ANNE BRADSTREET
(c. 1612-1672)
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father:
o Thomas Dudley
o estate manager for Puritan Earl of Lincoln
o Puritan himself
education:
o ensured by her father
o superior to peers
16: (1628)
o married
o Simon Bradstreet
 worked w/her father at Lincoln’s estate
 graduate of Cambridge University
 Puritan
 appointed to assist in preparations of MBC, 1629
 later = secretary & diplomat of MBC, governor of MBColony
 travel away from home  leaving AB alone  see poems
1630
o Dudleys & Bradstreets
o sailed w/John Winthrop, MBC to America
life in MBC:
o difficult
o severe fatigue: childhood rheumatic fever
o still, gave birth 8 times
Bradstreet the writer:
o captivated by the natural & majestic beauty surrounding her
o finding evidence of God in the land, sky, and sea
o had begun writing poetry as a girl
o continued to compose in New World
o without her knowledge, her brother-in-law (John Woodbridge) took a collection of her poems to
London and had it printed there as The Tenth Muse (1650)
 1st poetry volume published by a colonist
 widely read
 reprinted in 1678
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 like a diary – intimate, brutally honest
 doubt: truth in Scriptures, never saw miracles, feigned, existence of God
o (like Mother Teresa’s secret diary)
 took consolation in Nature
o saw God in Nature (DEISM)
o order, providing, proper end
o (less solace in the Bible, more in Nature)
 meditations on –
 ages of mankind
 the seasons of the year
 intimate: of family, home life, pleasure in everyday life
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reflect –
 erudition
 faith, nature
 joy in everyday life
 (“magic of ordinary days”)
RHYME SCHEME:
o AABBCCDD…
FORM:
o varying lengths
o no sonnets, …
METER:
o iambic pentameter
o 10 beats per line
o unstressed, stressed
“The Flesh and the Spirit”
 dialogue
o eternal battle between the Flesh & Soul
 overheard by Speaker
 by the river
 2 sisters
 Flesh:
o materialism & vanity
o mocks Sister
o Earth has everything you could ever want – riches, pleasure
 Spirit:
o mind & sights on afterlife, “higher sphere”
o won’t listen to her sister anymore – fooled once, led astray
o description of Heaven
 no need for sun, moon, candle, torches...gold, pearls, diamonds
 I’ll be free of you then
 b/c you won’t be allowed there (“things unclean”)
“The Author to her Book”
 1666:
o 16 years after the book was surreptitiously published
o as 2nd edition is being planned
 book = her child
o ugly, unwanted child
o metaphor, conceit
 ugly, unwanted child –
o “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain”
o “My rambling brat … I cast thee by”
 published w/o her consent
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o slightly embarrassed
o “my blushing was not small”
motherly love
o cast it aside
o but returns to it, out of natural affection
love
o tries to mend it
o love to fill in the gaps, overlook blemishes (love = blind)
tries to fix it
o washed face, but found more blemishes
o rubbed off spot, but found more
o stretched feet, but made it hobble more
o tried to dress it in better clothes, but found only “homespun” clothes
in public –
o around common people = OK
o around critics, literati = high class, avoid
excuses –
o tell people you have no father
o tell them your mother is so poor she turned you out, couldn’t take care of you
sustained metaphor of Mother to Child
humility
o no confidence in her literary achievement/ability
Billy Joel: songs like children
o http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3080039/ns/dateline_nbc-newsmakers/t/billy-joel-movin/#.TyS71Jib0c
o http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Billy-and-Katie-Joel-Movin-Up
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“Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
 “All things within this fading world hath end”
o everything & everyone dies
o nothing lasts forever
 mortality = Lesson #1 for her child
 heavy, unsentimental lesson
 Puritan?
 this = good-bye letter
o “These farewell lines to recommend to thee”
 in case she dies in childbirth
 childbirth in America: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/childbirth.cfm
 see her other poems
 3 @ death of grandchildren ***
o Elizabeth (1 ½), Anne (3.7), Simon Bradstreet (32 days)
o I should have known better to put my joy into something mortal, fleeting
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 (see line #1)
o don’t ask why, God’s plan
o consolation –
 “The Lord giveth & the Lord taketh away” (Job 1.21)
 they’re in heaven: “Thou w/thy Savior art in endless bliss”
o Michael Keaton movie My Life (dead before born, video)
o My Life w/o Me?
