To My Dear Loving Husband Essay

563 Words3 Pages

The key features of Colonial era literature were mainly Religion, poetry, narrative focus, and the enlightenment (Knight). The religion and poetry features were especially prevalent in the Puritan community where the choices of writing were limited to the Bible, and official documents. Therefore, Anne Bradstreet being a Puritan used a very plain and typical style of that time in order to disguise her ideas from the strict views of her peers. In the poem To My Dear Loving Husband, Anne is able to describe the love she has for her husband, while in the end making it about the Puritan belief that their souls are immortal. For example, in the text it says “I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold” (Bradstreet). Which seems like a normal love poem line. However, this specific line made a reference to the Bible, but instead of it leading to gold being more important than God, it …show more content…

Therefore, they were seen as very close-minded and harsh to people not in the community. Anne Bradstreet chose to move into the Puritan life with her husband, and brought out that complex view. Not only that, but to keep writing she had a balance with the free thinking aspect and strict beliefs. Since before her time the Puritans showed a harsher side with Anne Hutchinson who tried to teach her interpretations of the Puritan doctrine, along with meetings with other women. This made her seem like a leader, which did not help her in the community, since men thought that women’s minds were too weak to handle the information she was telling everyone about (Warn). They made her out to be more of a rule breaker when she started using her own interpretations and was soon persecuted to leave the colony. Unlike her Anne Bradstreet wasn’t seen as a threat, because she wasn’t directly teaching anyone. She was able to slip by doing something other than