Comparison Of Anne Bradstreet's The Flesh And The Spirit

Anne Bradstreet, a woman of early puritan and american poetry expounded her views of society, her works and her life throughout her poems and pieces by using unconventional metaphors to elaborate the way she felt. She having felt belittled for being a woman in the world of poetry. In The Prologue Her tone is passive throughout ,yet has a sarcastic undertones for the topics she truly cares to entail like the little room and credibility men allow women to have in contributing to poetry. Bradstreet touched on topics that were still controversial in her time such as the structures of how society is run of men. While The Flesh and the spirit her tone was a bit didactic using two characters to passively argue the two sides of human’s desires. Bradstreet’s

She uses personification to address these two characters; the Flesh and the Spirit. The Flesh plays the epitome of human earthly form and The Spirit plays the epitome of a boundless immortal. Both being symbolizing as the greater two halves of the human nature. By Bradstreet they both express their desires as opposites creating that sense of balance between the two characters. The desires of Flesh are of the physical world while the Spirit the satisfaction of the eternal world. In conversation, the Flesh temps the Spirit with the riches of the earth , ‘hath more silver, pearls, and gold, than eyes can see of hands to hold’(Bradstreet 223). asking the Spirit why are you not interested in these materialistic valuables? The Spirit responds using metaphysical examples of what flesh tempted her with, ‘My crown not diamonds, pearls, and gold, But such as angels’ heads enfold’. Bradstreet’s hidden sense of a satiric rebuttal for the spirit strengthened the claims and values the Spirit held showing Bradstreet’s distaste for dualism. Bradstreet wrote this conversation of values of these two for her target audience of people of the puritan faith to reevaluate their values at hand and to not favor the temptations of