Universidade Do Estado Do Rio De Janeiro Centro De Educação E Humanidades Instituto De Letras

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro Centro de Educação e Humanidades Instituto de Letras

Aline Fernandes Thosi

Anne Bradstreet: Revisiting humanist, puritan and feminist elements in the poet’s works

Rio de Janeiro 2018 Aline Fernandes Thosi

Anne Bradstreet: Revisiting humanist, puritan and feminist elements in the poet’s works

Dissertação apresentada, como requisito parcial para obtenção do título de Mestre, ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras, da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Área de concentração: Estudos de Literatura.

Orientadora: Profª. Dra. Fernanda Teixeira de Medeiros

Rio de Janeiro 2018

CATALOGAÇÃO NA FONTE UERJ/REDE SIRIUS/BIBLIOTECA CEH/B

B812 Thosi, Aline Fernandes. Anne Bradstreet : revisiting humanist, puritan and feminist elements in the poet’s works /Aline Fernandes Thosi - 2018. 144 f.

Orientadora: Fernanda Teixeira de Medeiros. Dissertação (mestrado) – Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Instituto de Letras.

1. Bradstreet, Anne, 1612?-1672 – Crítica e interpretação – Teses. 2. Puritanos na literatura – Teses. 3. Religião e literatura - Teses. 4. Mulheres e religião – Teses. 5. Feminismo na literatura – Teses. 6. Humanismo na literatura – Teses. 7. Retórica – Teses. I. Medeiros, Fernanda Teixeira de. II. Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Instituto de Letras. III. Título.

CDU 820-95 Bibliotecária: Mirna Lindenbaum. CRB7 4916

Autorizo, apenas para fins acadêmicos e científicos, a reprodução total ou parcial desta dissertação, desde que citada a fonte.

______Assinatura Data Aline Fernandes Thosi

Anne Bradstreet: Revisiting humanist, puritan and feminist elements in the poet’s works.

Aprovada em 14 de dezembro de 2018.

Banca Examinadora:

______Prof.ª Dra. Fernanda Teixeira de Medeiros (Orientadora) Instituto de Letras – UERJ ______Prof.ª Dra. Eliane Borges Berutti Instituto de Letras – UERJ ______Prof.ª Dra. Michela Rosa Di Candia Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro 2018 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Professor Fernanda Medeiros for her guidance. I also thank Professors Davi Pinho, Júlio França, Leila Harris e Peônia Guedes for sharing their knowledge and time.

Now Say, have women worth or have they none?

Anne Bradstreet RESUMO

THOSI, Aline Fernandes. Anne Bradstreet: revisiting humanist, puritan and feminist elements in the poet’s works. 2018. 144 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Estudos de Literatura) – Instituto de Letras, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2018.

O presente trabalho dedica-se a explorar o contexto histórico, cultural e religioso da poeta anglo-americana puritana Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), com o intuito de reler alguns de seus poemas sob a perspectiva da cultura retórica humanista na qual a poeta cresceu e se auto-educou. A releitura proposta será feita com o objetivo de melhor visualizar e analisar elementos feministas em sua produção. Tais elementos foram construídos a partir do que verificamos ser uma hábil capacidade de modulação da voz poética e de um domínio de certos jogos retóricos bastante valorizados na modernidade nascente. Essa expertise discursiva foi o que permitiu que, dentro de um contexto misógino em pleno século XVII, Bradstreet escrevesse sobre temas que não eram permitidos a mulheres, tais como política, história e religião, defendendo o direito e a capacidade destas de se expressarem poeticamente. Seus poemas transgrediram os padrões sexistas da época em que viveu, tornando-a, assim, uma poeta complexa e inspiradora.

Palavras-Chave: Anne Bradstreet. Cultura Retórica. Feminismo.

ABSTRACT

The present work is devoted to exploring the historical, cultural and religious context of the Puritan Anglo-American poet Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672), as well as re-read her writings through the perspective of the humanist rhetorical culture in which the poet was raised and educated herself. The aim of the re-reading proposal is to better visualize and analyze feminist elements in some of the poet’s poems. Such elements were built from what I have seen to be a skillful modulation of the poetic voice, and a mastery of certain rhetorical games which were highly valued in early modernity. The aforesaid discursive expertise allowed Bradstreet to write about themes which were not allowed to women in the misogynistic context of the seventeenth- century, such as politics, history and religion, defending women’s right and ability to express themselves poetically. Her poems transgressed the sexist standards of her time, making her a complex and inspiring poet.

Keywords: Anne Bradstreet. Rhetorical Culture. Feminism.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION…………………..……………………………….……………… 8 1 THE TENTH MUSE AND RHETORICAL CULTURE…...... 13 1.1 Anne Bradstreet – More than a Puritan writer………………………………..….. 13 1.2 Rhetoric, Humanism and Rhetorical Culture………………………...…………… 21 1.3 A debate between Ward and Bradstreet……………………………...…………… 37 2 PURITANISM AND THE PLACE OF WOMEN IN PURITAN SOCIETY…… 48 2.1 Anne Bradstreet and Puritanism…………………………………………………... 48 2.2 A brief account of the history of Puritanism……………………………………..... 50 2.3 The place of women in Puritan colonial society…………………………………… 55 2.4 Anne Bradstreet’s questionings…………………………………………………….. 57 3 FEMINIST ELEMENTS IN BRADSTREET’S WORKS………………………... 68 3.1 Submissive or subversive?...... 68 3.2 A brief account of the history of Feminism………………………………………... 78 3.3 Feminist elements in Anne Bradstreet’s elegy to Queen Elizabeth I…………..… 83 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………… 94 REFERENCES…………………………………………………….………………... 98 APPENDIX A – Nathaniel Ward’s commendatory poem …………………………... 101 APPENDIX B – The Prologue…..…………………………………………………... 102 APPENDIX C – The Flesh and The Spirit…………………………………………... 104 APPENDIX D – A Dialogue Between Old England and New ……………………… 108 APPENDIX E – Upon Some Distemper of Body…………………………………… 118 APPENDIX F – From Deliverance from Fever …………………………………….. 119 APPENDIX G – A Letter To Her Husband, Absent Upon Publick Employment…... 120 APPENDIX H – The Author to Her Book…………………………………………... 121 APPENDIX I – The Four Elements…………………………………………………. 122 APPENDIX J – An Apology ..………………………………………………………. 139 APPENDIX K – In Honour of That High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth…... 140

INTRODUCTION

Women writers from different historical, cultural and religious contexts have been increasingly contributing to literature while breaking the stereotypes and paradigms of their own time and times which follow. Women Studies and Feminist Criticism, which are important fields in academic research, have been responsible for creating an area of study for a group of people who were marginalized by history. Besides raising important discussions on women’s rights, women writers share their production in all literary fields. In the twenty-first century, there have been many researchers who dedicate their academic life to studying more deeply the works of many female novelists, essayists, dramatists, poets, among others. More and more there can be noticed an increasing rise of female writers and scholars who become interested in their art. The increase in research in the field is of paramount importance for it not only provides enlightening discussions upon contemporary issues, but also because it inspires new female writers to pursue such career.

I have been interested in feminine literature since I first started the undergraduate course due to the many inspiring lives and works about which I had the opportunity to study. Amongst many female authors whose works I have read, there was one who interested me the most. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) is known, up to the present day, to be the first person to be published as a poet in colonial America. The poet was a Puritan woman who was born and raised in England and later in life moved to the New World. The United States of America was not known as such by then, but it was a group of colonies which would become a nation only in 1776. Although the poet is commonly studied as an American Puritan writer, her English background can be strongly noticed especially in her early poems. Bradstreet had her first poetry book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650) published in England and the second edition Several Poems Compiled With Great Variety of Wit and Learning (1678), which included the author’s corrections as well as new poems, was published in America after her death. In the twentieth century, three centuries after her death, Bradstreet’s works were rediscovered by feminist scholars. In the twenty-fifth anniversary of women’s living in Harvard, a gate and a plaque were erected in honor of Anne Bradstreet where one can find her lines: “I came into this Country, where I found a new World and new manners at which my heart rose”. Indeed, The poet’s heart 9

rose in rebellion due to the many questionings she had regarding the Puritan religion and the new manners she found in the new land, as I shall further discuss.

When I discovered Anne Bradstreet, I not only felt amazed by her skilled writing, but I also felt puzzled by the fact that, up to that moment, there had not been any records of other poets publishing in America before her – and yet I had never heard her name before the undergraduate course. By asking other people whether they knew who the first poet in America was, I noticed they usually remembered male names and that intrigued me. After studying a few of Bradstreet’s poems, I decided I wanted to better understand the poet’s life and role in society. Hence, my undergraduate course’s monograph paper dealt with the different roles Bradstreet played in society in her time and the way which such roles influenced her works. In the process, I realized there has been plenty of research on her works in the United States of America, but very little in Brazil.

Willing to learn even more about her poetry, I decided to further study – in the graduate’s course – one of the topics I briefly covered in my undergraduate’s final paper: feminist elements in her poems. As noticed by means of research, Bradstreet was able to share her feminist thoughts by exploring her rhetorical expertise which allowed her to modulate her poetic voice(s) and, consequently, write poetry in a time when it was dangerous for women to express their opinion on virtually anything which was not related to God and family. I believe the study of such feminist elements requires revisiting not only her life and background in America but also in England, where she was raised. By doing so, other aspects emerge: her religion, family status, political view, her training as a reader in the classics, her self-taught education, as well as her poetic voice(s).

Although Bradstreet never had the opportunity to receive formal education in school for being a woman, she had an influential family in England and lived in good conditions, which allowed her access to the same books boys read in school. As an avid young reader, Bradstreet spent most of her hours in a library, which had a considerable influence in her works. After moving to the New World, Bradstreet kept her reading habit despite her many duties as a mother of eight and bad living conditions. She started writing in England when she was only an adolescent and only stopped at the end of her life. She wrote several poems about history, politics, religion, family, love, death and the right of women to write. 10

Bradstreet’s works were generally praised and encouraged by family members and close friends. However, as a Puritan woman living in New England’s colony, Bradstreet was not expected to deal with or write about themes related to the public sphere – such as history, politics and religion – and which were exclusively the concern of men. Women were confined to the household and could only write about their devotion to God. Even love letters to husbands were to be written in the secrecy of their homes; not to be ever published. However, Bradstreet – with the intention to publish or not, as critics debate – did not cease to write about whatever topic she found relevant. The poet was aware of the dangers of challenging the patriarchal Puritan society and chose a writing method. Bradstreet was able to write about issues which did not concern women for she followed the rhetorical techniques she learned from male classic and contemporary writers whose works she had access to and read. Such method prevented her from being accused of heresy and rebelliousness; on the contrary, she was generally praised. She protected herself through rhetoric, as I shall further comment.

In seventeenth-century New England, there were cases of women being banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony – where Bradstreet settled – for discussing religion in public. Women were not allowed to meddle in the male sphere and, depending on the case, even their families turned their back at them. Although being well-aware of the possible consequences of being an outspoken woman in Puritan New England, Bradstreet wrote in defense of women’s capability of reasoning and right to write, as well as to discuss politics and religion even if through poetry. There can be noticed hints of feminist elements in some of her poems such as “The Prologue”, “The Author to Her Book”, “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth”, among others. Such elements are more evident in some poems (“In Honour of that Hight and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth” is one of them) than in others (for instance in “The Author to Her Book”), but the very fact that she wrote about such important issues in a time when women were only expected to deal with the household can be regarded as feminist.

Thus, the aim of this thesis is to reread Bradstreet’s writing under the light of the Rhetorical Culture where she educated herself and by means of discussion of poems such as “The Prologue”, “The Flesh and the Spirit”, “A Dialogue Between Old England and New”, “Upon Some Distemper of Body”, “For Deliverance From a Fever”, “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent Upon Publick Employment”, “The Author to Her Book”, “The Four Elements”, “An Apology” 11

and “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth” in order to be better equipped to visualize the feminist elements in her production. To accomplish this task, I will use two biographies: Anne Brasdtreet and Her Time (1980) by Helen Campbell and Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America’s First Poet, by Charlotte Gordon (2005). I will also use texts about Renaissance Humanism, Puritanism, Feminism and feminist critical articles about Bradstreet’s work.

This work will be divided into three main chapters. In each chapter I will present specific aspects which influenced her work – such as Rhetorical Culture, Puritanism, the place of women in Puritan society and feminist elements present in her work – and will illustrate such aspects by selecting poems which I believe will help the reader understand her choices not only in terms of themes but also in terms of style and writing techniques. This order will be followed as an attempt to build the foundation for a fairer appreciation of the selected poems.

In the first chapter, I will briefly talk about Bradstreet’s life in England, family status and departure to America. This account will help the reader understand the themes about which she chose to write and the personae she presented in each of such themes. After that, I will present an overview of Rhetoric, Humanism and Rhetorical Culture, suggesting how such cultural elements might have influenced Bradstreet’s writing. It is crucial to take these aspects into account when analyzing her poems, for they show the reader that the poet used elements such as irony and fake humility – which were all part of the Rhetorical Culture – which make her a subversive rather than submissive female poet. Finally, I will discuss a possible episode of negative criticism by one of her contemporaries towards her work and how the poet dealt with such episode. For this last task, I will analyze her poem “The Prologue” which seems to be a response to her critical contemporary.

In the second chapter, I will deal with Puritanism and the place of women in Puritan society. It is important to take Bradstreet’s religion into account and to analyze her piety in order to understand that the poet was indeed devoted to God but, nevertheless, defied the dogma of her religion not only for the sake of religion itself, but also as an attempt to claim for women’s share in the literary society. She accomplished that by writing poems in which she questions both her faith and religion, but never leaving the rhetorical techniques aside to do so. Although there is no evidence of Bradstreet being against her religion, there are hints of questionings and 12

nonconformity in some of her lines. In this chapter, I will analyze some parts of her poems “The Flesh and the Spirit”, “A Dialogue Between Old England and New”, and the first twelve lines of “Upon Some Distemper of Body”. I will also mention three lines from “For Deliverance from a Fever” in which Bradstreet mentions feeling abandoned by God. Finally, I will analyze “A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick Employment” in full in order to explore the way in which, even though a Puritan, Bradstreet dealt with the theme of love.

In the third chapter, I will analyze feminist elements in “The Author to Her Book”, “The Four Elements”, “An Apology”, and “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth”, as well as present a brief account of the history of feminism. There has been a discussion amongst scholars whether Bradstreet’s poems could be considered to include feminist elements. Due to her devotion to God and husband, the poet might seem submissive in some lines. However, in other bold lines, the poet shows herself not only aware of the restrictions and prejudice women faced, but also willing to write about such issues as an attempt to claim women’s rights to write. Even when she sounds humble and acceptant of her limitations as a writer, there can be noticed hints of irony which can be regarded as nonconformity on her part. What is more, feigned humility was part of the male tradition and Bradstreet might have used such features for she was influenced by the many male classical and contemporary writers who she read. It is thus important to investigate her lines from several perspectives for a broader and more accurate analysis.

Bradstreet was not a rebel who protested on the streets; nor did she fight sexism in her time and place the same way women in later centuries did. She was inserted in a context of which men were in control and would retaliate women who would defy their authority. Still, Bradstreet found a way to claim women’s right to write despite the limitations imposed by the patriarchal Puritan society in which she had to live. Thus, the importance of this research is directly linked with the need to revisit and investigate the clever ways in which such poet contributed to the acknowledgement and acceptance of female writers’ capability of reasoning and writing while playing with the male poetic tradition.

1 THE TENTH MUSE AND RHETORICAL CULTURE

This section aims at exploring Anne Bradstreet’s life and education as an attempt to understand the poet and her works not only as the product of a Puritan society but also as a product of Renaissance Humanism. The influence of the Elizabethan poetic tradition in Bradstreet’s works is explored throughout this section also as a means to understand her poetic voice(s) and to help investigate feminist elements in the selected poem in this chapter, as well as the selected poems in the other two chapters. To accomplish this task, it is important to consider her intellectual and educational training in England, where she grew up with her family before settling in the American Colony. Although she is usually studied as a Puritan American female poet, her English background is of utmost importance when looking into her work, for she was educated – although not at schools but with tutors and with the help of library books – within a rhetorical culture, the understanding of which proves essential to a deeper analysis of her poetic production. Her educational background seems to influence even some of her religious poems, which makes her an unconventional Puritan writer.

1.1 Anne Bradstreet – More than a Puritan writer

Anne Bradstreet, born Anne Dudley in Northampton in England, was the daughter of the Puritans Dorothy Yorke and Thomas Dudley. Her father was chief steward to Theophilus Clinton, the Puritan Earl of Lincoln. Serving as a steward, Thomas Dudley was responsible for managing some of the earl’s estates. Thomas Dudley’s mother was descended from Henry II of England and as a consequence of being a man of good birth, young Thomas became a page boy1 at Castle Ashby2, in the household of William, Baron of Compton. Dudley also raised a company of men following a call to arms by Queen Elizabeth and served in the English army led by Sir

1 A page boy may have been a young male attendant/servant or he may also have been a messenger at the service of a nobleman.

2 An estate village and an English country house in rural Northamptonshire. 14

Arthur Savage assisting King Henry IV of France during the French Wars of Religion against Phillip II of Spain. He fought the Spanish at the Siege of Amiens as his final action of war. After he was discharged from his military service, Dudley returned to Northamptonshire and then entered the service of his kinsman Sir Augustine Nicolls as a clerk. Nicolls was a lawyer and later became a judge who may have taught Dudley some things about his occupation. Due to Nicolls’ sudden death, Dudley became steward to Teophilus Clinton, 4th Earl of Lincoln. Dudley’s grandfather Henry had served as a steward to Edward Clinton, 1st Earl of Lincoln, which may have been the reason Dudley was assigned the position.

Due to her father’s profession, Anne Bradstreet’s family led a privileged life. The poet grew up in cultured circumstances and was a well-educated woman. Adrienne Rich comments that Bradstreet’s “[…] education had been that of the clever girl in the cultivated seventeenth century house: an excellent library, worldly talk, the encouragement of a literate father who loved history” (RICH, 2000, p. ix). Her contemporary Lucy Hutchinson (1620-1681), has a fragment of a journal entry which enlightens the reader’s understanding of an English girl’s educational background in the seventeenth century. Hutchinson was an English poet who Bradstreet’s biographer, Helen Campbell, claims to have led a similar life to Bradstreet’s. Despite its speculative nature, Campbell’s comparison may be useful for us as evidence of young girls’ upbringing in Bradstreet’s time and place. Campbell states that the reader might take Hutchinson as an example and that Bradstreet herself could have written the same words about her intellectual training:

By the time I was four years old I read English perfectly, and having a great memory I was carried to sermons… When I was about seven years of age, I remember I had at one time eight tutors in several qualities, languages, music, dancing, writing and needle work; but my genius was quite averse from all but my book, and that I was so eager of, that my mother thinking it prejudiced my health, would moderate me in it; yet this rather animated me than kept me back, and every moment I could steal from my play I would employ in any book I could find when my own were locked up from me (HUTCHINSON apud CAMPBELL, 1981, L. 126).

As one reads Hutchinson’s entry, a main conclusion may be inferred: young girls were stimulated to study various subjects, but they were not exactly stimulated to read extensively or write. In the seventeenth-century Puritan world, writing about different subjects was not meant for girls. 15

In England, at the age of sixteen, Anne married Simon Bradstreet who, as well as her father, would later serve as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Simon assisted her father with the management of the Earl’s estate in Sempringham, England, and was also one of the Earl’s protégés. Anne’s husband was heavily involved in colonial politics. He was a colonial magistrate, businessman, diplomat and the last governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony while in the U.S.A. He was sent on many diplomatic missions and his absence from home inspired Bradstreet’s poems such as “A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick employment” and “To My Dear Loving Husband”. Simon’s father was a Nonconformist3 from whom young Simon acquired his Puritan religious views early in life. He studied for two years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, before becoming Thomas Dudley’s assistant in the household of the Earl of Lincoln, in 1622. By the time Simon died at the age of 93, he owned more than 1,500 acres of land in five communities spread across the colony.

Anne Bradstreet went to the United States along with her family of origin, husband and other Puritans in the Arbella as a part of the Winthrop Fleet of Puritan emigrants and settled in the colonies in 1630. She first arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, but due to the illness and starvation of Governor John Endecott and other residents of the village, the family stayed very briefly. The Bradstreets moved frequently in the colony. First, they settled in Cambridge, then in Ipswich, and later in Andover, which became their permanent home. Anne gave birth to her first child in 1633 and her seven other children were born between 1635 and 1652. As Rich comments, “Thomas Dudley’s library had passed to the New World, and the early childless years, for all their struggles with theology and primitive surroundings, left time, energy to go on reading and thinking” (RICH, 1967, p. xi). Due to Bradstreet’s father and husband’s influential participation in the founding of Harvard in 1636, two of her sons (Samuel and Simon) were graduates there. After having struggled for years with different illnesses, the poet died at the age of 60 in North Andover, Massachusetts. The Harvard community dedicated a gate in memory of Anne Bradstreet as America’s first poet in 1997.

