Comparing Anne Bradstreet's To My Dear And Loving Husband

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In the poem, “To My Dear and Loving Husband”, the speaker proclaims her profound and passionate love towards her husband only to illuminate the value of a mans figure in a woman’s life during the 1700’s. The poet Anne Bradstreet, brings forth this essence of emotional attachment and dependency through the use of unadorned syntax, declarative tone, imagery and repetition to send her message of her undying loyal love. The poem begins with the image of unity between husband and wife. The aspect of being entitled to one is conveyed with a couplet, “... then surely we...then thee”, the subservient speaker characterize herself to be crafted into this self proving predominate marriage. To continue, her rhyme scheme justifies a religion and how she can never repay such a gift of pure love to God so …show more content…

To illustrate, she repetitively announces how literal aspects of her environment cannot overcome the gratitude she receives from being a wife, “gold, riches, recompense, repay” cannot grasp her monogamy since, “I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold”. Which ironically does not contribute to the necessities of the lifestyle the author had during her time period, in an era of such economic demand and barriers for the english settlers. She conveys this declarative tone that it enhances the emotional attachment in the poem, “My love is such that Rivers cannot quench”. As a result, her belief in an afterlife actually outlines why the speaker is so persistent in her loyalty towards her husband. She steers clear from identifying herself as her own, and instead categorizes herself into this dependent woman with “we”, that if she tends to her husband with the utmost endearment they will be both rewarded in the afterlife, “ that when we live no more, we may live ever”, the real reward is not monetary but spiritual

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