The narratives of both Frederick Douglass and Mary Rowlandson, due to their detailed and uncompromising portraits of early American life, are extremely important examples of their respective genres, and American literature as a whole. While Mary Rowlandson's narrative is a straightforward narrative of her life before and after captivity, the majority of Douglass' slave narrative takes place in his childhood; furthermore, Rowlandson's narrative was thought to end with her death, though that was later proved false; Douglass' ends with the beginning of his true life as a free man.
The difference between a captivity narrative and a slave narrative are somewhat unique; while a captivity narrative is a much more personal text, speaking only about the experiences of Rowlandson and her children, Douglass' slave narrative reflected the experiences of an entire group of people. Both narratives represent the genre of the jeremiad, a long work of literature that discusses the dire state of current society; Rowlandson discussed just how savage the Native American captors were, while Douglass bemoaned the status of his people as slaves.
At the same time, they both display intriguing similarities; Rowlandson, like a slave, is very familiar with being treated as a commodity (Goodman, p. 16). She holds her captors with contempt and constantly tries to escape; such is the same with Douglass (Potter, p. 153). Unlike Douglass, she must contend with her own feelings as a mother while caring for and searching for her children (Boswell, 1997). Unlike Rowland's lack of specificity regarding places and things, as if to prevent herself from incrimination (Goodman, p. 16), Douglass revels in detailing all the evidence, including names and places, of the particulars of his captivity (Fuller, 1845). While Rowlandson uses language to attempt to communicate with her masters and constantly negotiate, Douglass advocates for silence as a way to resist his servitude (Jones, 1995). In these ways, the concepts of the captivity and slave narratives are simultaneously identical and vastly different.
References
Boswell PA, 1997, Mary White Rowlandson Remembers Captivity: A Mother's Anguish, a
Woman's Voice, Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, vol. 66.
Fuller, 1845, Review of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
Goodman N, 2010, 'Money Answers All Things': Rethinking Economic and Cultural Exchange
in the Captivity Narrative of Mary Rowlandson, American Literary History, vol, 22, no.
1, pp. 1-25.
Jones DC, 1995, Literacy, Orality and Silence: 'Reading' the Exigencies of Oppression in
Frederick Douglass' 1845 "Narrative", Conference on College Composition and
Communication, pp. 1-16.
Potter T, 2003, Writing Indigenous Femininity: Mary Rowlandson's Narrative of Captivity,
Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 153-167.