Anne Bradstreet’s first work, a collection of poems and letters in verse, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, was published in London by her brother-in-law, Rev. John

3 A Nonconformist was any English Protestant who did not conform to the doctrines or practices of the established Church of England – Baptists, Congregationalist, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Unitarians. 16

Woodbridge, in 1650 – whether with her approval or not still representing a topic of debate among critics and biographers. Campbell claims that “Now and again it is asserted that the manuscript for the first edition was taken to London without her knowledge and printed in the same way, but there is hardly the slightest ground for such conclusion […]” (CAMPBELL, 1981, L. 2969). However, Bradstreet’s scholar Ivy Schweitzer believes that John Woodbridge “took a manuscript of her poems to Master Bowtell in London and had them published without her knowledge or consent […]” (SCHWEITZER, 1991, L. 2544). Her poem “The Author to Her Book,” which was written after the publication of The Tenth Muse and which was included in the second edition after her death, indicates that the poet was not pleased with the event (I will explore the poem in depth in the third chapter while dealing with feminist elements). While some critics read the poem as an indication of her unawareness, others believe Bradstreet felt the need of pretending to be unaware because she might have been afraid of harsh criticism. If she did not have the intention to publish the book, then I conclude that Bradstreet’s works were meant to be read by her family and close friends only, especially because many of her works are addressed directly to family members such as husband, father, mother and children. Rich comments that “Her poems were being read seriously by strangers, though not in the form she would have chosen to send them out” (RICH, 2000, p. xvi). Concerning the debate over Bradstreet’s knowledge of the publication of her work, I hold the assumption that she was not aware of it for three main reasons: the poet did not have the chance to correct the errors in her poems before the first edition came out – she makes it clear when she later writes the poem “The Author to Her Book”; she writes other poems after the publication of The Tenth Muse such as “The Prologue” and “The Author to Her Book,” which indicates she would like to publish a second edition with her own changes; and, mainly, because she knew that Puritan women were not allowed to be outspoken or write about themes other than God’s love, as evidenced in her brother-in-law’s choice of not including the poet’s name in her own work.

Even though some of Bradstreet’s close friends and family were aware of her authorship, some measures were taken to prevent the female poet from suffering harsh criticism after publication. Besides presenting her as a muse in the first edition’s title, John Woodbridge concealed the author’s name publishing the book as being “by a Gentlewoman of those Parts”. Being presented as a muse, Bradstreet would be seen as an inspirational goddess to other male writers instead of a threat for her potential as a poet. Schweitzer explains that the title “[…] 17

styling Bradstreet a ‘muse’ made her the (conventionally female) source of inspiration rather than the (conventionally male) inspired writer wielding the pen”. (SCHWEITZER, 2009, p. 407).

As Kathleen Potthoff McHugh suggests, the Renaissance man would look for inspiration in his muse: “Like the Renaissance poets who will imitate him, Ovid is a poet inspired by an individual woman, in his case named Corinna”. (MCHUGH, 1993, p. 19). For many centuries, muses were writers’ inspirational sources, following the classical Greek concept of the Muses. The Nine Muses have been inspiring artists since antiquity and there are copious works of art – such as paintings, drawings, designs, poems and statues – dedicated to them. McHugh mentions that “Plato presents the Muses as the primary source for poetic inspiration in numerous works”, such as Phaedrus (370 bC) and Ion (380 bC). (MCHUGH, 1993, p. 19) Artists of the Renaissance endorsed their relevance in artistic creation, dedicating their works to the Muses. Henry T. Rowell reminds us that, the Muses give writers the gift of eloquence: “Kings are the nurselings of Zeus. But the Muses alone can bestow upon them the gift of honeyed speech with which they can make justice palatable and heal old quarrels”. (ROWELL, 1966, p. 78). As I will further discuss on this chapter, eloquence was an essential trait for the Renaissance man. The Nine Muses were deities who gave artists and philosophers the necessary inspiration for creation. It was customary for ancient writers to appeal to the Muses at the beginning of their work. Homer, for instance, asks the Muses both in the Illiad and Odyssey to help him tell the story in the best way. According to Rowell, the Muses are “first of all the divine reminders whom the bard invokes to help him tell his entire tale of some part of it”. (ROWELL, 1966, p. 78)

In this way, the Muse is seen as a superior being, for she both teaches and inspires. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that, even though the Muses were crucial in the inspirational process, they were not the actual authors. Male writers gave credit and worshiped their Muses. Yet, these Muses were never depicted with a pen in their hands. Bradstreet’s brother-in-law may have presented her as a “the tenth muse” as an attempt to soften the impact of a Puritan woman writing poetry – which was not exclusively about God – and also as a way to give her and her work a chance of receiving acceptance amongst contemporaries, for a muse would never be a threat to male authors, but an inspiration. 18

As said before, Woodbridge never mentioned Bradstreet’s name in The Tenth Muse. Concealing the names of female writers was not a new technique to avoid unpleasantly rough criticism. As Phyllis Rackin remarks regarding English early modern drama:

As far as we know, no women wrote playscripts for the London professional stage during Shakespeare’s lifetime, but we do know that, as Virginia Woolf shrewdly guessed, many texts that have come down to us as the work of ‘Anon’ were actually written by women. (RACKIN, 2005, p. 45).

Her brother-in-law also tried to justify the publication by writing a prefatory poem on her book that she had not wasted her working hours writing the poems, but that she had written them in her leisure time. He says that the book

[…] is the work of a Woman, honoured, and esteemed where she lives, for her gracious demeanour, her eminent parts, her pious conversation, her courteous disposition, her exact diligence in her place, and discreet managing of her Family occasions, and more than so, these Poems are but the fruit of some few houres, curtailed from her sleepe and other refreshments. (WOODBRIDGE apud RICH, 2000, p. xv).

Puritan women were confined to the household and were supposed to stay away from public affairs. Besides being a woman, she had eight children and a husband; she was expected to be taking care of the household at all times and, if she was to write, she would be expected to write only about her devotion to God’s love. As Kenneth A. Requa observes,

Perhaps as a result of her early reading of poets such as Du Bartas she had come to see the poet as a commentator on public as well as private concerns and the potential audience as at least all Englishmen, at home and in the colonies, as well as her family and herself. But the public role was for her a major problem: how could she be a historian or elegist? Such roles were not for the Puritan housewife. (REQUA, 1974, p. 3).

According to Rackin, “The Puritan preacher Henry Smith ended his 1591 treatise, A Preparative to Marriage, with the argument that, ‘we call the wife housewife, that is, a house wife, […] to show that a good wife keeps her house.’” (RACKIN, 2005, p. 36). Rackin further comments that

In many ways, the position of English women was deteriorating during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. […] The household was redefined as a private, feminized space, separated from the public arenas of economic and political activity, and women were increasingly confined within the raising barriers that marked its separation. These changes were rationalized and encouraged by Puritan preachers, who argued that the primary duty of a wife was not economic production but the nurturing of children. (RACKIN, 2005, p. 39). 19

Also, in the prefatory matter appended to The Tenth Muse, which Bradstreet maintained in the second edition, Woodbridge testifies to Bradstreet’s aversion to print. In his epistle to the “Kind Reader” he writes:

I feare the displeasure of no person in the publishing of these Poems but the Authors, without whose knowledge, and contrary to her expectation, I have presumed to bring to publick view what she resolved should never in such manner see the Sun: but I found that divers had gotten some scattered papers, which I thought to prevent, as well as to pleasure those that earnestly desired the view of the whole. (WOODBRIDGE, apud. BRADSTREET, 1678, s/p).

Most of the poems in the first edition are long and imitative works based on the standard conventions of the Elizabethan poetic tradition. As a humanist and rhetorical tradition, it encompasses a profound interest in borrowing from classical texts, chiefly Latin literature; its mode of address is predominantly public, turning the speaker into an agent involved in a public communicative situation; and it is driven to debate and argument as current forms of expression. Furthermore, this tradition is strongly marked by the presence of an effervescent dramatic activity and flourishes at a moment of lively excitement about the potentialities of the English language.

The topics addressed by Bradstreet in some of her poetry – such as politics, history and religion – were frequently discussed in the classical framework by her contemporary male authors. Nonetheless, the poet introduced a new topic to her discussions: women’s place in society. As Campbell claims, the poet is “[…] one woman who, in the midst of obstacles that might easily have daunted a far stouter soul, spoke words as her limitations allowed”. (CAMPBELL, 1981, L. 22). Campbell regards Bradstreet as “[…] if not the mother, at least the grandmother of American Literature”. Another biographer, Charlotte Gordon, states that “Anne Bradstreet’s work would challenge English politics, take on the steepest theological debates, and dissect the history of civilization”. (GORDON, 2005, L. 286). Campbell seems to understand Bradstreet’s work as limited due to her position in society as a Puritan woman, while Gordon seems to acknowledge the poet’s work as defying and bold. I believe her works were not limited – for she skillfully dealt with a wide variety of important topics – but that her female voice did not have enough power to impact society at her time the way it should have impacted. Although published and generally praised, the importance of Bradstreet’s work was lessened as an effect of the patronizing attitude towards women. 20

As a female writer at a time when women were only allowed to deal with family issues and write exclusively about their devotion to God, the poet defied the very male tradition which provided her with a voice – although this voice was still a limited one due to her religion and to the male-centered society in which she was inserted. As Rich points out about seventeenth- century poetry, “If its theme was the individual in his experience of God, the final value of a poem lay in its revelation of God and not the individual. Least of all in a woman poet would radical powers be encouraged”. (RICH, 1967, p. xiv). Enlightened by Rich’s comment, one can better understand the context in which Bradstreet wrote her works: a patriarchal society and religious context in which women were not encouraged or allowed to express their own minds. It would be a mistake to believe that Bradstreet’s brother-in-law published her poems with the intention of encouraging women’s critical thinking. The publication of her work had an agenda, as I will later explain.

As mentioned before, Bradstreet was well-read. Encouraged by her father, she spent most of her childhood reading. According to Campbell, she most likely kept up with her studies even after she went to the New World:

Many a Puritan matron shared her husband’s studies, or followed her boys in their preparation for Oxford or Cambridge, and Anne Bradstreet’s poems and the few prose memorials she left, give full evidence of an unusually broad training, her delicacy of health making her more ready for absorption in study. (CAMBPELL, 1981, L. 243).

Campbell brings into question whether Bradstreet had the chance to read authors such as Shakespeare and Cervantes, and admits there might be signs that Bradstreet had been acquainted with Shakespeare’s works:

Shakespeare and Cervantes were still alive at her birth, and she was old enough, with the precocious development of the time, to have known the sense of loss and the general mourning at their death in 1616. It is doubtful if the plays of the elder dramatists were allowed her, though […] (CAMPBELL, 1981, L. 245).

In an article about Bradstreet’s “To My Dear and Loving Husband”, Emily Earn compares the poem to Shakespeare’s sonnet “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day”. The critic says Bradstreet’s poem echoes the sonnet in which the poet promises immortality to his young lover. Warn also believes “To My Dear and Loving Husband” echoes Sir Phillip Sidney’s sonnet “My True Love Hath My Heart” which, Warn explains, “celebrates a perfectly balanced 21

marital union from the woman’s perspective”. (WARN, 2009, s/p). Although there are no official documents which affirm Bradstreet read Shakespeare, both Campbell and Warn agree on the likelihood. Speculating about the authors Bradstreet may have read leads us to reflecting upon the literary influence she may have had and how that influence may have had an impact on her production.

Shakespeare attended grammar school, learned Latin, elements of grammar and logic; had Shakespeare had a sister, Virginia Woolf states, she would most likely not have been able to do the same. While wondering what Shakespeare’s sister’s educational background would have been like in her A Room of One’s Own, Woolf claims that “She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother’s perhaps, and read few pages”. (WOOLF, 1929, p. 39). However, while Shakespeare’s sister would have read only a few pages from her brother’s books due to the social context in which she would have lived, Bradstreet read extensively because of her father’s social position and the easy access she had to the same books which were used in schools.

Bradstreet’s privileged educational background which most certainly influenced her writing. On the one hand, she had male writers – such as her favorite poet Guillaume Du Bartas– as inspiration to write her own poems. On the other hand, she frequently wrote in favor of women’s right to reason and to write about various subjects, which was not part of the male tradition at all.

1.2 Rhetoric, Humanism and Rhetorical Culture

Bradstreet was acquainted with writers such as Vergil, Plutarch, Livy, Pliny, Suetonius, Homer, Hesiod, Ovid, Seneca and Thucydides as well as Spencer, Sidney, Milton, Raleigh, Hobbes, Joshua Sylvester’s 1605 translation of Guillaume Du Bartas’s Divine Weeks and Workes, and the Geneva version of the Bible. In view of this repertoire acquired by means of her readings, I assume that Bradstreet’s poetic voice follows certain patterns developed within the Elizabethan poetic and rhetorical tradition. The classical authors she was exposed to belonged to most grammar schools' curricula granting the young Anne with knowledge the boys at her age 22

were being provided for in the classrooms and that she managed to bring into her writing, as I shall point out.

At the center of the humanist educational curriculum, rhetoric emerged as its main discipline, as well as a teaching methodology. The way in which texts were approached and written practice conducted resulted from rhetorical notions of language, written or spoken, as a communicative persuasive tool. I will write a brief account of the history of rhetoric in the Western culture as the term is constantly viewed with prejudice and its importance usually ignored. I will draw from Brian Vickers' chapter "An Outline of Classical Rhetoric'', in his In Defense of Rhetoric, to present such explanation.

In ancient Greece, rhetoric was associated with the practice of justice and the reflection on poetics. Athenian democracy required that every man should be ready to stand in Assembly and speak in debate to persuade his countrymen to vote for or against a particular piece of legislation. The rhetorical ability of such men would define their influence in ancient Athens. Hence, small schools began to form. In the 5th century BC, the sophists started teaching oratory in public places to attract students. The sophists claimed their main aim to be teaching students virtue and justice, stating that human “excellence” was an art that could be taught and learned. Students were willing to pay teachers great sums of money in exchange for tutoring, as rhetoric and public speaking were essential. According to Vickers, the beginnings of rhetoric can be traced back to a time prior to Athenian democracy:

The first teachers of rhetoric that we know of emerged precisely in answer to a new social need. A systematic rhetoric was first developed in the Greek towns of Sicily after the expulsions, between 471 and 463 BC, of tyrants who, among other illegal acts, had seized property. To re-establish its ownership widespread litigation was necessary, and one Corax and his pupil Tisias set up in Syracuse the first rule-based methods for handling judicial disputes (VICKERS, 1989, p. 6).

Isocrates (436-338 BC) was the leading representative of the sophists and taught public speaking with the aim of human improvement. However, he claimed to be different from other teachers and accused them of making promises they could not fulfill. Due to the profit sophists made with teaching, they were believed to manipulate the truth for financial gain. In his speech Against the Sophists, Isocrates attempts to separate himself from other teachers of rhetoric – who he believed gave a bad reputation to all teachers of rhetoric. For Isocrates, the sophists were unable to teach virtue and justice, as they claimed to do, for the sophists themselves did not have 23

such qualities. Isocrates believed constant practice and the imitation of good models were also main aspects of self-improvement. He wrote his speeches as “models” for his students to follow. The first school in Athens was his and though there are no handbooks, his speeches became models of oratory. Vickers proposes that “Isocrates’ importance as the founder of a rhetoric- school is marked by the many similar institutions that sprang up in the ancient world, and his influence on education extended to Renaissance Europe”. (VICKERS, 1989, p. 10) Through his influence on Cicero (106-43 BC) and Quintilian (35 – 100 AD), he also had influence on the entire educational system of the West.

Plato (427-347 BC) was a severe critic of rhetoric and rhetoricians. He wrote a Socratic dialogue, Gorgias, which depicts a conversation between Socrates and a small group of sophists. The aim of this debate is to seek a true definition of rhetoric, since Plato identified flaws in the sophistic oratory. In the debate, Socrates argues that philosophy is an art, while rhetoric is a skill based on mere experience; a knack or routine. Socrates and Plato believed that, if rhetoric was to be used for virtue and justice’s sake, it could not exist alone. Rhetoric alone could not be regarded as a moral endeavor but should depend on philosophy to guide its morality. Therefore, for both Socrates and Plato, without philosophy, rhetoric was simply used to persuade for personal gain: “To Plato, of course, it was deplorable that the rhetorician, not the philosopher, should have such power, but to the majority of students of rhetoric down to the Renaissance its great attraction was just this promise of success in civic life [...]” (VICKERS, 1989, p.7).

Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a student of Plato who put together an extended treatise on rhetoric. Although he also criticized the sophists’ misuse of rhetoric, he saw it as a useful tool in helping audiences see and understand the truth. “Aristotle shared Plato’s disapproval of Isocrates, but he shows himself his own man by challenging Plato’s own prejudices head-on […]” (VICKERS, 1989, p. 19). While Aristotle favored persuasion through reason alone, he recognized that at times an audience would not be able to follow arguments based solely on scientific and logical principles.

Aristotle produced important systematizations in the study of rhetoric, which influenced all his successors. For Aristotle, there are three means of persuasion: 24

He distinguishes three kinds or modes of persuasion: the first ‘depends on the personal character of the speaker’ (ethos); ‘the second on putting the audience into a fit state of mind’ (pathos); ‘the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself’ (1356ª 1-3). (VICKERS, 1989, p.20).

Aristotle’s Rhetoric had great influence on the development of the study of rhetoric. Aristotle highlights that rhetoric is closely related to dialectic, since both are concerned with things that do not belong to a definite genius or are not the object of a specific science. Cicero and Quintilian frequently used elements stemming from the Aristotelian doctrine. Aristotle discusses a variety of life issues in his Rhetoric:

Although the political orator was originally seen as concerned solely with a country’s welfare, in order to appeal to the interest of his hearers he must know what things are ‘good’, so Aristotle adds a discussion of ‘the main facts about Goodness and Utility in general’, absolute and relative (1362ª20-1365b20). By allowing topics to branch out organically from the main trunk of discourse, he leads us into ever-widening areas of life. (VICKERS, 1989, p. 22).

To be considered a skillful rhetorician, one should be able to teach his audience how to become better citizens. In his The Tudor Play of Mind: Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama, Joel B. Altman reminds us of what Aristotle argued in terms of rhetoric:

Yet, Aristotle had argued that ‘we must be able to employ persuasion [rhetoric] just as strict reasoning [dialectic] can be employed, on opposite ideas of the question, not in order that we may in practice employ it both ways (for we must not make people believe what is wrong), but in order that we may see clearly what the facts are, and that, if another man argues unfairly, we on our part may be able to confute him’. Seeing clearly what the facts are means in effect seeing what the facts may be […] Rhetoric becomes, then, ‘the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion’ […]. (ALTMAN, 1978, p. 31).

The first master rhetorician Rome produced was the statesman Cicero (106-43 BC). His writings on rhetoric guided schools on the subject well into Renaissance. Cicero’s approach to rhetoric emphasized the importance of a liberal education. He claimed that, to be persuasive, a man must have knowledge in history, politics, art, literature, ethics, law, and medicine. Only by being liberally educated would a man be able to connect with any audience he addressed. Vickers emphasizes that “In his major rhetoric-book, the De Oratore, which is also his longest work, Cicero attempted a wider scope, indeed the widest, bringing into the rhetorician’s field of competence everything under the sun”. (VICKERS, 1989, p. 29). Cicero left many speeches and letters which would establish the outlines of Latin eloquence and style for future generations: “[…] author of the fifty-eight extant speeches which were pillaged by Quintilian for examples of 25

virtually every rhetorical procedure, and which had an immense popularity in the Renaissance”. (VICKERS, 1989, p.35).

The second Roman to contribute to the study of rhetoric was Quintilian (35-100 AD). Quintilian claimed that public schooling was vital and more important than home education because he believed schools could teach morality to students with proper guidance. In his public school of rhetoric, he developed a study system in which a student was taken through different stages of intense rhetorical training. His twelve-volume textbook Institutio Oratoria (95 AD) deals not only with the theory and practice of rhetoric but also with the basis of the education and development of the orator: “The formation of the orator is Quintilian’s whole concern, leading the reader ‘from the very cradle of speech through all the stages of education […]” (VICKERS, 1989, p.39).

Cicero, in his De Inventione (91-88 b.c), organized the Five Canons of Rhetoric, which constitute a system and guide on the skill of making powerful speeches and writing. Quintilian dedicates most of his Institutio Oratoria to boosting and explaining the Five Canons of Rhetoric in more depth. Cicero’s textbook became the pillar of rhetorical education, the Five Canons being: (1) inventio – the process of developing and refining one’s arguments; (2) dispositio – the process of arranging and organizing one’s arguments for ultimate impact in target audiences; (3) elocutio – the process of determining how one can present one’s arguments using figures of speech and other rhetorical techniques; (4) memoria – the process of memorizing not only one’s speech in order to deliver it by heart but also of memorizing famous quotes and any relevant facts which could be used in speeches; (5) actio – the process of practicing how one can deliver speech using body language, utterance, and tone of voice. Quintilian emphasizes that the combination between body language and utterance has an extraordinarily powerful effect in oratory. “For the nature of the speech we have composed with our minds is not so important as the manner in which we produce it, since the emotion of each member of our audience will depend on the impression made upon his hearing”. (QUINTILIAN apud VICKERS, 1989, p. 65).

The study of rhetoric had already been taking place since the middle ages, but the concept was then infused with religious thought and monopolized by the Church. It was not until the 8th century that a secular interest in the classics began to gain ground again, especially in Italy, and the humanist movement started to develop, reaching a climax around the fourteenth century. 26

Nicholas Mann states that “Humanism is that concern with the legacy of antiquity – and in particular, but not exclusively, with its literary legacy – which characterizes the work of scholars from at least the ninth century onwards”. (MANN, 1996, p. 2).

