American Lit: Anne, the Author to Her Book, Mistress Bradstreet and Upon the Burning of Our House

In "Anne," begin with The Author to Her Book, which evidently was written as the epigraph to the second edition of her collection of poems. What of her personality as a woman comes through in the poem?

In “The Author to Her Book” It is immediate that the reader knows that a woman and a mother wrote this piece. “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth did’st by my side remain…” This sentence sets the stage for everything that would come next about her from staying by her side while children, to going out into the world with friends, and becoming adults and moving out of the house. Threw the middle of the poem, lines 5-10, you can tell that she is unhappy with her children for what is unclear but “brat” and “cast thee by as one unfit for light” can’t be a good sign. The last two lines though you can tell she will always love her children but she has to let them go. For a mother in that time period, especially a mother of 8, you can really get the sense of how much of an up and down ride I was to raise so many children and all the responsibility’s that when along with it.

•In “Mistress Bradstreet”, what poems show her in her social life as the wife of a high official?

From reading “Upon the Burning of Our House” I can gather that she was a wife of a high official or that she had had any money is to be new to Virginia she and her husband had many thing you wouldn’t think would be in a typical pilgrims home. Things that were burn such as a trunk, table and her stores even though she doesn’t really describe her stores, these alone would tell you that she was better off than most even before the mention of “pelf” which meant money or wealth.

Works Cited
George Perkins, B. P. (2009). The American Tradition in Literature. New York: McGraw Hill.

Cited: George Perkins, B. P. (2009). The American Tradition in Literature. New York: McGraw Hill.