Essay Comparing Anne Bradstreet And Phillis Wheatley

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Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley both published great works of poetry during a very difficult time when gender and race were not easily overlooked. Bradstreet was a Puritan housewife and Wheatley was an African slave. Both writers were extremely intelligent which was not very common back then. Their poems are not precisely the same subject matter, but their similarity is the expression of their own opinions. The topic that they do seem to share is that of religion. Bradstreet tested the boundaries of the Puritan beliefs and chose to write about life as a wife and mother. The love for her husband was more important than what others thought of her. She was proud of their relationship and stated, “I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee give recompense” a verse from her poem titled To My Dear and Loving Husband (226). Her poems stood as a movement for all radical feminists that admired Bradstreet and her confidence to express her opinions publicly. Religion was a common topic throughout Bradstreet’s poem, but there was a time as …show more content…

She did branch out of her comfort zone when she wrote On Being Brought from Africa to America. While the beginning of the poem was focused on being a Christian believing in God, it ended with "Some view our sable race with scornful eye, 'Their colour is a diabolic die.' Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, may be refin'd, and join th' angelic train" (764). It is this verse that shows the true unhappiness centered on the issues with race in America. Wheatley has a true belief in God even with the unanswered questions why the treatment of whites and blacks was so different. This could have caused her to lose faith in him, but it was the acceptance of her race and God that pushed her

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