Resistance to Dissent of the Puritan Faith Through Anne Bradstreet’s “To My Dear Children” Anne Bradstreet starts off her letter with a short poem that presents insight as to what to expect in “To My Dear Children” when she says “here you may find/ what was in your living mother’s mind” (Bradstreet 161). This is the first sign she gives that her letter contains not just a mere retelling of adolescent events, but an introspection of her own life. She writes this at a very turbulent point in history for a devout Puritan. She lived during the migration of Puritans to America to escape the persecution of the Catholic Church and also through the fragmentation of the Puritans into different sects when people began to question the Puritan faith. …show more content…
This was a common concern at the time, seeing as the Puritans had sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and were free from the influence of the Catholic Church for the first time. Life in the colonies was difficult and it led to questioning, such as Bradstreet’s, to surface as people asked themselves if they were making the right choice by seceding from the Catholic Church. After all, “They have the same God, the same Christ, the same word. They only enterpret it one way, we another.” (Bradstreet 164). This, however, does not convince Bradstreet that the move to the New World was a mistake. She unveils a harsh criticism, writing “but the vain fooleries that are in their religion together with their lying miracles and cruel persecutions” are enough for her to discredit the argument, stating that the Catholic Church is unquestionably wrong in her mind (Bradstreet 164). Though she admits that their teachings “hath sometimes stuck with me, and more it would,” she still reassures herself that she trusts the theology of the Puritans and remains strong in the consensus of those in the Massachusetts Bay area that firmly resist the dogma of the Catholic Church (Bradstreet …show more content…
She admits that she suffers through internal conflicts regarding her religious beliefs multiple times in “To My Dear Children”, even explicitly stating “I have argued thus with myself” (Bradstreet 164). Her struggle with what to believe was so great that she nearly abandons her original goal of writing to her children. This letter starts off addressing her children directly, but after the first paragraph she does not write in second person, with one exception, until the conclusion. Bradstreet instead writes the entire middle section about the issues she faced in her lifetime regarding her religion and how she overcame these problems. This gives great perspective into the mindset of all of her neighbors in Massachusetts as well. The “city upon a hill” (Winthrop 149) that John Winthrop told the Puritans they could create was not a perfect utopia even though they were finally free from the oppression of the Catholic Church. Doubts about whether God was truly on their side ensued as the Puritans discovered how laborious it was to live on the land and away from the luxury they were accustomed to in Europe. They began to question their own beliefs, just as Anne Bradstreet did. She presents these doubts in her letter and provides an understanding as to how this was not the perfect society it was meant to be. She also defends all of her doubts with
Anne Bradstreet’s inability to perfect her work before it was released frustrated her to the point where she internalizes the book’s imperfections as a reflection of herself. Bradstreet uses an extended metaphor of a mother and a child to compare the relationship between herself as the author and her book. Rather than investing her spirit in God, she repeatedly focuses on trying to improve the quality of her writing with no success, “I washed thy face, but more defects I saw” (Bradstreet 13). Like a mother protecting her child, Bradstreet’s attempts to prevent critics from negatively analyzing her work of art (20). Her continuous obsession about people’s opinions consumed in the Earthly world and essentially distracted her from developing a spiritual relationship with God. Bradstreet was enveloped by her dissatisfaction with her to the point of ridiculing herself, “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble mind” (1). It was obvious that her mind and spiritual
Bradstreet was a Puritan and was therefore raised with a simplistic view of the world. This, combined with the fact that she was a woman, carried over into her way of writing. Her writing style was not eloquent but plain, humble, and pleasant to read. Her poems dealt with topics such as faith, family, and adversity and were easy to understand. Bradstreet had great faith which she gained through the experiences she encountered in life.
Although Anne Bradstreet appeared to be the ideal Puritanical housewife, she faced many hardships throughout her lifetime. She faced death often, either due to disease or childbirth. These hardships led Bradstreet
Anne Hutchinson's efforts, according to some viewpoints, may have been a failure, but they revealed in unmistakable manner the emotional starvation of Puritan womanhood. Women, saddened by their hardships, depressed by their religion, denied an open love for beauty...flocked with eagerness to hear this feminine radical...a very little listening seems to have convinced them that this woman understood the female heart far better than did John Cotton of any other male pastor of the settlements. (C. Holliday, pps. 45-46.)
Anne Bradstreet, whom most critics consider America’s first “authentic poet”, was born and raised as a Puritan. Bradstreet married her husband Simon at the tender age of eighteen. She wrote her poems while rearing eight children and performing other domestic duties. In her poem “Upon The Burning Of Our House, July 10th, 1666”, Bradstreet tells of three valuable lessons she learned from the fire that destroyed her home.
Edward Taylor’s “Huswifery”, Anne Bradstreet’s “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment,” and “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and a Half Old” all demonstrated strong feeling toward either domestic life or Puritan spiritual beliefs. These three poems dealt with one or more of these topics: death, marriage, spousal duties, and the God’s role in the Puritan life. Taylor and Bradstreet both approach the belief God has His elects and those chosen will precede to heaven but their viewpoints on domestic roles are slightly different; where Taylor is glorifying the work of a housewife, Bradstreet is displaying the dependence and submissiveness that Puritan women have to their husband.
