Anne Bradstreet And Rowlandson Analysis

In addition to giving Mary Rowlandson and Anne Bradstreet hardships, God has given them comfort while undergoing these sufferings. Bradstreet strays a little farther than Rowlandson. Rowlandson is not tempted by atheism as Bradstreet is in her letter. Bradstreet mentions that Satan has “troubled me concerning the verity of the Scriptures…I never saw any miracles to confirm me, and those which I read of, how did I know but they were feigned,” (Bradstreet 125). Bradstreet looks to Him in her sufferings, but she finds Him in nature as she says, “That there is a God my reason would soon tell me by the wondrous works that I see,” (Bradstreet 125). Rowlandson just wasted holy time and found Him in her torment. God always brought relief to them

Bradstreet said in “The Prologue” how her poems were probably going to be received, “I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/ Who says my hand a needle better fits,/ A poet’s pen all scorn I should thus wrong,/ For such despite they cast on female wits:/ If what I do prove well, it won’t advance, They’ll say it’s sto’n, or else it was by chance,’ (Bradstreet 25-30). She’s saying that most people will think she needs to put down the pen and pick up the needle to sew for her family. If she does write something worthwhile, everyone will believe that either she plagiarized it or that it was a lucky shot. When she says “female wits” we know that if she were a man she would not be questioned as much as a poet. She feels, because of her gender, as if she can’t write about, “wars, of captains, and of kings, / Of cities founded, commonwealths begun, / For my mean pen are too superior things…” (Bradstreet 1-3). It is interesting Bradstreet did not try to disguise the fact that she was a woman poet as so many other literary women did before her. She mentions that the 9 Greek muses were women, “But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild/ Else of our sex, why feigned those nine/ And poesy made Calliope’s own child;” (Bradstreet 31-33). Throughout the whole poem she is putting down her own work in comparison to a man’s epic poetry, but in a way that suggests that she is not ashamed of her gender or her work. She knows that in her society she will not be taken seriously. That she has to, “Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are;/ Men have precedency and still excel,/ It is but vain unjustly to wage war,” (Bradstreet 37-39). She