argued that “the modern individual was first and foremost a woman” (Armstrong 8). Relying on Foucault’s account of modern subjectivity as one primarily structured within a disciplinary matrix of power/ knowledge, Nancy Armstrong has identified gender as “the metaphysical girder of modern culture” (14). Reading the novel as a crucial agent in the establishment of such modern ideas about women (and, by implication, men as well), Armstrong identifies the solitary reading woman as subject of/to the novel as discipline, as a vast array of “secular” media (including novels, conduct literature, diaries, and letters) constructs the feminine and its values as the discursive effects of reading. Although marginal in terms of public identity and power, women were in some ways central to the establishment of modern bourgeois identity, as the proliferation of newer print media like novels depended so manifestly on the consumption practices of women, practices that simultaneously established their power as agents even as they limited that power to the precincts of domestic life. Where the Habermas argument declines to account for the experiences of women in the new modernity of the English speaking eighteenth century, Armstrong claims a centrality for women that depends on a disciplinary gaze that would contain female agency within carefully scripted narratives of social possibility. Neither Habermas nor Armstrong has much to say about religion’s place (if any) in these modern epistemes, whereas Elizabeth Maddock Dillon has recently argued that the public sphere in which masculine subjectivity emerges simultaneously “constructs women’s privacy and relies upon this privacy to articulate the narrative emergence of the masculine liberal subject at the same time” (25). Woman’s privacy, in this revisionary account, serves as “the back formation of a masculinized public agency” (19) and, moreover, comes into being as a consequence of Protestant religion’s insistence on the autonomy of private religious conscience serving as a “proto-liberal” version of subjectivity (52). In her reading of the seventeenth-century Antinomian Crisis and its construction of Anne Hutchinson, Dillon argues that Hutchinson and her followers “used Puritan theology to authorize a new form of private subjectivity” and, at the same time, practiced and thereby proposed a form of a “non-state identified public sphere” agency (54). Rather than serving as the historical precursor to a nonreligious modern Enlightenment, Protestantism functions here to produce and thereby become part of modern discourses of liberalism. As such, according again to Dillon, “Puritans st[ood] on the cusp of the divide between early modern and modern concepts of gender and subjectivity, and thus competing versions of these concepts operate at the same time” (107-8). If, according to Armstrong, to be a modern individual meant to be a woman, then, according to Dillon, it meant also to be religious, which is to say that feminine privacy and religious agency authorize a modernity we have somewhat inaccurately been describing as “secular.” As the religious culture of Protestant New England evolved from its early civic and quasi-institutional practices of Congregational orthodoxies into an increasingly ritualized and sectarian polyglot of Protestantisms, religious devotion became increasingly experiential and, if considered only demographically, increasingly female. (7) We might say that female piety in early America came to occupy a dual, and paradoxical, position within this modernizing culture of New England. Female piety became a prominent location of authentic religious experience and could, even in its marginalized “private” configuration, be legitimately viewed as one of the signs of modernity itself. Particularized in the experiences of Mary Rowlandson, radical female piety paradoxically signals the modernity it would deny. EXTRAORDINARY EXEMPLARITY: THE DOCTRINE OF AFFLICTION Ever since Anne Hutchinson outsparred her male interrogators in the late 1630s, American intellectual authority has construed religion in problematical relation to femininity. Amanda Porterfield has argued that with the changing demographics of church participation--in which female congregants, by the end of the seventeenth century, had come to outnumber their male brethren--female piety became a more prominent fixture of colonial devotional life, and ultimately symbolized the life of New England Protestantism more generally (116-53). One reason for this “rise of the feminine” within New English religious life derives from the thematics of femininity residing within the house of Protestant theology. From the “Spouse of Christ,” to the need for self-abasement before the authority of patriarchal divinity, to the emotional vitality of contemplative interiority, it is not difficult to appreciate the fit between such religious values and practices and their gendered social performances. The ascetic interiority of Protestantism--its antiworldly ambition to force the self to imitate the Word--could also be “feminine” insofar as self-renunciation was central not merely to Protestant redemption theory but to the patriarchal ordering of women’s individual place and social role. Ascetic and patriarchal discourse together created the conditions for potentially abjected female subjectivity. (8) Cotton Mather’s Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion, published in 1692, describes the concomitant social and individual performance of female piety this way: “A vertuous woman labours to Please and Serve the great God, with the greatest of her cares ... Let her be of never so High Rank, she thinks it no stoop for her, to be a Servant for that Lord, who has all the Angels in Heaven for His Ministers” (Mather, Ornaments, 25). Ivy Schweitzer observes that Puritan conversion “affirmed the existence of a new kind of interiority, of a private, unique, inner space--the space of self-consciousness, of subjectivity--only to demand its sacrifice, renunciation, and occupation by Another” (23). Asceticism thus provides a gloss on the idea of female exemplarity lodged at the heart not merely of Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative but of the religious culture her narrative was designed to represent and reflect. As Geoffrey Harpham has argued, ascetic discourse shows “the way in which a human being can become imitable, how he can meet what are sometimes called the conditions of representation” (xiv). The discourse of asceticism proceeds as a “bodily act that points beyond itself, expressing an intention that forms, and yet transcends and negates, the body” (xiv-v). By denying the body/world in favor of imitable form, the ascetic can “anchor oneself in a community of imitation which both temporally and spatially exceeds the boundaries of the individual life ... by situating the self in systems that exceed the self” (xiv). In its denial of individual selfhood as the privileged location of cultural authority, the ascetic body reflects the communitarian containment of individuation. In the worldly self’s dissolution into a system of representation--Mather writes that “The whole World is a Book, and all Creatures are the Letters in it” (20)--the ascetic gestures necessarily outside herself, a gesture that undercuts the authority of the integral self at the heart of modernity’s developing metaphysics of individuation. The ascetic self, like the mystic, is fundamentally selfless. As such, asceticism construes an array of cultural associations with feminine subjectivity in which the disciplinary relation to the repudiated, fleshly body might be considered one of the conditions of Protestant culture itself. (9) The female body, that is to say, itself becomes a metaphor for the practices of self-denial and bodily negation required of Protestant subjectivity in general. And in