...June 8, 2012 American Literature Essay Anne Bradstreet was a British-American poet, born in Northampton, England. She was a daughter of Thomas Dudley, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She married Simon Bradstreet when she was eighteen- years- old. Two years later, in 1630, they came to the New World. They lived in Salem, Boston, Cambridge, and Ipswich before they finally settled on a farm in North Andover, Massachusetts, in 1644. Simon Bradstreet became a judge, legislator, royal councilor, and twice a governor of the colony while Anne Bradstreet became a devoted wife and mother. Bradstreet wrote many of her poems while rearing eight children. She was a wife and mother, but she was also the first important poet in the American colonies. Her poems were published in 1650 as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, which is generally considered the first book of original poetry written in colonial America. Through it she asserted the right of women to learning and expression of thought. Although some of Bradstreet's verse is conventional, much of it is direct and shows sensitivity to beauty. Although the young couple could anticipate a comfortable life materially, they chose to leave much of their wealth in England and move to America to serve their God. Anne’s father, Thomas Dudley, and her husband Simon were active in the governmental affairs of Massachusetts Bay Colony; both served several terms as governor of the colony. Anne's household was to be an influential...
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...Biography of Anne Bradstreet Anne Bradstreet was born in Northampton, England, in the year 1612, daughter of Thomas Dudley and Dorothy Yorke; Dudley, who had been a leader of volunteer soldiers in the English Reformation and Elizabethan Settlement, was then a steward to the Earl of Lincoln; Dorothy was a gentlewoman of noble heritage and she was also well educated. At the age of 16, Anne was married to Simon Bradstreet, a 25 year old assistant in the Massachusetts Bay Company and the son of a Puritan minister, who had been in the care of the Dudleys since the death of his father. Anne and her family emigrated to America in 1630 on the Arabella, one of the first ships to bring Puritans to New England in hopes of setting up plantation colonies. The journey was difficult; many perished during the three month journey, unable to cope with the harsh climate and poor living conditions, as sea squalls rocked the vessel, and scurvy brought on by malnutrition claimed their lives. Anne, who was a well educated girl, tutored in history, several languages and literature, was ill prepared for such rigorous travel, and would find the journey very difficult. Their trials and tribulations did not end upon their arrival, though, and many of those who had survived the journey, either died shortly thereafter, or elected to return to England, deciding they had suffered through enough. Thomas Dudley and his friend John Winthrop made up the Boston settlement's government; Winthrop was...
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...Puritanism was a religious movement in the sixteenth century that evolved in Europe. The Puritans wanted religious purity. Anne Bradstreet was one of the most prominent female writers during the Puritan Age. Her selection “Upon the Burning of Our House” contains aspects of Puritan lifestyle. The show “Breaking Amish” deals with the realities and struggles of young Amish people who are undecisive if they want to alter to the English lifestyle. During the Puritan Age, the work by Anne Bradstreet can be compared to todays pop culture show “Breaking Amish.” The Puritans were a varied group of people who stood up for religious purity in Europe. “Puritanism was more than a religious belief, it was a way of life” (Anne Bradstreet’s Use of Religious...
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...I enjoyed reading your discussion regarding Anne Bradstreet’s evolution as a writer, and how she acknowledges her struggle between flesh and spirit in her earlier years and develops into a more passionate and expressive writer. It seems as though has a sense of maladjustment to the New England environment and colonial life, which triggers her need to express her feelings. One important observation to consider, also, is that women were not only expected to take care of the home but not to be particularly expressive in thought or manner. Although losing children (and mothers during childbirth) was more commonplace during the 1600’s, nothing had been written from a woman’s viewpoint regarding the loss or separation prior to Bradstreet’s writings....
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...“To my Dear and loving Husband” Poetry Explication The poem “To my Dear and loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet is a heart felt expression of a wife’s marital unconditional love and commitment to her husband. Indirectly, it is also about a puritan woman, who is supposed to be reserved, conveying a message of ever-lasting love and devotion to her husband through vivid imagery and emotions. By reading the poem it seems to be directed to an audience consisting of people who are in love and a person who cherishes their partner’s love. “To my Dear and loving Husband” is classified as a lyrical poem written in couplet form which means in each of the two adjacent lines, it is poetry that rhymes. For example: in the beginning, “If ever two were one, then surely we, If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee;” (1-2) each line ends with a rhyme – we and thee. “To my Dear and loving Husband” is written in iambic pentameter that makes you read the poem with an obvious rhythm. The couplet form is AABBCCDD and so on making the lines come in rhyming pairs. The poem supports the rhythm with the masculine rhymes using the repetition in the final sounds in every last syllable. The poem consists of monosyllabic words such as we, thee, man, can, gold, hold, and pray. When reading the poem out loud the reader will notice there are many open vowel sounds and soft consonants, which adds to the sincere tone and gives the poem a sense of overall simple, unaffected speech. The beginning...
