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Puritan literary period
The story of the puritans
The rise of puritans
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During the Puritan era, women’s role in life was extremely simple. Marriage served as a huge role in women’s lives. The women thought that marriage was a gift from God, and consequently, followed their husband’s wishes. Due to this, women were expected to be docile housewives. They were to clean house, wash laundry, watch children, and please their husband when the man arrived home after work. The women were also expected to have many children, because it was believed that children were gifts from God. While this was the normality of the time period, Anne was different. She was interested in rebelling against society’s way of thinking. She wrote poetry, not only to rebel, but to express the love for all the gifts that she believed God gave
her. Anne had an enormous family while she was still alive. Some of her family accomplished much, while others accomplished nothing.Her husband Simon was the last governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and a diplomat to the crown of London. Her firstborn child was named Samuel. Samuel married two times, and was believed to assist his father with work in the new lands. The next child’s name that Anne gave birth to was Dorothy. Dorothy married to a pastor, providing help to the church wherever she could, but otherwise did nothing to make history. The last child that made the history books was Dudley Bradstreet. Dudley secured a position as a general, spy,adventurer, brewer( of alcohol), and even had the time to write his autobiography. Born in 1612, Anne grew up in the well cultured circumstances her family provided her in England, due to the fact that her father served as a governor for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She was taught miscellaneous subjects that actually aided in the poetry she wrote later in her life. At the age of sixteen, Anne met her future husband and got married to Simon all in the same year. She had her first child, Samuel, at the age of twenty. Soon after she had the rest of her children, she started to become paralyzed from the waist down and had to move to a better location to be able to live in a semi-sufficient standard of living. After she died from an unknown disease back then, now known as tuberculosis, her father and husband helped become the founders of the famous Harvard University
In the eighteenth century, the process of choosing a husband and marrying was not always beneficial to the woman. A myriad of factors prevented women from marrying a man that she herself loved. Additionally, the man that women in the eighteenth century did end up with certainly had the potential to be abusive. The attitudes of Charlotte Lennox and Anna Williams toward women’s desire for male companionship, as well as the politics of sexuality are very different. Although both Charlotte Lennox and Anna Williams express a desire for men in their poetry, Charlotte Lennox views the implications of this desire differently than Anna Williams. While Anna Williams views escaping the confines of marriage as a desirable thing, Charlotte Lennox’s greatest lament, as expressed by her poem “A Song,” is merely to have the freedom to love who she pleases. Although Charlotte Lennox has a more romantic view of men and love than Anna Williams, neither woman denies that need for companionship.
Literary historicism, in the context of this discussion, describes the interpretation of literary or historical texts with respect to the cultural and temporal conditions in which they were produced. This means that the text not only catalogues how individuals respond to their particular circumstances, but also chronicles the movements and inclinations of an age as expressed in the rhetorical devices of its literature. Evaluating the trial of Anne Hutchinson within such a theoretical framework means speculating on the genesis of her theological beliefs with recourse to prevailing theories of gender, class, and interpretation. Because texts are self-contained spheres of discourse, nuanced interpretations of them can be undertaken with greater assiduity than in the case of individuals whose private experiences remain largely concealed from the interpreter's knowledge. A historical analysis of Anne Hutchinson herself is hence, in the present discussion, secondary to the analysis of how she comes across in textual discourse as a palimpsest of seventeenth century gender controversy.
The story of Anne's childhood must be appreciated in order to understand where her drive, inspiration, and motivation were born. As Anne watches her parents go through the tough times in the South, Anne doesn't understand the reasons as to why their life must this way. In the 1940's, at the time of her youth, Mississippi built on the foundations of segregation. Her mother and father would work out in the fields leaving Anne and her siblings home to raise themselves. Their home consisted of one room and was in no comparison to their white neighbors, bosses. At a very young age Anne began to notice the differences in the ways that they were treated versus ...
Anne Hutchinson has long been seen as a strong religious dissenter who paved the way for religious freedom in the strictly Puritan environment of New England. Another interpretation of the controversy surrounding Anne Hutchinson asserts that she was simply a loving wife and mother whose charisma and personal ideas were misconstrued to be a radical religious movement. Since this alleged religious movement was led by a woman, it was quickly dealt with by the Puritan fathers as a real threat. Whatever her motives, she was clearly a great leader in the cause of religious toleration in America and the advancement of women in society. Although Anne Hutchinson is historically documented to have been banished as a religious dissenter, the real motive for her persecution was that she challenged the traditional subordinate role of women in Puritan society by expressing her own religious convictions.
Using the primary sources in chapter 2, child-rearing in Puritan New England was described as the responsibility of Puritan parents. By introducing their children to the importance of education, Puritan parents agreed that child-rearing is a methods that will help ensure their children’s spiritual welfare (Hollitz, 22). The two main goals Puritans taught their children are reading and writing. It is a system they believed that will properly mold their offspring. Parents also taught basic beliefs of religion and principles of government to their children (Hollitz, 22). Puritans took child-rearing very seriously; by using different practices to help the children’s writing development, they are responsible to write: diaries, journals, letters, histories, sermons, and notes on sermons. Although Puritan husband have the power within the household, other than house chore and wifely duties, the mother is mostly in charge of child rearing and provided their child with the proper education on reading, writing, and spiritual (Hollitz, 23).