the ascetic body’s transformation into imitable representation, we see the conditions of exemplary possibility laid down not merely as the basis for communal self-definition, but as the foundation for extraordinary female subjectivity at the same time. Mary Rowlandson’s text of female suffering and community redemption has for good reason been considered in terms of its exemplary cultural work, and modern scholars continue to privilege her text within American literary history as a pious exercise in seventeenth-century New England Congegrational and political orthodoxy. (10) Intended by its author(s) to provide a means for members of a threatened and internally fractured religious culture to understand their experiences in a singularly paradigmatic way, the text shows how New England readers might witness the sustaining hand of God, the necessity of faith in affliction, and the need for genuine penance, to say nothing of reviving a biblicist culture through an aggressive typological narrative. Read as such, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God becomes its own hermeneutic: it provides the markers and signs by which Mary Rowlandson can understand her part in her own and her society’s Protestant redemption narrative; it simultaneously provides the tools for its readers to understand Rowlandson as an exemplary model by which they might understand themselves and their experiences. The text, if not its acknowledged author, aspires to the status of abstraction itself, enacting in its replacement of experiential particular with paradigmatic generality, the drama of Protestant conversion, whose substitution of the Spirit for the sinful self was the sine qua non of redeemed subjectivity. Mitchell Robert Breitwieser’s American Puritanism and the Defense of Mourning offers a powerful corrective to Rowlandson’s orthodox exemplarity and the “lucid essence” of a Puritanism that her text unproblematically reflects. Breitwieser observes that, “despite her best intentions” to fulfill the exemplaristic expectations for her narrative, she “comes across significances that have teleologies leading, primarily, to mourning, rather than to faith as it was constructed by Mather and the other members of his cadre” (8). The particular object reference of her mourning--her daughter’s death--leads Rowlandson to open up an interrogation of Puritanism’s “attempt to sublimate mourning, to block and then redirect its vigour to various social purposes” (8). The entire process of memorial and witness--the foundation of Rowlandson’s narrative energy--thus carries her out of the timeless abstraction that the exemplary experience would reflect and promote, and into the rougher terrains of history, personal loss, memorial insufficiency, and the libidinous particularities whose loss these alternate psychic renderings register as much to instruct as to mourn. For Breitwieser, Rowlandson’s unintentional commitment to personal grief anticipates Hegel’s mid-nineteenth-century reading of Antigone’s defiance of the prohibition against mourning her dead brother. Hegel’s critique of mourning “takes up the quandary that ate away at and therefore defined American Puritanism: the arduous task of reconciling ... [the] extreme hostility toward institutional objectifications of devotion that instigates radical Protestantism, on the one hand, with the legitimation of a sociolegal apparatus on more than merely pragmatic grounds on the other” (21). As such, Breitwieser’s Rowlandson “challenges the fundamental premises of Puritan exemplaristic typology ... and the social project they were intended to justify and sustain” (29), a social project Hegel would later theorize as the realization “of a total Christian society, transparent, permeated in all its parts by a single compository vision” (21). Following Breitwieser’s lead, I would add that Mary Rowlandson’s presentation of her experiences at times threatens to exceed what we might call the Puritan doctrine of imitability, an idea displayed at the conclusion of Increase Mather’s prefatorial introduction to Rowlandson’s text in which he enjoins the reader to “Read therefore, peruse, ponder, and from hence lay by something from the experience of another against thine own turn comes, that so thou also through patience and consolation of the scripture mayest have hope” (322). Rowlandson’s example is worthy because another might imitate her piety. And of course, what should more “peculiarly concern” (320) her readers is the “wonderfully awful, wise, holy, powerful, and gracious providence of God towards that worthy and precious gentlewoman” (319). The text is significant, in the exemplary reading, for the ways in which it points away from its author, her body, and her experiences, and toward the invisible power of God. Although her text’s narrative reveals the providentially motivated interventions on her and her community’s behalf, those interventions are ultimately “about” God himself: about the manifestation of His will, “God’s acts ... his wonderful Works” (321), which her text communicates. Mary RowlandSon’s affliction, the piety displayed in her remarkable fortitude, and her deliverance from captivity, each and all witness the “strange and amazing dispensation” (319) of God inasmuch as they tell us something about Mary Rowlandson herself. If Rowlandson’s “alternate teleologies” lead away from timeless imitability and into the particular terrains of personal loss, then her own narrative, when read in the exemplaristic mode, could be said to dispense with her as its own object concern. The libidinal source of the text’s mourning can be traced not only to Puritan theology’s careful denial of the significance of human sadness but to the emotional residue of the woman, Mary Rowlandson, whose text has, in effect, dispensed with her as its primary subject. Considered in the language of ascetic discourse, Rowlandson’s self-denial makes possible the imitable text. Yet the self’s denial remains incomplete, and in its incompleteness, the text permits the continued circulation of the fragments of personal experience that refuse translation into Protestant imitability: a dead child, embittered faith, female rivalry, and uncompensated loss. The scandal of this text is not so much its persistent mourning of personal and material loss as it is the more extraordinary proposition that, in or around 1680, there is female self whose losses are worth mourning at all. (11) Where Breitwieser maintains that Rowlandson’s aggrieved subjectivity sustains its dissent from the proto-Hegelian ambitions of Calvinist Protestantism’s realization as a new Jerusalem, I propose that the female self commemorated in 1682 would become the voice not only of a post-Puritan Protestant femininity, but of eighteenth-century New England Protestantism more generally. THE INVISIBLE HAND In addition to detailing a mourning problematical because too personal, the text reveals a potentially contradictory relation between experience and interpretation that deepens (rather than resolves) the conflict between personal grief and doctrinal hermeneutics. While none, to my knowledge, have ever seriously questioned that Rowlandson was the primary author of The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, the text’s divided structure has attracted some comment over the years. