Anne Bradstreet's "The Flesh and the Spirit": Body vs. Soul
This paper analyzes Anne Bradstreet's poem "The Flesh and the Spirit," examining how Bradstreet uses a dialogue between allegorical sisters — Flesh and Spirit — to explore the conflict between earthly desire and spiritual devotion. The essay traces the poem's diction, noting how Flesh's seductive language nearly convinces the reader of the value of worldly pleasures, while Spirit's rebuttal paradoxically employs earthly imagery — gold, pearls, crystal — to describe heaven. The paper situates Bradstreet within the broader tradition of body-and-soul debate poetry, highlights her feminist extension of a medieval form, and connects her honest self-examination to the lived tensions of Puritan life in colonial America.
- Introduction: Two Sisters, One Self: Flesh and Spirit as one divided self
- The Temptations of Flesh: Earthly Pleasure and Persuasive Diction: Flesh tempts Spirit with worldly pleasures
- Spirit's Rebuttal: Heavenly Riches in Earthly Language: Spirit counters with paradoxical heavenly imagery
- The Vanitas Quality and the Limits of Language: Language fails to distinguish heaven from earth
- Bradstreet in the Debate Tradition: Feminist extension of medieval debate poetry
- Conclusion: Puritan Honesty and the Eternal Struggle: Bradstreet's honesty reflects Puritan lived experience
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- It supports every analytical claim with direct quotation from the poem, allowing readers to evaluate the argument against the primary text.
- It situates Bradstreet within a broader literary tradition — the medieval body-and-soul debate — and identifies her specific innovations: female disputants and an internalized, psychological setting.
- It acknowledges the paradox at the heart of the poem honestly: Spirit can only describe heaven using the same earthly imagery Flesh uses, which undercuts a tidy spiritual resolution and enriches the reading.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates close reading through attention to diction and rhetorical effect. By tracking how Flesh's persuasive language almost "sways the reader," the essay shows that analyzing a poem's effect on the audience — not just its stated theme — is a valid and productive critical move. This technique of reader-response awareness within a formalist analysis is a useful model for literary criticism at the undergraduate level.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by establishing the poem's central conceit (two sisters as one divided self), then moves through the poem's argument in order: Flesh speaks and tempts, Spirit rebuts, and the essay reflects on what that rebuttal reveals about language's limitations. A contextualizing paragraph then places Bradstreet in the debate-poetry tradition using secondary scholarship, and the conclusion ties the poem back to the lived experience of Puritan belief. The structure mirrors the poem's own back-and-forth movement.
Introduction: Two Sisters, One Self
Anne Bradstreet's poem "The Flesh and the Spirit" is a dialogue between sisters who, from the outset, are developed through language as much as one being — Spirit calling Flesh her "unregenerate part" — in an attempt to explore the conflicting drives of body and soul. Bradstreet describes her "sisters" as twins who are so completely different that one (Spirit) sets a goal of laying the other (Flesh) to dust. The language Bradstreet uses to develop her honest reflection on the draw of the world, as opposed to the draw of the ethereal, is both eloquent and candid.
Bradstreet opens with Spirit's declaration of war against her other half:
"Be still, thou unregenerate part, / Disturb no more my settled heart, / for I have vow'd (and so will do) / Thee as a foe still to pursue, / and combat with thee will and must / Until I see thee laid in th' dust. / Sister we are, yea twins we be, / Yet deadly feud 'twixt thee and me, / for from one father are we not. / Thou by old Adam wast begot, / but my arise is from above, / Whence my dear father I do love." (Bradstreet)
Bradstreet describes Flesh as the product of Adam, while Spirit is the product of God. Yet, as different as they are, the two are intertwined, occupying the same time and place, as both are in constant struggle to sway the other — through temptation (Flesh) and piety (Spirit).
The Temptations of Flesh: Earthly Pleasure and Persuasive Diction
Flesh taunts Spirit constantly, teasing her about her focus on the ethereal: "Sister," quoth Flesh, "what liv'st thou on / Nothing but Meditation?" She then catalogues the beauty and pleasure available from earthly life:
"Earth hath more silver, pearls, and gold / Than eyes can see or hands can hold. / Affects thou pleasure? Take thy fill. / Earth hath enough of what you will. / Then let not go what thou maist find / for things unknown only in mind." (Bradstreet)
The diction of the poem, especially in the passages associated with Flesh's argument for worldly pleasure, sways the reader to the point where one might begin to see it as foolish to hope for pleasure in an unseen world:
"Hast treasures there laid up in store / That all in th' world thou count'st but poor? / Art fancy-sick or turn'd a Sot / to catch at shadows which are not? / Come, come. I'll show unto thy sense, / Industry hath its recompence. / What canst desire, but thou maist see / True substance in variety?" (Bradstreet)
Flesh taunts Spirit with what can be seen and felt, asking her to look upon all the variety and beauty that can be gained from the fruits of earthly labor. She insists that there is nothing one desires that cannot be found upon the earth.
Spirit's Rebuttal: Heavenly Riches in Earthly Language
Spirit responds with a firm rebuttal, first rejecting Flesh's flattery:
"Thy flatt'ring shews I'll trust no more. / How oft thy slave hast thou me made / When I believ'd what thou hast said / and never had more cause of woe / Than when I did what thou bad'st do. / I'll stop mine ears at these thy charms / and count them for my deadly harms. / Thy sinful pleasures I do hate, / Thy riches are to me no bait. / Thine honours do, nor will I love, / for my ambition lies above." (Bradstreet)
Spirit then describes the heavenly world in such a way that the ethereal becomes earthly, only rendered more glorious:
"The hidden Manna I do eat; / the word of life, it is my meat. / My thoughts do yield me more content / Than can thy hours in pleasure spent. / nor are they shadows which I catch, / nor fancies vain at which I snatch / but reach at things that are so high, / Beyond thy dull Capacity. / Eternal substance I do see / With which inriched I would be. / Mine eye doth pierce the heav'ns and see / What is Invisible to thee. / My garments are not silk nor gold, / nor such like trash which Earth doth hold, / but Royal Robes I shall have on, / More glorious than the glist'ring Sun. / My Crown not Diamonds, Pearls, and gold, / but such as Angels' heads infold. / the City where I hope to dwell, / There's none on Earth can parallel. / the stately Walls both high and strong / Are made of precious Jasper stone, / the Gates of Pearl, both rich and clear, … / the Streets thereof transparent gold / Such as no Eye did e're behold. / a Crystal River there doth run / Which doth proceed from the Lamb's Throne. / of Life, there are the waters sure / Which shall remain forever pure. / nor Sun nor Moon they have no need / for glory doth from God proceed." (Bradstreet)
Conclusion: Puritan Honesty and the Eternal Struggle
The message of the work is clear: Puritans, and even Puritan women, struggled with coveting the things of the earth. "But Puritan men and women were constantly reminded of the difference between this fleeting world and the city of heavenly light. Yet knowing something intellectually and living it are two quite different things. Bradstreet's poetry is attractive to us because she is so honest about her affections" (Millier and Parini 6–7). The world in which Bradstreet lived is reflected throughout her poetry, but especially in "The Flesh and the Spirit," where the world becomes only a shell of words and deeds, while the love of God is eternal and far more promising in its gifts.
Works Cited
Bradstreet, Anne. "The Flesh and the Spirit." infoplease.com. Retrieved September 5, 2008. <
Jaskoski, Helen. "The Catacombs and the Debate Between the Flesh and the Spirit." Critique 35.3 (1994): 181–192.
Millier, Brett C., and Jay Parini, eds. The Columbia History of American Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.