As mentioned above, humanism spread more effectively in the fourteenth century. For those whose careers required skills of reading or writing, humanism became dominant. By the fifteenth century, humanism’s ideas and studies were becoming admired and central in upper- class Italy: “The term umanista was used, in fifteenth-century Italian academic jargon, to describe a teacher or student of classical literature and the arts associated with it, including that of rhetoric”. (MANN, 1996, p. 1). In the late sixteenth century, according to Mann, the English equivalent “humanist” makes its appearance with a very similar meaning. By the 1500s, humanism had converted into a huge pedagogical project to be used all over Europe and to be closely felt in the curricula of grammar schools in England. Humanists believed in educating citizens, so they would be able to speak and write with eloquence and hence engage in the civic life of their communities.

The humanists of Renaissance used the existing grammar schools and built others to teach their ideas. Humanist pedagogy combined Christianity and classical texts to produce a model of education for Europeans. Education during Renaissance was mainly composed of ancient literature and history, as it was thought that the classics provided moral instruction and an intensive understanding of human behavior.

The term itself owes its origin to the Latin humanitas, used by Cicero and others in classical times to betoken the kind of cultural values that one would derive from what used to be called a liberal education: the studia humanitatis constituted the study of what we might now think of as ‘arts’ subjects – language, literature, history and moral philosophy in particular. (MANN, 1996, p. 1).

In the sixteenth century, the educational curriculum of humanism spread throughout Europe and became foundational for the schooling of European elites. Women were not allowed to attend schools, but some were encouraged to know history and appreciate poetry, which was Bradstreet’s case. Her father stimulated her to read books and write poetry, although he most likely was not aware of what she wrote, for some of her poems – such as her “Prologue” and her “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth” which will be cited and analyzed 27

later on in this work – defied the patriarchal conventions of her time, especially in Puritan society.

In the sixteenth century, the English language had only recently replaced Latin as the primary medium for poetry, as Russ McDonald comments in his Shakespeare and the Arts of Language, becoming “respectable”, and much of this respect was due to the artistic use writers such as Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, among others, gave to the language: “Early modern English, just having emerged from Middle English, was relatively undeveloped as a literary instrument, encumbered with fewer regulations and conventions than the venerable ancient tongues”. (MCDONALD, 2013, p.1). Further does McDonald comment that until the middle of the sixteenth century a poet did not automatically write in his or her native tongue. Thus, it was common for people to learn Latin in order to read the classics as well as contemporary writers. It was only by 1603 that the vernacular had mostly supplanted Latin. McDonald adds that “by the end of the seventeenth century the process of standardization was nearly complete, and the range of expressive possibility had narrowed considerably”. (MCDONALD, 2013, p. 23). Before the standardization was complete, however, the attacks on the vernacular were frequent. It was argued that a writer could never reach as much eloquence in English as he or she would in Latin or Greek and that English was a “threadbare and homespun garment”. (MCDONALD, 2013, p. 12) It is important to note that eloquence was essential in debates – oral or written – and that students learned it at schools. Moreover, it was not unusual for scholars to learn Greek, Latin and French during the seventeenth century even though the English language was already accepted. Bradstreet had been well-tutored in those languages – her favorite poet was the French courtier and poet Guillaume Du Bartas –, which made it possible for her to read the original works by the authors previously mentioned and also to become acquainted with the “splendid and colourful coat” Latin provided the writer. (MCDONALD, 2013, p. 12) In her poems – mostly the ones in which she mentions public affairs –, Bradstreet demonstrates her linguistic skills, acquired, to a large extent, from her reading.

As these concerns with language and expression attest, the early modern period is characterized by the consolidation of a humanist mindset, built upon the recovery and circulation of texts from Antiquity. Humanism was the major intellectual movement of the Renaissance and 28

it became the dominant intellectual movement in Europe in the sixteenth century, using the study of classical texts to alter contemporary thinking. As Mann indicates,

Humanism is that concern with the legacy of antiquity – and in particular, but not exclusively, with its literary legacy – which characterizes the work of scholars from at least the ninth century onwards. It involves above all the rediscovery and study of ancient Greek and Roman texts, the restoration and interpretation of them and the assimilation of the ideas and values that they contain. (MANN, 1996, p. 2).

Mann also comments that there were changes in the European society during the twelfth- century Renaissance which created demands for new occupations and professions: “In addition to men of letters and philosophers, society needs lawyers, doctors and civil servants, and for them the study of the writings of antiquity assumed the role of professional training”. (MANN, 1996, p.4). According to Mann, the study of classical texts took different directions in different parts of Europe:

While in France the study of classical texts – which was to continue well into the fourteenth century – tended to remain rooted in grammar as a tool for understanding and sometimes imitating Roman writers, in Italy it developed along different lines and particularly in the direction of rhetoric as a skill for contemporary life. (MANN, 1996, p.5).

Petrarch (1304-1374), who has traditionally been called the Father of Italian Humanism, both for his influential philosophical attitudes and his discovery and compilation of classical texts, believed that classical writings were relevant in terms of moral guidance to the extent that they could reform humanity, which was also a key principle of Renaissance Humanism. Although he was considered a humanist mainly for his Latin works, his other writings were also influenced by classical texts.

Petrarch is best known today for his vernacular poetry and above all for the great cycle of sonnets, […]. Even there, the influence of the Roman poets is evident. But it is obviously his Latin works that most clearly establish his reputation as a humanist. (MANN, 1996, p. 12).

Petrarch inspired humanist philosophy, which led to the intellectual growth of the Renaissance. While intensely interested in the scholarly study of antiquity, he was also interested in rewriting antiquity giving it his own personal touch. Mann shows that the three features that were to mark the later development of humanism: “an appetite for classical texts; a philological concern to correct them and ascertain their meaning; and a desire to imitate them”. (MANN, 1996. P.7) Although Petrarch believed in the recovery of classical texts and that a writer could 29

follow another man’s tracks, yet without effacing his own marks, he believed in using classical texts as inspiration and example, but not as objects to be fully copied.

Petrarch describes the impact of classical literature on him and his profound acquaintance with it. He sets out his views on the legitimacy of drawing material from great writers of the past, but at the same time on the need to do so in a way which is neither servile nor too visible: the writer may follow in another man’s tracks, but not exactly in his footsteps. The resemblance to be achieved is not that of portrait to sitter, but of a son to his father: similitude non identitas (MANN, 1996, p. 13).

Bradstreet’s works fit into this pattern of imitating tradition yet inscribing one’s personal touch in it. Although her contemporary Nathaniel Ward (1578-1652) – a Puritan clergyman and pamphleteer in England and Massachusetts who was Bradstreet’s family’s acquaintance – suggested that the poet copied Du Bartas’ works and “crossdressed” as a male poet, Rich states that “She was influenced more by Du Bartas’ range and his encyclopedic conception of poetry, than by his stylistic qualities”. Rich also adds that, despite feeling directly influenced by Du Bartas, Bradstreet “seems further to have had reservations about mere imitation of even so stylish a model: ‘My goods are true (though poor) I love no stealth’” (BRADSTREET apud RICH, 2000, p.p xii – xiii). The poet tended to find inspiration in Du Bartas’ work but would, more often than not, follow her own footsteps rather than fully copying him.

In view of this history of rhetoric in Antiquity and the milestones gradually laid by different thinkers, the acknowledgement of the importance of rhetoric within the humanist movement foregrounds a whole culture immersed in the question of language, its uses and its power. Such culture may be named – that which yielded Elizabethan drama, lyric poetry and formed Anne Bradstreet’s training – a rhetorical culture. According to Peter Platt,

While American and English elementary schools no longer feature formal rhetorical training as a central part of their educational programs, our modern culture – suffused with seductive advertising and political ‘spin-doctors’ – is deeply conversant with the art of persuasion. And persuasion was at the heart of definitions of rhetoric in the manuals that taught Shakespeare and his contemporaries of art. (PLATT, 1999, p. 277).

Platt further explains that “The importance of rhetoric in shaping an audience’s moral actions was recognized by Renaissance humanists, who had learned practical applications for classical texts […]” (PLATT, 1999, p.281). Being educated within a rhetorical culture meant being able to talk or write about various subjects with mastery of eloquence, and, more important 30

than that, it meant understanding the individuals as “Protean creatures”, man as “homo rethoricus,” as Platt puts it, exemplifying with different thinkers:

‘Human beings are not born but fashioned,’ Erasmus said, and this is a statement that could serve as an epigraph for both humanism and homo rhetoricus (Greene 1968: 249). This idea presupposes - at least on the surface - a great deal of human freedom in molding the self. An important touchstone for this sense of human flexibility is Pico's Oration, in which Pico imagines God announcing to Adam - "a creature of indeterminate nature" - that he will give human beings "neither a fixed abode nor a form that is thine alone nor any function peculiar to thyself" (Pico 1948: 224). (PLATT, 1999, p. 287).

The understanding of individuals as Protean creatures consisted in believing that a person could have copious selves. As chameleons, individuals are able to shape themselves, having the ability to assume different forms. In Greek mythology, Proteus is a sea god known for his ability to avoid danger by changing shapes. From Proteus comes the adjective “protean”, meaning “versatile”, “mutable” and “capable of assuming many forms”. The Piconian self is also a Proteus. For Pico, human beings have copious selves, displaying great diversity and variety of selfhood. If on the one hand the ability of shaping one’s self according to one’s needs might be claimed as falsehood – for people might take advantage of this ability to deceive others – on the other hand it might be seen as a positive feature for those who lived in a time when shaping one’s discourse according to an audience meant mastering the art of persuasion. Erasmus (1466-1536) in his De Copia (1512), mentions Proteus when describing the rhetorical potential of copious language. Shaping one’s language with dexterity according to a given situation and/or audience was an important feature to be learned and practiced.

As mentioned previously, the possibility of shaping oneself according to requirements leads to the conclusion that one may as well use language as trickery. “For if one accepts that, like language, selfhood can be shaped and manipulated, one has entered a world of tremendous possibility – for both exuberant self-fashioning and devious deception”. (PLATT, 1999, p. 287). Hence, rhetoric may be regarded as a deceitful art, with a potential for destruction and harm, which was one of the reasons for Plato’s attacks on rhetoric and rhetoricians. For Plato, rhetoric’s aim was not to discover the truth, but to discover means of persuasion only. He saw that role of oratory as the decline of values in Athenian society.

Having grown up within a rhetorical humanist culture and having accessed its repertory of texts, Bradstreet turned out to be a writer who had the ability to shape and manipulate language 31

according to the topic she proposed to address. Writing about different issues such as religion, politics, family, death and women’s capability of thinking and writing, she adopted different voices to deal with her different themes, adjusting tone, mood and lexicon to the subject approached. In poems such as “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth” and “The Prologue”. the poet switches from modest to assertive, for example, fulfilling a typical rhetorical procedure. On the other hand, in poems such as “To My Dear Loving Husband” and “A Letter to Her Husband, absent upon Publick employment”, the poet sounds fond and hearty. The poem she writes in honor of the queen takes on political debates and also mentions women’s importance in society while the poems she writes to her husband show her passionate devotion to him and their family. This ability to take on different roles can be associated to Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric: “The faculty of discerning the possible means of persuasion in each particular case”. (ARISTOTLE, 1926, p.xxxii). The Protean nature of the self is characterized by its flexibility and possibilities for human development. Within the humanist view, selves are made and not born. Thus, selves may be constructed as masks or personae. Bradstreet had the ability to change into different selves and accept different roles according to the theme of her poetry and according to or about whom she was writing. Moreover, the poet knew she should not straightforwardly speak her mind, for women were not allowed to be outspoken in the Puritan society – as I shall further explain –, which led her to make use of different personae according to the theme of her poem.

Anne Bradstreet was a product of early modern rhetorical culture. She was well aware of the question of decorum: females were not supposed to meddle in the male sphere; for instance, talking about religion and politics, or any other topic which was not related to piety or to household affairs. When a woman wrote about religion, she was only allowed to do it in order to contemplate God’s kindness and to prove her piety. Hence, as the critic Tamara Harvey comments in her “Now, sisters… Impart Your Usefulness, and Force: Anne Bradstreet’s Feminist Functionalism in the Tenth Muse” Bradstreet dressed herself with male “garments” when writing about such prohibited issues. (HARVEY, 2000, p. 18). Due to her extensive repertoire of classical reading, she was able to shape herself as an attempt to have male and public acceptance. Her need for acceptance has little to do with her willingness to be admired by her contemporaries. In Bradstreet’s case, shaping herself and her writing in order to be accepted was paramount, for a 32

woman intruding male circles might have been banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as I will present with the following two examples.

There were two cases of women very close to Anne Bradstreet being banished from the colony for having tried to insert themselves in the male sphere. One of them was a family acquaintance Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) and the other was Bradstreet’s sister Sarah Keanye (1620-1657). Anne Hutchinson, a Puritan spiritual counselor who was tried and convicted, then banished from the colony in 1637 not only for preaching in public but also for taking part in the Antinomian Controversy. Also known as Free Grace Controversy, it was a religious and political conflict. The Free Grace theology taught that everyone receives eternal life as soon as they believe in Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. This controversy caused disruption in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Due to Hutchinson’s religious convictions and speeches in religious gatherings, she started to be referred to by some of her contemporaries as the “American Jezebel”.4 She was Bradstreet’s friend, also educated, of a prosperous family and deeply religious. She was a mother of fourteen children and a dynamic speaker. She led discussions about the weekly sermons in her home, and the discussions focused on criticizing ministers of the colonies. Women were allowed to take part in these religious discussions – for the leader of the discussions herself, Anne Hutchinson, was a woman – and some of these women went along with their husbands. Her theological movement threatened the community and her gatherings were seen as unorthodox by some ministers. By 1636, Hutchinson and her supporters were accused of heresy. Hutchinson was not only exiled but also excommunicated from the Puritan church. Thomas Dudley and Simon Bradstreet were two of the magistrates that sat at the trial and voted for her banishment from the Massachusetts Bay colony.

Another similar episode happened with Anne Bradstreet’s sister, Sarah Keanye. Sarah had the same religious convictions as Anne Hutchinson and started exposing her views on the streets of the colony. Her husband, Benjamin Keanye (1618-1659), wrote Thomas Dudley a letter

4 In the Hebrew Bible, Book of Kings, Jezebel is presented as queen, whose husband is Ahab, King of Israel. According to the biblical story, Jezebel encouraged her husband to quit worshiping Yahweh (national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah) and begin worshipping the deities Ball (a title associated with the storm and fertility god Hadad, who was condemned as a false god) and Asherah (a mother goddess) instead. Jezebel falsely accused the prophets of Yahweh of blasphemy, especially an innocent landowner who refused to sell his property to King Ahab. Jezebel became associated with false prophets and was killed by members of her own court, who later left her corpse to be eaten by dogs. 33

accusing Sarah of having had sex with another man and demanding excommunication and banishment from the colony. Keanye and his father were prominent public figures in the colony. Hence, he might have accused his wife of immorality in order to detach himself from the image of a woman who would preach in public. What is more, the church in Boston accused Sarah of irregular prophesying and of engaging unclear behavior. Nevertheless, Sarah’s father, found a way to save his daughter from the accusations and from being excommunicated: he claimed that Sarah was mentally ill rather than profane. Sarah and her father got the church to grant her the divorce under such arguments and Dudley later forced Sarah to marry a man from the lower classes, Thomas Pacey (1618-?), and live somewhere far from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The Tenth Muse seems to have been published with an agenda. Although the stealing of her manuscript might seem to have had the good intention of complimenting Bradstreet’s fine work, its main purpose was to obscure the family scandal caused by her sister Sarah. The idea may have been to publish the work of a pious housewife who wrote about her devotion to God and who, although dealing with issues designated to men, her contemporaries might have thought, was just a woman trying to copy her favorite poets. In the epistle to the “Kind Reader”, Bradstreet’s brother-in-law John Woodbridge explains

It is the work of a Woman, honoured, and esteemed where she lives, for her gracious demeanour, her eminent parts, her pious conversation, her courteous disposition, her exact diligence in her place, and discreet managing of her Family. (WOODBRIDGE Apud BRADSTREET, 1678, s/p).

In the above quotation, Woodbridge presents his sister-in-law as a pious, discreet woman. Hence, it may be inferred that her family wanted to parade their talented, not-involved-in- scandals daughter as an attempt to recover their family’s name’s reputation in the colony. So, besides the reasons mentioned previously for believing that Anne Bradstreet did not know about the publication, Sarah Keanye’s episode may have triggered the family’s willingness to have Bradstreet’s manuscript stolen and then published.

Regarding the act of writing for women, Virginia Woolf states that “[…] any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at”. (WOOLF, 1929, p. 39). Bradstreet did not end her life being mocked, but she most likely felt the pressure of being a female writer in a male-dominated society, as noticed in her “Prologue:” 34

“To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings, / Of cities founded, commonwealths begun, / For my mean pen are too superior things […]” (BRADSTREET, 1678, p.3). Woolf continues explaining that “For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted […] that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty”. (WOOLF, 1929, p. 40). What Woolf is trying to illustrate is that the usual scenario for a woman writer in the sixteenth century was devastating. Had Bradstreet not come from an important family or, had she not used rhetorical techniques and followed the male tradition when writing poetry, she might have faced the hostile situation which Woolf speculates.

Anne Bradstreet guarded herself through rhetoric, for she knew how unsafe it was for a female to speak her mind; her sister and her friend were very clear examples. Therefore, I conclude that Bradstreet used her knowledge and ability with words in an imitative way not only because she admired the classics – which she might as well have – but also to assure her safety and stay in the colony. Even in her more assertive works, such as “The Prologue” and “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth”, in which she claims women’s potential more avidly, she does so by following the rhetorical techniques she learned from male works – although with a hint of irony.

As Elizabethan and Jacobean poets did, Bradstreet wrote with an audience in mind – her family in private poems and her male contemporaries in most of her public poems – and her choice of words and style varied according to these audiences. It can be noticed that the poet assumes certain personae – makes use of impersonation – depending on her intended readers. In some of her private poems in which her family is addressed, the poet uses a fonder voice, mainly when addressing her children. In spite of being a Puritan, she used a more sensual voice when addressing her husband. She uses a humbler voice when addressing her father and other potential male readers. In her public poems, although one may notice a self-deprecating voice, especially when comparing herself to male writers, Bradstreet sounds more assertive when she writes about women’s capability of reasoning. In the lines she sounds humble when addressing a public audience, she does so for two main reasons: (1) she should not be writing about public issues in the first place; (2) she knows fake modesty was a common rhetorical code. Male poets – classic and contemporary – used this affected modesty in their works as well; she might as well have been plainly following the tradition. 35

Her imitative voice in public poems is part of the tradition in which she was raised. Rhetoric also presupposes imitation and emulation of the classics, as noted above; the very notion of “inventio” presupposes a collection of topics, a gathering of existing ideas, differently from the current meaning of “invention” It is only natural that Bradstreet’s studies had enormous influence in her first works; mainly the ones in which she dealt with public topics. Hence, in poems such as “The Four Ages of Man”, “Four Seasons of the Year”, “Four Elements”, “Of the Four Ages of Man” and “The Four Monarchies”, one can particularly identify her imitative technique. It is important to remember that there was no female tradition in the seventeenth-century. The poet could not follow any other pattern even if she wanted to.

Rhetoric tutors, as I have commented, trained their pupils to become successful debaters. This debate tradition also became part of the rhetorical culture and Bradstreet makes use of it in some of her public poems, such as “The Prologue” and “The Flesh and The Spirit.” As Platt explains, this debate derives from “the strategy of disputatio in utramque partem – arguing on both sides of the question”. (PLATT, 1999, p. 278). Altman states that in Tudor England “The habit of arguing in utramque partem permeated virtually all areas of intellectual life”. (ALTMAN, 1978, p. 34). Bradstreet seems to understand the importance of arguing both sides as a means to achieve one’s goal: convincing one’s target audience or rather exploring a theme from multiple perspectives. However assertive, the poet is unlikely to state her opinion on a given matter in the first lines of her poem. She will, in most cases, consider all the potential perspectives before claiming her own.

Another important contribution of humanist culture to Elizabethan poetic tradition is the practice of letter-writing. Petrarch was also one of the responsible writers for making the letter one of the “most favoured and versatile literary genres of the Renaissance”. (MANN, 1996, p. 5). Mann also mentions his letters deserve special attention, for they were “in effect the first humanist epistolario […]” (MANN, 1996, p. 13). After finding Cicero’s Ad Atticum (67-43 B.C) 5, Petrarch felt inspired to keep up with letter-writing, and he borrowed its form and conception from Cicero. Concerning Petrarch’s letters, Mann explains that “Certain of them, in particular ones addressed to Boccaccio, deal specifically with the topic of imitatio which was to become

5 Cicero’s letters to his friend Atticus. 36

crucial to the next generation of humanists”. (MANN, 1996, p. 13). In Tudor grammar schools, one of the main coursebooks was Erasmus’ De conscribendis epistolis, a manual teaching letter- writing and analyzing in depth all the communicative processes involved in this practice. Bradstreet also wrote letters, however in the form of poems, which may have been influenced by this letter-writing tradition. She wrote letters mainly to her husband as a way of expressing her love, such as in “A Love Letter To Her Husband” and “To My Dear And Loving Husband”.

