Anne Bradsteer and Abigail Adams
Anne Bradsteer and Abigail Adams
Today most American women are employed and encouraged to contribute their opinions and ideas but it was not always like that. There were great women that helped us to get to the place where we at today and two of these women are Abigail Adams and Anne Bradstreet. Abigail Adams was wife and advisor of the second president and mother of the sixth president of United States of America. Anne Bradstreet was an early feminist and the first female poet to be published. Both of these women left unforgettable prints in the women rights history, American literature and just as affectionate and trustworthy wives.
Anne and Abigail were born in different generations but they both were ahead of their time and were free thinkers. Bradstreet was the first female poet that was published. Being puritan wife she believed in God and expressed herself through her poems. However; she was a free thinker and she understood that writing poems was not a female thing. In her poem The Prologue she wrote:
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits.
A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong;
For such despite they cast on female wits,
If what I do prove well, it won't advance,
They'll say it was stolen, or else it was by chance. (Bradstreet 189)
Bradstreet did not oppose this role of women in a society; nonetheless, she acknowledges existence of gender issue and writes a poem about that. She was the first who made women think about gender inequality and Abigail Adams, being born next century, addresses this issue to her husband in letters: “…I desire you would remember the Ladies [in a new Code of Laws] and be more generous and favorable to the than your ancestors” (March 31,1776 Letter). Abigail in the same letter to her husband tries to explain him importance of including women rights code in new constitution, she writes: “If a particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies, we are determined to foment
Today most American women are employed and encouraged to contribute their opinions and ideas but it was not always like that. There were great women that helped us to get to the place where we at today and two of these women are Abigail Adams and Anne Bradstreet. Abigail Adams was wife and advisor of the second president and mother of the sixth president of United States of America. Anne Bradstreet was an early feminist and the first female poet to be published. Both of these women left unforgettable prints in the women rights history, American literature and just as affectionate and trustworthy wives.
Anne and Abigail were born in different generations but they both were ahead of their time and were free thinkers. Bradstreet was the first female poet that was published. Being puritan wife she believed in God and expressed herself through her poems. However; she was a free thinker and she understood that writing poems was not a female thing. In her poem The Prologue she wrote:
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits.
A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong;
For such despite they cast on female wits,
If what I do prove well, it won't advance,
They'll say it was stolen, or else it was by chance. (Bradstreet 189)
Bradstreet did not oppose this role of women in a society; nonetheless, she acknowledges existence of gender issue and writes a poem about that. She was the first who made women think about gender inequality and Abigail Adams, being born next century, addresses this issue to her husband in letters: “…I desire you would remember the Ladies [in a new Code of Laws] and be more generous and favorable to the than your ancestors” (March 31,1776 Letter). Abigail in the same letter to her husband tries to explain him importance of including women rights code in new constitution, she writes: “If a particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies, we are determined to foment