Anne Bradstreet

I think it is a big feat when a woman of such stature becomes the best known of early North American poets, and the first in the British colonies to have a book of poetry published. Considering her poetry and book writing flourished in the 1600's, a time when women were not recognized at all and their primary job was to fall in the shadows of men and not be mobile in their classes. I really enjoy how Bradstreet kept everyone informed about the Puritan religion, the religion that she so typically inspired herself with, but she also let people know how women could assert themselves in certain situations. I believe the main thing that drew people to her writings and made her become the best known of early North American poets was the fact that she not only took her personal experiences and elaborated on them, but she also related them to the ideals of Puritanism and gave people a happy medium of things to learn from. I thoroughly enjoyed her poems in honor of Queen Elizabeth. The one that struck me the most was "The Poem." This one really inspired me because on line 27, she writes: "Nor say I more than duly is her due, Millions will testify taht this is true. She hath wip'd off th'aspersion of her sex, That women wisdom lack to play the rex." In this verse, she is bringing her feminine ideals into play and demonstrating how strong and powerful of a woman Queen Elizabeth was. It is writings like these that began to shape our early societies by bringing a feminist view point into the mix when for so long, our society was dependent on men to play the dominant roles. Also, in Bradstreet's "Her Epitaph," she discusses how the death of Queen Elizabeth was a huge loss for her society and we see this when Bradstreet writes, "The greater was our gain, our loss the more." In other words, Queen Elizabeth left a legacy that would last forever with all of the good things she did for her society, but losing her would be a tragedy because there would never be another ruler like herself. I feel that Bradstreet had a very optimistic point of view when she wrote all of her poems and from these poems, I got the feeling that she had an extremely good outlook on life.