Anne Bradstreet :: essays research papers

Anne Bradstreet American PoetAnne Bradstreet is seen as a true poetic writer for the 17th century. She exhibits a strong prude voice and is one of the first noneworthy poets to write English verse in the American colonies. Bradstreets reckon symbolizes both her Puritan and feminine ideals and appeals to a wide audience of readers. American Puritan culture was basically unstable, with various inchoate formations of social, political, and religious powers competing publicly. Her thoughts ar usually on the reality surrounding her or images from the Bible. Bradstreets typography is that of her personal and Puritan life. Anne Bradstreets individualism lies in her choice of worldly rather than in her style.Anne Bradstreet was born in 1612 to Thomas and Dorothy Dudley in Northampton, England. Her military chaplain and a young man named Simon Bradstreet were chosen by the Earl of Lincoln as stewards to manage the Earls affairs. Anne, unlike many women of her time, was well educated and it is presumed that she had feeler to the Earls vast library during this time. The Earls residence was known for its sentimentalist background and this proved true in 1628 when Anne and Simon married. She was only sixteen to his cardinal years but they were known to have a happy conglutination as evidenced in To my Dear and Loving Husband where Bradstreet laments, If eer two were one, than surely we (125). In 1630, the Dudleys and the Bradstreets, along with other Puritans, sailed aboard the Arabella to settle the Massachusetts Bay Colony. These families journeyed to America as many Puritan settlers had before them, in the hopes of religious freedoms unattainable in England. In the colonies, Annes husband was frequently absent. Bradstreet still found time to write her verse while raising her 8 children and carrying on the strenuous duties of colonial life.though Bradstreet accepted the tenets of Puritanism, anti-Puritan texts are found in her verse in terms of religious doubts as in Meditations to her children where she speculates if the Scriptures are true or contrived. Anne Bradstreet likewise deviates from traditional Puritan writings of the time by composing poetry for pleasure and self expression as opposed to writings of preaching and teaching as was the standard. Bradstreet is not truly unorthodox in that she did not dissent from accepted beliefs and doctrine, but lived in an intensely religious, male reign society which put many limitations on women and their roles.