Anne Bradstreet's Essay 'The Author To Her Book'

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Summary of the essay entitled ‘The Author to her Book’ by Lisa Day Lindsey Day Lindsey focuses on the historical values of Puritan Boston and also enumerates the cultural context in Bradstreet’s poem. She comprises critic’s opinions and alternate interpretations. Bringing to light about the background in which the way ‘The Author to her Book’ and many other of Anne Bradstreet’s poems, provides clarity for the reader and why she uses the metaphor of a child for the poem. Day Lindsey notes Bradstreet’s family upbringing and how that impacted her work, and brings to light why the poem contains a “culturally significant subtext of anxiety”. She includes that Bradstreet’s ‘father was the Massachusetts Bay Company’s Deputy Governor’ and her husband was Chief Administer. This highlights the fact that Bradstreet was aware of the Puritan beliefs and values held in society in the 17th century yet…show more content…
This links to Bradstreet as Governor Winthrop dealt with infidels ‘of any sort’ and if the Bradstreet was not from a higher-class upbringing it could be suggested that the poet was almost heretic and would be seen in Puritan society as a…show more content…
Anne Hutchinson also miscarried a child six weeks before her due date of delivery. Hutchinson was at the time under house arrest for heresy as she was an experienced midwife, which in Puritan society seemed suspicious and heretic as midwives dealt with different herbs to help women in labour. ‘I beheld numerable distinct bodies in the form of a globe, not much unlike the swims of a fish/ it was impossible either to number the small round pieces in every hump’. Comparing the body to a ‘globe and ‘swims of a fish’ gives a monstrous image to the child. Winthrop examined the stillborn child and describes the globes to be “partly wind and partly

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