49 pages • 1 hour read
Amy Belding BrownFlight Of The Sparrow: A Novel of Early America
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Mary Rowlandson
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism, violence, enslavement, sexual assault, child death, and suicide. Additionally, the source material uses offensive terms for Indigenous Americans throughout, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.
Mary Rowlandson is the main protagonist and central character of Flight of the Sparrow. The fictional character is based on the historical figure of Mary Rowlandson (1637-1711) and her captivity narrative. However, there are some key distinctions between the fictionalized version of Mary and the historical figure. In the text, Mary struggles with her faith and belief in Puritan doctrine. Further, over the course of her captivity, Mary becomes admiring of and sympathetic to Nipmuc culture, even falling in love with a Nipmuc man named James Printer. She is portrayed as struggling to readjust to English society after her release. There is no historical evidence for this portrayal; it is an invention of the author that makes the character more relatable to a contemporary audience.
In the novel, Mary Rowlandson is a 35-year-old Puritan housewife living in the town of Lancaster in the English Massachusetts Bay Colony. She is married to Joseph Rowlandson, the town minister. At the time the novel begins, 1672, Mary has three children, Joss, Marie, and Sarah, to whom she is deeply devoted. She has also given birth to one child who died very young. In Puritan culture, women are expected to be entirely subservient to their husbands. They are supposed to follow their instructions without question. However, at the beginning of the novel, Mary is beginning to chafe at this expectation and other conventions of Puritan society, shown by her choice to assist young Bess Parker in giving birth, in defiance of both her husband’s direction and societal norms. No one else in the town will help Bess because she has gotten pregnant out of wedlock and the father of the child is a Black enslaved man. Mary knows that it is her duty to force Bess to confess the name of the father during childbirth, but she relents and, while she “berates herself as a poor, weak woman” for being unable to do this duty, she “wants only to comfort Bess and ease her pain” (8). Mary’s support of Bess shows that the Puritans’ harsh social expectations go against her conscience.
Mary is captured by the Nipmuc people and is sent to be enslaved to a Wampanoag leader, Weetamoo. While serving Weetamoo, Mary becomes captivated by the power and leadership Weetamoo demonstrates despite being a woman. She observes Weetamoo commanding the men around her, most notably when Weetamoo does not allow Monoco to marry Mary. This is a formative lesson to Mary, who has been taught as a Puritan woman to be subservient to her husband. Mary also observes the Nipmuc being kind and gentle to their children. This differs from Puritan childrearing practices, where Mary was taught to be firm with and even beat her children when they disobey.
When Mary is released, she brings these lessons back to her life in English society. This is best shown when she stands up to her husband when he wants to beat their son, Joss, for disobedience and laziness. She insists, “The whipping of children is a cruel and unnecessary practice” (212). When Joseph argues, she states that she would risk her soul to prevent her husband from beating her son. This defiance is also emblematic of the crisis of faith Mary endures. The first inkling of this crisis is shown when Mary defies Puritan rules by helping Bess Parker. However, it escalates during her time in captivity. Mary feels that God has forsaken her during this time, and she begins to question other aspects of Puritan belief, such as the prohibition against dancing and games. Upon her return home, Mary gradually realizes that she no longer believes as she once did; she pretends to pray but no longer has any faith. Her experiences have led her away from a firm conviction in Christian Puritan beliefs, and she reflects at the end of the novel that “the times she felt redeemed were when she ignored the counsel of the clerics and goodwives around her and followed the promptings of her own heart” (322-23).
Joseph Rowlandson
Joseph Rowlandson is Mary Rowlandson’s first husband. He is a devout, fiery Puritan preacher who expects to be treated with deference and respect by his wife and children. Joseph is largely portrayed as an antagonist in the text. He is constantly admonishing Mary to follow more closely the Puritan strictures; he chastises her for tending to Bess Parker, loving their children, openly mourning the loss of their daughter, Sarah, and not demonstrating sufficient faith in God’s will. In the text, he is an avatar or representative of strict Puritan beliefs. While Mary once loved him, she reflects during her captivity that she does not feel passionate about him.