For being so well-aware of Elizabethan poetic tradition and for using its techniques – for instance disputatio and imitatio – in most of her poems, some of Bradstreet’s works were regarded by one of her contemporaries as mere copies. Before the publication of her book, Bradstreet’s brother-in-law circulated her manuscript amongst family members and acquaintances and these readers were invited to write commendatory poems which can be found on the first pages of Bradstreet’s book; preceding her poems. Although such poems were supposed to be – and most of them are – positive, there can be found hints of negative criticism in one of them. The Puritan clergyman Nathaniel Ward’s words can be read as negatively for he suggests Bradstreet was merely copying male writers. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the practice of imitatio was not only common but also praised. This makes us think that the problem was not of her copying, but of her being a woman copying men. Platt comments that “Quintilian asserted that the orator ‘must accumulate a certain store of resources, to be employed whenever they are required. The resources of which I speak consist in a copious supply of words and matter’ […]” (PLATT, 1999, p. 285). Although Ward criticized her, Bradstreet was simply following the tradition with which she had become acquainted. Nonetheless, it is important to note that her writing differs from the male one due to her frequent speeches in defense of women’s capability of reasoning. If one does not take that into account, one may fall into the trap of misinterpreting her poems as plain copy, as Ward claimed them to be. It is essential to foreground that Bradstreet might have chosen to speak her mind – about topics such as politics, religion and women’s place in society – by imitating male tradition, for she had had the examples of other female contemporaries who spoke their minds and ended up being banished from the colonies. Bradstreet might have used the tradition in her favor; she would not be banished by writing imitative poetry. 37

Regarding her early, imitative works, such as “Of the four Elements” and “Of the four Humours in Mans Constitution,” Rich comments that “[…] had she simply continued in the same vein, Anne Bradstreet would survive in the catalogues of Women’s Archives, a social curiosity or at best a literary fossil”. (RICH, 2000, p. xiii). As a feminist critic, Rich believes that imitatio would have made Bradstreet invisible in the history of women’s writing. Another critic, Kenneth A. Requa, also praises the poet’s private voice and diminishes her early public works. Requa claims that Bradstreet was more successful as a private than a public elegist. The critic believes the poet felt uncomfortable writing about public issues because she knew she was imitating the male tradition and not with the same excellence. He also states that she holds more power over her writing in private poems, claiming she feels more adequate when writing about domestic subjects. Nonetheless, I believe the poet successfully modulates her voice according to the theme and audience, which should be regarded as a positive skill instead of being read as flaw or inability. Moreover, had Bradstreet lived in an egalitarian society, she would not have been criticized for writing about topics which trespassed the female sphere. Had Bradstreet had as many female classic and contemporary writers to read, she might have pursued inspiration in them too instead of copying male tradion. The idea that Bradstreet was a better writer when she wrote about domestic topics seems to be a replication of the same patriarchal mindset of the seventeenth-century Puritan society.

1.3 A debate between Ward and Bradstreet

When Anne Bradstreet’s brother-in-law decided to publish her work, he let family and friends of the family read the manuscript before sending it to publication. He also asked male members of the family and male friends to write poems which expressed these male readers’ opinion. Such poems were included in Bradstreet’s first edition of the book and were disposed before her poems. The men who wrote their impressions on her work were Rev. John Woodbridge, Nathaniel Ward, Benjamin Woodbridge, C.B., N.H., H.S. and Rev. John Rogers. 38

In Nathaniel Ward’s commendatory poem in The Tenth Muse, the reader can notice that Ward is mainly pointing out Bradstreet’s tendency to write as men wrote. In her “Prologue”, included in the second edition of The Tenth Muse entitled Several Poems, Bradstreet seems to be responding to Ward’s criticism. It is an intellectually stimulating poems because Bradstreet invokes historical facts, includes allusions to the Greeks, Christianity, contemporary poetry and comments on women’s capability of reasoning. Although this poem might be seen as Bradstreet’s admission of her ambivalence about her work, it is in fact a daring assertion of her skills and right to write poetry in a time when feminism was far from becoming a political movement. Let us analyze Ward’s poem in full and then analyze Bradstreet’s response.

Wards’ poem portrays a conversation between the Roman gods and goddess Mercury, Minerva and Apollo. While Mercury showed Apollo Du Bartas’ book – Bradstreet’s favourite poet – Minerva showed Apollo Bradstreet’s book. The group of gods then pondered upon the quality of Bradstreet’s book and raised the question: which sex is better at writing? At the end of the poem, the gods then come to the conclusion that Bradstreet is a real Du Bartas’ girl. I suggest a discussion upon the meaning of such conclusion. Were the gods praising or mocking the female poet for copying a male one?

In the first line of the poem, Ward introduces Du Bartas’ book for he was one of Bradstreet’s literary role models. Ward’s intention seems to be to compare Bradstreet’s writing to Du Bartas’, which can be regarded as either praise or negative criticism. Considering Du Bartas was such a great writer, comparing both writers could be read as a compliment. However, at the same time, such comparison could be read as a hint of negative criticism which suggests the female poet was trying to copy her admired poet. Ward narrates that the Roman god Mercury showed the god Apollo Du Bartas’ book while Minerva showed Apollo Bradstreet’s book. Then, Ward writes that the gods immediately started pondering which of the two poets wrote better:

Mercury shew’d Apollo, Bartas Book, Minerva this, and wisht him well to look, And tell uprightly, which did which excell; He view’d, and view’d, and vow’d he could not tell. (1-4)

In the following lines, Ward writes that the gods tend to believe the male poet has the best brains inside his head: Du Bartas is older and more respected. But they keep raising the question: 39

which one is best? The female or the male sex? The reader may understand the question to be genuine, as if Ward, after reading Bradstreet’s poems, would be considering a fair analysis of both writers’ skills:

They bid him Hemisphear his mouldy nose, With’s crackt leering-glasses, for it would pose The best brains he had in’s old pudding-pan, Sex weigh’d, which best, the Woman, or the Man? (5 – 8)

However, in the twelfth line of the poem, the gods call Brasdtreet a “right Du Bartas Girle” and Ward’s intention become doubtful. Is he trying to diminish Bradstreet’s work by presenting her as a Du Bartas’ girl (a female poet who simply copied the works of her favorite male poet) or is he praising her, saying that she could be as good writer as the French poet? I suggest that, intentionally or not, Ward wastes the opportunity to praise his female contemporary and focus only in her ability to copy another man. Instead of using her name to comment on her talent, he calls her a girl. Her name is not mentioned in the poem, the same way it is not mentioned in the title of her own book:

He peer’d, and por’d, and glar’d, and said for wore, I’me even as wise now, as I was before: They both ‘gan laugh, and said, it was no mar’l The Auth’resse was a right Du Bartas Girle. (9 – 12)

When Ward says he feels more alive to see a woman doing such a good job by writing poetry, the reader may once again interpret his poem as a genuine compliment on Bradstreet’s writing skills. Nonetheless, the last two lines indicate otherwise:

Good sooth quoth the old Don, tel, ye me so, I muse whither at length these Girls wil go; It half revives my chil frost-bitten blood, To see a woman once do, ought that’s good; (13 – 16)

In the closing lines of the poem, Ward seems to mention “Chaucer’s Boots” and “Homer’s Furrs” with the intent to ironically criticize Bradstreet for imitating the male tradition. By suggesting that Bradstreet wanted to wear male clothing, especially Chaucer’s and Homer’s, Ward is trying to convey the idea that Bradstreet copied men with the attempt to become part of 40

their world. Ward also mentions “Spurs”, apparently indicating that he believed women wanted to be in control; for spurs are worn by horse riders and are used to control a horse, which can be connect to the idea of women trying to dominate:

And chode by Chaucers Boots, and Homers Furrs, Let men look to’t, least women weare the Spurs. (17 – 18)

According to Harvey, Ward mocks the female poet for cross-dressing in the male trappings of the poetic tradition. (HARVEY, 2000, p. 5). The boots, furs, and spurs, as the act of writing, were naturally male. Ward is, in fact, stating that the pen was supposed to be used by men, while “a needle better fits” a woman’s hand, as Harvey compares. In her “Prologue”, as I will present in this chapter, Bradstreet seems to be responding to Ward’s ironic accusation. Further does Harvey comment about this issue, stating that both writers were engaging in a debate tradition which they expected their audience to recognize. That could be read as an aspect of the rhetorical tradition with which Bradstreet was acquainted.

Ward was a close friend to the Bradstreet family, which makes it somewhat unclear whether his lines had a misogynistic or only a comic intent. Harvey explains that

As many scholars of the Renaissance have observed, this debate tradition and humor about women more generally are driven by aims other than ‘the woman question.’ According to Woodbridge, most texts within the formal controversy were undertaken as ‘a kind of intellectual calisthenics’ (17), exercises in argument and rhetoric that may contain political agendas and certainly reflect social issues of their time, but rarely are really concerned with the status of women themselves. Both defenses and attacks frequently took the form of dialogues filled with familiar exempla and commonplaces; discussions of women’s intellectual capacity, physical strength (or weakness), and virtue; and catalogs of good and bad women. (HARVEY, 2000, p. 9).

For the second edition of The Tenth Muse, Bradstreet wrote “The Prologue”. This poem seems to have been written as a response to Ward’s seemingly negative criticism. If that was the case, if Bradstreet was indeed responding to Ward’s criticism, then it is possible to infer that Ward’s comparison was received by Brasdstreet more as an accusation than as a praise. I will now present how the female poet dealt with her contemporary’s comments on her work.

In the first stanza, Bradstreet seems to write ironically that she will not discuss the same topics as elite male poets, like kings, commonwealths, and cities because these topics are too 41

superior to her. She grants this accomplishment to Historians and Poets, which may be seen as an irony since she herself was a poet who had already written extensively about history and politics:

To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings, Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun, For my mean Pen are too superior things; Or how they all, or each their dates have run, Let Poets and Historians set these forth. My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth. (1 – 6)

In the second stanza, Bradstreet compares her work to Du Bartas’ work and confesses she envies his talent as a writer. She claims she does not aspire to be as good a writer as he, but rather, to be simple and true to her skill. This might be a response to Ward’s criticism:

But when my wond’ring eyes and envious heart Great Bartas’ sugar’d lines do but read o’er, Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part ‘Twixt him and me that over-fluent store. A Bartas can do what a Bartas will But simple I according to my skill. (7 – 12)

In the third stanza, the poet seems to be deprecating her own work by saying it is faulty, but that, as she writes, these flaws should be expected from a woman’s work (which one may assume was not her opinion in fact, but a criticism towards men who consider women inferior). Bradstreet explains that, the same way it is not expected from school boys to master rhetorical techniques, for they are young and still learning, it should not be expected from a broken instrument to produce good music. She seems to be using the image of a broken instrument as a comparison to a woman’s brain; as if female brain were naturally inferior and defected. Bradstreet was not using so many negative images because she believes women are indeed inferior or have a less-capable brain. It is important to remember that the self-deprecating style was also part of the male tradition, which means that, although Bradstreet might have felt insecure about her work due to the prejudices of her time, she may also have written these lines as a way of criticizing a male-centered tradition by using this very tradition. After that, she evokes the Muses for the first time. She claims a “foolish blemished Muse so sings” to her:

From School-boy’s tongue no Rhet’ric we expect, 42

Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings, Nor perfect beauty where’s a main defect. My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings, And this to mend, alas, no Art is able, ‘Cause Nature made it so irreparable. (8 – 13)

In the fourth stanza, she alludes to Demosthenes, a Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. He learned rhetoric by studying the speeches of previous great orators. As a boy, he had a speech restriction: he probably suffered rhoticism (mispronouncing some letters) but overcame it to achieve great prestige. Bradstreet pretends to believe that, unlike Demosthenes’ condition, her “weak or wounded brain” has no cure:

Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek Who lisp’d at first, in future times speak plain. By Art he gladly found what he did seek, A full requital of his striving pain. Art can do much, but this maxim’s most sure: A weak or wounded brain admits no cure. (14 – 19)

In the fifth stanza, however, Bradstreet shifts her tone and stands up for her right to write and claims that a woman’s place went far beyond the household. She also denounces men for accusing women of stealing from the male writing tradition, which one may assume is aimed at Ward or any other contemporary who might have criticized her:

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’s stol’n, or else it was by chance. (20 – 25)

In the fifth stanza, Bradstreet returns to the topic of the Greeks. She uses the Greeks to question prejudiced male readers: why would the Greeks have made females their muses if they thought females were not worthy artists? Bradstreet is debating here with her potential readers, and she concludes her argument will be defeated by prejudiced male opponents, who will claim that the Greeks were fools and lied:

But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild, 43

Else of our Sex, why feigned they those nine And poesy made Calliope’s own child? So ‘mongst the rest they placed the Arts divine, But this weak knot they will full soon untie. The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie. (26 – 31)

In the sixth stanza, after realizing her readers will not accept her previous argument, she decides to stop mentioning the Greeks and to let men outdo women. She admits men are better at writing and claims that women know this fact. Whether Bradstreet actually believed men wrote better or not is still a topic of debate amongst critics who further study her self-deprecating style, as I shall present later on. While on the one hand she may be using irony, she might as well have felt inferior under criticism. I believe Bradstreet did not agree on the inferiority of women, but that her words are a reflex of the rhetorical culture in which she was raised. She engages in debates in which she writes self-deprecating lines for she was accustomed to such features. Bradstreet was well-aware of men’s opinion upon the female sex and she may have felt the consequences of harsh criticism and oppression. However, while she may sometimes sound humble, she makes it clear in some poems that she disagrees with the limitations imposed by the patriarchal society in which she lived.

In the last line, after pretending to admit men can write better poetry, she asks recognition for her good work in return:

Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are. Men have precedency and still excel; It is but vain unjustly to wage war. Men can do best, and Women know it well. Preeminence in all and each is yours; Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours. (32 – 37)

In the last stanza, Bradstreet wants to close her poem showing her readers she knows how to write good quality poetry, undermining the idea that women cannot write well. The poet makes a final modest request: if her readers ever admire her work, then she asks them to give her a “thyme or Parsley wreath” which are cooking herbs, representing the home and women’s work, instead of asking for a crown of laurel (“Bays”). She claims she does not want to take men’s place, but only to have the right to write her lines. In the last two lines, she once again sounds 44

humble when she says her little ability to write would make men’s works look even better in comparison to hers. Bradstreet once again sounds humble, but there can be noticed a hint of irony when she exaggerates in the compliment upon men’s writing:

And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies, And ever with your prey still catch your praise, If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes, Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays. This mean and unrefined ore of mine Will make your glist’ring gold but more to shine. (38 – 43)

Bradstreet seems to write her “Prologue” with an intended audience in mind: Ward and other male critics. In the same way she seems to write “The Author to Her Book” as a response to her brother-in-law’s unauthorized publication of her book and other male critics. She seems to always write to her male readers and critics when she writes about public issues, in which she often makes use of an apologetic and self-deprecating voice, asking her readers to excuse her lack of skills, as if she was recognizing women as inferior to men. Nonetheless, the poet is wisely using the techniques she learned: disputatio and imitatio, as well as irony. Harvey explains that Bradstreet’s contemporaries do not disregard the fact that Bradstreet was not copying but following the tradition and that, even when they did acknowledge that, they believed the male tradition does not suit the female poet: “Even when Renaissance conventions are accounted for, this critical approach seems to find Chaucer’s and Homer’s garments ill-fitting adornments for the tenth muse”. (HARVEY, 2000, p. 5). It is clear the critics knew she was making use of the available techniques, but were, nonetheless disturbed by her audacity to take on a male activity.

Ward and Bradstreet were engaging in a debate on sex differences and the place of women writers in a Puritan male-centered society. While Ward mocks Bradstreet for her imitative writing, Bradstreet responds in her “Prologue” using irony to explain to the reader that, however good her poems may be, male critics will always say they were either a copy or were good out of luck.

In her “Bradstreet Wrestles with Renaissance”, Ivy Schweitzer discusses Bradstreet’s use of the “topos of affected modesty” in her public poetry. She states that the apologies should not be mistaken for Bradstreet’s true feelings since “affected modesty” was a common poetic device 45

employed by Renaissance poets. When Bradstreet is unable to finish her poem The Four Monarchies, she writes an apology in the form of a poem, as if she was admitting she was not capable of such task. As Eileen Margerum suggests, Renaissance poets routinely employed the topos of “affected modesty” that they learned from Greek and Latin poets. If one does not account for the rhetorical tradition, one may misinterpret Bradstreet’s apology as a statement in which she confesses her writing capability was inferior to men’s. Margerum also states that “Both the classical tradition of public poetry, which she learned by reading the works of her predecessors, and the Puritan narrative tradition contain formulae for humility which writers were obliged to in include in their works, regardless of personal feelings”. (MARGERUM, 1982, p. 151). As Marjorie Boyle states

The modesty of the author became the model for eliciting the modesty of the audience: to listen, to learn, to assimilate, to assent. It was an affected modesty, a necessary convention of the author as the condition of a favorable response from the reader. The concept depended, before Christian humility, on Ciceronian humility. The classical orator protested his inadequacy to the task. (BOYLE, 1997, p. 15).

However, Schweitzer argues that, as a woman, Bradstreet “was defined by injunctions not merely to affect modesty, but to be ‘truly’ humble and self-effacing in everything she did”. (SCHWEITZER, 1988, p. 293). Both the Puritan and Renaissance traditions were androcentric and Bradstreet “encountered the same obstacles faced by other women poets writing within a Renaissance tradition inhospitable to women writing”. (SCHWEITZER, 1988, p. 292). Indeed, Bradstreet was raised within the Renaissance conventions which assumed a masculine subjectivity and a feminine objectivity: conventions which denied women voices as subjects.

Poets like Spenser, Sidney, and Milton, not to mention a whole host of others, could abase themselves and their talent in verse, and affect a modesty which sometimes covered an obvious arrogance (as, for example, Milton […]). (SCHWEITZER, 1988, p. 293) .

According to the critic, the poet was not only being humble due to tradition but also because it was expected from her to be, since she was a woman meddling in men’s business – of writing about public affairs.

As mentioned above, Requa suggests that Bradstreet was more successful as a private than a public elegist. The critic believes the poet felt uncomfortable writing about public issues because she knew she was imitating the male tradition and not with the same excellence. He also 46

states that she holds more power over her writing in private poems, claiming she feels more adequate when writing about domestic subjects. Requa’s observation that Bradstreet was more successful writing about domestic subjects might be mirrored with the comments of her prejudiced male-readers, who believed women should not write about that which did not concern them.

Regarding Bradstreet’s self-consciousness in writing about history and politics, Requa comments that “Anne Bradstreet had an alternative; if she did not feel at ease as a public speaker, she could create speakers in dialogue to present her messages. This alternative posed a possible solution to the conflict of her roles as house-wife and public poet”. (REQUA, 1974 p. 8). Requa’s comment is referring to two of Brasdtreet’s poems in which the poet uses personification and writes the poem in a dialogue format: “A Dialogue Between Old England and New” and “The Flesh and The Spirit”, which will be analyzed in the following chapters. Requa suggests that Brasdtreet uses personification and creates dialogues to feel more comfortable writing about such controversial issues. Nonetheless, the critic failed to consider the cultural context in which Bradstreet was raised. The dialogic and debate structure in her poems are a reflex of the rhetorical culture, as discussed previously. Thus, Bradstreet might not have been self-conscious about her skills, but merely following the only tradition of which she was aware.

Bradstreet’s reading habit built her as a poet. Although her humility might stem from fear of being banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as two of her contemporaries, she was also using techniques she learnt by being raised within the rhetorical culture. It is but crucial to keep that in mind when reading her poems, especially the ones which deal with public subjects such as history and politics. By reading her poems, one can notice that she was not actually stating she was inferior to men but that she was going against men’s notion of women’s inferiority. Hence, it is possible to understand the lines in “The Prologue” as feminist, as well as in the lines of the other poems chosen for the following chapters, for Bradstreet advocated women’s worth and power.

Most of Bradstreet’s limitations as a woman, as a poet and as a female poet derived from her religion. As I have presented in this chapter, the role of Puritan women was confined to the household. The examples of Anne Hutchinson and Sarah Dudley illustrate the female limitations within the Puritan society in the colony. In the following chapter, I will further talk about the 47

history of Puritanism and the place of Puritan women in society while exploring the reflexes in some of Anne Bradstreet’s works in contemplation of this discussion. 48

2 PURITANISM AND THE PLACE OF WOMEN IN PURITAN SOCIETY

Anne Bradstreet belonged to a Puritan community and incorporated the Puritan ideology in her works. Nonetheless, she would not refrain from expressing her religious questionings, which could be considered an outrage. Had she known her works would be displayed for public view, she might not have written about her questionings, for there would have been a risk of being banished from the colony, as I shall discuss. Most likely due to Bradstreet’s use of the Elizabethan rhetorical tradition to express her religious questionings (as I shall further comment in this chapter), that was not the case. According to Robert C. Wess in his Religious Tension in the Poetry of Anne Bradstreet, “That a Puritan poet would express religious tension in his poetry is a curious phenomenon […] Yet like all good poets, the two best poets of colonial New England, Edward Taylor and Anne Bradstreet, do reveal such conflict is some of their best poetry”. (WESS, 1976, p. 30)

2.1 Anne Bradstreet and Puritanism

Since Bradstreet followed the male poetic tradition, she found a way of speaking her mind about Puritan dogmas without being considered heretic by her contemporaries. Not only did the poet question the belief that women were men’s servants, but she also questioned religion itself. Bradstreet, as I commented in the previous chapter, was acquainted with the debate tradition and made use of it in some of her poems. In her religious poem “The Flesh and The Spirit”, there can be noticed the influence of such humanist debate tradition. Before I move further into the matter, I will present what the Puritan dogma meant for Bradstreet and her contemporaries, as an attempt to better understand her lines.

