The idiom 'fool's gold' is often used to address an object that is ostensibly valuable but in reality is nothing more than trifling slabs of rubbish affixed together. I could not think of a more suitable term to depict my perception of Anne Bradstreet's false sense of security, best portrayed in 'To My Dear and Loving Husband'. Her axiomatic insecurity (shamelessly present in most of her work) is painfully rendered throughout the distorted lines of this 'love' poem that substantially describes her codependent attachment to her husband. This consuming relationship is evinced despite the poet's feeble attempt to lull the reader (and herself) into believing this pantomime of a romance. The poet starts off the first three lines1 with conditional statements that set the poem on a somewhat logical tone. The speaker’s vaunting of their love in inclusion to the previously mentioned anaphora conceals the uncertainty being proposed by the conditional statement. In the following line2, the poet challenges her husband to compare her to other women ‘if he can’; this boldness juxtaposes the self-deprecating paradigms shown in other pieces of her work. The mere fact that Bradstreet feels the need to have herself be compared to other women denotes her eagerness for validation. …show more content…
Bradstreet does, however, accentuate how much she cherishes her husband’s love in return, and contrasts it to a monetary value. The speaker is shown to have a certain avidity when it comes to her husband’s love for her. This is evident in lines 7-84 where she acknowledges her longing to have her love be reciprocated. One can surmise that her fixation on her husband’s love is derivative from her own feelings of inadequacy and yearning to be fulfilled by her