Anne Bradstreet Defies Conventions and Defends Women in Early American Literature

Born in 1612 in Northampton, England, Anne Bradstreet was the daughter of Thomas Dudley, a steward of the Earl of Lincoln, and Dorothy Yorke, a gentlewoman of noble heritage. After emigrating to America in 1630 and experiencing many hardships along the journey, Bradstreet turned to God and allowed her faith to direct her. Some consider her to be the first American poet as she published the first book in the United States written by a woman. Her work portrays the struggles that a Puritan, and in particular a Puritan woman, faced in the New England colonial life. Most of her works centered on her love for her husband and children or her spirituality and struggle with the Puritan beliefs. Some of her works openly confront subjects disapproved by the Puritan elders, such as miscarriages. (Anne Bradstreet)

Despite the controversy surrounding Bradstreet's choice to question Puritan beliefs in her writings, most critics agree on at least one thing: she knew what she was doing and the consequences she would face for addressing these issues. Lee Day-Lindsey writes that:

To have been a Puritan in colonial America was to agree to a firm set of rules regarding daily life, and to have been a Puritan woman meant that the rules were even more abundant and strict. Anne Bradstreet... was well aware of Puritan standards, and more important, knew the consequences of every behavior. (66)

Carrie Blackstock suggests that "Puritan faith, then is not essential to Bradstreet's identity, but rather is produced in response to her historical context, itself pervaded by Puritanism" (243). Jean Lutes writes that Bradstreet's "secure place in American literary history demonstrates her difference from her contemporaries" (312).

Sometimes Bradstreet's disconcert with the Puritan beliefs arises in elegies or epitaphs that she writes for those in political positions. For example, Helen Maragou writes that "Bradstreet's depiction of Alexander the Great is at odds with the Puritan dogma that subordinates the worldly desires for power, fame, and honor to higher spiritual and moral values" (70). Paula Kopacz writes that the elegy she wrote for Queen Elizabeth "has achieved much critical attention because Bradstreet uses the occasion to defend women" (181).

Bradstreet's identity as a woman also created a problem for the reception of her work. Not only was she speaking out against the Puritan beliefs, but she was a woman speaking out against the beliefs. According to Kopacz, "writing was not an activity for one's leisure time, in a recreational sense" (117). Nancy Wright claims that Bradstreet "Bradstreet voices the strictures of a society that attempts to exclude her from this activity" (253). Tamara Harvey recognizes that at the time that she is writing, "Bradstreet is alone and feels herself alone in her struggle with sexist literary traditions" (6). Avery Fischer believes that Bradstreet is "either an exemplar of seventeenth-century Puritan piety" or "an early feminist because of her willingness to produce poetry in a society that viewed women writers as 'dangerous'" (11). Timothy Sweet writes that "a woman writer feels overwhelmed by and excluded from the essentially male tradition of authorship" (152). Nevertheless, Alvin Rosenfeld claims that as a woman writer, Bradstreet provides "that special point of view that belongs to the feminine sensibility and which... will provide certain details of life in early America missing in the writings of her Puritan brothers" (79).

Perhaps the most important aspect of Bradstreet's writings is that she was the first female to write about the New England colonial life, and she succeeded. Ivy Schweitzer points out that "Anne Bradstreet was the first woman in colonial New England to raise her voice in a sustained poetic achievement" (291). Lee Oser claims that "as a religious poet, Bradstreet transposed the rival voices of the Antinomian Crisis-the great spiritual expressions of her day-into her best and most richly ambivalent poem" (200). Bethany Reid writes that Bradstreet was successful in constructing "a new space in which women can claim poetic legitimacy precisely because their talents and accomplishments can be distinguished from those of men" (540). According to Tom Sleigh, ever since Bradstreet started appearing in American literature, "American poetry has never been content to let the self hang in the wind, subject to the uncertainty of its own status, but able to experience that uncertainty in its own independent way" (179). Rosemary Guruswamy says that women like Bradstreet "put the transgressive into play, assuming masks and subverting what the mainstream considers a man's world of language" (103). The publication of Bradstreet's works made her well-known and model for following American women poets such as Deborah Prince, Sarah Prince Gill, Mary Pepperell, and Martha Brewster (Cowell 106).