Puritan families, including the Dudleys and the Bradstreets, left the comfort of their houses and gathered in the Arbella to leave for the New World. John Winthrop (1587-1649) led the first large wave of Puritan immigrants. The Arbella group and its three escorts departed from Yarmouth, Isle of Wight on April 8, 1630. Bradstreet's biographer Helen Campbell comments 49

that “It is perhaps the fault of the seventeenth century and its firm belief that a woman’s office was simply to wait such action as man might choose to take, that no woman’s record remains of the long voyage”. (CAMPBELL, 1650, p. 32) Hence, there are no records of Bradstreet’s impression of the crossing. Nonetheless, Governor Winthrop’s journal gives the reader an idea of what the crossing was like. There were problems such as bad weather, diseases, hunger and death. After a three-month crossing, they finally arrived at Salem, on July 22 1630. The Thirteen Colonies were divided into three main categories: New England colonies; Middle colonies; and Southern colonies. The New England colonies comprised the Province of New Hampshire (established in the 1620s, chartered as crown colony in 1679); the Province of Massachusetts Bay (established in the 1620s, a crown colony in 1692); the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (established in 1636, chartered as crown colony in 1663); and Connecticut Colony (established in 1636, chartered as crown colony in 1662). Bradstreet and her family settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the northernmost of the several colonies.

Bradstreet went to the New World due to her family and their religion. However, the poet had her own religious questionings, as previously mentioned. She remained ambivalent about the issues of salvation and redemption for most of her life. Her works reflect the religious and emotional conflicts she experienced as a Puritan woman and as a Puritan woman writer. Topics such as sin and redemption, physical and emotional weaknesses, death and mortality were all a concern to Bradstreet, about which she ostensibly wrote. Her readers will notice that much of her work indicates she had a difficult time managing the conflict she experienced between seeking the pleasures of worldly life and the promises of heaven. As a Puritan, she struggled to subdue her attachment to the world. As a woman, she sometimes felt more strongly connected to her husband, children, and community than to God. According to Malcom Bradbury and Richard Ruland,

The New World was not new, not virgin, not unsettled. But, arriving in historical daylight, sometimes with aims of conquest, sometimes with a sentimental vision of the ‘noble savages’ or other wonders they might find; these settlers brought with them many of the things that formed the literature we now read. They brought their ideas of history and the world’s purpose; they brought their language and, above all, the book. The book was both a sacred text, the Bible (to be revigorated in the King James Authorized Version of 1611), and a general instrument of expression, record, argument and cultural dissemination. (BRADBURY, M. & RULAND, R., 1992, p. 4).

2.2 A brief account of the History of Puritanism

The roots of Puritanism can be found in the beginnings of the English Reformation, which was a series of events in sixteenth-century England. In the English Reformation, England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. The English Reformation was both political and religious. Henry VIII (1491-1547) wanted an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536). However, Pope Clement VII (1478-1534) refused to grant him the annulment. The king repudiated papal authority and in 1534 established the Anglican Church with the king as the supreme head. King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and abbeys in 1536. Although the Anglican Church was separated from the Roman Church, some Catholic practices remained, such as rituals and the cult of images. Puritans were English Reformed Protestants who sought to purify the Church of England from the remaining Catholic practices in the late sixteenth century. The first Puritans to arrive in the New World were called “Pilgrims”. They were separating from the Anglican church and escaping religious persecution in England by fleeing to America. These Puritans were called separatists and advocated total withdrawal from the Church of England. Nine years after the Pilgrims founded Plymouth Colony, the first major Puritan migration to New England took place, in 1629. These Puritans were non-separatists and did not seek to separate from the Anglican church completely, but to reform the Church from within. Most Puritan men held ideas in the mainstream of Calvinistic thought. John Calvin (1509-1564) was Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) successor as the preeminent Protestant theologian who made a significant impact on the fundamental doctrines of Protestantism. He became a pastor of the church of Geneva in 1536 and established an international reputation as a scholar and biblical exegete due to his theological treatise The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

The Puritan ministers Richard Mather (1596-1669) and John Cotton (1585-1652) were both in charge of clerical leadership in the dominant Puritan colony planted on Massachusetts Bay. In addition to believing in the absolute supremacy of God, the total evil of man, and the complete dependence of human beings on divine grace for salvation, they emphasized the importance of personal religious experience. These Puritans insisted that they, as God's elects, 51

had the role of directing worldly affairs according to God's will as revealed in the Bible. This alliance between church and state to form a holy commonwealth gave Puritanism forthright and absolute control over most colonial actions until commercial and political changes compelled them to abdicate it at the end of the 17th century.

Puritans did not believe in celibacy; they were in favor of wedded life and procreation. A woman’s place in Colonial America was at home minding household affairs. Puritans led their lives following a certain pattern of hierarchy, God being at the top of this hierarchy. In the American colonies, Puritans put themselves above Native Americans and those who chose not to convert to Puritanism. In the family sphere, men were at the top followed by women, and finally by children and servants. In the hierarchical structure of the household, women occupied a lower position in relation to men, and a higher position in relation to their children. According to John Morgan,

Much of the puritan attempt at reform, perhaps especially in Elizabethan times, concentrated on the chambers of power. But even from the beginning of our period puritans were also keen to proselytize at the lowest organizational levels; hence a new interest arose in the possibility of the household as a centre of godly instruction. At the bottom of all social analysis came the family rather than the individual. Both Luther and Calvin set their seal of approval on the conjugal bond and the resultant family structure. Almost all writers agreed, citing the fifth commandment, that the family could exist only as a hierarchy. (MORGAN, 1986, p. 142). According to Puritanism, a wife should be a servant to a husband and her participation in public affairs was almost nonexistent. Total acceptance and submission were required of all Puritans, which was not Bradstreet’s case. She cherished earthly things, emphasized her passion towards her husband, and questioned women’s place in Puritan society. Martin and Sherone affirm that

Bradstreet writes candidly of her love for her husband and children, her fears related to death and her visions of heaven, the beauty of nature, the deaths of her grandchildren, and the burning of her beloved house, and through it all runs a single thread: her deep ambivalence about faith. Entrenched in a Puritan orthodoxy that treats the world as a temporary home of bodily temptations and emphasizes trials as a form of spiritual preparation for the return of Christ, Bradstreet struggles to reconcile the joy found in her earthly attachments and her suffering from sickness, grief, and loss with the expectations of her faith community. (MARTIN; SHARONE, 2016, p. 9). In the Puritan ideology, femininity was reduced to submission towards men. Women were seen as inferior to men and children were taught to identify their mother’s inferiority in relation to their father so they could learn obedience. As Morgan continues to explain, 52

It was in the family that the child learned basic social skills such as duty, humility, sobriety, and self-denial. The first necessity, in a highly stratified society, was obedience, and here the child could learn not only from its own experiences, but also from observing the inferior status of its mother. Domestic manuals generally ranted against those women who failed to be feminine, that is to say, submissive in all aspects of their marital relationship. (MORGAN, 1986, p. 143). Puritan women were pious and devoted to God. Nevertheless, they were expected to obey their husbands before they obeyed God, since men were believed to be in control of God’s teachings more than women. Morgan states that “Thus William Gouge could emphasize the primacy of a woman’s obligation to obey God, but imply that in practice her duty was first to her husband, regardless of religious state”. (MORGAN, 1986, p. 144). The English clergyman and theologian John Downame (1574-1652) also advised women that they should look at their husbands as if they were the better part of their selves and, thus, women should cherish them.

Artistically speaking, intellectual life in England in most of the seventeenth century was dominated by religion, and three forms of art were banned: drama, religious music and erotic poetry, at which the English excelled. Even though Bradstreet never wrote erotic poetry, her love poems to her husband were passionate enough to be condemned by her contemporary Puritans. However, she was never criticized for them; she was mainly criticized for her attempt to imitate the male poetic tradition.

One of the most important political and social concepts in Puritan theology is that of the “covenant”, which is a form of contract. In religion, it is a formal alliance made by God with a religious community. The covenant is a biblical concept and many illustrations can be found on the pages of the Scriptures. As a rule, all covenants have certain common beliefs. Firstly, a covenant is always made between God and people, as opposed to a contract which is made simply between people. Secondly, the terms of a covenant are non-negotiable. The terms of a covenant are dictated by God Himself and are not subject to modification. Finally, a covenant is perpetual. While a contract commonly ends when the parties have fulfilled their obligations to one another, a covenant has no earthly expiration date, being extended in some cases beyond lifetime.

Puritan colonists saw themselves as the “Chosen people” and it is possible to refer to this self-image as deriving from the Old Testament, mainly from the story of the Exodus. Bradbury and Ruland comment that, although the belief that Puritans were the chosen people started being 53

spread before the voyage, still in European land, it was the use of the Bible in the voyage which made the idea more tangible: “The myth remains shaped by European sources, but now one source above all, the Bible, and specifically its opening chapters, Genesis and Exodus, the tale of the Chosen People and the Promised Land”. (BRADBURY, M. & RULAND, R. 1992, p. 9). Puritan leaders from John Winthrop to Cotton Mather (1663-1728) appealed to biblical language of escape from Egyptian enslavement, crossing the Jordan, conquering Canaan, and inheriting the Promised Land, to convince Puritans they were the chosen ones. Puritans thought of themselves as a new Israel, a people chosen by God to achieve His historic ends. The colonists saw themselves as escaping a kind of cultural enslavement in England, seeking refuge in the New World, and seeking one day a New Testament version of the Promised Land. Winthrop explicitly made just such an assertion in his “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630):

We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: ‘The Lord make it like that of New England.’ For we must consider that we shall be as a city on a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us. (WINTHROP, 1630, s/p). Bradbury and Ruland state that “The idea of America as an exceptional place somehow different from all others endures to this day, but it is not a myth of the modern American nationalism or recent political rhetoric. It is an invention of Europe […]” (BRADBURY, M. & RULAND, R. 1992, p.5) America, as Puritans thought of it – as the Promised land –, already existed in Europe: “This America first came into existence out of writing – European writing – […]” and became tangible after colonization. The critics explain that “[…] the recorded literary imagination thereafter was formed from the intersection between the European Renaissance mind and the new wondrous land in the West the settlers found”. (BRADBURY, M. & RULAND, R. 1992, p. 4).

Whereas it does not directly address this notion of a Chosen People, Bradstreet’s long historical poetic quartet, “The Four Monarchies”, works as a reminder of what had happened to the Israelites in their own promised land when they failed to maintain God’s law and their devotion to Jehovah. It is her longest poem, which versifies 3,432 lines of ancient history. Her main source was Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World (1614). Bradstreet’s long unfinished poem describes what were considered the four great monarchies of civilization. I will present the section of the poem in which Bradstreet mentions the Israelites and their promised land: 54

Belus6 Great Nimrod7 dead, Belus the next his son Confirms the rule his father had begun, Whose acts and power is not for certainty Left to the world by any history. But yet this blot forever on him lies, He taught the people first to idolize: Titles divine he to himself did take, Alive and dead, a god they did him make. This is that Bel the Chaldees8 worshiped, Whose priests in stories oft are mentioned; This is that Baal9 to whom the Israelites So oft profanely offered sacred rites: This is Beelzebub10, god of Ekronites11, Likewise Baalpeor12 of the Mahabites, His reign was short, for as I calculate, At twenty-five ended his regal date. (25 – 40)

Bradstreet’s literary standards derived from writers of Renaissance. As I have mentioned in the previous chapter, Bradstreet’s early works were embedded in the influence of Renaissance Humanism. As Martin and Sherone claim, critics such as Rosamond Rosenmeier, Tamara Harvey, Timothy Sweet and others “[…] have explored the ways in which Bradstreet practices a kind of doubleness, writing poetry that appears to conform to a particular standard but can be read in potentially subversive ways” (MARTIN; SHERONE, 2016, p. 7). Having drawn from classical writers, Bradstreet's interest in debate would often guide her questionings about

6 Belus: In classical Greek texts, the king who founded Babylon. He is recognized and worshipped as the God of war.

7 Nimrod: a biblical figure described as a king in the land of Shinar (Assyria). According to the Book of Genesis, Nimrod was the great-grandson of Noah.

8 Chaldees: a Semitic-speaking nation that existed between the late tenth or early ninth and mid-sixth centuries B.C. It was located in the southeastern corner of Mesopotamia and briefly came to rule Babylon.

9 Baal: it was a title and honorific meaning “lord” in the Northwest Semitic languages. Baal was particularly associated with the storm and fertility god Hadad. 10 Beelzebub: a name derived from Philistine (ancient people known for their conflict with the Israelites described in the bible) god and is associated with the Canaanite god Baal.

11 Ekronites: people who lived in the city of Ekron. In the Hellenisic period known as Accaron, it was one of the five cities of the Phillistine pentapolis located in southwestern Canaan.

12 Baalpeor: A reference to a divinity worshipped by the Moabites (people who lived in Moab, the historical name for a mountains tract of land in Jordan, an Arab country in western Asia. Baal of Peor, which is mentioned in the bible, means The Lord of the House of Horus. In John Milton’s (1608 – 1674) “Paradise Lost,” Peor is said to be the other name of the fallen angel Chemos. 55

everything that permeated life. Many of her early poems rely on the resort to different personae and the use of argumentation in order to create a debate-like format. Thus, as Stanford suggests, “Anne Bradstreet went as far as her place in a society which condemned Anne Hutchinson and Anne Hopkins would allow”. (STANFORD, 1966. p. 87).

2.3 The place of women in Puritan colonial society

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, women did not have many rights. They did not participate in town meetings and were excluded from decision making in the church. Ministers were male and would preach that the soul had two parts: the immortal masculine half and the mortal feminine one. The Puritan mindset understood women were to be treated harshly – as well as children – and there was a strong demand for marriage. According to the Puritan belief, women's weaknesses were a representation of Eve’s original sin, which would make women much more inclined to give in to temptation. The community leaders were male and supported the idea that women were inferior to men. Nonetheless, some women were safe from public exposure due to the fact that they usually exercised an indirect authority within the community. Bradstreet was the daughter of a governor and the wife of another governor; that cannot be overlooked. Although Anne Hutchinson was an influential woman in the colony – having had many people attend her meetings – she made the mistake of meddling in men’s world. As Faith Cook introduces, “The Anne Hutchinson saga had all begun back in old Boston, England, when this highly able and serious-minded Christian had been among the many who attended John Cotton’s ministry at St. Botolph’s”. (COOK, 2010, p. 37). Hutchinson and her husband followed Protestant Minister John Cotton to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, where she shared her own interpretations of the Minister’s teachings, against the rules and beliefs of the governing ministers. According to Cook, Hutchinson believed “[…] firmly that the justification of a sinner was the result of the unmerited grace of God and did not depend on reaching a certain moral standard as a necessary prerequisite, or even entail a certain depth of conviction of sin”. (COOK, 2010, p. 37). That means Hutchinson did not believe one’s good deeds could save oneself from damnation. Following Cotton’s teachings, she believed only faith could excuse a 56

person from his/her sins. Cook explains that “The evidence that a regenerating work had taken place in an individual’s life lay not in the attainment of an acceptable standard of conduct, good though that might be, but by the inner witness of the Spirit of God with the believer”. (COOK, 2010, p.p 37-38).

After settling in Boston, Hutchinson conducted weekly meetings in her home to discuss ministers’ sermons and she spoke of a spirit-centered theology which claimed that God’s grace could be directly granted through faith. This idea went against the Puritan ministers’ orthodox view that people must live according to the Bible’s law by performing good deeds. As Cook mentions, Hutchinson made “[…] the mistake of thinking that in her adopted country she would have freedom to express all her deeply held beliefs, whereas in old England she had been obliged to suppress them”. (COOK, 2010, p. 39). She was becoming increasingly outspoken by the time numbers of people, including men and women, started attending her classes. Cook suggests that “For a woman to be teaching men would become an issue of major aggravation in the colony on scriptural grounds and one that led directly to clashes with the Massachusetts governors”. (COOK, 2010, p. 40). Hutchinson became more and more extreme in her religious views and resisted the oppression when only John Cotton stood by her. In October 1635, Henry Vane (1613- 1662), a young nobleman from the court of Charles I, arrived in New England and supported Hutchinson’s position, attending her twice weekly meetings. Thomas Dudley's governor position was taken away from him when Vane was elected in 1635, which made Hutchinson’s life easier. However, Vane left the colonies and John Winthrop was re-elected. When Hutchinson started claiming extra-scriptural revelations and spread the idea that she had personal and direct guidance from God, Winthrop sent her to trial and found her guilty of disrespect for the ministers. She was excommunicated and banned from the colony. These growing tensions of the era became known as the Antinomian Controversy.

Anne Bradstreet, as Hutchinson, questioned some of the Puritan religious beliefs, but confined her views to her writings. According to Wess, in some of her poems she “[…] reveals a simple, sincere, univocal, and explicit faith in her Puritan beliefs. […] This viewpoint, however, is not always present in her poetry”. (WESS, 1976, p. 31). Wess comments that in the epistolary poem “To My Dear Children”, “She candidly admits her doubts ‘concerning the verity of the Scripture’ and God’s existence. She even wonders whether the Catholic Church might really be 57

the true church”. (WESS, 1976, p. 31). Due to her questionings regarding the Puritan ideology, Bradstreet would occasionally wonder if the Catholic Church was the right choice as Wess states. However, in other poems such as in “A Dialogue Between Old England and New”, the poet harshly criticizes the Catholic Church. Bradstreet registered her ambivalent thoughts regarding the Puritan ideology according to different moments of her existence. As Zach Hucthins explains:

Because Anne Hutchinson combined her quest for gender equality with heterodox theology, critics continue to conflate the two issues when studying contemporary women such as Bradstreet, making Bradstreet’s affirmation of orthodox doctrines into a pose of submission and her poetic objections into gendered hierarchies tantamount to heresy. But a close reading of Bradstreet’s poetry reveals neither a writer who meekly accepts predominant Puritan views on gender, nor one who wholly rejects the theological tradition in which she writes. Instead, many of Bradstreet’s poems, both those labeled subversive and those labeled submissive, detail her negotiation for an empowering form of wisdom accessible to women within the context of Puritan orthodoxy. Bradstreet does advocate gender equality and does innovate theologically, but she operates within the confines of her faith […]. (HUCTHINS, 2010, p. 41).

2.4 Anne Bradstreet’s questionings

In her poem “The Flesh and The Spirit”, Bradstreet writes about her questionings in relation to worldly themes and afterlife redemption in the form of a debate. She starts her poem describing a scene: the speaker is walking by a secret place on the banks of Lacrim and overhears a conversation between two sisters. It is important to notice that the debaters are women. Puritan women were not allowed to engage in debates. Nonetheless, Bradstreet found a way of expressing her belief that women should engage in debates as well. One of the sisters is called Flesh and personifies worldly pleasures. The other sister is called Spirit and personifies heavenly life:

Jean Lutes explains that the Puritan doctrine was a fundamental part in Bradstreet’s daily life: “She lived in a community founded on a belief in the supremacy of God’s word, surrounded by others who, like her, struggled to wean their affections from this world and focus their attention on the next”. (LUTES, 1997, p. 314). In this poem, Bradstreet voices her struggles by personifying flesh and spirit as sisters. Each sister will be in favor of one side of the question throughout the poem. Flesh then starts her part of the debate. Flesh directly asks why Spirit is so devoted and pious, but the questions seem to express a bit of irony, a feature Bradstreet used in some poems. This inquiry seems to have an agenda: to convince Spirit that earthly pleasures are more worth it than heavenly life:

'Sister,' quoth Flesh, 'what liv'st thou on Nothing but Meditation? Doth Contemplation feed thee so Regardlessly to let earth go? Can Speculation satisfy Notion without Reality? (9 -14) Flesh keeps on questioning Spirit on her hope to find a better life in heaven. The irony is still present when Flesh calls Spirit’s belief in after-life a “dream”. Flesh seems to have a hard time understanding why Spirit would do such a thing, wait upon treasures that might never come: Dost dream of things beyond the Moon And dost thou hope to dwell there soon? Hast treasures there laid up in store That all in th’ world thou count’st but poor? (15 – 18) Had Bradstreet not used poetic devices to express her doubts, these lines might have been taken as heresy by her male contemporaries. For Bradstreet was, as Anne Hutchinson did, defying the Puritan ideology. After criticizing Spirit’s interest in meditation, speculation and contemplation, Flesh shows her intention of presenting Spirit with the pleasures of the world. Flesh invites Spirit: Art fancy-sick or turn’d a Sot To catch at shadows which are not? Come, come. I’ll show unto thy sense, Industry hath its recompence. (18 – 22) 59

As an attempt to convince Spirit that the world is worthier, as if she was advocating in favor of sinful pleasures, Flesh then gives Spirit examples of how delightful earthly life is: the fame, the riches, etc.: Dost honour like? Acquire the same, As some to their immortal fame; And trophies to thy name erect Which wearing time shall ne’er deject. For riches dost thou long full sore? Behold enough of precious store. Earth hath more silver, pearls, and gold Than eyes can see or hands can hold. (23 – 32) According to Cook, “These suggestions played on those very temptations with which Anne wrestled, together with the wistful desire to gain recognition for her work, or even renown”. (COOK, 2010, p. 76). So far only Flesh has pronounced herself. In the second part of the poem, Spirit has her chance of defending her side of the question: being pious and religious is worth it for heavenly goods are eternal and more generous. Spirit starts her defense by saying the pleasures Flesh so much loves are sinful and that Spirit’s willingness to meet heavenly life is greater: I’ll stop mine ears at these thy charms And count them for my deadly harms. Thy sinful pleasures I do hate, Thy riches are to me no bait. Thine honours do, nor will I love, For my ambition lies above. (55 – 60) Comparing both speeches, Spirit seems to use a more assertive tone whilst Flesh is more ironic and inquiring. Spirit calls worldly possessions “trash” and insists on the idea that all possessions earth can provide are not even close to the greatness of what heaven shall provide, which is precisely what Puritans should believe:

Mine eye doth pierce the heav’ns and see What is Invisible to thee. My garments are not silk nor gold, Nor such like trash which Earth doth hold, But Royal Robes I shall have on, More glorious than the glist’ring Sun. (78 – 83) 60

Now, Spirit seems to be using the same technique as Flesh: advocating in favor of her own cause (in Spirit’s case, piety and devotion). In the following lines, Spirit expresses that she believes her meditations will pay off in a place in heaven which could never be found on earth:

My Crown not Diamonds, Pearls, and gold, But such as Angels’ heads infold. The City where I hope to dwell, There’s none on Earth can parallel. (84 – 87)

Spirit continues the debate for 22 more lines, proving Flesh is wrong in her choice. Spirit then ends the poem/debate by stating that heaven is not the place for Flesh, for Flesh is “unclean”. Regarding the poem and the poet, Cook states that “Like any Christian, she knew the constant conflict that arises between the sinful desires that still distress a believer and the new life of the Spirit in the soul”. (COOK, 2010, p.75). Despite Bradstreet's questionings about the religious institution, she was still a pious Puritan, which might be the reason why her poem ends with Spirit’s arguments, as if she meant her religious side would always win in spite of such questionings.

