Gender And Inferiority In Anne Bradstreet's The Prologue

Anne Bradstreet, in the first half of her poem “The Prologue,” declares her inferiority, but she shifts her tone in stanzas five and six to reveal her ulterior motive -- to satirize gender roles. By using a strict poetic meter, often referencing historical and literary fact, but still calling herself unworthy simply because of her gender, she mocks society’s expectations for women to stay humble. Bradstreet allows the two halves of the poem to clash, signalling to the readers, through stark inconsistency, that her goal is to ridicule how early Puritan American society judges her merit. She alternates between conflicting ideas of confidence and humility not because she is humbly ignorant of her own capabilities, but because she intends to satirize seventeenth-century societal conventions that pressure strong, intelligent women to remain humble and compliant.

Bradstreet

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