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Reaction paper on anne bradstreet poems
Anne bradstreet contribution to literature
Anne bradstreet contribution to literature
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Recommended: Reaction paper on anne bradstreet poems
In The Author to her Book, the author’s tone changes multiple times throughout the story making it quite clear where she stands and how she wants the reader to feel about each sentence she writes. By analyzing the words and images Anne Bradstreet uses and depicts, it clear she is frustrated and annoyed about what is happening based on what the speaker says in the poem. It is clear the author is frustrated from the first sentence. The speaker starts by saying, “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain.” After reading this quote, it is easy to tell the author is not satisfied with the “offspring” of her brain, which are most likely her poems. She calls the “offspring” ill-formed, and her brain, feeble. This choice of words makes it apparent
Anne Bradstreet’s inability to perfect her work before it was released frustrated her to the point where she internalizes the book’s imperfections as a reflection of herself. Bradstreet uses an extended metaphor of a mother and a child to compare the relationship between herself as the author and her book. Rather than investing her spirit in God, she repeatedly focuses on trying to improve the quality of her writing with no success, “I washed thy face, but more defects I saw” (Bradstreet 13). Like a mother protecting her child, Bradstreet’s attempts to prevent critics from negatively analyzing her work of art (20). Her continuous obsession about people’s opinions consumed in the Earthly world and essentially distracted her from developing a spiritual relationship with God. Bradstreet was enveloped by her dissatisfaction with her to the point of ridiculing herself, “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble mind” (1). It was obvious that her mind and spiritual
Anne Bradstreet, whom most critics consider America’s first “authentic poet”, was born and raised as a Puritan. Bradstreet married her husband Simon at the tender age of eighteen. She wrote her poems while rearing eight children and performing other domestic duties. In her poem “Upon The Burning Of Our House, July 10th, 1666”, Bradstreet tells of three valuable lessons she learned from the fire that destroyed her home.
Anne Bradstreet is seen as a true poetic writer for the seventeenth century. She exhibits a strong Puritan voice and is one of the first notable poets to write English verse in the American colonies. Bradstreet’s work symbolizes both her Puritan and feminine ideals and appeals to a wide audience of readers. American Puritan culture was basically unstable, with various inchoate formations of social, political, and religious powers competing publicly. Her thoughts are usually on the reality surrounding her or images from the Bible. Bradstreet’s writing is that of her personal and Puritan life. Anne Bradstreet’s individualism lies in her choice of material rather than in her style.
Anne Bradstreet can be considered as a strong-willed but sensitive Puritan woman. Her poetry includes a combination of sarcasm and dispute against certain issues involving the unequal rights between men and women, and sentimental writings about her own emotions. She mostly writes about her feelings towards events going on in her personal life and not so much about politics or social phenomena. She did not write so as to put on a show or to be socially correct, but about her genuine feelings. She writes about being a woman and all the things that come with it, family, love, sorrow and seeking equality. She also incorporates her religious beliefs strongly in her poem as a driving force to reconciliation between herself and God. Anne Bradstreet was an eloquent poet who was able to convey her innermost feelings to the reader through various techniques and diction.
As the story begins, the narrator expresses her feelings for her environment in a very disturbed tone. The narrator explains her feelings through the use of negatively connoted words such as “irritating” and “revolting” to describe her disgust for her surroundings. These two negatively connoted words tell us that the narrator is truly bothered and
...e from her love to the world. Perhaps, she believed that in this love of her, she became God-like and God thus punishes her. Nevertheless, the presence of God in her poems is more than clear. Perhaps, it was due to religious beliefs that she though that it was wrong to feel too strong feelings to world and she considered herself to be a sinner who deserves punishment. Today, there are few followers of Bradstreet, but she, her ideas and her thoughts about sufferings still remain in modern books.
Anne Bradstreet wrote poetry in a time when only Puritan men were publishing writing, mostly about their faith and religion. Thus, she was the first woman in the colonies to be published and received a lot of criticism for it. At this time, there were roles that women were expected to fill, specifically wife and mother roles, and going against these roles could have grand consequences. While her poems may seem simple and domestic, they contain a more complex meaning when looked at closely. Through many of her poems, Bradstreet expressed her frustration towards her society’s gender norms and went against the Patriarchal ideas of the Puritan society.
. This story embodies how the author saw her experiences that she had lived through.
... she is indeed angered and fed up at the fact that there is a stereotype. The way in which she contradicts herself makes it hard for readers to understand the true meaning or point to her poem, the voice was angry and ready for change, yet the actions that the individual was participating in raised questions of whether or not he actually fit the stereotype.
...smile”; however, after listening to the introduction about every pen from the girl, the boy’s voice “filling with fear”. This marked contrast indicates the speaker’s impatience, and the audience can feel the development of the story clearly. If the attitudes of the speaker remained the same throughout the poem, it will create a lack of movement so that the audience cannot relate to the speaker.
In Anne Bradstreet's poem "The Author to Her Book," the controlling metaphor is the image of a baby being born and cared for. This birth imagery expresses the complex attitude of the speaker by demonstrating that the speaker's low regard for her own work and her actions are contradictory.
Bradstreet is a master of balance, harnessing her love for God, her family, and her intelligence without dampening her knowledge or creativity. Literary analysts often believe Bradstreet accidentally creates “feminist irony,” () but few explore the possibility of Bradstreet placing the irony there willingly. According to The Works of Anne Bradstreet by Johnston, “Most of what [people] know about Anne herself [are from] her own writings,” () because the lack of personal accounts about her character, but nonetheless many have gathered an unvarying construct of her character. Bradstreet, as an individual, was much more headstrong than many, who believe her inconsistencies are intellectual mistakes, assume. Bradstreet does not fear strict convention or judgement like many interpreters believe, even though she knew some would be inevitably uncomfortable with her
...e to portray her feelings and dreams about the world in which she lived. Bradstreet lived in a very strict religious community which would not have accepted very many new or provocative ideas such as those of Anne Hutchinson and Anne Bradstreet. This caused Bradstreet to hide her ideas in the lines of poetry which she created for her family and friends. If she had intended her poetry to be used for the purpose of making money or expressing ideas she would have written them so that they would have been more widely accepted at the time in which she lived. It is apparent that Bradstreet never intended to publish her more personal poems such as, To My Dear and Loving Husband because of its provocative language and lack of religious ideas. Bradstreet was not trying to make any major changes in her society rather to simply express herself through poetic language.
...mmon humanity. For the first time in American literature, the reader can see through the eyes of the author, and feel what the author feels. Bradstreet showed all future American writers the beauty of writing as means of self expression. This is why Anne Bradstreet’s single greatest literary contribution is her use of personal content.
She defines her idea of what is right in a relationship by describing how hard and painful it is for her to stray from that ideal in this instance. As the poem evolves, one can begin to see the author having a conflict with values, while simultaneously expressing which values are hers and which are unnatural to her. She accomplishes this accounting of values by personalizing her position in a somewhat unsettling way throughout the poem.