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...Anne Bradstreet was born to a wealthy father, Thomas Dudley. Her father’s wealth enabled her to pursue an education superior to the education most women received at that time. It is obvious that her education played an important role in her intellectual achievements. Her family moved from England, to America in 1630. Anne Bradstreet’s The Tenth Muse was published in London, in 1650. It became the first published of volume of poems in English, written by a resident of America. Bradstreet’s work is still being referred to today by many contemporary poets. Bradstreet was Puritan. Many critics say that her Puritan background is apparent in her writings as some of her poems allude to the Scriptures. “The Author to Her Book” can be identified as...
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...Essay #1 In Ann Bradstreet’s writings, it is clear that she is highly intelligent and well educated for the women of her time, with a large family library. Her writings are about what is around her: her religion, history, family, political and puritanical views. She had a difficult life with illness, hunger, and the loss of her child, but still she wrote with wit, love, and a sense of community. Religion and God’s plan play a crucial role in many of her writings. When she wrote, Upon the Burning of Our House, a sad, but forgiving poem, “And, when I could no longer look, I blest His name that gave and took,” she acknowledges her belief of God’s involvement in the fire, but doesn’t seem angry by it. “Thou hast an house on high erect, Fram’d by that mighty Architect…Stands permanent, though this be fled.” Anne Bradford was a very spiritual woman and believes God has a home for her in heaven and this home on earth is only temporary. To go to heaven would be “A prize so vast as is unknown” and “There’s wealth enough, I need no more.” She writes “My hope and treasure lies above,” evidences heaven is the ultimate destination. Anne Bradford seemed to be a very loving, respectful, and devoted wife to her husband Simon. In To My Dear and Loving Husband, she writes, “If ever two were one, then surely we…I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold…My love is such that rivers cannot quench…” The passion she feels for her husband truly shines in this poem. She may be considered one of...
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...Anne Bradstreet’s poetry is considered one of the best literary achievements of the 1700s. Anne Bradstreet and Jonathan Edwards are both very talented writers with Bradstreet’s poem Upon the Burning of Our House and Edwards’s Sinners in the hands of an Angry God. Both of these writers have unquestionably different, but both unique writing styles. First we will talk about their use of literary devices and then about their style and structure of writing. Lastly we will talk about their strong religious views. Both of these two writers are different in many ways, but also in some they are alike. Both authors have different styles of writing. Bradstreet fancy’s to write poems while Edwards is keen on writing more about sermons and speeches. Bradstreet...
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...Anne Bradstreet was a poet who was born in 1612. She was the first to write English verse and her poems were published without her knowledge by John Woodbridge, her brother-in-law. She wrote many of her poems about her personal experiences and religion. Anne Bradstreet's poems are filled with themes that set the path for her writing career which include feminism, sickness, love, and Puritanism. Anne Bradstreet is considered a feminist in today's world, even though she herself never stated it. Anne Bradstreet, through her writing in "The Prologue," demonstrated that women are worthy enough to write poetry, or to write in general. Men believed that women were not supposed to write or do anything out of their "domestic duties". Bradstreet believed that men and women had their separate duties, but...
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...ANNE BRADSTREET 1. What does Bradstreet’s poetry reveal about Puritan ideas of the proper role of women? Note how, in writing her poetry, she both rejects and accepts (Prologue stanza 7) John Winthrop’s standards for women as he revealed them – first, in describing Mrs. Hopkins’s failure to attend “to such things as belong to women” and, second, in his “Speech to the General Court” (“The Woman’s own choice”). The puritans believed that women should not have the right to voice their opinion. The husbands were the ones who made the decisions in the household and not the women. The women played the role of being home doing house work and taking care of the kids. In John Winthrop’s writing, he says, “he is her lord, and she is to be subject to him” (Winthrop 76). Therefore, men are the dominant where the...
