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.
Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
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.
One morning, in July 1672, in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Mary Rowlandson is collecting eggs at her home when Edmund Parker, a poor farmer, comes running up begging for her assistance with his daughter, Bess, who is about to give birth. The other women in town have refused to help Bess because she got pregnant out of wedlock while in indentured servitude to a deacon in Roxbury. Mary agrees to assist the teenager and hurries to Edmund’s small hut. Mary tries to get Bess to confess the name of the man who impregnated her, but Bess refuses to give his name.
Bess gives birth to a dark-skinned child she names Silvanus. Edmund tells Mary the father is a Black enslaved man also working at the deacon’s home and that Bess is in love with him. Mary returns home.
Chapter 2 Summary
That evening, Mary tells her husband Joseph, the town minister, about Bess’s child and the father. Joseph tells Mary she cannot visit Bess until Bess repents for her sins. Mary thinks it is Christian charity to help. Although she knows that she is obliged to be obedient to her husband, she disobeys him and brings Bess food. Bess says she will not repent for her sins because she “would lie with him again tomorrow, if [she] could” (14).
A week later, Edmund brings Mary a sparrow in a cage as a gift for bringing food to Bess. Joseph wants Mary to get rid of the gift, but she convinces him to let her keep it. They name the sparrow Row. Mary continues to bring Bess food and learns the enslaved man’s name is Silvanus. Silvanus had tried to escape but he was recaptured and sent to jail. By September, Mary is spotted visiting Bess and Joseph is angry.
In 1674, Mary learns that the Court has ruled Bess’s son is to be enslaved to Deacon Park. Joseph and other men from the town go to Edmund’s house to take the child away from Bess. Later, Mary goes to Bess, who is inconsolable over her loss.
Chapter 3 Summary
In the summer of 1675, there is news of attacks by Indigenous Americans on settler colonies throughout New England. The townspeople turn the Rowlandson house into a stockade for protection. That winter, many of the townspeople sleep in Mary’s home every evening. In early February, Joseph decides to go to Boston with Lieutenant Henry Kerley to ask the governor for troops to protect them from attack. Mary watches him leave with a sense of foreboding and “the evil thought that she will never again see her husband alive” (30).
Chapter 4 Summary
Four days later, Joseph still has not returned from Boston with soldiers. That night, Mary sits with the other women, and they talk about the attacks. The women suggest that it’s God’s punishment for Bess’s sinful behavior. Mary defends Bess and Edmund, Bess’s father. Then, the women talk about the viciousness of the attacks by the Indigenous Americans. Mary’s sister, Hannah, says she does not think they will be attacked in the dead of winter.
The next morning, Mary awakes and hears the sounds of musket fire at a nearby house. She realizes they are under attack. Mary gets her children dressed and prepares to flee. Mary goes to the room of her son, Joss, and realizes the house has been lit on fire. Mary rushes to get the children out of the burning building. At the last moment, her daughter, Sarah, insists on going back to get the sparrow, Row.
Chapter 5 Summary
Mary leaves the house with her daughter and niece while holding the birdcage. Around her, Indigenous Americans are attacking the colonists. They are killing livestock and people. Mary’s niece, Martha, turns and runs back to the house. Mary hides behind a barrel and releases the sparrow, which does not immediately fly away, having grown used to its captivity.
Mary picks up Sarah, and they head toward the meeting house. She watches as her brother-in-law is killed. Then, Mary and Sarah are hit with musket balls and injured. Mary bandages Sarah’s injuries to her hand and stomach and keeps moving. One of the Indigenous American warriors catches sight of Mary’s red hair and takes her and Sarah away. He ties a rope around Mary’s neck. Mary watches as the body of her sister, Elizabeth, gets caught in the house fire. Mary is being held along with other captives, including her children, Joss and Marie, and her nieces and nephews. Then, Mary sees the warriors kill a woman’s child.
The captives are taken toward the trees.
Chapter 6 Summary
The captives are led by the Indigenous Americans, the Nipmuc, on a path into the woods. They are taken to the outside of a disused trading house where they make camp for the evening. She begs her captors to let the women and children sleep in the warehouse instead of outside in the cold and the snow. They laugh at her. One of the warriors tells her that they had been ordered to capture her and that she is now enslaved. She falls asleep under her cloak.
She awakes in the night to see the warriors dancing around the fire and eating the food they had stolen. She tries to untie the knot around her throat but is unable.
The next morning, she sees that Sarah has a fever. One of her captors asks if she is sick. Sarah goes to the bathroom and when she returns, she sees that Sarah is gone. A tall warrior who speaks English comes and cuts the rope from Mary’s neck. Then, Mary goes looking for Sarah in the encampment. She is told that Sarah is with the sachem’s, or chief’s, son. She finds Sarah on the boy’s horse and is grateful he is carrying her daughter.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
Flight of the Sparrow is told entirely in third-person limited perspective. Mary Rowlandson’s perspective, actions, and emotions are described, with limited insight into the activities and feelings of others. This differs from the narrative of the original, historical A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682), which is written in first person.
Another key difference between the plot of the historical narrative and Amy Belding Brown’s historical fiction is in the opening. Mary Rowlandson’s historical account opens on the day of the raid by Metacomet’s forces. Brown opens on Bess Parker’s birth and related following events: Rowlandson’s assistance, disobedience of her husband, and the removal of the baby, Silvanus, from his mother. This opening episode contextualizes the harsh realities of Puritan society in the early American colonies. This allows for a contrast later in the text with Nipmuc society, elucidating Rowlandson’s difficulty in reintegrating with Puritan society after her return.
Bess Parker’s story reveals the mores of Puritan life, introducing Mary’s community’s conceptions of evil and purity as well as the realities of indentured servitude and enslavement. Mary relates that the other women in town will not assist Bess in childbirth because “they all believe that evil is contagious, that proximity to sin provides a foothold for the Devil, who can easily pass from one person to the next” (2). Joseph later accuses Mary of “tainting [his] ministry” (21) with her association with Bess, underscoring the idea that “sin” can easily spread across a community. Further, Mary relates the Puritan belief that the mother must admit the name of the father during childbirth in order to avoid hellfire. Finally, the event shows the varying forms of servitude and bondage in this era. Bess Parker was an indentured servant; indentured servitude is a form of bondage wherein someone signs a contract obliging them to work for a certain amount of time without pay in the service of another. As an indentured servant, she did not have the right to fall in love or marry. The father of her child, Silvanus, was an enslaved man in the Goodkin household. Under the laws of the colony, the child was therefore also born enslaved and was taken away from the family. In an article on her website, Amy Belding Brown describes the historical facts of the story of Silvanus Warro, Bess Parker, and their child (Belding Brown, Amy. “The Story of the Slave Silvanus.” Collisions, 7 Aug. 2014). Mary Rowlandson’s assistance is fictionalized, but Bess’s story provides a telling backdrop that introduces the theme of Notions and Experiences of Freedom.
Over the course of the narrative, Mary’s views on enslavement and freedom evolve substantially, catalyzed by this event. Bess tells Mary, “I warrant a person ought to be free from human bondage” (19). These words prompt Mary to reflect that Puritan religious doctrine teaches that “bondage is part of the human condition” (20). She herself did not feel bad about keeping an enslaved Indigenous person previously, but now she wonders if there is “a deeper need for freedom she did not recognize” (20). This nascent abolitionism is further encouraged when Mary is horrified to hear herself referred to as a “slave” after her capture. She regrets “her own assumption that it is God’s will” (51).
