How Does Anne Bradstreet Use Of Vanity

In Anne Bradstreet’s “The Four Ages of Man,” “The Vanity of All Worldly Things,” and “Contemplations” – at length took quite some time to read and analyze – her use of vanity in each of the poems seems to be a recurring theme. Puritans believed that vanity was one of the key sins before God. Notice, vanity’s reference five times within the pages of “The Four Ages of Man” and in “The Vanity of All Worldly Sin.” She brilliantly alternates the use of vanity and vain throughout,” however, in “Contemplations” she cleverly uses vanity with a play on the word use as just vain.

Bradstreet speaks of being depressed by the new way of dress, language, and other cultural ways of her new home in America. America in the 16oos was a very brutal land and

Her methods were heavily influenced by the severity and rigidly applied simplicities of Puritanism. The first time vanity’s mentioned in “the Four Ages of Man,” it’s in her depiction of “youth.” Her characters here are driven by challenges she faced in her personal life. At times it seems almost biographical, mentioning her eight pregnancies, as well as her children’s deaths by the hardships and vicious illnesses of her time. In her poem “The Four Stages of Life” Youth was but one of four stages of life cast as if characters on a stage. The others were: Childhood, Middle age, and Old Age. Summarily she connects these characters to comparable seasons, humor, and

Here she was clearly inspired by the Bible (Collection of little books or Book of instruction before leaving earth) and she uses the Good Book in comparison to man 's actions here on earth. Bradstreet speaks on how man take life for granted and in the blink of an eye he is awaiting or standing at death 's door.

Contemplations is said to be a single unified poem about the temporal and the eternal, about their intersection in man according to Robert Daly. Here uses divine order of God and man, the Bible and mans study of nature exploding her pen to paper. She is makes comparisons of life expectancy is shorter than our biblical predecessors and how man still ignores the value of his time here on earth. Robert J.

Richardson writes, "the interplay between the two worlds is so closely and carefully developed that it may be regarded as Mrs. Bradstreet 's most successful expression of the Puritan ideal of living fully in the world without being of