Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Anne Brandstreet and Female Identity Essay - 533 Words
There are not many ââ¬Å"majorâ⬠female writers in American Literature, and writing, traditionally, has always been viewed as a masculine activity. It is therefore very interesting, and even ironic, that the first author published in the newly established Puritan society on the American soil, Anne Bradstreet, was a female. Indeed, Bradstreets poems are filled with female presence. However, I also sense that Bradstreetââ¬â¢s feminism is held in check by her Puritan values, and there is a conflict created throughout her writing between this society of Puritan patriarchy that she lived in and her identity as a female. Bradstreetââ¬â¢s poems are focused on the simple pleasures found in the realities of the present. She rejoices in theâ⬠¦show more contentâ⬠¦This tone ventures farther across that thin line as she writes about the great female Queen Elizabeth I: ââ¬Å"Now say, have women worth? Or they have none? Or had they some, but with our Queen isââ¬â¢t gone? Nay masculines, you have thus taxed us long, But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong, Let such as say our sex be void of reason, Know ââ¬Ëtis a slander now but once was treason.â⬠Here Bradstreet almost masks her female identity by using humor to laugh at the Puritan beliefs on women as being unfit and unreasonable as compared to men. However, while questioning and laughing somewhat at the traditional view of women in her society, Bradstreet does not take a feminist view. Through the use of Queen Elizabeth as a figure representing the greatness, intellect, power, and reason of a woman, Bradstreet could have pointed to the fact that women can indeed reign over men, and are just as capable. Instead all Bradstreet says is that Elizabeth ââ¬Å"will vindicate our (the womenââ¬â¢s) wrong.â⬠In other words, she is one of a kind. Puritan patriarchy demands this subordination of the female, and this mindset is shared by Bradstreet as she is held in check by her Puritan piety. In her poem to her husband, she writes, ââ¬Å"If ever two were one, then surely we.â⬠Indeed, this line could also be used to describe Bradstreetââ¬â¢s poetry itself, as there are two seemingly conflicting elements of her Puritan
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