Anne Bradstreet's role as a Puritan wife and mother posed problems when she chose to start writing. But when she started writing on subjects which conflicted with Puritan beliefs, she fell into hot water with critics. Though a "dutiful Christian, devoted wife and mother, shy but determined poet" (Lutes 311), Bradstreet felt a desire for something greater. She wanted her poetry to make an impact on her readers and that is why she chose to write about things that were considered un-Puritan and about people in high places who did not carry Puritan beliefs such as Queen Elizabeth I. These works allowed her to encourage other Puritan women who were afraid to reveal their negative feelings towards the Puritan belief system and quickly become one of the most noted early American women writers. Despite her rigid Puritan background, Anne Bradstreet often wrote on subjects, particularly that of female oppression by the Puritans, which conflicted with her doctrinal beliefs-through a male speaking voice which enabled her to escape the consequences of being a woman writer-in order to encourage those who felt oppressed by those beliefs and make a significant impact on establishing early American literature as a woman writer.

Anne Bradstreet was first and foremost a Puritan mother and wife; however, she did not allow that to keep her from writing about her feelings. Kopacz writes that "the task for the Puritan was not to repress the emotions, but to direct them. Emotions were not considered autonomous, but subject of the control of the will" (182). Laughlin describes Bradstreet as:

...a cultured, educated Englishwoman adapting herself to a totally strange new environment, a loving wife, a devoted mother, a questing Puritan, and a sensitive poet. (2)

Blackstock says that it is because of Bradstreet's role as a Puritan mother and wife that "her feminist rebellion was carried out quietly; that because she was a woman and Puritan, her poetry was often framed with ostensible apologies" (238). This can be seen in "The Prologue", where Bradstreet apologizes for writing because:

For my mean pen are too superior things:

Or how they all, or each their dates have run

Let poets and historians set these forth,

My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth. (3-7)

She says that "men can do best, and women know it well" (40). By putting the focus back on the men and claiming that she knows men are better writers than she will ever be, Bradstreet releases herself from the consequences of being a woman writer.

Another way which Bradstreet frees herself from punishment for writing is by using the name of a precursor. Wright says that "Bradstreet explores how the conventions of an epitaph that articulates the name and fame of her precursors authorize and endow her voice with the poetic agency customarily denied to women" (244). Kopacz says that Bradstreet is "slavishly but imperfectly trying to emulate the male writers who influenced her" (176) For example, in "The Grecian Monarchy", Bradstreet depicts Alexander the Great, and shows her admiration but condemnation of him. Maragou says that "on one level then, one can see Anne Bradstreet's whole-hearted condemnation of Alexander's moral degradation" but yet on the other level, "Bradstreet's disparaging tone is balanced by an understated fascination with Alexander's personality" (76). Rather than being considered as weak for using the males as a speaking subject, Bradstreet is actually showing her poetic strength, according to Amanda Porterfield. She says that "Bradstreet's deft use of the Puritan convention of wifely devotion allowed her explicit claims of submissiveness to mediate her implicit authority as poet and as wife" (203).

Much like her mixed feelings about Alexander, Bradstreet struggled with her mixed feelings about the Puritan beliefs. For example, in "The Author to Her Book", Bradstreet writes about her miscarriage, even though "some women in the Puritan community were persuaded to conceal the miscarriage and to grant "instruction" by a minister (Day-Lindsey 67). Puritans believe that males have no responsibility in an abnormal childbirth, and therefore, it is the fault of either the mother or the midwife. Day-Lindsey points out the cases of Ann Hutchinson and Mary Dyer, both of which John Winthrop writes about in his Journal. Hutchinson showed "persistent objections to Puritan teachings" and miscarried six weeks early while under house arrest for heresy (67). Dyer's midwife fled after Dyer's baby was miscarried "because it became known that she 'practiced physic'" (67).

Bradstreet wrote "The Author to Her Book" in order to help out both of these women by sharing her similar experience, despite the consequences she might face for writing about something un-Puritan. Day-Lindsey says that

Knowing her immediate audience, Bradstreet conveys the anxiety of Puritan women who feared not only an abnormal childbirth, but also the public castigation of her motivations and influences. (68)

Bradstreet knew that by writing this poem she was putting herself at risk of being charged for heresy because she was "creating something that did not meet with the approval of Puritan elders" (Day-Lindsey 68). The graphic language that Bradstreet uses poses a problem for the elders. She starts out the poem by saying "thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain" (1) suggesting the deformities which the baby had. She takes full responsibility for the deformed baby when she says "if for they father asked, say thou hadst none" (22). This relieves the father from any obligation to claim the child as his own.

