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LITR 4231 Early American
Literature Research Posts 2014 (research post assignment) Research Post 1 |
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Liz Nolen
Born Too Soon
In class we read poems written by Anne
Bradstreet. Given that I enjoyed the poems and learning about her, I decided to
discover additional information about her.
I was warned I might not find much about her private life, but after
looking up her past, I realized I had heard her name before in a history class.
She was a friend of Anne Hutchinson, another woman born too soon.
My curiosity about her was to find out possibly why Anne decided to write
in a time period when women were not
allowed to write because it might take them away from their family duties. I
also wanted to unearth how she did
get published, since women in this time period were considered to be the weaker
gender in both body and mind.
While trying to find
why Anne Bradstreet wrote, I learned that as a child she had access to
private tutors and her father’s library.
This allowed Anne educational opportunities uncommon for women in this
era, and gave her the
advantage of being able write with confidence about politics, history, medicine,
and theology; thus allowing her to have a
vocabulary and knowledge very rare for women to possess back then.
Some of the websites I searched contradicted each other’s information.
One website stated that Anne married Simon Bradstreet at the age of
sixteen, but a few others stated she was eighteen.
Something I do not remember discussing in class was the fact that Anne
struggled in life because she had smallpox and also experienced paralysis
according to one website. I found
other websites contradictory, stating “it was likely that she had tuberculosis
“and that “while the cause of her death is not certain, the likelihood was from
tuberculosis.” Another website
stated she had polio at an early age, and later tuberculosis. No matter who is
right, she died after a long and difficult battle with her illness.
But
back to WHY she wrote; I feel that Anne wrote to make herself happy. Her poetry
was based on her life experiences, and her love for her husband and family.
Her work was intended to be seen by her
husband and children only. I read
Anne used her writing as a way to deal with her loneliness while her husband was
away for political dealings and her struggles adapting to her new life in the
colonies. I lay a wager most of us
have kept a diary or a journal in our lifetime to record our feelings.
Had it not been for Anne’s brother-in-law
John Woodbridge, we may have never had the opportunity to enjoy her work. While
researching, I found that John had secretly copied Anne’s work and later brought
it to England to have it published, without her permission. At least he was
honest enough to admit what he did in the preface of her first collection,
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in
America, By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts. Anne was troubled by the
publication, and updated it a few years later, with a poem of apology for its
original publication. She also kept
her later writings more private. Bradstreet became the
first female poets ever published in both England
and the New World, and The Tenth
Muse became the only book of hers to be published in her lifetime.
One of her children collected and published her other work after Anne’s
death.
I discovered two letters she wrote; the
first to her children telling them about her trip to the New World-America, and
her feelings about her life there.
The second, A Letter to Her Husband,
Absent upon Public Employment, describes the loneliness she felt while her
husband was out of town. In this
letter she uses the symbolism of nature by referring to her husband as the sun
and the warmth of the sun being her happiness.
Society as a whole did not truly recognize the significance and
importance of Bradstreet’s poetry until the 1960’s when her works appeared as
woman suffragist began the women’s right movement.
In looking for my answers, I would have to
say my professor was right, there is little we know about Anne Bradstreet's
private life other than she was a Puritan woman in every way and she wrote
poetry to pass time. I liked the way she used certain metaphors and word play to
write, and it would not trigger issues with society because it seemed as if she
were sincere in everything she wrote. I
did find out things about her that I did not learn in class, like her illnesses,
and how her only book was published.
One of the most important findings was the fact that Anne Bradstreet was
a very brave woman. As I said
before, Anne Bradstreet was born too soon, but I for one am glad she was.
Works Cited
http://sschlemminger.wordpress.com/2013/01/27/how-did-anne-bradstreet-become-a-famous-poet/
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/bradstreetanne/a/anne_bradstreet.htm
http://www.poemhunter.com/anne-bradstreet/biography/
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5766
http://www2.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/16071783/lit/bradstre.htm
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