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian proposes a distinction between “empirical narration (the ‘colloquial’ style)” and “rhetorical narration (the ‘biblical’ style)” ("Puritan Orthodoxy” 83). Lisa Logan pushes a bit further, arguing that Rowlandson’s construction of a “narrative self” renders her “subject to others’ agendas,” in this case the agenda of Increase Mather, who “functions in an authorial manner in the production of Rowlandson’s text” (264). Although Logan’s discussion focuses on Mather’s prefatorial positioning of the text, its attempt to “co-produce” the text by “delineating its proper significance and stabilizing interpretation” (265), the text’s divided narratorial status and attempted prefatorial containment together compel further assessment of the narrative’s ostensible authorship. While we should be careful, given the lack of a corroborative archive, to assert an account of the text’s creation in which authorship is held to be shared by Rowlandson and Mather together, I will exploit the tension between empirical and rhetorical narratives, identified by Derounian and others, to argue that some measure of the text’s theological crisis can be taken by considering more particularly the relation between Rowlandson’s recorded experiences and the exegetical uses to which they are put in the text. Whether considered “spiritual” or “profane” as she makes her way through the memory of her captivity, the text at times imperfectly registers its attempted scriptural management. By drawing out some of these dissonances between experience and exegesis, we can better hear the sounds of a still deeper theological clash between a corporate model of exemplaristic representation, and one more recognizably a narrative of modern individuation. To state the question bluntly: did Mary Rowlandson or Increase Mather insert all those Bible references? Scholars have for a variety of reasons been reluctant to speculate on the extent of Increase Mather’s participation in the crafting of the Sovereignty and Goodness of God. The most obvious reason, of course, is that there is no empirical evidence to support such thinking. Most assume, with David Richards, that Mather encouraged Rowlandson to write the story shortly after her return from captivity, saw the text through publication in 1682, and supplied the infamous “Per Amicum” preface. (12) Lacking any textual archive by which editorial emendations and collations might indicate either singular or plural authorship, and assuming the biblical literacy and intelligence of Mary Rowlandson (to say nothing of not wanting to diminish her achievement or gender by questioning her text’s composition), we have stayed away from precisely this sort of speculative skepticism. I am less interested here in the gendered politics of authorship--a problem that others have approached successfully--than in the complex interpretive spaces that might be opened by questioning, rather than assuming, a harmonious fit between what Mary Rowlandson recalls and how her text construes memory in relation to its biblical emendations. (13) And while the sorts of dissonance to be heard in the text might imply a more intrusive Matherian presence in the composition of the text “proper” than scholarship has been thus far prepared or able to concede, the composite authorship question can be bracketed in favor of considering the cultural work performed by the text in its mediation of Puritan authority’s relation to a vernacular account of piety. Consider the following moment, recorded during the Fifth Remove, and describing the escape of Rowlandson’s captors from the pursuing English army: For they went, as if they had gone for their lives, for some considerable way, and then they made a stop, and chose some of their stoutest men, and sent them back to hold the English army in play whilst the rest escaped: And then, like Jehu, they marched on furiously, with their old and with their young: some carried their old decrepit mothers, some carried one, and some another. Four of them carried a great Indian upon a bier; but going through a thick wood with him, they were hindered, and could make no haste, whereupon they took him upon their backs, and carried him, one at a time, till they came to Baquag river. (332-33) It is an important scene in several ways, not least because Rowlandson returns, toward the conclusion of her narrative, “to mention a few remarkable passages of providence, which I took special notice of in my afflicted time,” including this moment of providentially authorized escape by the “enemy” when the English were close enough “to destroy them” (358). Yet, Rowlandson surmises, “God seemed to leave his people to themselves, and order all things for his holy ends” (358). In what at first seems to be a familiar, even routine (my students would probably say “rote") gesture, Rowlandson compares the “furious” march of the Indians to Jehu’s driving of his army to the gates of Jezreel to overthrow the corrupt house of Ahab, worshipers of Baal. But exactly what sort of typology is being established here? Jehu’s victory over the house of Ahab temporarily re-established the one God of Israel and an anointed king over Israel and Judah; he is, that is to say, one of the military heroes of Old Testament, a scourge of polytheism, idolatry, and sin, whose subsequent inability to follow the law of God (2 Kings l0: 30) diminished his star considerably. Jehu provides an ambiguous referent for typological thinking: on the one hand, he exemplifies the figure of the holy warrior by fulfilling the terms of his sacred anointment without question; on the other, he serves as a cautionary figure who fails to sustain his side of the covenant by allowing Israel to slide back into idolotry and religious malaise (the so-called sin of Jereboam). In its reference to failed promise, the casual Jehu reference seems Jeremiadical. Given Increase Mather’s desire to read the war as God’s judgment on the failures of New England/Israel, we might construe the Jehu reference as a Matherian gesture, one designed to draw attention to New England’s status as simultaneously anointed and sinful, the chosen remnant sliding further into a darkness ever more stygian precisely because the promise of glory was once so bright. As Rowlandson’s husband, Joseph, puts it in his sermon on Jeremiah 23:33, “The point is to be understood of a people that are visibly and externally near and dear to him, and these may be totally and finally forsaken of God” (Joseph Rowlandson 9). Whether or not Mather actually “wrote” the Jehu typology into the text, we can understand the hermeneutic established by the gesture: that New England will either make good on the failures of the Old Testament heroes by upholding their side of the gospel covenant’s renewal of the special contract between God and his chosen people, or it will go the sorry way of Old Israel, and return to an interrupted sequence of covenant-breakage, yet more national sin, and, therefore, more divinely ordered retribution. Finally, there is good reason to suppose that Rowlandson herself, a minister’s wife and professing Congregationalist, would have accepted this Jeremiadical reading of the failures of the English army to follow through on its initial victory. This doctrinal reading of Jehu (and the text as a whole), however, does not account for another way of thinking about the typology established therein. The passage explicitly compares the flight of the natives to Jehu’s driving of his tattered army to the gates of Jezreel; the typology, as grammatically and logically constructed, compares the experiences of an Old Testament military hero to those of a starving, desperate band of an indigenous and Godless people trying to escape from a pursuing foe. To make the typology “work” would be to understand that both Jehu and the Wampanoags share a kind of desperate nobility, an acceptable reading given the sacrificial heroism of the defending warriors, to say nothing of the text’s frequent (if unintended or begrudging) depictions of native endurance and even heroism in the face of a persistent yet ineffective English military aggressiveness. Following this logic, a second reading suggests itself: that the natives, like Jehu, are the newly anointed scourge of the unbelieving Israelites. The Lord’s smile shines upon their efforts to punish the sinful English. This alternate reading