Analysis Of 'The Author To Her Book' By Anne Bradstreet

The poem, “The Author to Her Book,” written by Anne Bradstreet, focuses on the feelings of the author about an event that happened to her. The event explained in the poem is the experience that Bradstreet went through when her friends published her work without her permission and put it into the eyes of other people, when she didn’t even think that it was good enough for her own. She describes this book as the “ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,” in the poem and this description basically shows the complex feelings, attitude, and also the central metaphor of the book, paralleling the book to a feeble child that happens to be her offspring, of Bradstreet on the subject of her work, that she is extremely ashamed of, being published. She …show more content…
“I cast thee by as one unfit for light,” (9) is a quote that demonstrates the extent of her shame towards the child. She thought that the child was not fit to see the light of day, or for others to see in public. Without the veiling of the metaphor, this is how an author would feel if they thought their book was horrible and they scrapped it so no one else could see it, but Bradstreets’ friends exposed it. The writer then continues on to show a small amount of affection for the literature even though she is very ashamed of it. The lines containing this are eleven through fourteen and they talk about how much the mother loved her child, and she held hope that her love and affection would fix the problems that were so obvious to her. But washing the childs’ face only led to more imperfections, and fixing something always made something else imperfect, “Yet being mine own, at length affection would thy blemishes amend, if so I could. I washed thy face, but more defects I saw, and rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw,” (11-14). A continuation of this description is, “I stretch thy joints to make thee even feet, yet still thou run’st more hobbling than is meet,” (15-16) and in this quote, the author shows both sides of the metaphor, the actual poem and a description of the child. In poetry, they use feet, a basic repeated sequence of meter, …show more content…
She says that the book is her child, and that it was ousted by her friends to the public but later in the poem contradicts herself by the mention that she sold the book herself because she could no longer care for it due to her poor economic standing, which lifting the metaphor, meant that she felt she did not have enough skill to write this book so she gave it up. But this was after she thouroughly tried to protect herself and put the blame upon others of the issues of this book, and making excuses for what could not be thrust upon another individual. So, all in all, the complexity of the author was shown after careful analyzation of the central metaphor, and showed the reader the progression of the authors’ attitude through the