In 1630, the Massachusetts Bay Company set sail to the New World in hope of reforming the Church of England. While crossing the Atlantic, John Winthrop, the puritan leader of the great migration, delivered perhaps the most famous sermon aboard the Arbella, entitled “A Model of Christian Charity.” Winthrop’s sermon gave hope to puritan immigrants to reform the Church of England and set an example for future immigrants. The Puritan’s was a goal to get rid of the offensive features that Catholicism left behind when the Protestant Reformation took place. Under Puritanism, there was a constant strain to devote your life to God and your neighbors. Unlike the old England, they wanted to prove that New England was a community of love and individual worship to God. Therefore, they created a covenant with God and would live their lives according to the covenant. Because of the covenant, Puritans tried to abide by God’s law and got rid of anything that opposed their way of life. Between 1630 and the 18th century, the Puritans tried to create a new society in New England by creating a covenant with God and living your life according to God’s rule, but in the end failed to reform the Church of England. By the mid 1630’s, threats to the Puritans such as Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Thomas Hooker were being banned from the Puritan community for their divergent beliefs. 20 years later, another problem arose with the children of church members and if they were to be granted full membership to the church. Because of these children, a Halfway Covenant was developed to make them “halfway” church members. And even more of a threat to the Puritan society was their notion that they were failing God, because of the belief that witches existed in 1692.
Many British colonists, such as the Puritans, fled from religious persecution by the Church of England and for this reason, early American religious culture quickly gravitated towards holding an anti-Catholic bias. John Tracy Ellis wrote that a universal anti-Catholic bias was ‘vigilantly cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia’ and that Colonial charters and laws contained specific proscriptions against Roman Catholics. In 1642, the Virginia Colony enacted a law prohibit Catholic settlers, and a similar statue was enacted in 1647 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1719, the Rhode Island Colony imposed civil restrictions on Catholics. In 1776, after the American Revolution and the enacting of the Declaration of Independence, Virginia, Penns...
Bradstreet’s poetry is fully religious. Being a pious woman, as everyone was at that time period, she wrote poems claiming high morals and religious motifs. Her writings were very popular among puritans who started colonizing America. His Puritan belief was the reason of her special attitude to her life, soul and sufferings. “She thought that God was so hard on her because her soul was too in love with the world. She also wrote some poems where she asked God to watch over her children and husband” (Gonzalez, 2000).
Quite atypically for a renowned American poet, Anne Bradstreet was an English-born writer who moved to America in 1630 after enduring an arduous journey (“Anne Bradstreet”). Bradstreet was a devoutly religious Puritan, following the precedent of her father and husband, the most prominent men in her life. Her dedicated Puritan beliefs greatly molded her writings. Many of her poems contain references to sin, redemption, and immortality among other recurrent Puritan topics (“Anne Bradstreet”). Anne Bradstreet’s published poetry collections were the first published works of poetry by an English-American (Eberwein 161-163). Anne Bradstreet was a groundbreaking writer as the first English-American poet of her time; her life experiences, Puritan beliefs, and family greatly influenced her writing topics and led her to accomplish international fame through her collection The Tenth Muse.
Anne Bradstreet is often praised as being one of the first feminist voices in colonial America which, perhaps, is misleading. Her poetry adhered to the standard themes and styles of her male contemporaries, glorifying male-dominated society and never questioning the authority of the men that controlled her life both personally and spiritually. She was content to be the property of her father, husband, and Puritan society as a whole. However, because she worked within the confines of the Puritan era's gender roles and literary techniques, Anne Bradstreet was able to shed light on the oft overlooked existence of women within the society.
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) and Edward Taylor (1642-1729) are both early American litterateurs, and are firm believers in the Puritan experiment in America. Anne Bradstreet was the daughter of Thomas Dudley, and got married to Simon Bradstreet when she was sixteen years old. She received a better education than other young women did of her times. Due to her childhood diseases and deadly, childbirth experiences, she became very weak. She had to lead a life full of hardships in the new land. Although her distress is not hidden, faith in God is also the prominent object in her works. Edward Taylor was a son of a yeoman farmer, went to Harvard for higher education, and became a teacher for a while. He was not involved with the church and instead became a puritan minister. He wrote poems for his own pleasure and not as a part of religious service. He too believed in the puritan experiment in America. The poems chosen of these two writers are about death immediate family members.
This poem is a firsthand account of how Anne Bradstreet was feeling when she experienced the loss of her granddaughter, Elizabeth. Although Bradstreet's attitude on Elizabeth's death seems to reflect her belief in God's plan, the diction suggests otherwise.
Anne Bradstreet was America's first published poet, who lived in the 1600’s. She was a well-educated poet of her age and time, a loving wife, and caring mother. She used her poetry to show recognition of women's rights, the puritan lifestyle and beliefs, also to show her husband and eight children how much she loved them. Most of Anne Bradstreet’s poetry was based off true experiences in her life and what she believed in spiritually. In that day and time, she was heavily criticized for being a woman and writing. Bradstreet wrote a lot on puritanism, being a mother and wife, as well as the ways of life. Anne Bradstreet was and still is one of the most important American poets of all time. (poetryfoundation) f
Up until the early 17th century, American literature was chiefly about politics, religion, and recorded events. These writings were very dry and lacked insight into the everyday lives of the authors. To put into writing any individual spiritual reflections that strayed away from the religion of the colony could be dangerous at that time; possibly resulting in banishment from the colony or worse. Likewise, any writing that did not serve at least one of the purposes listed above was considered to be a waste of time that would be better spent praising God. Anne Bradstreet defied the rules of her time by writing about whatever she wanted including personal thoughts, reflections, emotions, and events. Bradstreet was the first to write about personal matters, which is her greatest literary contribution in early American literature.