Asserting the Woman’s Experience in Anne Bradstreet’s “To My Dear Children”, “To My Dear Loving Husband”, and “A Letter to her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” For centuries, artists find a woman to be a most worthy muse. Poets proclaim her beauty, her poise and charm. Her physical presence is evident but her intellectual contributions are absent. Women with pens of their own come and go, wedging a space for themselves in a male dominated field. When the quest to start a new nation comes to fruition, Anne Bradstreet becomes an unlikely trailblazer. With a balance of sarcasm and hopefulness, Bradstreet writes about the experiences of a Colonial woman that are suppressed because of societal expectations. From her prologue, Bradstreet
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For the sake of giving useful advice, Bradstreet knocks down the walls of self-preservation. She admits to her children that she too was prone to “lying, disobedience to parents, etc.” (124). But Grandest of Bradstreet’s struggles is accepting the fundamentals of Christianity. She certainly has company in this instance, but as Colonial society had it, such matters are not openly discussed. This unwritten rule is especially true for Colonial women, who are expected to adhere to the religious notions taught them, later passing them on to their children without any hesitation. Their understanding of scriptures comes from Sunday sermons and the male presence amongst them. Bradstreet, however, is open about her reservations, “many times by atheism” in which she debated “how [she] could know whether there was a God; [she] never saw any miracles… and those which I read of, how did I know but they were feigned?” (125). Unheard of for Colonial women is the mention of unbelief, but Bradstreet goes further and alleges belief lost and again gained through her own personal journey with God. No mediators are mentioned; it is not counseling or reprimanding that leads her back to religious conviction, but applying scriptures to everyday experience. She sees God in Earth’s wonder, and provisions met, and fro these connections the religious text is read with different
For the sake of giving useful advice, Bradstreet knocks down the walls of self-preservation. She admits to her children that she too was prone to “lying, disobedience to parents, etc.” (124). But Grandest of Bradstreet’s struggles is accepting the fundamentals of Christianity. She certainly has company in this instance, but as Colonial society had it, such matters are not openly discussed. This unwritten rule is especially true for Colonial women, who are expected to adhere to the religious notions taught them, later passing them on to their children without any hesitation. Their understanding of scriptures comes from Sunday sermons and the male presence amongst them. Bradstreet, however, is open about her reservations, “many times by atheism” in which she debated “how [she] could know whether there was a God; [she] never saw any miracles… and those which I read of, how did I know but they were feigned?” (125). Unheard of for Colonial women is the mention of unbelief, but Bradstreet goes further and alleges belief lost and again gained through her own personal journey with God. No mediators are mentioned; it is not counseling or reprimanding that leads her back to religious conviction, but applying scriptures to everyday experience. She sees God in Earth’s wonder, and provisions met, and fro these connections the religious text is read with different