Anne Bradstreet’s The Flesh and the Spirit
SOUL: Oh, who shall from this dungeon raise
A soul enslaved so may ways?
With bolts of bones, that fettered stands
In feet, and manacled in hands;
Here blinded with an eye, and there
Deaf with the drumming of an ear;
A soul hung up, as 'twere, in chains
Of nerves, and arteries, and veins;
Tortured, besides each other part,
In a vain head, and double heart.
- Andrew Marvell "A Dialogue between the Soul and Body" (1621 - 1678)
In "The Flesh and the Spirit" Anne Bradstreet, like Andrew Marvell, creates a "dialogue" between the Earth bound "Flesh/Body" and the Heaven raised "Spirit/Soul." However, while Marvell leaves ambiguous which voice is superior in his "dialogue," Bradstreet is quite clear that the "Spirit" will "triumph" over her sister "Flesh," and as "victor" she will wear a "laurel head." Marvell launches directly into "dialogue" causing the exclusion of any narrator, and thus lessening the chance for determination of 'right' and 'wrong.' Bradstreet opens "The Flesh and the Spirit" in the first person. The "I" quickly becomes an observer of the "sisters'" debate. By opening with "I" Bradstreet leads the reader to understand the deep personal interest of the speaker in the outcome of the sisters' conversation; for the speaker comes to "Lacrim flood" (i.e. "tears") to hear these two siblings speak. The speaker's "st[anding]" and "hear[ing]" appear hardly coincidental. In fact the discourse is entirely held between two parts of the speaker's own being, her "Spirit" and her "Flesh." Through "observation" of the "dialogue" the speaker separates herself from the conflict and makes her claim to 'impartiality.' Thus, Bradstreet strengthens the "Spirit's" "victory" by allowing both sisters' views to be objectively represented instead of subjectively presented. Though of course, because the speaker is relaying this conversation to the reader, what was heard could indeed be colored by the speaker's own voice (i.e. desire). Thus, the complicated narrative web, which Bradstreet weaves, causes the reader, like the speaker, to internalize the "dialogue" between the two sisters.
The trope of the "dialogue" between flesh and spirit commonly appeared during the 17th century in Puritan discourse. According to Margaret Olofson Thickstun, in her Fictions of the Feminine: Puritan Doctrine and the Representation of Women, Puritans held that "flesh lusts against the spirit." Thickstun also states that Puritan women were associated with the flesh, while men of the faith were allied with the spirit. Thus, it is interesting that Bradstreet creates a discourse between two sisters instead of perhaps a sister and a superior brother. Bradstreet seems to imply by this construct that the woman can contain both "Flesh" and "Spirit," and that she need not what "earth doth hold," indeed as "Flesh" accuses "That all in th' world [Spirit] count'st but poor". Is Bradstreet implying that woman does not need man or matrimony to see that "Spirit" belongs to a higher nature than "Flesh"? However, this reading might be drawing to an extreme the intentions of Bradstreet, who in her other works, especially her later 'domestically' oriented pieces, holds to the teachings of the Puritans faith and praises and relies heavily upon her husband's guidance (see "To My Dear and Loving Husband" and "A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment").
Both Bradstreet and Marvell, each by their own method, seek "freedom from, not freedom for the flesh" (Thickstun). For Bradstreet "unto the pure all things are pure" (Paul) "Of life, there are the waters sure,/Which shall remain forever pure" (Bradstreet). Thus, Bradstreet, opening with the speaker "st[anding] close" to a "flood" of renewing and baptismal "'tears,'" employs an extended metaphor of a struggle, settled through "dialogue," to over come the "lusts" of the flesh and rise to the Puritan ideal of disembodied spirituality.
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