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.
Symbols & Motifs
Sparrow
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.
The core motif of Flight of the Sparrow is a sparrow. It represents the theme of Notions and Experiences of Freedom. The sparrow first enters the text when Bess Parker’s father, Edmund, gifts Mary a sparrow in a cage to thank Mary for her support of Bess during her pregnancy. The sparrow, named Row, is an avatar for Mary’s own experience of captivity and freedom. Despite being confined in Puritan society, this sparrow, like Mary, is contented enough in its cage to sing. When she attempts to free the bird during the raid, it initially is so used to its life in the cage that it refuses to fly away. This is analogous to Mary’s own reluctance to question the confines of a life to which she has grown accustomed.
After her return from captivity, Joseph Rowlandson gifts Mary another sparrow in a cage. However, Mary is reluctant to keep it, and the sight of it prompts Marie to cry. This reflects Mary’s own changed views of the strict expectations of Puritan society. This sparrow, unlike Row, does not sing. It constantly tries to escape the cage. After Joseph’s death, Mary feels a sense of relief, content with the greater degree of freedom his death allows. She frees the sparrow soon after. After its release, the sparrow flies up into the tree and sings, a sign of its happiness.
Clothing
Puritan doctrine extends not only to religious beliefs but also to everyday behaviors and norms, including how people, especially women, are expected to dress. Because of this, the motif of clothing connects to the themes of Notions and Experiences of Freedom and Challenges to Religious Doctrine. Mary Rowlandson is particularly focused on clothes and how they make her feel. After her capture, Mary is given Indigenous clothing to wear as her English clothes are ruined. She is initially shocked that Indigenous women wear deerskin against their naked bodies without a shift underneath. Wearing the clothes imparts a feeling of sensuality proscribed by Puritan life that she describes as “like a caress” (76-77). The moccasins as well are softer and more comfortable than traditional English leather shoes.
Upon her return to Puritan life, Mary is initially comforted by returning to wearing English clothing. However, she is soon discomfited by the restrictive, impractical clothing. When walking in the rain to Increase Mather’s she recalls how “the deerskin dress she wore during her captivity had shed the rain, how surely her feet had gripped the ground through the soles of her moccasins” (236). Later, Mary takes the rebellious step of going barefoot. When Joseph upbraids her for this, she reflects that “the severe conventions of English dress, which fall most heavily on women, seem old things, relics of some dark age before she was born” (247). Mary’s feelings about her clothing and the freedom they allow represent her overall transformation from devout, unquestioning wife to rebellious woman who resents aspects of Puritan doctrine.
The Bible
The Bible and Biblical quotation more generally are used throughout the text as a symbol to illuminate the theological tensions between the characters. Flight of the Sparrow itself opens with a quotation from Psalm 124 that makes clear the centrality of Biblical scripture to the Puritan society in which Mary Rowlandson lives. In disputes between Mary and her husband, Joseph, over her activities, each cites the Bible support for their arguments. For instance, Mary notes that “Christ himself mingled with sinners” to argue that she should be allowed to see Bess Parker (21). When they argue about slavery, Joseph says that “God has ordained slavery and set down His ordinances for it in Scripture” (249).
During her time in captivity, James Printer gifts Mary a Bible. She reads it for comfort even as her faith falters. This is a different, more personal experience of scripture than that shown in Mary’s debates with her husband. James, a convert to Christianity, himself evinces his own understanding of scripture. He set the typeface for Eliot’s Bible, “a labor of love in the service of the Lord” (109). In contrast with the harsh religious doctrine expressed by Joseph Rowlandson, James tells Mary he believes that “Christ’s kingdom will only come when we learn to be deeply kind” (145). Despite his trials, James persists in his faith. In their final meeting, Mary returns the Bible to him. This is both representative of her loss of faith and a token of their friendship.