is one that The Sovereignty and Goodness of God solicits, and, at various points, sustains. We might, for example, point to the marked similarity between the inscrutable, apparently arbitrary and even capricious mind of the Puritan God--"Thus all things come alike to all: none knows either love or hatred by all that is before him” (319)--and the equally baffling, totally unpredictable behavior of Rowlandson’s captors: “Sometimes I met with favor, and sometimes with nothing but frowns” (340). By not excluding the possibility that God has decided to switch sides, the undenied mimesis of divine with native unintelligibility signals a new and exclusive covenant with the natives rather than the usual Puritan confusion of divine instrumentality with divine unknowability (one thinks of Bradford’s Squanto, for example). The text’s readers, in other words, can encounter the “savages” as something other than mere tools of God’s scourge. In the concluding movement of her text, Rowlandson remarks “the wonderful providence of God in preserving the heathen for further affliction to our poor country” (358-59); and then again: “yet how to admiration did the Lord preserve them for his Holy ends, and the destruction of many still amongst the English” (359); and then again: “Though many times they would eat that, that a hog or a dog would hardly touch; yet by that God strengthened them to be a scourge to His people” (359); and then again: “I can but stand in admiration to see the wonderful power of God, in providing for such a vast number of our enemies” (359). Although the text attempts to manage the ontology of the natives back into the toolbox of divine instrumentality, the compulsive repetition produces its own counter-orthodox resonance: “Strangely did the Lord provide for them,” Rowlandson interjects, “that I did not see (all the time I was among them) one man, woman, or child, die with hunger” (359). God “feeds and nourishes them up to be a scourge to the whole land” (359), a claim which, on the face of it, asserts the instrumental claim, even as the rhetoric of natives as divine affliction characterizes that relationship in terms of God’s compassion for them. Additionally, the rhetoric of divine nourishment and cultivation clashes with the reality of starvation experienced by the natives and the English during the long 1677 winter. Jehu’s anointment as scourge to the unbelieving house of Ahab does not limit him to merely instrumental status; in similar fashion, the typologizing of the natives in relation to Jehu can be understood as part of a wider crisis within the corporate covenant. In one significant way, then, these two readings of the Jehu typology (that either the English or the Algonqiuans are like Jehu) are similar: they both imply an insufficient English commitment to the terms of anointment and covenant, and regardless of whether Indian or Englishwoman occupies the privileged typological position, the perils of vitiated faith and incompleted holy task are writ large. Yet these two typologies are quite different, and even incompatible: they advance opposed understandings of what cultural work the typology will perform in its reception by a New English audience. By positing several hermeneutical frameworks, the Jehu typology undercuts any monological regard of the text as being the only teleological endpoint of a historical narrative begun in the Pentateuch, partially fulfilled in the New Testament, and carried through into the historical promise of a New Israel in seventeenth-century New England. The multiple reading, we might say, paraphrasing Foucault, produces a multiple author function. Whether or not this multiplicity implies the presence of a multiple author misses the larger point here: that the text invites several readings and, indeed, makes the case for an individual reading practice residing at the heart of any biblical hermeneutic. (14) Even where the text explicitly interpolates biblical excerpt, whether in historically typological or more generally theological modes, Rowlandson’s remembered experience threatens to squirm out of an orthodox hermeneutical straightjacket. In the Third Remove, when Mary’s daughter, Sarah, dies and the mother is forced to leave her daughter’s lifeless body in the wilderness, she describes her attempt to cure the wound she took during the Lancaster raid. “Then I took oaken leaves and laid to my side, and with the blessing of God it cured me also; yet before the cure was wraught, I may say, as it is in Psalms 38.5-6. My wounds stink and are corrupt, I am bowed down greatly, I go mourning all the day long” (328). Quoting from one of the so-called Lament psalms in which the psalmist’s cry for divine comfort takes on a desperate and wholly unrequited edge ("Hasten to my help,” the psalm concludes), Rowlandson appears to position her experience within the context of psalmic desperation, even as she reports receiving comfort from her oaken field-dressing. Indeed, her text registers the dissonance between medical and scripture comforts, as it acknowledges that the outcome of her “cure” is more than Psalm 38 would give her grounds to expect. Her experience of mourning--"I sat much alone with a poor wounded child in my lap” (328)--accords with the melancholy lament of the Psalm, even as the exemplaristic demands of the corporate hermeneutic require her text to gesture toward a redemptive account of suffering. Her presentation of the Psalm recasts her experience--"yet before the cure was wraught"--so as to accord with the exhortational mode of her piety. Despite its commitment to a corporate rendering of representative affliction, the text’s vernacular theology envelopes Protestantism’s individuation of faith into the bargain as well, potentially, and at times explicitly, undercutting the federal impulse pressuring Rowlandson and her audience to read her experiences a certain way. Like Lot’s wife, she keeps looking back, and even as her text routinely attempts to press experience into a scriptural leaf, the backward glance strays off the page and into the murky domains of fathomless interiority. Per Amicum’s/Increase Mather’s preface to the text introduces us to the figure of Lot, one of the central typological references of Rowlandson’s narrative. Mather bewails the “sad catastrophe” of the Lancaster raid, and observes, “Thus all things come alike to all: none knows either love or hatred by all that is before him. It is no new thing for God’s precious ones to drink as deep as others, of the cup of common calamity: take Lot (yet captivated) for instance beside others” (319). But even the interpretive frame Mather provides here pressures the exemplary reading, as the case for omnipotence derived from Lot’s captivity and redemption--"all things come to all"--threatens to compromise the distinction between saint and sinner otherwise maintained in the Lot story. Blessed affliction, this is to say, carries with it not merely the potential to be misunderstood by the sufferer, but also by the reader(s) for whom the sufferer stands in. The hermeneutic of affliction places a heavy demand on its interpretive community, not least because Christ’s passion itself demonstrated the possible outcome of saintly suffering: the inculcation of unbelief at the very moment of atonement. The seemingly random acts of divine arbitration visited on Old Testament hero and Puritan captive alike, while undoubtedly contributing to the typological reading of the text, its author, and the society of chosen Christians for which she stands, nonetheless lodges interpretive ambivalence inside the text’s case for the redemptive powers of divinely ordered human suffering. To put the matter in terms of communicative theory, we might say that in order for ordered affliction to be successful, its meaning must be comprehensible to the sufferer. If divine suffering fails to indicate something other than the mental or physical experiences of pain--if suffering fails, in other words, to be something other than cruelly identical to itself--then the epistemology of religious belief divine affliction would inculcate is lost; human suffering becomes its own end, rather than an avenue to transcendence. Elaine Scarry has suggested that physical pain “has no referential content” and so resists its “objectification in language.” Physical pain and, at times, “a state of consciousness other than pain ... deprived of its object” (Scarry 5) can shatter the self’s relation to the object world, thereby producing the peculiar self-referentiality of suffering with which Rowlandson struggles. Suffering becomes meaningless, in this reading, when it fails to indicate transcendence. Pain becomes, following Asad, a signpost of the secular itself, the removal of which constitutes a central ethical imperative of modernity’s desire to eliminate human pain and suffering precisely because it has lost its anchor in the oceanic divine. