Anne Bradstreet was the daughter of Thomas Dudley and Dorothy Yorke. Anne lived in a time when the amount of education that a woman received was little to none. She did not attend school but was privileged enough to receive her education from eight tutors and her father. She was very inquisitive and satisfied her hunger for knowledge by reading some of the greatest authors ever known. Anne was a Puritan woman of deep spiritual faith, but her highly intelligent and well-educated mind was capable of questioning and even of rebellion (Piercy, 17). Because of her father's position as the steward of the Early of Lincoln's estate, she had unlimited access to the great llibrary of the manor. In 1628 she married Simon Bradstreet, her father's assistant.
Her father and husband had joined a group of very successful men, whose goal was to protect Puritan values from people like the Bishop of Laud. Their plan was to establish a Puritan society in the New World. Bradstreet and her family immigrated to the New World in 1630. She was not happy giving up all of the benefits of the Earl's manor. After a difficult three months aboard ship, they arrived in the New World. Bradstreet was overwhelmed by the sickness, lack of food, and primitive living conditions. Bradstreet lived a hard life, but she was a strong woman. This internal resolve is reflected in her writings [http://www.annebradstreet.com/anne_bradstreet_bio_002.htm].
For the Puritan man or woman, writing was always just on the edge of idolatry. Writing in the public arena, for women, was a far more scandalous undertaking than it was for their male counterparts. In order to experss her views, Bradstreet presented her works in the modest manner of a godly woman who remains faithful to her duties (Engberg).
Bradstreet was bothered by the cultural bias against women that was common in her time. Women were often considered intellectual inferiors. Her writing was severely criticized because it was that of a woman. When her first publication of The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America was released, her brother-in-law stressed she was a virtuous woman. Bradstreet displays her anger toward this kind of criticism in her writing from "The Prologue":
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits;
A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
For such despite they cast on female wits.
If what i do prove well, it won't advance;
They'll say it's stol'n, or else it was by chance.
Bradstreet wrote love poems about her passion for her husband. These poems to her husband were bold departures from standard Puritan poetry (Watts). In Bradstreet's Puritan culture, the love between husband and wife was supposed to be repressed, so as not to distract from devotion to God. A good example is the poem, "To My Dear and Loving Husband":
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
Bradstreet's works also dealt with her religious experiences. In these writings, she gives an insight of Puritan views of salvation and redemtion. Bradstreet writes about how she feels that God has punished her through her illnesses and her domestic problems. The Puritans believed that suffering was God's way of preparing the heart for accepting His Grace. This idea plagued Bradstreet, and she wrote about how she struggled to do everything she could to give into His will. She thought that God was hard on her because her soul was too in love with the world.
The publication of her first work gave her the confidence and experience to write freely in her own style. Bradstreet began to express her own emotions in her writings. In her later works, she proclaims that women are worth something. In writing these later works, one would realize that Bradstreet had planned on having her poetry published from the beginning. The use of emotion in her writings, is what changed Anne Bradstreet from a good writer into a great writer. This is definitely not the "Puritan way" [http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/16071783/lit/bradstre.htm].
Percy, J.K. Anne Bradstreet. Twayne Publishers Inc., New York, 1965.
Watts, E.S. The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945. University of Texas Press, Austin and
London, 1977.
Engberg, K.S. The Right to Write. University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland, 2010.
