Utopian Promise Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612-1672)

• When John Woodbridge, Bradstreet’s brother-in-law, compiled her poetry for publication, he included a preface vouching for the book’s authenticity and for his sister-in-law’s character:
  

  …the worse effect of his [the reader’s] reading will be unbelief, which will make him question whether it be a woman’s work, and ask, is it possible? If any do, take this as an answer from him that dares to avow it; it is the work of a woman, honored, and esteemed where she lives, for her gracious demeanor, her eminent parts, her pious conversation, her courteous disposition, her exact diligence in her place, and discreet managing of her family occasions, and more than so, these poems are the fruit but of some few hours, curtailed from her sleep and other refreshments.

  Read this prefatory material aloud to your class and ask students why Woodbridge felt compelled to include it. What does this preface reveal about women’s status in Puritan society? What does it tell us about the kinds of anxieties Bradstreet probably felt with regard to her poetry and its publication?

• Have students read aloud “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment.” While students may initially respond to this as a conventional love poem, try to stress how unusual its secular tone is within the corpus of Puritan poetry. Even though some of the imagery has spiritual and biblical resonance, what emerges in this poem is Bradstreet’s erotic attachment to her husband, not her understanding of her marriage as a metaphor for her union with Christ. Her reliance on pagan imagery (the sun god, the zodiac) is notable in this context.

1. Comprehension: Bradstreet’s seventeenth-century language and syntax can be confusing. Pick one of her poems and write a line-by-line paraphrase of it in contemporary American English. What difficulties did you encounter in rewriting Bradstreet’s images and ideas? What has the poem lost in translation?
2. Comprehension: Anne Bradstreet composed a number of “elegies,” that is, poems that relate the experience of loss and the search for consolation. In an important sense, elegies are designed to defend the individual against death. Whose loss is mourned in “Before the Birth of One of Her Children,” and how does Bradstreet console either the mourners or herself?
3. Context: What are some of the recurring themes and images in Bradstreet’s poetry? How does she balance abstract, theological concerns with personal, material issues? What does Bradstreet’s poetry tell us about motherhood and marriage in Puritan New England?
4. Context: In the poem “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House,” how does Bradstreet struggle with her Puritan commitment to the doctrine of “weaned affections” (the idea that individuals must wean themselves from earthly, material concerns and focus only on spiritual matters)? How does she turn the experience of losing her possessions to spiritual use? Does she seem entirely resigned to casting away her “pelf” and “store”? In what terms does she describe the “house on high” that God has prepared for her?
5. Exploration: How sincere is Bradstreet’s evaluation of her poetry as the “ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain”? Should we read this kind of self-abasement as a calculated rhetorical pose, a poetic convention, a defensive maneuver, or as evidence of extreme insecurity? Why does she make a point of avowing “Men have precedency” and “Men can do best”? Keep in mind that Bradstreet was writing in the immediate aftermath of the Antinomian controversy and the banishment of Anne Hutchinson. How might a consciousness of the dangers of female speech and female writing inform her work?
6. Exploration: Anne Bradstreet’s poetry has often been compared to that by Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, the first female poet to write in the Spanish American colony of New Spain (the area that is now Mexico and the southwestern United States). How does Bradstreet’s “Prologue” compare to Sor Juana’s “Prologue”? What justifications does each poet give for women composing poetry? How do their attitudes toward death compare?

[1219] Anonymous, The Mason Children: David, Joanna, Abigail (1670),
courtesy of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, 1979.7.3.
This rare early New England portrait of children offers insight into the life of the merchant class. Children were considered small, sinful adults, hence the adult head-to-body ratio, clothing, and posture. The lack of sensuality reflects the religious mores and plain style of the time.

[6728] Arthur C. Haskell, Gov. Simon Bradstreet House,159 Osgood Street, North Andover, Essex County, Massachusetts (1934),
courtesy of the Library of Congress [HABS, MASS,5-ANDON,1-].
The stateliness of this house reflects the prominence of the Bradstreet family, and its clean lines and balanced composition reflect the Puritan plain-style aesthetic.