Research Paper on:
Captivity of Women in A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Mohicans" and Mary Rowlandsons "A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson" both tell stories of female captives during the Indian colonial wars in the  Eastern U.S. In Coopers work of fiction, he tells the story of Cora Munro and how she provides the strength needed to allow her pure sister to survive their captivity.  Cora is of mixed blood but still finds the idea of marrying Magua the Huron "morally repugnant". Cooper was also criticized after the publication of the work in his insinuation  of doubting the purity of the colonists. Rowlandsons true account of her own captivity stressed that she found her strength to survive her ordeal through the purity of the Psalms  of the Puritan religion. Rowlandsons strength came from her religion whereas Coras came from within herself and her use of her powerful sexuality: the colonist ideals remain intact however as  Rowlandson survived and the impure Cora dies. These ideals of the importance of pure blood lines are still seen today in the rapes which are reported during wartime in Joanne  Barkans article on the Serbian rape camps of Yugoslavia which were meant to bring impurity to the blood lines of the Muslims. In  James Fenimore Coopers 1826 novel "The Last of the Mohicans" he portrays the captivity of two sisters, Alice and Cora Munro during the French and Indians wars from the previous  century. In the novel, Munro not only shows another side to the usual depiction of the "savage Indian" portrayed in most works of the time but also shows the strength  and the difference approaches and responses each woman has to her captivity. Cora, the older and wiser sister is portrayed as a strong woman who not only protects and offers