Anne Bradstreet

Spencer Lambert
ENGL 48A
Journal for Anne Bradstreet
November 18, 2009

"A corrupt carcass down it lies,
A glorious body it shall rise.
In weakness and dishonor sown,
In power 'tis raised by Christ alone."

Internet Quotation: "While it is rather easy for us to view Puritan ideology in a bad light because of it's attitude towards women and strict moral code, her indifference to material wealth, her humility and her spirituality, regardless of religion, made her into a positive, inspirational role model for any of us." - AnneBradstreet.com

Summary: The first quotation is indicative of the sort of Puritan resignation to the evil of the physical world. Across many of her poems is the theme of human life as worthless, corrupt, impure, and wrong. Only when one goes to heaven can one be cleaned and fulfilled. This creates a waiting game that I think promotes indifference to the world's problems, which I will talk about below.

The second quotation is here because I talk about her humility and spirituality below. Where the website devoted to her life points it out as inspiring, I take a rather different route.

My Ideas: As I stated in the summary, Bradstreet talks a lot about how terrible this world and its inhabitants are. Is there an image of our world so revolting as "dunghill mists"? This place is so low and disgusting that we can't even be the dunghill proper.

In a Puritan context, this is exactly what you should say. Bradstreet follows the idea that this world is a test, through things like her fever, for when they reach the Lord. It's like the original American Gladiators. If they can survive sickness, food shortages, childbirth, and savage Indians, they too can win big! This is the whole purpose of the Puritan life: to live so that you can die. Why would I want that?



This type of thinking instills in people the idea that this world isn't worth living for. Despite the ones we love, the wonders and majesty of the natural world, and the things we, as human beings, can accomplish, the Puritans see this as a temporary hellhole we wait around in, the line at the DMV writ large. This is a mindset that continues today, coming straight from the Puritan tradition. We go to war, we rape the world of its resources, we let people fall through the cracks in squalor, etc. etc. The ills never end. I don't want to believe that human beings are necessarily bad. Instead, we seem to have learned that things can't get better, so why even try. It's what Bradstreet says in her poetry, and it is what we say daily by doing nothing. Let's just wait it out, we say.

Bradstreet gives into this imperfect view of the world by looking at herself in the same way. She constantly undermines her own poetry with self-deprecating comments about how "imperfectly done" her writing is, despite being the first poet from the New World to be printed, and as a woman and in two editions at that. I'm not saying one should boast, but she could at least recognize her own talent and cross those lines out when writing. Humility is one thing; such a dim view like hers is quite another.

It is sickening to me to think that so many people lived only because they were here. It is even more sickening that we continue to live such an existence. These last two readings have really made me look at myself and think about what I'm doing to avoid the type of fatalistic life outlined by the Puritans and perpetuated by us today. Right now is a fitting time, I believe, to read something like Bradstreet to show what not to do with yourself. Don't just say God will fix everything one day. Don't say I can't do anything right, or special, or meaningful. Don't try to escape the dungheap but rather craft a bigger, more glorious dungpile that others are envious of at all times. In other words, realize that we only get one of these lives here on earth. And while you may one day go to heaven, you can make things as good as you can here and now.



Also, I may have gone a bit far on the dungheap metaphor. Apologies for those opposed to poo humor.