Joseph is unsupportive of Mary to the point of cruelty upon her return. For instance, despite her insistence that she was not “defiled” or raped by the Nipmuc, he does not believe her and does not have physical contact with her for a long time after her return. He pressures her into sharing her testimony about what happened to her during her captivity despite her obvious reluctance, both to restore her honor in the community and to improve his own position as the minster who showed generosity of spirit by welcoming his wife back after her return from her time with the Nipmuc. However, after he reads Mary’s narrative, he expresses compassion for her suffering and allows her some limited freedoms by permitting her to go for walks on her own. Joseph dies suddenly, likely of a heart attack, toward the end of the novel. Mary feels relief at his death.
James Printer or Wowaus
Wowaus, who goes by the English name James Printer, is a Nipmuc man with whom Mary falls in love during her time in captivity. The character is based on the historical James Printer (1640-1709). Under the tutelage of Reverend John Eliot, James converted to Christianity and was sent to live with the president of Harvard. He later worked as an apprentice to Samuel Green, a printer, which is how he was given the name James Printer. At the outbreak of King Philip’s War, James’s village was attacked by Metacomet’s men, which is how he came to live with the Nipmuc at the time of Mary’s capture. In the fictional account of Flight of the Sparrow, James aids Mary during her captivity by freeing her when she is tied up, providing her with food, teaching her phrases in Nipmuc, and even giving her a Bible. She becomes deeply devoted to him and eventually falls in love with him. James reciprocates her feelings, but he is aware that she cannot stay with the Nipmuc people. He negotiates her ransom, an event based on historical evidence. When she begs him to help her stay, he replies, “There is no life for you here. […] The Indian ways are fading like a mist” (161). Later, Mary sees James at the print shop in Boston where is working on typesetting her manuscript (also based on real events). Where James once had long hair and looked strong, proud, and free in the wilderness, by the end of the novel his hair has been cut short, and “his back seems to sag” (319). He commiserates with Mary, as they both belong neither in Indigenous American society nor the English colony.
Marie and Joss Rowlandson
Marie and Joss Rowlandson are Mary and Joseph Rowlandson’s surviving children. They are abducted along with Mary and sent to work with different Indigenous American families. They both adapt well to their time with the Nipmuc and Wampanoag. Both children have difficulty readjusting to life back in Puritan society afterward. Like Mary, they feel claustrophobic in the house after life in the wilderness.
Marie begins to question Puritan doctrine when she notes that the Wampanoag woman who helped her escape captivity demonstrated “Christian kindness […] Yet she had no faith in Christ” (297). Marie is troubled that this kindness flies in the face of what she had learned about the so-called heathens and their savagery, especially when she reflects that her time with them was sometimes “fun.” Eventually, Marie appears to reacclimate to Puritan society, as shown in her dedication to household chores and childcare consistent with Puritan expectations for women.
It is Joss who chafes more against Puritan expectations. He begins to spend an increasing amount of time away from home living in the wilderness. He shirks his chores and does not appear to mourn his father’s death except to disappear into the woods with a knife for a time. Ultimately, Mary realizes that “Joss […] is lost to her. She considers the possibility that he has been lost since the moment of his capture” (304-05). Joss and Marie’s difficulty readjusting to Puritan life are manifestations of Mary’s own internal turmoil at her return.
Weetamoo and Quinnapin
After Mary’s capture by the Nipmuc, she is given by the warrior Quinnapin to his wife, Weetamoo, as tribute. Weetamoo, a historical figure who was a Wampanoag leader, is a difficult mistress. She is volatile and strikes Mary when Mary defies her. When food is scarce, she neglects to feed Mary, forcing Mary to scavenge for food for herself. When Sarah is dying, she forces Mary and her daughter out of the wetu. Later, when her own child is dying, Weetamoo forces Mary out of the wetu under the threat of death. However, Weetamoo is a complex character. She is not just an antagonist but also a model for Mary of possibilities for women. Weetamoo is a leader who does things Mary could never dream of doing, such as challenging men and dancing. Mary comes to have great respect for Weetamoo and her husband, Quinnapin, who also treats Mary with kindness. Mary is devastated when she hears they have died in the war, an emotional response that underscores her difference from other Puritan colonists.