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF AFFLICTION Consider more closely the key moment in the text when Mary Rowlandson compares herself to Lot’s famous wife: I went along that day mourning and lamenting, leaving farther my own country, and travelling into the vast and howling wilderness, and I understood something of Lot’s wife’s temptation, when she looked back: we came that day to a great swamp, by the side of which we took up our lodging that night. When I came to the brow of the hill, that looked toward the swamp, I thought we had been come to a great Indian town (though there were none but our own company). The Indians were as thick as the trees: it seemed as if there had been a thousand hatchets going at once: if one looked before one there was nothing but Indians, and behind one, nothing but Indians, and so on either hand, I myself in the midst, and no Christian soul near me, and yet how hath the Lord preserved me in safety! Oh the experience that I have had of the goodness of God, to me and mine! (334) Breitwieser quite rightly makes much of this passage, observing that “Rowlandson’s identification with models such as Job and Lot’s wife discovers subdogmatic complexities in the Bible, a plurivocality that echoes with the tensions of grief and thereby establishes an intertextual rather than a didactic typology” (l04). Rowlandson proposes to understand her affliction not merely in terms of a doctrinal rendering of Old Testament prefiguration but also in terms of her interpretive relation to an object world whose missing components--children, houses, spouses--produce a narrative “promising minutely mimetic repair” (l05) rather than one subjoined to a corporate typology of salvation which demands an ascesis of material objecthood. Alongside the abstractions of self demanded by her culture’s exemplaristic Protestantism, she stacks the details of her experience. Like the bewildering proliferation of Indians whose numerous ubiquity refuses to recede into the background of the forest’s face, Mary Rowlandson’s memories of captive experience resist their conversion from memory to monument, from wife of faith to pillar of salt. Considered as a doctrinal typology, Rowlandson positions herself as a latter-day Israelite, lost in the wilderness, threatened by imminent destruction, and longing to return to New England’s fold; yet, there is a remarkable critique of New England at play in this passage. For if Mary Rowlandson reads herself into Lot’s narrative of divine affliction and reward (such as it is), then what kind of typological analogy emerges between the two communities here? Is her Lancaster, or New England more generally, a latter-day Sodom? If the temptation to look back implicates the chosen in the sin of unbelief, then the historical destruction of Sodom just as surely places New England under a similarly final sentence. Of course, such a critique of corporate failure would be in keeping with the reading of Rowlandson’s text as a Jeremiad. But it is worth observing that the voice of this critique is that of a lonely, distressed, and formerly captive Englishwoman. Moreover, her possible critique of New England as a latter-day Sodom from which she has been taken perforce separates her ensuing narrative of affliction and redemption from that of New England’s own. (15) In the concluding moment of the narrative, the insomniac Rowlandson’s “separate” status is painfully self-evident. Her implied criticism of New England establishes the sovereignty of Mary Rowlandson not just as an author-recorder of her own captivity but as a person claiming a personal religious experience independently of a New English orthodoxy whose religious integrity, by virtue of the war’s visitation, has been seriously compromised. (16) A latter-day Sodom, New England as a culture has turned away from God, its final vestiges of belief scattered, like Lot and his family, into a wilderness exile which amplifies Rowlandson’s individual piety in a way which her apostocizing home culture cannot. The point here is less that Rowlandson dissents from the New England Way than that she relocates the significance of faith into a private rather than social register. Rowlandson’s text exploits this tension between Lot’s wife’s conflicting obligations to the Word and the world. When she confesses her partial ("something of") understanding of Lot’s wife’s desire--her refusal to accept her home’s destruction without this act of witness--she is also making a claim about divine retribution: that the punishment doled out does not fit the crime. Moreover, her partial identification with the wife’s apparent doubt suggests that, for Mary Rowlandson, the terms of New England’s affliction and punishment are somewhat unclear as well. She registers not merely the undeniable tug of grief but the divine obfuscation of the logic informing her loss. The potentially meaningless death of Lot’s wife--she meets the same end as the Sodomites, albeit by more “humane” means if one accepts in theory that salinization is a method of execution preferable to incineration--and her monumentalization into static, exemplary lesson quite closely parallels Rowlandson’s own experience as helpless captive, redeemed Englishwoman, and nocturnal insomniac. In her uncomfortable typology, she reveals the distress prompted, rather than settled, by the act of faith in the face of uncertain divine intention, thereby revealing just how fine the line between faith and doubt could be in a spiritual universe defined by the utter sovereignty and necessary goodness of God. This slippage between credible faith and incredible doubt appears in a variety of Rowlandson’s remembered experiences. Late in the Thirteenth Remove, one of the longer segments of the narrative, Rowlandson recounts the following: My mistress’s papoose was sick, and it died that night, and there was one benefit in it--that there was more room. I went to a wigwam, and they bade me come in, and gave me a skin to lie upon, and a mess of venison and ground nuts, which was a choice dish among them. On the morrow they buried the papoose, and afterward, both morning and evening, there came a company to mourn and howl with her: though I confess I could not much condole with them. Many sorrowful days I had in this place, often getting alone; like a crane, or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove, mine eyes all with looking upward. Oh, Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me, Isaiah 38.14. (346) One of several scenes in which Rowlandson records her conflicted relationship with her “mistress,” the formidable squaw-sachem Weetamoo, this passage has struck readers as a callous, if practical, response from one bereft mother to another predicated largely on Rowlandson’s ethnocentric antagonism toward her female owner. (17) When she