In “To My Dear and Loving Husband”, going against her beliefs, Anne Bradstreet expresses the profound and prodigious love she has for her husband. She asserts the adherence to her spouse, which according to Puritans, could not be superior than the devotion to God. The opening line of the poem establishes the complete union there is between them and uses the pronoun “we” (1) to assure this fact. In a boastfully manner, Bradstreet states that there is no wife who loves his husband more than she loves him (2), and that there is no wife happier than her (3), implying that their union in marriage is the most passionate. Anne portrays herself as a loving wife and demonstrates the exaggerated amount of love she has for her husband, straying from the
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These last two lines can be thought of as paradoxical and conflicting because in addition to contradicting each other, they also contradict Puritan beliefs. Line eleven gives love a time limit, making it last while the couple is alive, but line twelve then says that love does not necessarily end with death, implying that love can overpower death. According to Anne Bradstreet’s religion, personal relations were supposed to end with death, and an ever-lasting love as the one she wants and describes through out the poem, would go against the Puritan dogma because they believed they had to be able to ascend to heaven free from everything on Earth. By presenting the idea that if they have a persistent love while they live will lead to it lasting for eternity, is also another way of causing disagreement with her religion because this means she is trying to claim that the love for others, rather than the love for God and His Grace, is the way to eternal life and salvation. Despite the fact that Puritans believed in predestination and knew that they had no control over their final destiny (either it would be Heaven or hell) and that it was all in God’s hands, the poet still suggests that by loving each other, they will be rewarded with a place in Heaven, in return of the “investment” the made when they were
These last two lines can be thought of as paradoxical and conflicting because in addition to contradicting each other, they also contradict Puritan beliefs. Line eleven gives love a time limit, making it last while the couple is alive, but line twelve then says that love does not necessarily end with death, implying that love can overpower death. According to Anne Bradstreet’s religion, personal relations were supposed to end with death, and an ever-lasting love as the one she wants and describes through out the poem, would go against the Puritan dogma because they believed they had to be able to ascend to heaven free from everything on Earth. By presenting the idea that if they have a persistent love while they live will lead to it lasting for eternity, is also another way of causing disagreement with her religion because this means she is trying to claim that the love for others, rather than the love for God and His Grace, is the way to eternal life and salvation. Despite the fact that Puritans believed in predestination and knew that they had no control over their final destiny (either it would be Heaven or hell) and that it was all in God’s hands, the poet still suggests that by loving each other, they will be rewarded with a place in Heaven, in return of the “investment” the made when they were