Fischer, Oser, and Reid, among other critics, also mention the case of Ann Hutchinson. Fischer says that while Bradstreet's writings were "not radical enough to merit the harsh punishments accorded Ann Hutchinson", her "pious" poems "often betrayed more struggle than resignation (11). She also argues that Bradstreet questions Puritan beliefs, such as the belief that marriage dissolves at death, through her writings. This can be seen in "To My Dear and Loving Husband", one of many love poems that Bradstreet wrote to her husband. In this poem, she writes that "then while we live, in love let's so persevere/that when we live no more, we may live forever" (11-12). By this last line, she means that she hopes her and her husband will love each other, even after death, which conflicts with the Puritan belief that marriage dissolves at death.

Despite any objections from other Puritans for her un-Puritan writings, Bradstreet's writings helped establish women writers in early American literature as she was one of the first. Kopacz says that:

[Bradstreet's works] tell us about life in New England in the mid-seventeenth century. In both the early and the later poetry the literary conventions and doctrinal assertions in the poems bound Bradstreet to her culture-her English literary heritage and her New World theology. (176)

Also, Bradstreet's role as a writer of elegies and epitaphs helped establish her as a writer because of the importance of them. The elegies she wrote for men such as Alexander the Great and Sir Philip Sidney gave her precursors of which to write by as a woman writer. Also, her elegy for Queen Elizabeth established a power for women which had not been present before. Wright claims that:

Bradstreet's elegy and epitaphs are important public statements upon which the queen's good fame stands... Her fame disproves derogatory ideas about women. Elizabeth I is an argument that silences the voices of male authorities, "Doctors" who denigrate women's abilities. (257)

The fact that she expressed her feelings through male voices in her elegies did not hinder the importance of them, but allowed her to write without facing consequences because of the use of the males as speaking subjects.

In the queen's elegy entitled "In Honor of That High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory", Bradstreet presents another apology. She writes that "no Phoenix pen, nor Spenser's poetry,/No Speed's nor Camden's learned history,/Eliza's works, wars, praise, can e'er compact" (19-21). Again by referring to Spenser, a precursor, Bradstreet proves her right to write. She apologizes for writing because she is a woman and also because nothing can praise the queen's good works, but using her male precursor's name, she presses on. Again by using the male as the speaking subject, Bradstreet recognizes "commonplace ideas about feminine gender used to deny women the agency of a speaking or writing subject" (Wright 257).

Bradstreet's writings opened a door for women writers who followed in her footsteps because she was not afraid to write about how she felt, even if it was against her religious beliefs. Before her writings, women were "depicted even in the literature of their time as being distinctly marginal in the life of the community, historical fact to the contrary" (Kopacz 176). Bradstreet helped tear down this obstacle and give women the feeling that they could write. Ann Stanford reiterates this when she writes "she sets the tone for a long line of American writers who would follow her, who could press farther against the limitations of society" (388). Those who followed her style of writing, however, were not just women. Stanford points out Cooper, Hawthorne, and Melville, all whom pressed the boundaries of the social world and challenged commonplace beliefs while writing their works.

Another important factor of Bradstreet's work is the time period and settings in which she is writing. She is in America at the beginning of a new nation, providing a rare point of view. Stanford says that the crude settlement set up in Salem, Massachusetts where Bradstreet lived in America "was no doubt a dismal sight compared to her own homeland" (373) but yet she remained loyal to America as she wrote about her experiences there.

[Bradstreet] lived and wrote in the first years of the foundation of the American colonies, in a place and a time that are near-mythic in the popular imagination, and we anticipate in her writings, stubbornly and perhaps even unfairly, some sense of that age and some early traces of the developing myth. (Rosenfeld 79)

Though she grew up reading English and French writers, Bradstreet's work remains very American. As she writes about her life in colonial New England, the reader grasps for a feeling of the new American.

Though she was first and foremost a devoted Puritan wife and mother, Bradstreet did not allow these restrictions to keep her from writing. Instead, she wrote about how she felt, no matter the consequences. She found ways to escape being punished for writing as a woman such as using male precursors, male speaking subjects, and writing apologies. Addressing the female oppression caused by the Puritan beliefs, Bradstreet encourages women and men alike, and those who will follow in her footsteps as a writer. Even though she had doubts about the Puritan beliefs, she remained devoted to them, and that can be seen in her writings as she uses common Puritan themes like virtuous death (Wright 250). Her writings challenged Puritan beliefs but set the bar for American writers to follow her.

Works Cited

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---. "In Honor of That High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory". Baym. 247-51.

---. "The Prologue". Baym. 239-40.

---. "To My Dear and Loving Husband". Baym. 263.

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