Eastern University Institute of Higher Technology

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Contemporary American Literature – Bernice Aleman

BIOGRAFY OF ANNE BRADSTREET.

TEACHER: BERNICE ALEMAN BACHELLOR:

Puerto La Cruz, May 31, 2021

 ANNE BRADSTREET.
Anne Bradstreet was the first American writer and poet to publish a book. She
was born in Northampton, England. Her father, Thomas Dudley, was the manager
of the country estate of the Earl of Lincoln. Both men were both devout Puritans.
Dudley provided his daughter with private tutors in languages, music and dancing,
a level of education that was extremely unusual for girls at that time, and it can be
assumed that she had access to the library of the Earl of Lincoln, as well.

At the age of 16, Anne married Simon Bradstreet, nine years older than she and a
recent graduate of Cambridge University. Bradstreet, who had taken bachelor's
and master's degrees at the strongly non-conformist Emmanuel College, was
steward to the Countess of Warwick and a protégé of Thomas Dudley. One year
later he was appointed to assist in preparations for the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
and in 1630 both the Bradstreets and the Dudleys set sail with John Winthrop
aboard the Arbella for the New World.

The Bradstreets lived for brief periods in Salem, Boston, Cambridge and Ipswich
before settling permanently on a farm in North Andover, close to the Merrimac
River. Over the course of their lives together, they had eight children (one of which
died in infancy) and Simon was constantly active in public affairs, becoming a
judge, a royal counsellor involved in the colony's diplomatic missions, and
eventually governor of the colony.

Her adaptation to the wilds of America was not, however, an easy one. In a letter
written for her children, and intended to be read after her death, she described it
thus: "After a short time I changed my condition and was married, and came into
this country, where I found a new world and new manners, at which my heart rose.
But after I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it and joined to the
church at Boston." Certainly, the transition from being the much-loved daughter of
a well-to-do English family to being the mistress of a relatively isolated farm in a
struggling American colony cannot have been an easy one. In addition, her health,
which had always been weak since childhood, was further debilitated by the rigors
of life in the Massachusetts countryside. This was probably the reason for her
inability to bear children until around 1633.

Yet she persevered, accepted God's will, prayed and survived. The evidence of
her own poems and the tributes to her written by her children indicate that her
marriage to Simon was a happy one and that she was a loving, kind-hearted and
wise mother and grandmother. The fact that she was able successfully to carry out
the duties of the wife of a very public figure, to manage a large household of eight
children and to produce, on the earliest American frontier, an exceptional body of
poetry -- all within a strict Puritan society that tended to frown on intellectual
initiatives taken by women -- bears witness to her talent and to the quality of her
character. Who knows what form her work would have assumed had she lived in
different circumstances?

Given the circumstances she did live in, the poems that she left us fall into two
general categories: those concerned with religious themes, expressing her
understanding of her faith and those concerned with her personal emotional life,
her love for her husband, her father and family, and her complex reactions to the
pain of death. The differences between these categories reflect one of the most
interesting qualities of her poetry, which is also one of the central conflicts that
energizes American art: the tension between the pressure to conform to the
expectations of the collective and the drive toward individuality (or, as we often
think of it, the conflict between the mind and the heart).

In her religious poetry she says exactly what her training had taught her to say;
she follows the dictates of a conscience that has been formed by Puritan theology.
In her personal poems, however, she tries to follow the dictates of her heart. What
is striking is that her deepest feelings sometimes lead her to the brink of a
confrontation with what she knows she should believe.

It is hard to judge to what degree she was aware of this subtle friction in her
personal poetry, which is often expressed through small deviations in form. This
unexpected psychological dimension and the uncertainty surrounding it, imbue
these poems of her emotional experience with much more interest for readers of
today. They offer us a glimmering of that open conflict with the Puritan theocracy
that deeply marked the lives of public figures such as Anne Hutchinson and Roger
Williams and set the stage for one of the major themes in the literary expression of
the United States.

We might also extract from these two categories another kind of poem, mainly
represented by "Contemplations", in which she examines and reaffirms her Puritan
beliefs through her emotional responses to the beauty of the natural world. She
refers to this kind of response to nature in that same letter to her children quoted
above: "That there is a God my reason would soon tell me by the wondrous works
that I see [...] The consideration of these things would with amazement certainly
resolve me that there is an Eternal Being."

This is not an unusual statement for an intelligent Puritan to make. The beauties
of a fallen nature should be perceived as a flawed reflection of the infinite glory of
the Creator. This sense of amazement -- in all of its complexity -- goes back to
William Bradford's report of the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620 and looks forward
to Jonathan Edwards essentially mystical vision of nature in the following century.
But Bradstreet's "Contemplations" provide us with the first poetic description of a
rapturous response to the American landscape.

His sequence of religious poems "Contemplations" gained the utmost attention

from critics. She had written this collection for her family, but it was not published
until the mid-19th century. During periods when Simon traveled abroad to various
colonies on diplomatic errands, she used to keep busy reading her father's vast
collection of books. Reading not only helped her in lonely times, it also equipped
her with knowledge about religion, science, history, the arts, and medicine. His
literary works were deeply influenced by the poet Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas,
who was very popular with 17th century readers. Despite the traditional attitude
towards women, Anne always valued knowledge and intellect. Due to her free
thinking, some people believe that she is one of the first feminists. Her feminism
cannot be considered as a heterodox and antinomian point of view, but it can be
said as a complement. When her first work was published in London as "The Tenth
Muse Lately Emerged in America" in 1650, it was believed by many to be an
attempt by devout Puritan men to show that an educated and God-fearing woman
could elevate their rank.

He suffered from tuberculosis. His condition worsened because he was already

dealing with the loss of several relatives. Anne, being a devout religious woman,
stood strong from losses. Knowledge of the biblical scriptures helped her believe
that her daughter-in-law Mercy and her grandchildren were in heaven. He died in
1672. Four years after her death, Simon married a woman also named Anne.
Simon died in 1697 and was buried in Salem. In 1997, the Harvard community
dedicated a door in his memory. This gate also known as Bradstreet Gate is
located next to Canaday Hall, the newest dormitory at Harvard Yard. In 2000, a
marker in the North Andover Cemetery commemorated the 350th anniversary of
the publication of his book "The Tenth Muse." These two sites are the only places
in the United States that honor his memory.