Anne Bradstreet: Puritan Poet Born

Anne Bradstreet: Puritan Poet

Born in Northampton, England in 1612, Anne Bradstreet and her family would become significant citizens of Massachusetts Bay colony. Bradstreet's family was well-educated and from distinguished heritage. Anne's father Thomas Dudley helped educate his daughter in history, several languages and literature ("Anne Bradstreet Biography"). Anne's mother Dorothy Yorke was also a well-educated woman. When she was sixteen, Anne Dudley married Simon Bradstreet. In 1630, Anne Bradstreet and her family undertook the trans-Atlantic journey to help settle the New England colonies. The Dudleys and the Bradstreets arrived on the Arabella, one of the first ships dedicated to bringing Puritans to the colonies ("Anne Bradstreet Biography"). Thomas Dudley became the Deputy-Governor of the Boston settlement, and Simon Bradstreet became its Chief-Administrator ("Anne Bradstreet Biography"). The Bradstreets were "among the richest of the settlers," (131). However, her husband's work obligations kept him away from home for long lengths of time. During her time alone, Anne would read and develop her penchant for poetry. Bradstreet's poetry reveals what life was like in the early colonies, especially for women.

Anne would bear eight children, and she served in the traditional role of housewife and mother. Moreover, Bradstreet remained a pious woman throughout her life. Puritanical gender norms prevented Anne from openly pursuing her passion for poetry because "it was frowned upon for women to pursue intellectual enlightenment, let alone create and air their views and opinions," ("Anne Bradstreet Biography"). Anne Bradstreet's poetry does not directly criticize Puritanical gender roles. In fact, Bradstreet writes about misogyny without a trace of irony. For example, Bradstreet believed "the pain of child labor is God's corrective tool." (Gordon 137). As Gordon notes, "according to Puritan theology, each woman's suffering was her personal retribution for Eve's original trespass and was a kind of purification process," (137). However, the very act of her writing poetry challenged the stifling restrictions on women's personal and intellectual development.

Serving God through her husband and children was a Puritan woman's responsibility. Anne Bradstreet upheld that responsibility by penning many verses about God. "Bradstreet often intended that her spiritual meditations might serve not only to reconcile herself to God but also to testify to her family about God's work in her life." (Nichols 55). For a Puritan woman, motherhood was "the most important way to serve God," because "if she could help raise a new flock of the faithful, Anne would help ensure the future of the New England Puritan dream," (142).

Anne also wrote extensively about love and many of her poems were directly addressed to her husband. Bradstreet expressed her longing for her husband when he was away from the colony: "My head, my heart, mine eyes, my life, nay more, My joy, my Magazine of earthly store, if two be one, as surely though and I, How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lye? Return, return sweet Sol from Capricorn (Cited by Nichols 119). Bradstreet also wrote about her fear of death and whether her husband might remarry. "Through her dread of dying in childbirth lets us see that her deeper fear is a jealous one that her husband might remarry," (Hensley xxiii). Bradstreet's description of childbirth as being a shade away from death shows what life was like for women in the colonies. "The last month of pregnancy was not only a time for making 'pyes' but also a time of making peace with the idea of approaching death," (Gordon 135).