In other religious poems, Bradstreet also analyzes the dogmas of her religion in a critical way. When she suffers from some sort of pain or tragedy, she tries to place it within the larger context of God’s will and reminds herself to turn her thoughts heavenward. She regularly explores the tension between the joy of her earthly life and her supposed eternal life. Even though she always concludes that Heaven is superior to Earth, she shares her thought process with the reader which, for a Puritan woman, could be considered an act of rebellion:

Like most New England colonists, Anne Bradstreet was torn in her loyalties. Although the churches were congregational in their form of government, the leaders of Massachusetts Bay Colony had not severed their links with the Church of England. Nor had they repudiated the authority of Charles as their king appointed by God to rule over them. Yet at the heart of the present conflict were those same issues which had led to their own exile. As a woman Anne had no political influence, nor was she expected to pass any public opinion on the situation, and yet she was burning with unexpressed views. Was there no way in which a woman’s voice could be heard? (COOK, 2010, p 81). Bradstreet did find a way to be heard; more precisely, to be read. Even though without the intention to publish her works, the poet was able to express her views towards religion and politics through her poems and many of her contemporaries read her opinion. Although there is 61

no evidence that they were taken seriously, Bradstreet was one woman who was able to share her thoughts about matters which were not allowed to women.

Another poem in which Bradstreet expresses her political and religious questionings is “A Dialogue between Old England and New: concerning their present Troubles, Anno, 1642”. The year of 1642 was when the English Parliament and the Stuart king Charles I furthered their power conflicts onto the battlefield. There then began the Civil War, ending with Charles’s execution in 1649 and the installation of Oliver Cromwell as the Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth government. The poem, according to Heidi Nichols, considers “the religious and political conflict brewing in England, including quarrels between Charles I and Parliament and the persecution of dissenters under Archbishop Laud, which eventually ignited civil war in 1642”. (NICHOLS, 2006, p.82). As soon as Bradstreet arrived in New England, her motherland was filled with political and religious troubles.

In “A Dialogue between Old England and New”, Bradstreet demonstrates her knowledge of history and her opinion about the religious tension between Protestantism and Catholicism. Throughout the poem, she mentions her concern over the civil and religious strife in England (or “Old England” as she writes in her poem). It covers the English crisis of 1642, which took place at the beginning of the English Civil War.

Bradstreet personifies Old England as the mother and New England as the daughter, who will have a dialogue in which New England questions the cause of the current situation. Personification, as used in “The Flesh and The Spirit”, was another borrowed technique, and one strongly associated with the medieval morality plays. What seems to be a domestic conversation between mother and daughter turns out to be a meditation on how England fell into a state of civil war. New England asks her mother whether the distress had been caused by foreigners, monarchs, or plagues. Her mother, after much refusal, states the cause to be political and religious corruption.

In the first lines, the daughter, New-England, questions her mother, Old England, about the troubles which are taking place in England. The daughter treats the mother as “Queen”, which can be seen as a sign of respect to her motherland. Bradstreet was raised and educated in England. Hence, even though her new home was for Puritans a hope for a new and better life, Bradstreet had much affection for the place where she learned most things she knew by then. 62

New- England Alas, dear Mother, fairest Queen and best, With honour, wealth, and peace happy and blest, What ails thee hang thy head, and cross thine arms, And sit i’ the dust to sigh these sad alarms? What deluge of new woes thus over-whelm The glories of thy ever famous Realm? What means this wailing tone, this mournful guise? Ah, tell thy Daughter; she may sympathize. (1 – 8) Old England seems, in her first lines, bitter and reluctant about telling her daughter the issues of her land. Old England does not straightforwardly give her daughter an answer. Instead, she tries to catch her daughter’s attention by mentioning many other woes which might have been the reason for her sorrows, but in fact are not. Her ability to catch her daughter’s attention by making her even more curious about the real reason can be attributed to the rhetorical poetic tradition as well, as mentioned in the first chapter.

Old England Art ignorant indeed of these my woes, Or must my forced tongue these griefs disclose, And must my self dissect my tatter’d state, Which Amazed Christendom stands wondering at? And thou a child, a Limb, and dost not feel My weak’ned fainting body now to reel? This physic-purging-potion I have taken Will bring Consumption or an Ague quaking, Unless some Cordial thou fetch from high, Which present help may ease my malady. If I decease, dost think thou shalt survive? Or by my wasting state dost think to thrive? Then weigh our case, if ‘t be not justly sad. Let me lament alone, while thou art glad. (9 – 22) New-England keeps wondering why her mother is reluctant to say what it is that afflicts her. The poet goes through England’s history, which shows her vast knowledge derived from the education she had received back home, in the voice of New-England, who lists events – such as the Norman invasion, Edward II’s deposition, the War of the Roses, the battle of Bosworth – and hardships to try and identify the source of the issue. Bradstreet recovers historical facts up to Elizabeth I’s reign and her defeat of the Invincible Spanish Armada in 1588. 63

New-England And thus, alas, your state you much deplore In general terms, but will not say wherefore. What Medicine shall I seek to cure this woe, If th’ wound’s so dangerous, I may not know? But you, perhaps, would have me guess it out. What, hath some Hengist like that Saxon stout By fraud and force usurp’d thy flow’ring crown, Or by tempestuous Wars thy fields trod down? Or hath Canutus, that brave valiant Dane, The regal peaceful Sceptre from thee ta’en? Or is 't a Norman whose victorious hand With English blood bedews thy conquered Land? Or is ‘t intestine Wars that thus offend? Do Maud and Stephen for the Crown contend? Do Barons rise and side against their King, And call in Foreign aid to help the thing? Must Edward be depos’d? Or is ‘t the hour That second Richard must be clapp’d i’ th’ Tower? Or is it the fatal jar, again begun, That from the red, white pricking Roses sprung? Must Richmond’s aid the Nobles now implore To come and break the tushes of the Boar? If none of these, dear Mother, what’s your woe? Pray, do not fear Spain’s bragging Armado. Doth your Ally, fair France, conspire your wrack, Or doth the Scots play false behind your back? Doth Holland quit you ill for all your love? Whence is this storm, from Earth or Heaven above? Is ‘t drought, is ‘t Famine, or is ‘t Pestilence? Dost feel the smart, or fear the consequence? Your humble Child entreats you shew your grief. Though Arms nor Purse she hath for your relief— Such is her poverty,—yet shall be found A suppliant for your help, as she is bound. (23 – 56)

Old England answers that the issues New England mentioned should be good reasons for sorrow, but then confesses that she is not precisely worried about foreign rivals at that moment. The source of her sorrows lies in her sins. She mentions that, in her land, citizens have committed adultery, usury, bribery and murder. Moreover, she mentions the selling of church offices in exchange for money and the abuse of religion in her country. Old England also talks about historical facts, highlighting religious ones, though. Old England’s complaints in the poem – such as the English Civil War, caused by the clash of power between the monarchy and Parliament – 64

can be considered as Bradstreet’s own political and religious views upon her motherland. It should be highlighted, at this point, that it was not up to a woman to tackle such public events; especially Puritan women, who should be minding their household affairs and writing only about piety:

Her attitude toward the Catholic Church in her poetry is one only of contempt. In ‘A Dialogue Between Old England and New,’ the Reformation is the bright day after the night of ‘dark Popery’ (1. 222). Mrs. Bradstreet is in the vanguard of Puritan sentiment against Catholicism when she announces in that same poem her hatred for ‘Rome’s whore with all her trumpery’ (1.243). (WESS, 1976, p. 31). The poem goes on with New-England asking her mother to be more specific about her sorrows, so New-England could be able to help her. The mother then explains that the King and the law are quarreling over who is more powerful and sovereign. Old England claims there are people on either side of the argument, but she herself does not know exactly where she stands and asks her daughter for compassion.

The scales shall fall from your long blinded eyes, And him you shall adore who now despise. Then fullness of the Nations in shall flow, And Jew and Gentile to one worship go. Then follows days of happiness and rest. Whose lot doth fall to live therein is blest. No Canaanite shall then be found ‘n th’ land, And holiness on horses’ bells shall stand. If this make way thereto, then sigh no more, But if at all thou didst not see ‘t before. Farewell, dear mother; Parliament, prevail, And in a while you’ll tell another tale. (275 – 286) Although Bradstreet was not writing against her own religion in her “Dialogue”, the fact she was writing about it could alone be considered a rule-breaking action. Jean Lutes explains that rather than classify Bradstreet as a rebel or a conformist – which some other scholars tend to do –, he tries to complicate totalizing definitions of what she was conforming to or what she was resisting, “thus revealing the sensitivity and grace with which her writings avoid, and even profit from, the contradictions within the ideological systems themselves”. (LUTES, 1997, p. 311). Hence, I can safely affirm that Bradstreet can be regarded as a non-conventional Puritan writer.

Another instance of such non-conventionality can be seen in the poem “Upon Some Distemper of Body”. According to Wess, “Such poems recall the anguish of physical pain and spiritual torment during illness when religious doubts might very naturally manifest themselves. ‘Upon Some Distemper of Body’ mentions this sense of doubt […]” (WESS, 1976, p. 31). When writing about infirmity, the poet’s “anguish” might be assumed to be referring to doubtful feelings while sick, but she usually ends up saying she relies on God for recovery: In anguish of my heart replete with woes, And wasting pains, which best my body knows, In tossing slumbers on my wakeful bed, Bedrenched with tears that flowed from mournful head, Till nature had exhausted all her store, Then eyes lay dry, disabled to weep more; And looking up unto his throne on high, Who sendeth help to those in misery; He chased away those clouds and let me see My anchor cast i' th' vale with safety. He eased my soul of woe, my flesh of pain, and brought me to the shore from troubled main. (1- 12) While Bradstreet deals with public matters such as religion and politics by showing her acquaintance with such topics and also history, her private works have a more confessional tone. In another poem in which Bradstreet talks about her illness, “For Deliverance from a Fever”. she expresses more clearly her doubts and fears. As Wess points out, “Since in her pain she seems abandoned by God, the religious doubt in this poem becomes the uncertainty of her election: ‘Beclouded was my soul with fear / Of Thy displeasure sore, / Nor could I read my evidence / Which oft I read before’ (11. 10-13)”. (WESS, 1976, p. 32). Although in the twenty-first century her lines might not seem that troubling, Puritan women (and men) were expected to be fully devoted and pious, not questioning.

Another theme which was not expected from Puritans to write about was the theme of bodily love. Bradstreet often wrote poems in the form of letters to her husband, who would usually go on business trips. In such poems, she openly talks about her passionate love for him, which defies the common misconception of the Puritans as a harsh, narrow-minded people. On the other hand, although it was expected from a wife to be devoted to her husband, it was not acceptable for a Puritan woman to be writing about love if not about the love of God. In her poem “A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick Employment” Bradstreet wonders why her head and heart are 66

away with her “Magazine of earthly store” (which refers to her husband). By using such an image to refer to her husband, she is distancing him from a divine, sublimated figure and referring to him as a being of flesh and blood. While she feels heavenly love for God, being a pious Puritan, she also feels earthly love for her husband. Openly disclosing carnal feelings – even if for one’s husband – was not at all expected from a Puritan woman. However, in her letter, Bradstreet mourns his absence. Also in this poem, she uses her knowledge of astrology to explain the time of the year for the events mentioned:

My head, my heart, mine Eyes, my life, nay more, My joy, my Magazine of earthly store, If two be one, as surely thou and I, How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lye? So many steps, head from the heart to sever If but a neck, soon should we be together: I like the earth this season, mourn in black, My Sun is gone so far in’s Zodiack, Whom whilst I ’joy’d, nor storms, nor frosts I felt, His warmth such frigid colds did cause to melt. (1 – 10) Bradstreet shows her sensuality in this poem, topic about which Puritan women were not supposed to write. The poet says her husband’s warmth melted her “frigid colds” and that, because of such warmth, she did not have to fight storms or frosts. The poet openly works with the image of a woman feeling warm because of her husband’s love. Moreover, she mentions how difficult it is for her to look upon her children, for they remind her of her husband. Such revelations were far from being conventional. Whilst in her public poems she defies her religious standards by questioning her own faith and the Puritan ideology itself, in her private ones she shows that, although pious, she would not write only about piety and God’s love. My chilled limbs now nummed lye forlorn; Return, return sweet Sol from Capricorn; In this dead time, alas, what can I more Than view those fruits which through thy heat I bore? Which sweet contentment yield me for a space, True living Pictures of their Fathers face. O strange effect! now thou art Southward gone, I weary grow, the tedious day so long; But when thou Northward to me shalt return, I wish my Sun may never set, but burn Within the Cancer of my glowing breast, The welcome house of him my dearest guest. 67

Where ever, ever stay, and go not thence, Till natures sad decree shall call thee hence; Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone, I here, thou there, yet both but one. (11 – 27) Bradstreet was a pious woman who devoted her life to God, her husband, and children. Her private poems illustrate such devotion. Nonetheless, there is much more in Bradstreet’s poems than just piety. According to Wendy Martin and Sharone Williams in The Routledge Introduction to American Women Writers, “During her lifetime and since, many groups have wanted to claim Bradstreet as one of their own: a submissive Puritan daughter, wife, and mother, a symbol of cultural sophistication of New England, and a convert feminist operative in a deeply patriarchal culture, among other things”. (MARTIN; SHARONE, 2016. p. 7). Nevertheless, Bradstreet spoke her mind using her poetry instead of publicly preaching like her two female contemporaries mentioned in the previous chapter:

She was invested in the social structures that dictated filial and wifely obedience, but her probing of her Puritan faith and experiences and of history, philosophy, and gender in her poetry reveal her as someone who loved her earthly life and questioned the religious, social, and political systems that told her how she ought to experience it. Bradstreet likely would never have identified herself as a radical, but her deep involvement in the world of ideas in her public poetry and her exploration of the emotional depth and validity of the female experience in her later, private work reveal her as a poet with feminist concerns. (MARTIN; SHARONE, 2016, p. 7). Although Anne Bradstreet is usually studied as an American Puritan female writer, the poems mentioned in this chapter serve as evidence that Bradstreet was not totally in accordance with the Puritan dogma, for she wrote about her religious questionings, her passionate feelings towards her husband and, more importantly, inserted in her poems the female figure engaging in religious debates. Thus, her Puritan label should not be taken for granted, for the poet wrote much more than only her piety and devotion to God. Her religious poems played an important role, for they express Bradstreet’s ambivalence towards her own religion and the way she chose to deal with her questionings, especially regarding women’s place in society.

3 FEMINIST ELEMENTS IN BRADSTREET’S WORKS

In this final chapter, I will revisit Anne Bradstreet’s poems “The Four Elements”, “The Author to Her Book” and “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth”, taking the poet’s humanist and Puritan background into account, as an attempt to further analyze feminist elements in such poems. Although the poems presented in the previous chapters also contain feminist elements, especially “The Prologue”, my choice for the last chapter was made considering the following questions: can Anne Bradstreet be considered a feminist when she so frequently used the male poetic tradition to write her own poems? Can the poet be considered a feminist regardless of her misogynistic religion? Can she be considered a feminist having lived in a time when feminism had never been discussed as a theory? I will use the above-mentioned poems to discuss such questions.

3.1 Submissive or subversive?

Anne Bradstreet’s early imitative poems,13 which deal with public issues such as history, religion and politics, are regarded by critics such as Adrienne Rich and Kenneth Requa as somehow inferior to her later domestic poems, for they believe Bradstreet was only able to express herself comfortably when discussing domestic issues. While Rich believes her domestic poems prevented the poet from being forgotten, Requa claims that “Her inability to comfortably fulfill these chosen public roles is evident in the self-consciousness she shows in the poems”. (REQUA, 1974, p. 3). The self-consciousness that Requa sees in Bradstreet’s poems might be artificial, as mentioned in chapter one. Although Bradstreet might have felt the weight of being placed in an inferior position, the poet did not actually believe she was an inferior poet. Bradstreet was, in fact, making use of the same humility formulae that classical and

13 “The Four Elements”; “Of the Four Humours in Mans Constitution;” “The Four Ages of Man;” “The Four Seasons of the Year;” “The Four Monarchies;” “An Elegie Upon That Honourable and Renowned Knight, Sir Phillip Sidney;”” In Honour of Du Bartas;” “In Honour of That High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth.” 69

contemporary poets used. As Eileen Margerum explains “In the classical poetic tradition, a poem’s success depended not on the validity of the poet’s sentiments but on her successful use of prescribed formulae”. (MARGERUM, 1982, p. 152). In other words, although humility and self- deprecation were commonly seen in the classical poetic tradition, such elements were not necessarily – and in most cases were not – sincere. Even though Bradstreet might have felt the impact of the limitations of being a Puritan female poet in the New World, my point in this thesis is that the supposed self-consciousness that Requa reads in her lines is a consequence of the dexterity with which Bradstreet successfully used the prescribed formulae which Margerum mentions. What is more, I will claim in this chapter that, it is precisely because Bradstreet was so familiarized with the male tradition that she was able to write subversive lines, which can also be read as feminist elements in the poems I will analyze.

Due to Bradstreet’s awareness of the formulae poets followed, she often apologized for her so-called lack of writing skills. In her poem “An Apology”, Bradstreet opens the poem by apologizing for not being able to finish one of her longest and most ambitious projects, “The Four Monarchies”, which was an account of ancient history in which she wanted to reveal how brutal and uncivilized life was before the Christian era. In “The Four Monarchies”, the poet begins with a review of the Assyrian kings and goes on through the Romans to about 600AD. In her “Apology”, Bradstreet explains that she quit her ambitious project for she had “mind and body weak”. Throughout her life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the poet went through various illnesses due to the harsh weather and bad conditions of colonial America, which impaired her physical health. However, the interpretation of her mentioning her weak mind might be threefold: (1) she was feeling psychologically charged by the harsh illnesses; (2) she did not consider herself skilled enough to finish a poem of that caliber; (3) she was writing within the “prescribed formulae” as Margerum suggests. I agree with Margerum, for she explains: “Confession of personal unworthiness at the beginning of one’s effort had come into Latin poetry from Roman oratorical tradition […]” (MARGERUM, 1982, p. 153). Bradstreet opens her apology explaining that she intended to finish her poem, but that the more she tried to write, the less sure she was of her ability: “To finish what’s begun, was my intent / My thoughts and my endeavours thereto bent; / The more I mus’d, the more I was in doubt: / The subject large my mind and body weak”. I work with the assumption that Bradstreet did not actually think she lacked ability, for she wrote 70

other poems as complex as “The Four Monarchies”; poems such as “The Four Elements”, “Of the Four Humours in Mans Constitution”, “The Four Ages of Man” and “The Seasons of the Year”

The above-mentioned quaternions14 were included in the first edition of her book, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America. “The Four Elements” deals with astronomical, geographical, historical and theological issues. “The Four Humours” was written as an introduction of medical and psychological matters which would later be amplified in “The Four Ages of Man.” Finally, “The Four Seasons” deals with weather and agriculture. Such poems show the poet’s vast knowledge of topics which only people who received formal education – that is, men – were expected to master.

Although Requa and Rich regard Bradstreet’s early imitative poems as somewhat less important for her development as a writer, Jane D. Eberwein believes such poems were of paramount importance: “[…] the four quaternions actually made possible her development as a poet in terms of intellectual adjustment as well as technical craftsmanship […]” (EBERWEIN, 1974, p. 19). Instead of being interested exclusively in matters related to the household, Bradstreet expanded her scope of interest, reading and writing about other issues. Due to such interest, the poet was an avid reader, which enabled her to develop her writing skills. Eberwein explains that,

The long poems of her literary apprenticeship established Anne Bradstreet’s poetic reputation and encouraged her to continue writing. In addition to the personal satisfaction which would come from such achievement, she gained intellectual benefits which were to help shape the less academic poems she composed. In writing the quaternions, the poet refreshed her girlhood education in the Earl of Lincoln’s library and systematized her knowledge. The quaternion format allowed her to classify, integrate, and at times simply show off her wealth of information. (EBERWEIN, 1974, p. 19). Thanks to her reading repertoire, Bradstreet was well-acquainted with the debate tradition which derived from humanism and the rhetorical culture – topics explored in the first chapter. Consequently, some of her poems – such as “The Flesh and the Spirit” and “A Dialogue Between Old England and New” – follow a debate structure. The same happens in her quaternions:

14 Quaternion is derived from the Latin word quaterni which means four by four. In poetry, it is a style in which the theme is divided into four parts. In Bradstreet’s quaternions, she divides the themes of seasons (summer, autumn, winter and spring), the elements of nature (fire, earth, water and air), the humors of man’s constitution (sanguine, pragmatic, choleric and melancholic) and the four ages of a man (childhood, youth, manhood and old age). 71

The quaternion format, with its four interconnected debates, offered the poet yet another intellectual benefit: the chance to experiment with varied logical and rhetorical structures. […] The debate structure, with its varied handling of issues and emotions, contributed dramatic intensity to Bradstreet’s work and provided a stylized means of handling the tensions which characterize even her most personal poetry. (EBERWEIN, 1974, p. 20). One of the debates takes place in “The Four Elements”. In the poem, Air, Fire, Water and Earth debate among themselves to determine which one is the noblest, strongest and worthiest. While in her “A Dialogue Between Old England and New” Bradstreet personifies a mother and a daughter, in “The Four Elements” the reader finds the personification of four sisters. Each sister gloats about her strengths and vindicates her superiority in relation to the other. It is interesting to notice that Bradstreet usually chooses female figures to engage in the debates, showing the reader that the poet believed women should not be confined to their household issues. Such inclusion of women in debates about public affairs illustrates Bradstreet’s feminist mindset when she reclaims gender equality; at least in areas she believed it possible to achieve.