goes on to “confess” her inability or refusal to “condole,” the cool pragmatism becomes even more marked, as Rowlandson rejects the invitation to participate in the communal act of mourning, choosing instead to “pass many sorrowful days ... often getting alone” (346). Rowlandson’s consequent recounting of “the sorrow that lay on my spirit” (346) indicates quite clearly that the papooses death has triggered a new bout of mournful distress and self-examination. Proceeding to read her sadness hermeneutically--she concedes her “careless” demeanor and excessive share of creature comforts--she concludes her sudden descent back into melancholy with what appears to be a predictable flourish: “Yet that comfortable scripture would often come to my mind, For a small moment have l forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee” (347). Rowlandson introduces this swerve to scripture-comfort with the conditional “would often,” thereby revealing that, at the time of this particular sorrow, the passage may not actually have come to mind. The text does not identify the scripture, possibly because it is so well-known a verse from Isaiah 54, in which God reassures the faithful that Israel will be rebuilt. Even more tellingly, Isaiah 54 begins with an address to childless women: “Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear: break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 54.1). To be sure, the psalmist’s point here is that it is better never to have delivered a child than to have labored and delivered a sinner (as did Weetamoo), and no doubt the Puritan elect would accept the passage’s implication that few, indeed, are the saved* But even granting Rowlandson’s genuine desire to read her experience within the appropriate theological framework, it would be difficult not to recognize the bitter irony Isaiah 54 produces when read in the context of Rowlandson’s recent experiences: that given the death of her daughter, she would prefer to be in the position of barren women who, never having to contemplate the loss of a child, are in a position to “break forth into singing and cry aloud.” As one of many moments in the narrative when recalled experience and scriptural figuration fail to cohere seamlessly, the epigrammatic interpolation of Isaiah 54 also opens a space for a radically personal understanding of suffering. Far from extending a tradition of female exemplarity and afflictive redemption into the latter half of the seventeenth century, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God introduces a recognizably modern understanding of “personal life” into the reading culture of New England. In the penultimate paragraph of her narrative, Rowlandson writes: “I have seen the extreme vanity of this world: One hour I have been in health, and wealthy, wanting nothing. But the next hour in sickness and wounds, and death, having nothing but sorrow and affliction” (365). Taken alone, Rowlandson’s world-weary perspective recalls several of the text’s theological preoccupations: the corruption of the world and its sinful participants; the apparently random visitations of blessing and curse upon a chosen yet still sinful people; and the challenge to faith--"having nothing but sorrow and affliction"--posed by her covenant with a wrathful God whose actions, while always justified and sovereign, are nonetheless baffling in terms of causality and merit. In the succinct recollection of these themes, the text appears poised to return to the doctrinal folds, inviting its readers to contemplate, with its chastised author, the difficult life of faith in a sinful world, and the need for the faithful to remain steadfast in the course of designed affliction. Yet in the next, this time the final, paragraph of the text, she writes: “Before I knew what affliction meant, I was ready sometimes to wish for it” (365). Read as narrative introjection, this passage calls attention to the text’s construction as witness not merely to the past but to the present condition of its first-person author. Now in the apparently sure possession of the meaning of her affliction, she appears less ready to want more of it; her present understanding of the signification of divinely appointed suffering makes the prospect of such notice less rather than more appealing. Her old self, the pre-afflictive self, well-trained in the doctrinal understanding of divine affliction, wanted what she had never had in order to measure the strength of her covenant, and the likelihood of her ultimate salvation. To conclude that her narratives resolution incoherently asserts the doctrine of saintly affliction would be to miss the more important point here: that Rowlandson claims to have figured out one of the more enduring mysteries of Christian religious faith and that, in doing so, she’s not really sharing that knowledge with the rest of us. If one of the points of Puritanism’s doctrine of saintly affliction is to offer a coherent epistemology of suffering to those experiencing the glorious scourge, then Rowlandson’s text subverts that doctrine by relocating the understanding of suffering outside of a communal register and into one more intensely private and so, finally, opaque. Having struggled, Job-like, with the sorrows of divine challenge, she comes to terms with that experience by vitiating its communal meaning, by shrouding it, so to speak, behind the mask of representation. In the imperfect mimesis established between written word and personal faith--between exemplary representation and individual particular--the text honors the integrity of female piety even as it attempts to abstract such belief into a usable theory of public religion. This tension between individual belief’s abstraction into representation and its sequestration into the mystery of private experience is not unique to Mary Rowlandson. Earlier in the seventeenth century, we might look to the Bay Colony’s attempt to redescribe Anne Hutchinson’s mystical piety as the heretical other to a publically authorized spiritual discipline. Anne Bradstreet’s lyrical recollection of material loss--"And here and there the places spy / Where oft I sat and long did lie: / Here stood that trunk, and there that chest, / There lay that store I counted best” (Bradstreet 292:27-30)--presents the object world of absent particulars as the “pelf” (293:56) which slows her progress into “an house on high erect, / Framed by thatmighty Architect” (292:47-48). Finally, we might look into the peculiar status of speech during the Salem Witchcraft trials, in which individual religious utterance functions simultaneously as legal accusation, religious epistemology as the production of knowledge in the civic sphere of the court. Of course, the historical narrative of these seventeenth-century examples of female piety and its relation to Puritan representative practices requires much more development than I can undertake in this essay; I offer these remarks merely to suggest that Rowlandson’s mediation of individual piety and public religion might usefully be regarded less as a singular anomaly within New England Puritan historiography, than as part of a constellation of episodes of female religious experience which together contribute to an alternate narrative of religion’s persistence on and into the advent of eighteenth-century modernity. As Elizabeth Dillon argues in her reading of Christopher Hill’s analysis of the covenant theology of English Puritanism, “Puritans individually claimed a representative status insofar as their contract with God allowed them to embody authority. In other words, Puritanism authorized the individual over and against the state and relocated public authority in the private contract with God rather than in conformity to divinely authorized state powers” (Dillon 65). As such, the demands made on Rowlandson that she and her text assume representative