Anne Bradestreet Essay response

Typically, a love poem displays the feelings and thoughts of one who is (or believed to be) immensely in love and ruptured with the desire for love. A conventional love story is often painted with eloquent words that describe an emotion that tries to describe an inner euphoria. For example, in William Shakespeare’s famous poem Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer’s Day? Shakespeare uses many comparisons and words of appeal and sensuality to convey the simple message of “I love you because you are beautiful.” However, in contrast to Anne Bradstreet’s poem To My Dear and Loving Husband a completely different use of imagery is displayed in context with her husband. The central piece of Shakespeare’s poem is a beautiful woman but Bradstreet’s poem does not focus solely on her husband, but reflects upon a love that it is complete when the two are entwined. The reader assumes that love to Bradstreet is something that must be held onto and a desire that must never be relinquished. As will be made apparent, the use of similes and imagery all combine to depict the writer’s surprising lack of pathos of what is meant to be a love poem.

Before beginning, however, we must keep in mind that Bradstreet is a Puritan woman from perhaps the same century as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter. Understanding that Puritans dedicated their time to God, tried to live a “pure” lives which shunned evil and had quite simplistic lifestyles might help us better understand why they did not devote much time to love or the appreciation of it. Bradstreet’s Puritan background might help us better understand why there in an underlining tone of irony in the poem.

In opening, Bradstreet compares her husband’s love to depth that is supposedly immeasurable. It is a love that she “prizes…more than whole mines of gold” and it is so precious and priceless that “she cannot in no way repay” his love. Upon first glance, a reader might assume that Bradstreet is so completely in love with her husband that she cannot stop thinking and devoting her time to him.

The author however spends a greater part of the poem explaining how she is deserving of his love because she is equally priceless as he, perhaps even more. “Compare with me, ye woman, if you can” she writes, for she already knows the answer to this demand: there is none to compare her with. This poem then becomes a slight variation of a typical love poem because it uses more logos than pathos. Evidence of this is when the author writes, “my love is such that rivers cannot quench” instead of “your love is such that rivers cannot quench” to show that she is nothing without him. Her series of logical reasoning’s is centered on the fact that she finds herself deserving of her love, which may not been a typical Puritan woman’s attitude. So while similes and comparisons were used in Shakespeare’s poem to better exalt his ladies’ essence of exquisiteness, Bradstreet uses comparison to exalt herself as well.

In addition to comparisons there is also a great deal of imagery used throughout the poem to emphasize the author’s belief that she is worthy of her husband love for she herself is a rare gem. She uses adjectives such as “happy” to describe what a man should be with her wife when their “love” is to be. This is also a complete deviation of what a love poem usually is because the imagery consists of all things beautiful and pleasant in nature to contribute the innocence of love. It would almost seem that the image the author paints isn’t one of a love that is pleasant and peaceful but wanted and needed and perhaps even demanded.

As we can obviously then assume that Anne Bradstreet is someone quite to determined to get what she wants (and in this case needs) from her husband. The way she goes about acquiring it, unfortunately, is not entirely humble for someone of her class. To conclude, Bradstreet’s poem is an example of love that may seem smooth on the surface but has many unseen layers.