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16 Facts About Elizabeth Marsh

1.

Elizabeth Marsh was an Englishwoman who was held captive in Morocco for a brief period after the ship she was traveling from Gibraltar to England to unite with her fiance was intercepted by a Moroccan corsair and overtaken by its crew.

2.

Elizabeth Marsh had decided to disguise herself as the wife of a James Crisp, a merchant from London, in her narrative of the story.

3.

Elizabeth Marsh was importuned to be the Prince's concubine, tricked into renouncing her Christianity and converting to Islam, and almost beaten into submission.

4.

Elizabeth Marsh uses the powerful dependent tactic, the constant victim tactic, and the multiple offender tactic to help her survive as a captive.

5.

The rest of the narrative gives many examples of Elizabeth Marsh using manipulation for her own survival.

6.

Elizabeth Marsh's narrative is marked by her ability to evade the humiliating conditions and hard labor the male captives endured and, rather, how she was treated with care, and leisurely made her way through her time spent as a captive.

7.

Elizabeth Marsh had a dichotomous, paradoxical enslavement, in that she was technically a captive, yet was not enslaved the way the men were.

8.

Elizabeth Marsh was never given duties as harsh as those of the men, and could skew a situation in her favor by highlighting the fact that she was a woman.

9.

Elizabeth Marsh faced scrutiny after returning home after her captivity.

10.

Elizabeth Marsh faced this criticism when she returned home, preventing her from publishing her narrative due to fear of the backlash it would cause.

11.

Elizabeth Marsh exhibited loneliness, emotional detachment from herself and those around her, and distrust.

12.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a key part of understanding why Elizabeth Marsh wrote her story.

13.

Elizabeth Marsh had done so in the hopes that she would not be assaulted by the other men she was traveling with.

14.

Elizabeth Marsh's life took a turn when she left from her family for 18 months.

15.

The largest impact that Elizabeth Marsh's captivity had on herself was likely the production and publication of her narrative.

16.

Elizabeth Marsh's narrative became one of the most consumed female slavery narratives as well as one of the few to withstand time.