status for New England derive as much from Increase Mather’s orthodox hermeneutic as from Puritanism’s location of authority within the self’s relation to God. In this sense, Rowlandson’s elocutionary anticipation of modernity’s positioning of a private female self in relation to a masculine-identified public sphere might better be read as part of a longer historical narrative that starts to become visible in seventeenth-century New England. This historical narrative offers an alternate account of modernity’s emergence than that found in the “secularization thesis,” one of whose key concepts, as we have seen, is the alignment of religion with a private and female self. The privatization of religion, as Jose Casanova has summarized this phenomenon, implied that “[t]he modern question for salvation and personal meaning had withdrawn to the private sphere of the self” and that terms like “‘self-expression’ and ‘self realization’ had become the ‘invisible religion’ of modernity” (36). (18) Where the marginalization of religion to the domain of private contemplation constitutes part of the historical narrative of modern secularity, however, it simultaneously sponsors a religious modernity that privileges female religious selfhood. Mary Rowlandson offers not merely a text but a theory about the place of individual piety in an evolving culture of modernity. Against the imperative to exteriorize religious interiority into the didactic utility of confessional prose, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God sponsors a competing, if simultaneous, project: to uphold the sanctity of converted faith by insisting on its non-representational status. Of course, such a theology anticipates, if it does not altogether structure, the gendered divisions of modernity’s public sphere. Rowlandson’s piety, powerful because individual, can now also be called “feminine” because personal. Moreover, the account of suffering that informs her feminine piety authorizes a narrative of human pain that is curiously self-referential. She has had “nothing but sorrow and affliction”; she has, in spite of the many signs of favor God has shown her, gone “up and down, mourning and lamenting” (330, 334, 339); the final paragraph of her narrative refers to her “affliction” five times, and even as she writes in one sentence that she knows what meaning to attach to her suffering, in another she finesses this certainty into a more tentative rapprochement with her past: “I hope I can say in some measure, as David did, It is good for me that I have been afflicted” (366). Puritans were, by default, seldom assured of much, but the concluding paragraph of the narrative elaborates a baffling logic of afflictive knowledge that takes the form of a psychological extemporizing born of a conflict over the meaning of divinely ordered suffering, yet curiously independent of the socio-cultural domain her narrative is intended to shore up. In what appears to be a predictable expression of Puritanism’s anti-worldly disposition, she writes: The Lord hath showed me the vanity of these outward things. That they are the vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit, that they are but a shadow, a blast, a bubble, and things of no continuance. That we must rely on God Himself, and our whole dependance must be upon Him. If trouble from smaller matters begin to arise in me, I have something at hand to check myself with, and say, why am I troubled? It was but the other day that if I had had the world, I would have given it for my freedom, or to have been a servant to a Christian. I have learned to look beyond present and smaller troubles, and to be quieted under them. (366) Having not merely witnessed but experienced the “shadow,” “blast,” and “bubble” of the world’s assault on the spirit, Rowlandson has learned to regard such particulars for the venalities they are. Eyes on the prize offered by “God himself,” Rowlandson regards “smaller matters” with the scepticism of painfully acquired knowledge and understanding of the right ordering of things. Even so, it is through the vicissitudes of worldly experience that her capacity for transcendence is defined and her achievement of success is measured. Without the world’s indexical relation to the invisible world it imperfectly if crucially mirrors, the believer’s induction of divine reality would be a difficult matter. In this sense, Rowlandson’s refusal to “sweat the small stuff” indicates, on the one hand, the expected disconnect from the sacred’s relation to the profane, while, on the other, it records the ongoing significance of the “shadow” world to the apprehension of divine knowledge. Her studied consideration of the value of the material world reflects the religious understanding of it as a sum of particular details any one of which might help her better understand the revelation of God’s mind. However, her partial rejection of the vicissitudes of worldly life as having any significance to her spirituality means that she has taken up a worldview we might regard as “therapeutic.” In the therapeutic perspective, the world functions less as a map to the mind of God than as the means for an individual to cultivate the conditions of mental stability. Her religiously ordered understanding of materiality co-exists with one that we moderns might recognize as primarily “psychological”: one that is as concerned, so to speak, with spiritual as with mental health. Another way to put this is to observe that, in the denial of life Before 1800 2008-09-22T03:02:39-07:00 http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/affliction/ http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/affliction/#When:02:58:57Z by Carlo Rotella. Full Text :COPYRIGHT 2002 Phi Beta Kappa Society “Before I knew what affliction meant,” wrote Mary Rowlandson in her account of being captured by Indians during King Philip’s War, “I was ready sometimes to wish for it.” Until sunrise on February 20, 1676, the “dreadful hour” when she woke to find friends and neighbors already “bleeding out of their heart-blood upon the ground” and the smoke of burning buildings “ascending to heaven,” she had “lived in prosperity, having the comforts of the world about me, my relations by me, my heart cheerful, and taking little care for anything.” But the very easiness of those pre-tribulation times had made her uneasy; she had wondered why the Lord did not visit sorrows upon her. If, as her Bible said, “whom the Lord loveth he chastiseth, and scourgeth every Son whom he receiveth,” then to live without affliction was to live at the margins of the Lord’s attention. So, looking backward at the end of her account, she found a curious sort of relief in having suffered through the bloody raid and eleven hard weeks of captivity before coming home at last: “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 and then another; but the dregs of the cup, the wine of astonishment, like a sweeping rain that leaveth no food, did the Lord prepare to be my portion. Affliction I wanted, and affliction I have had, full measure (I thought), pressed down and running oven” She had come to understand the brittle shabbiness of the life she had made prior to the day of the attack, a life built of “outward things” that are “the vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit, ... they are but a shadow, a blast, a bubble, and things of no continuance.” And there, after a final injunction to rely wholly on God for salvation, Rowlandson arrived at her finis. Her narrative was published in 1682. For 320 years she has been lying awake in those closing paragraphs--"when all are fast about me, and no eye open, but His who ever waketh"--in fearfully ecstatic contemplation of “the awful dispensation of the Lord towards us.” These days she has plenty of company in sleeplessness, if not in ecstasy. Even with Rowlandson’s