“The Four Elements” has three-hundred and sixty-eight lines of debate. Due to its length, I will present only the first twenty-four lines, in which the four elements of nature, the debate structure and tone are presented as well as a summary of what the reader should expect from it. The poet writes that, although cordiality is expected – especially when women speak, I must add – chaos will follow, for such powerful elements were arguing against each other, claiming dominance. Bradstreet chose to present such female figures as strong, dominant and fierce characters, mirroring the poet’s belief that women should be entitled to a voice and that such voice would be powerful. Fire begins the debate, because she is the “most impatient Element”:

Fire, Aire, Earth, and Water, did all contest which was the strongest, noblest, & the best, Who the most good could shew, & who most rage For to declare, themselves they all ingage; And in due order each her turne should speake, But enmity, this amity did breake: All would be cheife, and all scorn'd to be under, Whence issu'd raines, and winds, lightning and thunder; The quaking Earth did groan, the skie look't black, The Fire, the forced Aire, in sunder crack; The sea did threat the heavens, the heavens the earth, All looked like a Chaos, or new birth; Fire broyled Earth, and scorched Earth it choaked, Both by their darings; Water so provoked, 72

That roaring in it came, and with its source Soone made the combatants abate their force; The rumbling, hissing, puffing was so great, The worlds confusion it did seeme to threat; But Aire at length, contention so abated, That betwixt hot and cold, she arbitrated The others enmity: being lesse, did cease All stormes now laid, and they in perfect peace, That Fire should first begin, the rest consent, Being the most impatient Element. (1 – 24) After the elements are presented, the debate commences. Fire speaks first, stating that she is the most powerful one since she can both help and destroy the earth. Fire claims that she has the power to both warm people’s bodies in the winter and incinerate towns and temples. “[spare] Life when I can take the same; / And in a word, the world I shall consume / And all therein”. Earth speaks next and mentions her hills and substances that yield material goods and wealth. She also mentions the dangerous aspects of her existence, such as earthquakes and poison. Ultimately, Earth tries to illustrate her power by mentioning that she is the place where men are entombed after “death whether interr’d or buried”. Water starts her part in the debate, claiming that all the other elements are bound to her because she is their drink and blood. If she refuses to help, they will all die. Following the previous elements’ example, Water warns the other sisters of the damage she can cause: floods and tumultuous oceans which can make both mankind and the animal world become extinct. Air is the last sister to speak. She tries to make it clear that, without her, all the other elements are insignificant, for men cannot live without air to breathe. Air also claims that she can cause fevers and poxes as well as hurricanes and violent storms. Although none of the sisters seems to win the debate, the reader can discern that all four elements coexist and provide life and sustenance.

Eberwein believes Bradstreet’s “The Prologue” can be related to “The Four Elements” when it comes to the debate tradition. As discussed in the first chapter, through “The Prologue”, Bradstreet seems to engage in a debate with her contemporary Nathaniel Ward, who apparently criticized the female poet for copying male tradition:

Keeping in mind both Anne Bradstreet’s tendency to divide issues into dichotomies and the rhetorical energy she found in the debate structure of the quaternions, one can approach the well-known ‘Prologue´ from fresh perspective. (EBERWEIN, 1974, p. 21). 73

Although in “The Prologue” Bradstreet speaks in the first-person and, consequently, expresses her assertiveness, in the quaternions she uses personification, as in her “A Dialogue Between Old England and New” and “The Flesh and The Spirit”. This is an important distinction, for she chooses to speak directly to her opponent in “The Prologue”; an evidence of her determination to argue in favor of women’s right to write.

The debate tradition was created by men for men. It was not expected for a Puritan woman to engage in debates. In fact, women were not allowed to debate about any public issues, as mentioned in the second chapter concerning the Anne Hutchinson case. However, Bradstreet uses tradition in her favor. Although women were not allowed to publicly debate with men, Bradstreet found a way of including them in debates. She personifies England and New England – in her “A Dialogue Between Old England and New – as well as earthly pleasures and eternal life – in her “The Flesh and The Spirit” – and the elements air, fire, water and earth – in her “The Four Elements” – and allows them, which are all personified by female figures, to debate about issues which went beyond the household, transgressing the limits imposed by the patriarchal Puritan society. Rather than submit, Bradstreet subverts female limitations by using the poetic tradition as her ally.

In her poem “The Author to Her Book”, Bradstreet also shows the reader her transgressive thoughts. After becoming aware of the publication of The Tenth Muse, she wrote another poem, which was included in the second edition, Several Poems. “The Author to Her Book” is Bradstreet’s reaction towards the publication. As mentioned before, Bradstreet was, most likely, not aware of such publication. For this reason, the poet did not have the opportunity to edit her poems beforehand. In “The Author to Her Book”, she personifies her book as her “ill- form’d offspring” whose departure for printing was premature and whose return after publication embarrassed her. Her lines follow, as in “An Apology” and “The Prologue”, the humility and self-deprecation pattern common to the classical poetic tradition. Although the interpretation of her humble and self-deprecatory lines might be twofold – she was either only following tradition or truly embarrassed due to the errors she never had the chance to fix – I would like to highlight two specific lines at the end of the poem, in which Bradstreet shows her assertiveness in terms of female authorship. I will present the poem in full and then analyze the poem in its wholeness, line 74

by line, before dealing with the two lines I consider most important regarding the transgression of the limitation imposed by the patriarchal Puritan society of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain, Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view, Made thee in raggs, halting to th’ press to trudge, Where errors were not lessened (all may judg). At thy return my blushing was not small, My rambling brat (in print) should mother call, I cast thee by as one unfit for light, Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight; Yet being mine own, at length affection would Thy blemishes amend, if so I could: I wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw. I stretched thy joynts to make thee even feet, Yet still thou run’st more hobling then is meet; In better dress to trim thee was my mind, But nought save home-spun Cloth, i’ th’ house I find. In this array ’mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam. In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come; And take thy way where yet thou art not known, If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none: And for thy Mother, she alas is poor, Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door.

In the first line, Bradstreet personifies her book, calling it her defected son of her weak brain: “Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain, […]” Throughout the poem, Bradstreet treats her book as a flawed son who should not be seen by others. The poet embodies motherhood in an unconventional manner for, as I shall further comment, she rejects her son, which is not expected from a mother – especially a Puritan one, who should be the guardian of her house and offspring –, let alone to do so openly. When it comes to her fragile brain, mentioned in the first line as well, it is important to notice that, although Bradstreet had gone through many diseases when she wrote “An Apology”, her weak brain might also be an ironic reference to the fact that she was a woman and that women were believed to be inferior to men. The same can be said about “The Author to Her Book” for, had Bradstreet believed women were inferior to men, she would never have written lines in defense of women’s capability of reasoning as she did in “The 75

Prologue” and in “In Honour of That High and Mighty Queen Princess Elizabeth”, to name a few.

In the second line, Bradstreet reveals that after she had written all the poems which were included in The Tenth Muse, they remained by her side and were not revealed to the public eye. In the third and fourth lines, she explains that the poems were later taken from her by friends who were, in her view, not so wise in publishing her poems, but were, nonetheless, well-meaning: “Who after birth didst by my side remain, / Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, / Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view, […]” The friend who Bradstreet mentions is her brother-in-law John Woodbridge, who took her manuscript to be published in England. By stating her friend was “less wise than true”, Bradstreet might have been either honest or careful. While Bradstreet’s belief in her brother-in-law’s good intentions might have been genuine, she might also have chosen her words carefully in order not to insult a man. Either way, Bradstreet seems to be withdrawing from the responsibility of publishing the book.

In the fifth and sixth lines, the poet writes not only that her book was not dressed up nicely, but also that it was not in good shape, for it was forced to “trudge”, to press. “Made thee in raggs, halting to th’ press to trudge, / Where errors were not lessened (all may judg)”. The personifications Bradstreet uses (“raggs” and “trudge”) are meant to make the book seem to be low in quality. Once again, she is using the prescribed formulae mentioned previously in this chapter. Nonetheless, the poet might also have felt too exposed and, therefore, vulnerable to public judgment. What is more, the errors which she did not have the opportunity to fix were not fixed by the publisher either; there was no concern with editing whatsoever.

From lines seven to ten, the poet writes about the book’s return to the colony and how embarrassed she felt due to its defects. Once again, she embraces motherhood through an atypical perspective, for she is ashamed of her own son’s appearance: “At thy return my blushing was not small, / My rambling brat (in print) should mother call, / I cast thee as one unfit for light, / Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight; […]” Her lines might be interpreted either as her belief that her book was not ready to be read by the public or as her acquaintance with the humility tradition. I personally believe that, in this poem specifically, Bradstreet was both following the tradition and feeling too exposed and vulnerable. Differently from “The Prologue” in which one might wonder whether Bradstreet was just playing the humility game or in fact feeling self- 76

conscious, in “The Author to Her Book” the case is different. Bradstreet was not previously aware of the publication and did not have the proper time to edit her poems. In most cases – if not in all cases – poets have the chance to make any chosen modifications in their poems before publishing them. Thus, I believe that, in “The Author to Her Book”, Bradstreet was indeed feeling not only self-conscious but also resentful about such exposure – which did not prevent her from being transgressive as I shall comment later –, while also following the humility topos.

In the eleventh and twelfth lines, the poet acknowledges the authorship and expresses her wish to fix the errors present in her poems: “Yet being mine own, at length affection would / Thy blemishes amend, if so I could: […]” Although Bradstreet did not have the chance to previously edit her poems, she makes it clear to the reader that she tried to do so after the publication of the first edition of The Tenth Muse, which might be interpreted as her wish to publish a second edition with the proper changes.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth lines, the poet continues, letting the reader know that, after the publication of the first edition, she attempted to fix the errors, although unsuccessfully: “I wash’s thy face, but more defects I saw, / And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw […]” In the previous lines, the image of this mother trying to wash her son’s face as an attempt to make him look better but not succeeding expresses the poet’s rejection towards her own work. Bradstreet uses strong physical images to emphasize her awareness that, regardless of her efforts, the book would never be considered fit for the male poetic sphere.

From the fifteenth to the eighteenth lines, the poet concludes her account of revision attempts: “I stretched thy joynts to make thee even feet, / Yet still thou run’st more hobling then is meet; / In better dress to trim thee was my mind, / But nought save home-spun Cloth, i’ th’ house I find”. In the previous lines, Bradstreet metaphorically writes about her intention to clean her son. However, despite her best efforts, the book was still not ready. When the poet mentions stretching joints, she is in fact referring to the uneven metre of some lines. As I have discussed, the poet’s early poems – which were the content of The Tenth Muse – were more imitative due to her acquaintance with the classical poetic tradition. Hence, she was not only worried about the topics about which she wrote, but also about the form. Nevertheless, most of her imitative poems were, as far as metre is concerned, even. When Bradstreet mentions trimming, she refers to adornments as opposed to the “raggs” in which her ill-formed son is dressed. The poet tells the 77

reader that “home-spun cloth” would not be enough to make her poems better-written. The “home-spun cloth” she mentions is a reference to the fact that, although skilled, the poet was still a woman confined to the household and did not have the means to write better lines. I believe such reference to the place of women in Puritan society was, although true, rather ironic, since her poems were of high quality.

From the nineteenth to the twenty-first lines, the poet writes that, due to her book’s lack of quality, it should be amongst “vulgars”, that is, the uneducated and that it should avoid the critics and hide. The poet was a woman who, despite all the books she read, never received formal education. Hence, such lines seem to express the poet’s criticism towards the inequality of sexes: “In this array ‘mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam. / In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come; / And take thy way where yet thou art not known, […]” As I have shown, Bradstreet tends to use irony and fake-modesty when dealing with the women’s ability to write. The shift between humility and assertiveness is clearer in the last lines which I will deal with next.

In the last three lines, the shift from humility to assertiveness is abrupt. She states that her son – that is, her book – has no father, but a mother: “If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none: / And for thy Mother, she alas is poor, / Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door”. By stating that her son has no father, that is, that she is a single mother, Bradstreet not only transgresses the standardized image of a conventional Puritan woman, who should have a husband as the father of her children, but she also takes over the authorship more assertively in these lines and makes it clear for the reader that, although she followed the male poetic tradition, she was the author of such book, not any men whose books she had read; a female Puritan housewife was the author, however criticized the poems might be. Such statement might be related to Nathaniel Ward’s lines in which he claims Bradstreet was a “Du Bartas’ girle.” Even if Bradstreet had had the influence of her favorite poet, as well as others, that was her own work. When Bradstreet mentions sending her son out of door, she is referring to the fact that she had ended her attempts to amend the supposed errors and finally came to terms with her book.

The analysis of “The Author to Her Book” is helpful for it shows the reader that, although Bradstreet’s lines were usually self-deprecatory, the poet transgressed the limitations with which she had to deal and took over her position as a legitimate poet. Her apparent submission to the Puritan male-centered society falls to the ground when a close analysis of her lines is made. Her 78

command of the prescribed formulae which Margerum comments, along with her use of irony and personification with such strong physical images, as well as her shift from between humility to assertiveness, proves that Anne Bradstreet was a transgressive female poet rather than submissive to the male poetic tradition.

3.2 A Brief Account of the History of Feminism

The critic Josephine K. Piercy suggests that, early in her career, Bradstreet sublimated her rebellious feelings through imitative verse; that is, the poet chose to write as male poets and hide her questionings. Nonetheless, her imitative verses in fact reveal her understanding of a woman’s place in the colonial Puritan society of the New World as well as her wits when dealing with such limitations. Due to her awareness of the limits imposed by the male-centered community to which she belonged, Bradstreet protected herself through the rhetorical tradition with which she was well-acquainted and managed to include feminist elements in her work without being rejected as a member of the community for being outspoken. The poet was able to express her divergent thoughts towards the patriarchal society by writing as the classical and contemporary male writers, whose works she had the chance to read throughout her life. Elisa New states that “If Bradstreet’s portraits of female strife have not often been noticed, it is probably because they are fittingly exiled in places so obvious that we do not see them”. (NEW, 1993, p. 107). Bradstreet did not hide her questionings behind her imitative verses. On the contrary, she was so skilled when writing poetry within the classical standards that she was able to express her questionings without being considered rebellious by her contemporaries. As mentioned in the previous chapters, Bradstreet discusses religion and politics in her early poems; topics a Puritan housewife was not expected to discuss. Such initiative alone can be considered transgressing for a Puritan woman living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. However, due to her ability to emulate classic and contemporary male writers, Bradstreet’s early poems might not be considered of feminist nature, for such poems might be read as the expression of her submissiveness. Nonetheless, I tend to believe that the poet’s acquaintance with the rhetorical tradition allowed her to express the feminist views that a woman should not be confined to the 79

household and that women were capable of reasoning and writing. About such early imitative poems, New explains that

Bradstreet opens one poem by personifying flesh and spirit as battling sisters, another by representing Old and New England as mother and grown daughter, another by introducing an author and her book as new mother and infant – and we are used to understanding these allegories as conventionalized, somewhat contrived devices for the treatment of worldliness and renunciation, colonial dependence on England, the mixed blessing of early publication. However, […] in poem after poem these conventions take on lives of their own. The figures we expect to remain allegorical conveniences materialize as fleshed combatants who fight with such virulence, who exist with such characterological exactitude, who defend life histories of such depth that they threaten not only Calvinist decorum but also the alleged utopian doctrine of the poems. (NEW, 1993, p. 107). Anne Bradstreet was the daughter and wife of governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She left her old home and faced a three-month journey aboard the Arbella to find “[…] a new world and new manners, at which my heart rose.” Her heart did not rise in happiness, but in dismay, for she knew hard times were coming. She wrote “But after I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it and joined the church at Boston”. In her An American Triptych: Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich the critic Wendy Martin explains that “Although she joined the Boston congregation, Bradstreet remained ambivalent about the Puritan enterprise”. (MARTIN, 1984, p. 20). Apparently, Bradstreet did not want to leave England and she did not entirely agree with the Puritan ideology. However, as a young Puritan woman she had to follow both her father and husband’s orders and directions: “The grievances that brought the Puritan expedition to New England were not Anne Bradstreet’s but belonged to the two men she loved. Whatever degree of pride or self-preservation Bradstreet possessed caused her to rebel against her part in the destiny […]” (MARTIN, 1984, p. 20).

Although the poet led a good life in England and went to New England as a colonizer, she was still a woman and women were not entitled to an opinion; they had to obey their father and husband, as Bradstreet did:

Bradstreet left the comforts of an aristocratic manor house in the English countryside to accompany her father and husband to the Massachusetts Bay Colony where they hoped to better their estates as well as find religious freedom. Once in New England, she uprooted her household several times to move to increasingly more distant, uncivilized, and dangerous outposts so that her father and husband could increase their property as well as their political power in the colony. (MARTIN, 1984, p. 17). 80

As I discussed in chapter two, Puritan women were servants not only to God but also to their husbands. They were restricted to their household affairs and, if they were to write, they were not supposed to write about other topics rather than their devotion to God. However, as I have shown, Bradstreet wrote about various issues. Amongst the topics I have already presented, Bradstreet wrote versified letters to her husband, such as “A Letter to Her Husband Absent Upon Publick Employment” and “A Love Letter to Her Husband”, amongst others. Although being a single Puritan woman is inextricably intertwined with the lack of respect from society, being a Puritan married woman did not necessarily entail respectability either. Despite the fact that there have only been discovered poems in which Bradstreet praises her husband, Puritan men believed women were inferior beings; idea against which Bradstreet wrote. The poet married Simon Bradstreet at the age of sixteen, two years before sailing to the New World. Even though there is no evidence that the poet was unhappily married, the poet had to face limitations as a Puritan housewife: “Although Bradstreet was an educated woman, a child of one colonial governor and the wife of another, this privileged status alone could not protect her against the scorn and persecution visited upon women who stepped beyond their deferential role in Puritan society”. (MARTIN, 1984, p. 23).

Anne Bradstreet was born long before the term “feminism” started being used. Yet, she did write lines in defense of women which can be considered feminist. Martin states that while the poet “played the role of a dedicated Puritan and a dutiful daughter and wife, Bradstreet often expressed ambivalence about the male authorities in her life including God, her father and husband, and the literary critics and authors whose models she initially copied”. (MARTIN, 1984, p. 18).

Clearly, Anne Bradstreet believed in women’s worth. However, a question arises: should Bradstreet’s lines be referred as protofeminist or feminist? Firstly, it is important to understand how the word “feminism” emerged and what it entails. Jane Freedman problematizes the origins of the term:

It is difficult (perhaps impossible) to define feminism in terms of a set of core concepts then can feminism be defined better or further in terms of its historical origins and development? The term feminism is a relatively modern one – there are debates over when and where it was first used, but the term ‘feminist’ seems to have first been used in 1871 in a French medical text to describe a cessation in development of the sexual organs and characteristics in male patients, who were perceived as thus suffering from ‘feminization’ of their bodies (Fraisse 1995). […] Thus, as Fraisse (1995: 316) points 81

out, although in medical terminology feminism was used to signify a feminization of men, in political terms it was first used to describe a virilization of women. (FREEDMAN, 2001, p. 2). It is curious to notice that, in the medical case, the first use of the term “feminism” (or “feminization) was not to entail female empowerment, but to describe physical differences between men and women. Notwithstanding, in political terms, it meant women were going through a process of “virilization.” Women were reclaiming their power and power was a male privilege. Such process can be analogue to Bradstreet’s use of the male poetic tradition, for if she wanted to place herself as a poet in her place and time, she would have to write like men did.

Even though the term “feminism” belongs to the modern times, other women had already begun writing about the social and gender inequalities long before; its roots might even be traced back to Ancient Greece with the Greek poet Sappho (630 B.C – 580 B.C) who wrote lesbian poetry and ran a school for girls. The term protofeminism is a philosophical tradition that foresees modern feminism. Notwithstanding, both terms are used to define the same ideology: the equality of the sexes.

In the French Revolution (1789), women played an important role and feminist pamphlets proliferated while Parisian women formed political clubs and associations to campaign on issues affecting them. In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the seminal English-language feminist work published in England, which argued for women’s rights to be on the same basis as men’s. Wollstonecraft claimed in her Vindication that women are essential to the nation and hence should receive education compatible to their position in society instead of receiving only domestic education. As Bradstreet, Wollstonecraft is also regarded as a feminist writer.