She questions “why should I be my aunt / or me, or anyone?” (75-76), perhaps highlighting the notion that women were not as likely to be seen as an induvial at this time in history. Additionally, she questions, almost rhetorically so, if “those awful hanging breasts -- / held us all together / or made us all just one?” (81-83). This conveys the questions of what it means to be a woman: are we simply similar because of “awful hanging breasts” as the speaker of the poem questions, or are we held together by something else, and what is society’s perception on this? It is also interesting to note Bishop’s use of parenthesis around the line “I could read” (15). It may function as an aside for the reader to realize that the six year old girl can in fact read, but also might function as a wink to the misconstrued notion throughout history that women were less educated and didn’t
I chose to start this paper by quoting an entire poem of Anne Sexton's. Why? Because no one told the story of Anne Sexton's life as often or as well as Anne Sexton herself. Over and over she wrote, recounted, and recast her struggles with madness, her love affairs, her joys and griefs in parenting, and her religious quests. For example, "Rowing" touches upon the need for Anne to tell stories about herself, her longing for connection with others, her mental problems, and her searching for God - one could not ask for a better introduction to the world of Anne Sexton.
Anne’s thoughts and perspectives of stuff she encountered with, or the struggles she endured weren’t shown in depth in the film. Her curiosity and wonders of countless stuff weren’t shown to the best of ability. Anne was a young girl figuring out many new things in life, in the film however her thoughts aren’t really elaborated. Making the film less interesting, considering the book is a diary full of her encounters of war and the disruptive life that she constantly envisaged throughout her life. She says, “What does that matter? I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart. (20 June, 1942). This quote accentuates the way she wants to write stuff, in the film however she doesn’t
Anne Bradstreet is one of the most remembered American poets who lived during the ages of the 17th century. She faced many hurdles simply because she was a woman taking part of the Puritan law. The Puritans were an assembly of English Protestants that formed in the sixteenth century. The Puritans wanted to cleanse the church by shadowing powerful, stringent religious philosophies which they then earned the name Puritans. They presumed that they were God’s chosen people and that they are an admirable illustration for the rest of the world, attempting to create an exemplary for America. Bradstreet is one of the first notable poets to write English poetry in the American colonies. According to many authors that have studied and written about Bradstreet,
Marriage was very different in the 1400s than it is today. In the 21st century, it is hard to comprehend what kind of marriage traditions they had in the 15th century. While many people toady marry for love, in the Renaissance Era, marriages were primarily arranged by the families. In addition, when a couple did marry the ceremonies and customs were also very different.
... her personal relationship with God, where Mary Rowlandson went through scripture to seek spiritual interpretation. The men were opposed to Anne Hutchinson’s action where they were not to Mary Rowlandson’s. The reason lies within the patriarchal society. Men were able to have some control over Rowlandson and not Hutchinson. Rowlandson was the perfect example of Puritan piety, and Hutchinson was not. Hutchinson was a threat to them as well because she showed her power within the court room when they had such a hard time finding her guilty. Did Rowlandson learn from Hutchinson’s mistakes of taking it to far, or did the Puritan government learn through the course of the 17th century that by empowering women, as they did Rowlandson they could keep women within their gender roles. Regardless both women had a voice, and regardless of the outcomes both voices were heard.
Feminism today remains prominent because even while women’s rights are very strong, women are still fighting for equality every day. In the time of Anne Bradstreet, women had few rights and they were seen as inferior to men. Anne lived among the puritans whom ruled her everyday life. Although it was against the puritan code for women to receive an education, Bradstreet’s father, Thomas Dudley, loved his daughter dearly and made sure that she was well educated which shows in her works. Anne Bradstreet’s literature became well known only because her family published her works under a male name. This was done because writing poetry was a serious offense to the puritans since poetry was considered creative and the only creating that was done was by God. In the works of Anne Bradstreet, she conveys a feminist attitude, and could very well be one of the first American Feminists.
I believe that Anne Bradstreet’s main purpose in writing this poem was not for the entertainment of readers, but for her to escape the oppression of women in the Puritan times. My reasoning behind this hypothesis being that this whole poem is just a prayer to God to rid her of the sickness, which ailed her. Why would Anne Bradstreet write this poem? I believe that Anne was writing this poetry as a rebellious effort to illustrate that women are just as talented as men, if not more talented. Every other line of this poem is a rhyme, if Anne was just writing her prayer down for her pleasure I believe she would have not put so much time and effort into finding the “perfect word” to rhyme with the previous line, if she had not meant this poem to be a demonstration that women can and will become un-oppressed one day. I believe one main purpose of this poem to show women that they should be able to express their ideas and feelings.
Throughout literature’s history, female authors have been hardly recognized for their groundbreaking and eye-opening accounts of what it means to be a woman of society. In most cases of early literature, women are portrayed as weak and unintelligent characters who rely solely on their male counterparts. Also during this time period, it would be shocking to have women character in some stories, especially since their purpose is only secondary to that of the male protagonist. But, in the late 17th to early 18th century, a crop of courageous women began publishing their works, beginning the literary feminist movement. Together, Aphra Behn, Charlotte Smith, Fanny Burney, and Mary Wollstonecraft challenge the status quo of what it means to be a
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.