help, it took me a while to identify relief as the odd element in my--and, I think, our--response to the events of September 11. I am not Puritan enough (who is, anymore?) to take heart in the belief that the Lord must love us because he scourges us. Rather, I woke up one morning a couple of days after the 11th and realized that for the first time in my adult life I was not secretly half-expecting an imminent blow that would knock the cozily arranged components of life as I know it to irretrievable pieces. I had been walking around for twenty years in cringing expectation of an actual physical impact that would signal the dreadful hour’s arrival. Because so much of what is wrong with us is compressed into our cars--and because I live in Boston, where angry incompetence behind the wheel is pandemic--I had assumed that the shock in question would be that of one car hitting another with me inside. But when the planes hit the buildings, my half-expectation of imminent impact evanesced, ascending to heaven like smoke. An eccentric millionaire playing at holy warrior--a villain of comic-book grotesquery, equal parts Howard Hughes, Charles Manson, and Cat Stevens--served us a taste of the wine of astonishment. It awakened me to the most unlikely of thirsts, a wish for affliction, already working within me and more generally within American culture. Like many people I know (granted, a sample of humanity short on those who greet each new day with a smile and have a cheery word for everyone), I switched quickly from feeling that the events of September 11 were dreamlike and unreal to accepting them as perfectly normal instances of the world’s regular functioning. At the same time, the fantasy of perfectible safety that has flourished in American culture over the last two decades graduated from minor annoyance to suicidally foolish delusion. Dreamlike and unreal? How about armored vehicles for commuters, seemingly designed to ensure that we go to war in the Middle East from time to time so we can keep filling their giant gas tanks at bargain prices; a missile defense shield instead of a foreign policy; a widespread expectation that we can fight a war without a single casualty on our side; gated communities that offer the fleeting impression of security at the cost of making public life increasingly unsustainable; threat-neutralizing incantations (Do Not Ingest, No Step, Do Not Douse with Gasoline and Set On Fire) on anything that might conceivably give somebody a boo-boo ... how’s that for dreamlike and unreal? We seem to have willed ourselves to forget, officially, for a couple of decades, that a whole country cannot order Domino’s, screen its calls, and hunker down in front of the TV in the vague hope that everything will be okay. Compared to most of those with whom we share the planet, Americans (including those who have reason to regard themselves as unlucky or oppressed) lead a collective life of fabulously heedless let-them-eat-cake profligacy. Sooner or later, this state of affairs was going to inspire somebody to do something bad to us as a people, and we (again, as a people) should have prepared in advance for such an inevitability. Since September 11, as we return to something more like waking life, we have been remembering what we chose to forget. We forgot that highly motivated unreasonable people will, as a matter of course, hurt blameless individuals just because they can. We forgot that we cannot control all the consequences of our behavior, and that therefore we would do well to envision those consequences as well as we can before we act. We forgot, most critically of all, that it is imperative to know the world in which we move, and to know it intimately at street level and from a variety of perspectives, rather than watching highlight loops of it on cable and hoping the alarm system will keep it all safely out there while we cower inside, quivering piles of weight-room muscle or food-court fat in fuzzy sweat clothes. Hey, we forgot. It happens. Of course, we did not really succeed in forgetting, or even in trying to. If we closed our eyes and pulled the covers over our heads, it was because we knew there was a monster in the closet, and we did find ways to imagine that monster. As Jeanine Basinger, Anthony Lane, and others have pointed out, we have been rehearsing the events of September 11 for those same twenty years in our popular fantasies--quintessentially in the action movies that have perfected the formula of explosions, collapsing buildings, malign perpetrators, and special-effects bystanders sent pinwheeling by gouts of orange flame. The action movies of the 1980s and 1990s stink of hubris and ingratitude; in retrospect, they seem to suggest that a whole culture was asking for it (which is not the same thing as deserving it when it happens). But retrospect has also imbued the genre with, of all things, a moral charge. The composite rolling cinematic fireball produced by Hollywood over the last two decades is more than a mere blast, more than just a thing of no continuance that vexes the spirit. In light of the definitive explosions of September 11, the many fake ones that preceded them now seem to indicate a readiness to wish for affliction before we knew what it meant. All those unconvincing last-second saves by heroic protagonists (5 ... “The red wire or the blue wire?” ... 4 ... “Dude, pick one!” ... 3 ... “Okay! Red! No, blue!” ... 2 ... snip ... “Phew, it’s Miller Time") were never the point. They were, rather, part of the necessary apparatus of fantasy, the synthetic sweetener that masked the strong taste of the wine of astonishment. We were asking for it, in code, the way Mary Rowlandson was asking for it: even as we dreamed the black-lotus dream of a hermetic life, we felt the urgent need to awaken in time to save ourselves. I am not attempting the doomed trick of finding a silver lining in the events of September 11. The dream-ending, or at least dream-attenuating, effect of the blow does not make anybody’s suffering worthwhile or proper. The papers are full of bad news and the expectation of more bad news; my fellow citizens are filled with worry and anguish; members of my family are in harm’s way. But I would not accept the dream’s return, if that were even possible; I did not want to dream it in the first place. We were always in harm’s way; the bad news was always coming; we should have been more engaged, less thoughtless, more vigilant, less satisfied. We are, of course, not done with make-believe, as our new set of post-September-11 delusions will attest. We take Cipro superstitiously when we are not sick, even though we know that by doing so we damage the drug’s chances of working against future illness. We put up with far too much talk of a war of good against evil, rather than of one set of interests against another: it is still strictly business, even if the other side has generously ceded the moral high ground. The president insists that he believes in a universe “of moral design,” even though all leading indicators point to a darker and more chaotic truth that might be more effectively addressed by a more hard-boiled philosophical system. None of this is an improvement. But if the shocks of September 11 were always on the way--and if, by refusing to see them coming, we made them more likely to happen and worse in their effect when they did--then as a people we are better off now than we were before the dreadful hour’s arrival. Even the current national climate of huffing righteousness, conditioned as it is by an enlivened sense of limits and consequences in a complex world, amounts to a significant improvement over, as a friend put it in a recent e-mail, “being a big stupid bully.” Like many other citizens put off by the autoerotic flexing and world-historical bad manners of post-Cold War national style (I mean, did America have to rip off