Anne Bradstreet To My Dear And Loving Husband

“To My Dear and Loving Husband” written by Anne Bradstreet expressed her affection and unconditional love for her husband. This poem was written when her husband was away on business trip to England. Bradstreet put her feeling and how profoundly she misses him in every sentences of the poem. She values their love more than any earthly riches and views that as a sign of spiritual union and salvation, rather than as something profane or lowly. Unlike other contemporary Puritan women writers, Bradstreet focuses on how she rejoices and appreciates her ordinary life instead of religious conversion. Certainly, almost every Bradstreet’s poems focus on the presence of female. Bradstreet’s internal conflict is the key symbol which has emphasized the feminism issue because she challenged the traditional view

The answer to this could be found in “To My Dear and Loving Husband”. In the third and fourth line of the poem, she wrote “If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can.” (Bradstreet 120). By directly addressing women “compare with me, ye women” rather than addressing her husband, Bradstreet had avoided Hutchinson’s footsteps. Hutchinson was banished for directly provided spiritual advices to women. Despite all the years of teaching and advising women, the only written record of Hutchinson’s remains is “Trial and Interrogation of Anne Hutchinson (1637)” (The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America 2010). In her trial, she responded “If any come to my house to be instructed in the ways of God what rule have I to put them away? Do you think it not lawful for me to teach women and why do you call me to teach the court?”. Unlike Hutchinson, Bradstreet had the right to address women publicly because she did so in the context of a loving Puritan