Allen's Essay 'Pocahontas To Her English Husband'

676 Words2 Pages

For centuries, women have acted as men’s hypothetical stepping stones. Their work has been pushed to the back and overlooked; even if they were the ones to accomplish immense breakthroughs or life-altering discoveries. In “Pocahontas to Her English Husband, John Rolfe.”, Paula Gunn Allen argues that this is exactly what happened to Pocahontas. Not only did she helped the settlers by introducing them to the land and showing them how to grow tobacco, she also saved John Smith and his crew's lives. In spite of these things, Pocahontas gets overlooked throughout history. Allen shows how this happened through her poem. Her argument claiming Pocahontas was indubitably overlooked in history is strong considering it lines up with other accounts, …show more content…

Correspondingly, Allen’s argument that Pocahontas’s contributions were overlooked can be backed up by many other writings by knowledgeable scholars. One of those writings is “Living with Europeans” by Daniel Richter. In it he states “...writings of at least fourteen seventeenth-century English chroniclers… their works reveal that Pocahontas was a nickname…”(Richter 307). This demonstrates just how much she was overlooked; they gave her a nickname instead of calling her by her birth name. By doing this they showed just how much they didn’t respect her. Moreover, it ties into “saying I was a simple wanton, a savage maid” (Allen 322) in Allen’s poem. Coupled together with “Letter to Queen Anne of Great Britain” by Captain John Smith, Allen’s argument is backed up even further. In it, John writes all about how Pocahontas saved his life and occasionally helped feed the Europeans. This is a major understatement. In Allen’s poem she said “And indeed I did rescue you- not once but a thousand times… you slept, a foolish child” (Allen 322). Pocahontas saved both his and his men’s lives, and was their saving grace. Given that she taught them how to tend the land and grow tobacco; without her they would have

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