bury my faults (like a body)
remember my virtue (like a soul – lives on, eternal life)
look to my other children
when you find this poem
o kiss the paper
o my tears are on it
A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment
 wish you were here
 miss you
 when he leaves on business (not in the poem)
o she = alone to raise the kids
o take care of the house, property
o in the wilderness, New World, savages
o PLUS
o she has bouts w/severe fatigue
 metaphors, syndoche
o he = her head, heart, eyes, life, joy, “magazine of earthly store”
 conceit re: the ZODIAC:
o he = her sun
o in Capricorn (winter)
o wants him in Cancer (summer)
 “flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone”
o Genesis 2.23-24
 23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called
Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and
they shall be one flesh
o marriage ceremonies
 2 = 1:
o we’re still together although apart
Another [Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment]
 puns –
o deer & dear, hart & heart
 metaphors of –
o deer
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o dove
o fish
equals
“Return my dear, my joy, my only love”
o come home soon
o I miss you
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PURITAN MARRIAGE:
o civil ceremony
 Puritan clergy did not officiate
 still, adultery = serious violation, homosexuality = death
 still, couldn’t marry outside the church
 still, no divorce (annulments w/infertility)
o marriage = society
 hierarchically structured
 husband over wife, parents over children
o marriage = metaphor for relationship between God & Christian
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 care for spouse, family
 be faithful
 (also = sign of piety)
o BUT
o remember God = #1
 keep your eyes on the prize –
 “Puritan ministers warned against excessive devotion
between family members lest such love distract from
proper spiritual focus.
 John Cotton, a Puritan minister, preached that marriage should make men and women “better
fitted for God’s service, and bring them nearer to God.”
 He also cautioned, “[W]hen we exceedingly delight ourselves in husbands or wives or
children, [it] much benumbs and dims the light of the spirit.”
o Daniel Rogers: “Marriage is the preservative of chastity, the seminary of the commonwealth, seedplot of the church, pillar (under God) of the world, right-hand of providence, supporter of laws,
states, orders, offices, gifts, and services: the glory of peace, the sinews of war, the maintenance of
policy, the life of the dead, the solace of the living, the ambition of virginity, the foundation of
countries, cities, universities, succession of families, crowns, and kingdoms; truly (besides the being
of these) it is the wellbeing of them being made, and whatsoever is excellent in them, or any other
thing, the very furniture of heaven (in a kind) depending thereupon.”
from Anne Bradstreet’s The Tenth Muse:
“To My Dear and Loving Husband”
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever,
That when we live no more we may live ever.
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true love
partners
2 = 1:
really love each other
passionate for a Puritan?
“if” – metaphors – religious
I can’t repay you – God will
immortality:
o through love
o God will grant us eternal life .. b/c we love each other
 marriage = God’s covenant between God & Man
 Christ = married to His Church, Christians –
 so we “model” marriage after Christ’s example
o unlike SHK
 not through procreation
 not through poetry
1. How does the speaker describe her relationship with her husband? What aspects of her feelings does she
seem to emphasize?
2. What kind of figurative language does Bradstreet use to describe her feelings for her husband?
3. How do you understand the final two lines of the poem? What do you think Bradstreet means when she
enjoins her husband to “persever” in love so that they “may live ever”?
STYLE:
 simple language
o PURITAN simple style
o concrete descriptions
o simple syntax
 metaphors & conceits
o from the natural world
o Zodiac
 Biblical allusions
o concepts
o verses
 erudition
o bible
o zodiac
o classical mythology
 brutal honesty
o like a journal, diary
o very personal
o fears, doubts
o love & longing
 faith in God
o even in pain, loss
o God’s plan, mercy, justice
 d
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http://www.lukehistory.com/resources/oaths.html