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...It is no secret that Anne Bradstreet, a British born female poet who lived between (1612-1672), had her share of doubts and questions about God, salvation, eternal life, and the teachings of Puritanism. Despite the fact that she conformed, at least outwardly, to Puritanism, the dominated ideology and doctrine in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where she lived, themes of criticism to the Puritanism can be traced in her literary works. In Bradstreet’s elegiac poem, in the memory of her grandchild, Anne, who died at three years and seven months, the reader comes across words of such: With troubled heart and trembling hand I write, The heavens have changed to sorrow my delight. Here, not only the tone of Bradstreet is different from her first elegy,...
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...Thessa Andrade Professor Heidi Bean EN234: Survey to American Literature 18 September 2014 Anne Bradstreet: Doubting Faith Naturally, any people of any kind of religion at some point of their lives question or show a level of uncertainty in their faith. Religion is a complex idea to accept and to truly have full belief in. Curiosity surfaces when humans cannot prove or understand something logically or scientifically right away. As individuals, reason and solution is a must and the truth is what keeps life going. This feeling of ambiguity is no different for the Puritans in the sixteen hundreds. In fact, Puritan Anne Bradstreet reveals her struggle in faith within many of her literary works. To readers, the assumption is already made that as a Puritan member and a woman of society Bradstreet would incorporate godly worships in all her pieces of writing. Although that is true to some degree, once readers deeply analyzes her work in poetry they can see that her relationship with God is not always all mighty and secure. There are moments in her poems where she feels a certain disconnect or a sense of disbelief in His power. In rare occasions, she even blames God for her misfortunes. Bradstreet begins to see God differently than how she did when she was raised as a little girl. The mentality of every devoted Puritan man and woman in this New World, now called America, is to be a believer in God and only Him. In fact, it is said that “The [...] Puritan was such as one...
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...the Civil War, it is undeniable that American literature has had a profound impact on the development of our country. In studying the literary works of the colonial period, we are given a chance to peer into the past as we get a sense of religion’s central theme in the colonies, the important issues of the time, and how influential that literature was in shaping our country. Religion had a starring role in the development of the American colonies. Puritan ideals were very influential, and their significance is reflected in the journals and diaries written during their immigration, settling, and day-to-day experiences as they laid the foundation for America. God and religion was referenced many times in poetry and prose during the colonial period in works such as Anne Bradstreet’s “The Burning of Our House,” in which she implied that God had the right to...
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...Themes of Early American Literature Early American literature does a tremendous job of revealing the exact conditions and challenges that were faced by the explorers and later by the colonists of the New World. From early shipwrecks to the later years of small colonies barely surviving through dreadful winters, the literary works of the time period focus on some very recognizable themes. The theme of any given work – being simply the unifying subject or idea – is a very important element of any piece of writing. As one reviews some of this early literature, it becomes obvious that several themes appear repeatedly, and it is these subjects that were clearly very common among people from all over the New World. While a number of themes can be found in early American literature, the only dominant and recurring themes are exploration, hardship, and religion. It is these central ideas around which all early American writing is based. The first prominent theme that appeared in the literature of Christopher Columbus and the many great explorers that followed in his footsteps was that of exploration. With the mission to sail West across the Atlantic Ocean and report back with their findings, these explorers wrote down all of their noteworthy experiences in journals and narratives. So, it is only natural that the theme of exploration can be found in many of these literary works. For example, in Christopher Columbus’ Report of the First Voyage, he details the discovery of...
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...American Puritanism Institution affiliates Name American Puritanism The relationship of the individual to the community The term community is associated with hope and ways of reviving a harmonious bond linked to people who are not clearly attributed to past ages. This exploration of the history has been significant in shaping the character and culture of the American. Community is a value because it is used to bring together several elements such as trust, solidarity, mutuality, and trust. On the other hand, individualism positions each member of the community to draw apart with their friends and family, so that he can leave the society once he forms his own circle. Community is crucial as opposed to individualism, which leads to absolute selfishness. According to the Enlightenment theory, the individual natural right should progress according to his personal goals, as a result, succeeds economically. Shakespeare’s treatments of a family and friendship shows tension in the stories of a community defined in terms of the public and private circles of government. Even though, it does not necessarily condemn it, it question discretion. In other words, an individual relationship does not necessarily result in public responsibilities. The conflicts between private and public relationships are contradictory dynamics. Shakespeare narratives are dedicated to undermining the authority because of their inability to stabilize...
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