Comparing Bradstreet's To My Dear And Loving Husband

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." This famous quote by Robert Heinlein is Anne Bradstreet’s poem To My Dear and Loving Husband in one sentence. Being the first women to be recognized as an accomplished poet, Bradstreet wrote that poem to, of course, her husband. The poem expresses her never-ending love and gratitude for her husband. It shows the appreciation she has towards her spouse. The love is so grand that no one else but the two can fathom. And no matter how much time passes by, the love continues to grow and does even after life.

The poem starts off with, “If ever two were one, then surely we” (1). Bradstreet says that if ever two people were one person, then she

and her husband certainly were. In modern translation, she says that she and her husband are “two peas in a pod’. This line illustrates the strong and unbreakable bond they have. According to Charlotte Gordon from the Journal of Gilder Lehrman Institute, “the ‘if ever’ of the opening line introduces an impossible mathematical proposition, that two can become one, a paradox that the human couple overcomes, or, at least, almost overcomes as Bradstreet leaves the line dangling in the realm of the impossible ‘if’” (1). Which links back to how the poet trusts she and her husband are basically one human being. No matter how many bumps on the road and disagreements they might encounter, she is certain that the bond will never break. The poem continues to say “I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,” (5). She is explaining that nothing is as powerful as and more meaningful than the love she shares with her husband. No amount of money or riches can relate or come close to the love between the married couple. Bradstreet does not hold back on how she feels and the deep affection she has for her husband. Being a Puritan who ought to be reserved and conservative, and, “Bradstreet was not supposed to be able to write like this. Most people believed that women’s brains were too small to allow them to read, let alone write, poetry” (4). She uses figurative language in this poem to convey the message of the devotion for her husband.
Furthermore, in the poem Bradstreet says, “Compare with me, ye women, if you can” (4).

It’s clear to see that she is happy with her marriage unlike her peers. Bradstreet surely doesn’t mean this in any demeaning or bragging way, she is just so infatuated with who is clearly her soul mate and the love of her life that she wrote and dedicate a poem to. She also states in the poem that, “My love is such that rivers cannot quench, / Nor ought but love from thee give -recompense” (7-8). These two lines are great worldly comparisons. She can’t get enough of her husband. Her husband brings her this happiness and form of bliss that she can’t find anywhere else. No supply of water can satisfy the thirst she has. It’s common to see a husband be loved by his wife, but it is shocking and quiet satisfying to see the amount of love Bradstreet has for her husband. Tying back to her background of being a Puritan, “the Puritans acknowledged the importance of love, as long as one did not lose sight of God, and they believed that wealth could be a sign of being among God’s chosen” (Gordon 2). Even though there is thoughts of Puritans being old-fashioned and aren’t allowed to be affectionate, Bradstreet breaks that

stereotype.
No surprise, the poem continues to show nothing but more love than the line before.

When a wife declares, “Thy love is such I can no way repay; / The heaven reward thee manifold, I pray” (9-10), the husband is doing something right. She explains how, no matter how much love she gives back, no matter how much of the sacrifices he does and time her husband’s give, she can no way be equal to him and no way could she pay him back. Bradstreet hopes and prays that heaven, where assumingly her husband will be, rewards and gives him back all he has done for her. There is no better place to be valued and rewarded in than heaven. Bradstreet wants nothing more than heaven being where her beloved ends up in the afterlife. Bradstreet carries on in the poem elucidating that, “Then while we live, in love let’s go preserver, / That when we live no more we may live ever” (11-12). With this quote, she make a vast connection with spirituality and humanity. In the Puritan world, it is believed that, “they had no control over their final destiny. Their fate was in God’s hands,” (Gordon 3). By means of the last two lines of the poem, Bradstreet is strong believer of her faith. She is confident that her husband is going to heaven and that in heaven, she prays, that he will be granted rewards for what he has done for his wife out of love and

kindness.
The poet speaks to her husband, celebrating their unity and saying that there is no man in the world whose wife loves him more. If there was ever a wife happier with her husband, the poet asks those women to compare themselves to her. She prizes her husband's love more than gold or the riches of the East. Rivers cannot quench her love and no love but his can ever satisfy her. There is no way she can ever repay him for his love. She believes they should love each other so much that when they die, their love will live on. That’s real love.