| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-02-15 | | Series: | Women in Culture and Society Series |
| Size | | Length: | 254 pages | | Height: | 9.0 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 7.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
Christopher Castiglia gives shape to a tradition of American women's captivity narrative that ranges across three centuries, from Puritan colonist Mary Rowlandson's abduction by Narragansett Indians to Patty Hearst's kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Examining more than sixty accounts by women captives, as well as novels ranging from Susanna Rowson's eighteenth-century Rueben and Rachel to today's mass-market romances, Castiglia investigates paradoxes central to the genre. In captivity, women often find freedom from stereotypical role attributes of helplessness, dependency, sexual vulnerability, and xenophobia. In their condemnations of their non-white captors, they defy assumptions about race that undergird their own societies. Castiglia questions critical conceptions of captivity stories as primarily an appeal to racism and misogyny and instead finds in them imaginative challenges to rigid gender roles and racial ideologies. Whether the women of these stories resist or escape captivity, endure until they are released, or eventually choose to live among their captors, they emerge with the power to be critical of both cultures. These compelling narratives, with their boundary crossings and persistent explorations of cultural differences, have significant implications for current investigations into the construction of gender, race, and nation.
In "Bound and Determined", Christopher Castiglia gives shape for the first time to a tradition of American women's captivity narrative that ranges across three centuries, from Puritan colonist Mary Rowlandson's abduction by Narragansett Indians to Patty Hearst's kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Examining more than sixty accounts by women captives, as well as novels ranging from Susanna Rowson's eighteenth-century classic "Rueben and Rachel" to today's mass-market romances, Castiglia investigates paradoxes central to the genre. In captivity, women often find freedom from stereotypical roles as helpless, dependent, sexually vulnerable, and xenophobic. In their condemnations of their non-white captors, they defy assumptions about race that undergird their own societies. Castiglia questions critical conceptions of captivity stories as primarily an appeal to racism and misogyny, and instead finds in them an appeal of a much different nature: as all-too-rare stories of imaginative challenges to rigid gender roles and racial ideologies.
Industry Reviews
By exploring more than 60 narratives, 18th- and 19th-century novels, and Patty Hearst's abduction account, Castiglia (English, Bryn Mawr Coll.) asserts that the captivity narrative actually debunks the gender and racial hierarchies it was intended to preserve. He argues that in fact these narratives offered women a forum for criticizing their victimization in their own society. His sources include anthropological, historical, and traditional literary sources. (For comparison, see Gary Ebersole's Captured by Texts: Puritan to Postmodern Images of Indian Captivity, Univ. of Virginia, 1995.) Castiglia's first book is undoubtedly aimed at his literary colleagues; nonpractitioners will find the introduction full of literary jargon. Still, the text is engaging and provides a new examination of women and culture. For academic, and especially university, libraries only. Jenny Presnell, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, Ohio
Breitman
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