Although women had already been claiming their importance in society, it was only in the 1840s that the women’s rights movement started to emerge in the United States of America, as Freedman notes, with the Seneca Falls convention15 of 1848 and the resulting Declaration of Sentiments16 which “claimed for women the principles of liberty and equality expounded in the American Declaration of Independence” (FREEDMAN, 2001, p. 2). The document was based on

15 The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York.

16 The Declaration of Sentiments is a document signed in 1848 by 68 women and 32 men who attended the Seneca Falls Convention. 82

the Declaration of Independence and it was one of the first accounts of the political and social repression of American women. The document starts by claiming the equality of the sexes and it argues that women are oppressed by both the government and the patriarchal society as a whole. A hundred people signed the Declaration – sixty-eight women and thirty-two men – but many of these people withdrew their names due to harsh ridicule and criticism received after the document met the eyes of the public.

Although it was a significant step forward, such movement emphasized education and political rights which were privileges of the upper classes and had no impact on ordinary women’s lives. The African American former slave, evangelist and reformer Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) – legal name Isabella Van Wagener – was the only nonwhite female voice heard at this time, which illustrates the distance between the elite and the ordinary people. In 1851, Truth delivered a speech called “Ain’t I a Woman” before the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. Nevertheless, throughout her life, Truth focused on abolitionism rather than women’s rights.

As soon as the goal of suffrage had been achieved in both Europe and the United States, the feminist movement collapsed due to the lack of ideology beyond the achievement of the vote. In the 1960’s and 70’s, women’s movement, also known as the second wave of feminism, emerged. Whereas first-wave feminism focused chiefly on suffrage and property rights, second- wave feminism expanded the issues to be debated. Some of the issues related to the second-wave of feminism were sexuality, family, workplace, reproductive rights, domestic violence, marital rape, amongst others.

In the mid-1990s, the third-wave feminism emerged. It encompasses issues such as gender equality, identity, language, sex positivity17, body positivity18, ending violence against women, fixing the media’s image of women, amongst others. The idea is that there should not be a universal identity for women, for they come from different backgrounds, including religion, nationality, culture, sexual orientation and ethnicity. R. Claire Snyder states that “Third-wavers

17 A social and philosophical movement that promotes and embraces sexuality and sexual expression, with an emphasis on safe and consensual sex. Feeling comfortable with one’s own sexual identity and with the sexual behaviors of others.

18 The acceptance and appreciation of all human body types. 83

want their own version of feminism that addresses their different societal contexts and the particular set of challenges they face”. (SNYDER, 2008, p. 178). Throughout the years, feminists have been broadening the scope of issues dealt with by feminism.

To conclude, the term feminism emerged from the women’s rights movements in the nineteenth century, but women had been acting and writing in favor of women’s rights long before modern feminism. Anne Bradstreet wrote in favor of women’s capability of reasoning and writing and questioned her own religion which claimed a woman’s place was confined to the household and that women were not supposed to meddle in the public sphere. I will now analyze feminist elements in her poem “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth” in which, I believe, Bradstreet was rather straightforward in her feminist agenda.

3.3 Feminist elements in Anne Bradstreet’s elegy to Queen Elizabeth I

In her poem “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth”, which was written in 1643 and later published in the first edition of her book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up In America, Bradstreet displays ample historical knowledge and ability in the elegiac19 form. In her poem, she praises Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603) as an exemplar of female excellence. Censuring her male readers for underestimating women, Bradstreet refers to the Queen’s preeminent leadership.

Bradstreet begins her elegy with a proem20, explaining that the queen has died and that the poem pays a tribute to her glory. Since Elizabeth’s death, there had been thousands of people writing in appreciation of the queen and the honors had increased. Hence, Bradstreet humbly states that her honor might seem irrelevant in comparison to the other tributes, but that she will pay hers just the same. Lisa Gim points out that

19 An elegy is a poem which deals with serious reflection upon a topic, typically a lament for the dead. The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a wide range of themes and is usually of smaller scale than the epic.

20 A proem is a preamble to a poem. 84

Bradstreet’s selection of England’s Elizabeth as a topic for a poetic elegy may have been influenced by a number of particular personal, generic, and sociological factors, including a desire to assert her own literary autonomy and intellectual authority in a threatening New World – perhaps while sometimes yearning for her old one. (GIM, 2007, p. 174).

Her display of humility might be mirrored to her tone in “The Prologue”, but with the difference that there can be seen hints of fake modesty in her “Prologue”, while in the tribute to the queen her humble tone seems sincere due to her respect towards the powerful female image of the queen. Such difference allows the reader to notice that Bradstreet was able to modulate her voice according to the topic of her poem as well as her audience. In the poem itself, Bradstreet enthusiastically praises Elizabeth’s many virtues and states that there had never been a country so happy and well ruled as Elizabeth’s England. She compares the Queen to great female leaders and claims for the recognition of female worth.

There are many hints of feminism in Bradstreet’s elegy. While praising the queen, Bradstreet also foregrounds the excellence of other women in history and vindicate women’s worth, as she believes Elizabeth did. As Gim explains, the main focus of Bradstreet’s tribute is to present Elizabeth as “a vindicator of female intelligence and worth and thus to explore the space allotted to the female subject and also to the female poet – here Bradstreet herself”. (GIM, 2017, p. 175). As mentioned in the account of the history of feminism above, there have been many examples of women who played the role of vindicators of female intelligence and worth. Bradstreet was one of these women and, in her poem in honor to the queen, she insists on her vindication.

Queen Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 1558 to 1603. She was also known as the "Virgin Queen" because she never married. The daughter of Henry VIII (1491-1547) and Anne Boleyn (1501-1536), Elizabeth was the last monarch from the Tudor dynasty. The Pope declared Elizabeth illegitimate in 1570 and she received many threats throughout her life, but her ministers defeated all the assassination plots. She was cautious in foreign affairs and won her most memorable victory in 1588 with the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Her reign, which historians refer to as the Elizabethan era, represents the moment when the great English dramatic traditions emerged. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic 85

and military problems weakened her popularity. Bradstreet admired the queen and her accomplishments and felt comfortable expressing her feminist thoughts through her praise.

The reading of Bradstreet’s poem suggests that she believed queen Elizabeth’s greatness should be proclaimed over the entire world and would continue to resonate until the end of time. The poet writes that the queen is so glorious and worthy that human senses become enchanted when they hear of her greatness. According to Bradstreet, the queen is so deserving of praise that it is not sacrilegious to call her a god on earth. The poet explains that there are thousands of admirers writing poems to praise her and offer such poems to her memory as ancient people used to offer sacrifices to the gods. However, Bradstreet believes she too should offer her a poem, even though hers is humble and lowly, like a lamb, compared to the noble verse of others, which roar like a lion. Bradstreet is referring to the male writers who have more power and prominence in society.

In her proem, Bradstreet celebrates the late queen’s greatness. The poet explains that, though dead, Elizabeth’s legacy has remained and that both rich and poor acclaimed her accomplishments as a leader. Bradstreet claims her own honor as sincere and worth. So far, the proem is a typical elegy and her complimentary lines could be expected since she was writing about a queen. Proem. Although great Queen, thou now in silence lie, Yet thy loud Herald Fame, doth to the sky Thy wondrous worth proclaim, in every clime, And so has vow’d, whilst there is world or time. So great’s thy glory, and thine excellence, The sound thereof raps every human sense That men account it no impiety To say thou wert a fleshly Deity. Thousands bring off’rings (though out of date) Thy world of honours to accumulate. ‘Mongst hundred Hecatombs of roaring Verse, ‘Mine bleating stands before thy royal Hearse. Thou never didst, nor canst thou now disdain, T’ accept the tribute of a loyal Brain. Thy clemency did yerst21 esteem as much The acclamations of the poor, as rich,

21 Yerst: erst, once 86

Which makes me deem, my rudeness is no wrong, Though I resound thy greatness ‘mongst the throng. (1 – 18)

In the first lines of the poem, Bradstreet says that the works of Spenser (1552 – 1599), John Speed (1552 – 1629) and Camden (1551 – 1653) cannot be compared to the greatness of Elizabeth’s reign. Of all England’s monarchs, Bradstreet describes Elizabeth as the wisest and the most just, which could never be disputed. As Gim explains, “Through her description of Elizabeth, the poet underscores the qualities of the monarch’s mind and her power emphasizing the inability of great kings to match her accomplishments or even learned male authors like Spenser, Speed, or Camden […]” (GIM, 2017, p. 176). By stressing that “The World’s the Theater where she did act”, Bradstreet emphasizes the queen’s role both in public and international spheres, which can be considered a validation of women as rulers:

The Poem. No Phoenix Pen22, nor Spenser’s Poetry23, No Speed’s24, nor Camden’s25 learned History; Eliza’s works, wars, praise, can e’re compact, The World’s the Theater where she did act. No memories, nor volumes can contain, The nine Olymp’ades of her happy reign, Who was so good, so just, so learn’d, so wise, From all the Kings on earth she won the prize. (1 – 8)

In the following lines, Bradstreet becomes more assertive when dealing with the value of women in society. The poet claims that Elizabeth, through her leadership, put an end to defamation on her sex made by men. The poet mentions the Spanish Armada26 and states that the Spanish people learnt the hard way how powerful the queen was:

22 Phoenix Pen: the writings of Sir Philip Sidney, the English poet in whose memory R.S compiled The Phoenix Nest (1593), an anthology of poems of that time.

23 Spenser’s Poetry: Edmund Spenser is the author of The Faerie Queene (1590), an epic poem in praise of Elizabeth.

24 John Speed: mapmaker and historian who published Historie of Great Britaine (1611).

25 William Camden: Latin historian and author of two seminal works in the period, Britannia (1586) and the Annales of Elizabeth’s reign (1615 – 1629).

26 The Spanish Armada was a Spanish fleet of 130 ships which sailed from the city A Coruña in 1588 in order to invade England. The aim was to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I and her establishment of Protestantism in England. 87

Nor say I more than truly is her due. Millions will testify that this is true. She hath wip’d off th’ aspersion of her Sex, That women wisdom lack to play the Rex. Spain’s Monarch27 sa’s not so, not yet his Host: She taught them better manners to their cost. (8 – 14)

After that, Bradstreet mentions the Salic Law, which was the ancient Salian Frankish28 civil law code written in Latin. It was compiled around 500 A.D. by Clovis (? – 511), the first Frankish king. The best-known principle of the old law was the exclusion of women from inheritance of thrones, fiefdom and other properties. Such reference to the old civil law code is another evidence of Bradstreet’s vast knowledge of History. Then the poet assertively says that the queen has enough argument to make men mute and compares the queen to a Phoenix. In Greek mythology, the Phoenix was a bird that could live for a long time and could also be regenerated or reborn from the ashes of its predecessors. This image of the queen being a phoenix entails extreme power and prominence.

The Salic Law had not in force now been, If France had ever hop’d for such a Queen. But can you Doctors now this point dispute, She’s argument enough to make you mute, Since first the Sun did run, his ne’er runn’d race, And earth had twice a year, a new old face; Since time was time, and man unmanly man, Come shew me such a Phoenix if you can. (15 – 22) The poet starts questioning her audience, asking if the reader has ever seen a better ruled people and land. After that, the poet mentions the Counter Armada (or the English Armada), in which a fleet of warships were sent to Spain by the queen to counter-attack. The strategy was to take advantage of Spain’s temporary weakness at sea and to compel Phillip II (1527 – 1598) to sue for peace. Phillip II was also Phillip I of Portugal, which means that the revolt against him

The attempt was unsuccessful due to the Spanish mismanagement, bad weather and the defensive naval efforts of the English and their Dutch allies.

27 Phillip II of Spain

28 The Salian Franks were a Northwestern subgroup of the earliest Franks who first appeared in the historical records in the third century. The Franks were a collection of Germanic peoples. 88

was raised after the English Armada made a landing in Lisbon. Bradstreet mentions the Lisbon wall in her poem and boasts of the queen’s strategies and capability to handle such undeclared war.

Was ever people better rul’d than hers? Was ever Land more happy, freed from stirs? Did ever wealth in England so abound? Her Victories in foreign Coasts resound? Ships more invincible than Spain’s, her foe She rack’t, she sack’d, she sunk his Armadoe29. Her stately Troops advanc’d to Lisbon’s wall30, Don Anthony in’s right for to install. She frankly help’d Franks’ (brave) distressed King, The States united now her fame do sing. (23 – 32)

In the following lines, the reader becomes further aware of Bradstreet’s acquaintance with Greek Mythology. The poet compares the queen to Minerva (the Roman goddess of wisdom). The choice Bradstreet makes was not random. She chose Minerva for she believes the queen was wise in her decisions. The poet also calls the queen “dread virago”. A virago is a woman who demonstrates exemplary and heroic qualities. The word comes from the Latin word virāgō which can mean man-like, vigorous, heroic maiden, a female warrior or heroine.

She their Protectrix was, they well do know, Unto our dread Virago, what they owe. Her Nobles sacrific’d their noble blood, Nor men, nor coin she shap’d, to do them good. The rude untamed Irish31 she did quell, And Tiron bound, before her picture fell. Had ever Prince such Counsellors as she? Her self Minerva caus’d them so to be. Such Soldiers, and such Captains never seen, As were the subjects of our (Pallas) Queen: Her Sea-men through all straits the world did round, Terra incognitæ might know her sound. (33 – 44)

29 The Spanish Armada of 1588.

30 Elizabeth launched a naval attack on Portugal in 1589 to replace its monarch with the pretender, Don Antonio of Crato (1531 – 1595).

31 Sent by Elizabeth to Ireland in March 1599, Essex failed to put down a rebellion led by Hugh O’Neill, second earl of Tyrone (ca. 1540 – 1616) and returned home. 89

Although one might consider her elegy an ordinary one – since one would expect any elegy to a queen or king to be that complimentary – it is important to notice that Bradstreet’s strategy is to compare the queen to other female figures. While she praises the queen, she also foregrounds the importance of many other women throughout history. Considering Bradstreet’s belief that a woman’s place went far beyond the household, it is possible to read such references as a feminist claim of women’s power. In the lines which follow, the poet states it would be hard for her to remember and write all the queen’s great deeds, then she claims Semiramis – the legendary Lydian-Babylonian wife of Onne32s and Ninus33, who succeeded the latter to the throne of Assyria– could not be compared to Elizabeth’s greatness. What is more, the poet refers to Francis Drake34 as being “Her Drake” and to Robert Devereux35 as being “Her Essex” as if they belonged to the queen, giving her the strong image of the owner of men.

Her Drake came laded home with Spanish gold, Her Essex took Cadiz, their Herculean hold. But time would fail me, so my wit would too, To tell of half she did, or she could do. Semiramis to her is but obscure; More infamy than fame she did procure. She plac’d her glory but on Babel’s walls, World's wonder for a time, but yet it falls. (44 – 52) Other female references are mentioned such as Tomris (an ancient Iranian Massagetae36 queen from Central Asia), Amazons (a tribe of women warriors related to Scythians and Sarmatians) and Dido (the founder and first queen of Carthage). She compares the queen to such strong female figures while also stating Elizabeth is greater.

Fierce Tomris (Cirus’ Heads-man, Sythians’ Queen) Had put her Harness off, had she but seen Our Amazon i’ th’ Camp at Tilbury, (Judging all valour, and all Majesty)

32 The royal governor of the province of Syria.

33 Assyrian king.

34 Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596), famous for his circumnavigation of the world in 1577, plundered Spanish cities in 1585 and 1589 with Elizabeth’s approval.

35 Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1565-1601), was an English nobleman.

36 The Massagetae were an ancient Eastern Iranian nomadic confederation. 90

Within that Princess to have residence, And prostrate yielded to her Excellence. Dido first Foundress of proud Carthage walls (Who living consummates her Funerals), A great Eliza, but compar’d with ours, How vanisheth her glory, wealth, and powers. (53 – 62) Bradstreet then briefly mentions Cleopatra. Cleopatra ruled ancient Egypt as co-regent for almost three decades. She was first co-regent with her two younger brothers and then with her son. She was the last in a dynasty of Macedonian rulers. Cleopatra spoke different languages and served as dominant ruler in all three of her co-regencies. Bradstreet mentions Cleopatra's reputation. Due to her romantic liaisons, exotic beauty and powers of seduction, Cleopatra earned polemic reputation. When mentioning Cleopatra, Bradstreet is not clear about her opinion. The poet mentions the word “shame” and does not write a lot about her worth; only that she was a queen. On the one hand, it is possible that Bradstreet did not feel comfortable writing about a woman who had romantic affairs with different men. On the other hand, the poet might be using irony to say that, although Cleopatra had a bad reputation, she was still a queen and deserves acknowledgement:

Proud profuse Cleopatra, whose wrong name, Instead of glory, prov’d her Country’s shame: Of her what worth in Story’s to be seen, But that she was a rich Ægyptian Queen. (63 – 66) Bradstreet then mentions Zenobia, queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria. She writes that Zenobia and all the other women mentioned previously could never be compared to queen Elizabeth. The poet then spends a few more lines praising the queen’s qualities:

Zenobia, potent Empress of the East, And of all these without compare the best (Whom none but great Aurelius could quell) Yet for our Queen is no fit parallel: She was a Phoenix Queen, so shall she be, Her ashes not reviv’d more Phoenix she. Her personal perfections, who would tell, Must dip his Pen i’ th’ Heliconian Well, Which I may not, my pride doth but aspire To read what others write and then admire. (67 – 76) 91

Although the poet might seem to be following the protocol, since praising kings and queens was not unusual, she does so with an agenda. In the lines below, Bradstreet speaks directly with her male audience, defying the patriarchal belief that women are inferior or worthless. Considering the other feminist elements which have been explored throughout this work, I believe the following ones are the most assertive and bold:

Now say, have women worth, or have they none? Or had they some, but with our Queen is’t gone? Nay Masculines, you have thus tax’d us long, But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong. Let such as say our sex is void of reason Know ‘tis a slander now, but once was treason. (77 – 82) Bradstreet ends her poem claiming that queen Elizabeth shall rule England again, meaning that the poet believes her old home will be in peace again.

But happy England, which had such a Queen, O happy, happy, had those days still been, But happiness lies in a higher sphere. Then wonder not, Eliza moves not here. Full fraught with honour, riches, and with days, She set, she set, like Titan in his rays. No more shall rise or set such glorious Sun, Until the heaven’s great revolution: If then new things, their old form must retain, Eliza shall rule Albian37 once again. (83 – 92)

The feminist critic Ivy Schweitzer believes that Bradstreet tried to emphasize Elizabeth’s power by writing that the queen had male qualities instead of being feminine: Bradstreet elevates Queen Elizabeth, a woman she depicts as a cross-dressing military leader […] who equals and, in fact, bests men not by being feminine, but by excelling in masculine roles […]” (SCHWEITZER, 2009, p. 408). The critic explains that early American women writers articulated their sense of self and authority not from a cultural femininity perspective but “[…] in response to its pervasive denigration”. (SCHWEITZER, 2009, p. 408). What is more, Schweitzer claims that Bradstreet’s early works were pervaded with male characteristics while her later poems could be identified as feminine and protofeminist: “Only in her later poems, written after the publication of The Tenth

37 Albion, Latin name for England, from the white (“albus”) cliffs of Dover. 92

Muse, does Bradstreet write with what Adrienne Rich identifies as a feminine (and protofeminist) perspective, as mother, wife, and grandmother”. (SCHWEITZER, 2009, p. 408). Although Bradstreet did indeed explore with dignity and pride her female roles in her later poems, her early poems reclaim women’s right to go far beyond than the roles imposed by patriarchal society. By stating that only the poems which deal with motherhood and wifehood can be considered feminine and thus feminist, the critics fail to identify Bradstreet’s strategy of using the very male tradition to conquer her space in spheres other than the household. Schweitzer gives such strategy some credit, yet still states that it seems a rejection of the female body:

Some feminists do not want to find this rejection of the body and femininity as gendered subordination and embrace of the neuter or androgyne; it seems politically ‘incorrect,’ a capitulation to the superiority of masculinity and an acceptance of the masculine as norm. But it was a powerful strategy for these writers, and I believe we have to acknowledge it and see it in its historical context. (SCHWEITZER, 2009, p. 409).

Instead of rejecting her female body and roles, I believe Bradstreet was defying what men had imposed to women as the limited function of their bodies and minds. While it may seem that Bradstreet was subordinated to the male tradition, I see it as an artful protest against the imprisonment of women inside their own houses and own heads. Tamara Harvey reckons that “Though she may at times have felt isolated, to characterize Bradstreet primarily as intimidated and/or isolated by dominant literary expectations is to underestimate her project and oversimplify that which is ‘dominant’”. (HARVEY, 2000, p.6). To accept that the female body and femininity was confined to motherhood and needlework while being a military leader or politician was exclusively a male matter was not part of Bradstreet’s project. What is more, Bradstreet made it clear she did not want to become a man, but to have the same rights. Zach Hutchins comments that

When, in her ‘Prologue’ Anne Bradstreet requests that her readers bestow upon her ‘Thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bayes’ (7, 316), she seeks only a simple recognition of her achievements as a poet, not the glory and honor a crown of laurels might bring or the title of Tenth Muse bestowed upon her by family and friends. (HUCTHINS, 2010, p 40). Instead of rejecting her femininity "to become a man", Bradstreet engaged in debates in order to break with the boundaries imposed to women. “Throughout The Tenth Muse, Bradstreet consciously and intelligently participates in contemporary literary battles of the sexes”. (HARVEY, 2000, p.6). Anne Bradstreet’s familiarity and ability with historical facts as well as 93

the traditional poetic formulae of her time enabled her to tackle issues not permitted to women in the seventeenth-century Puritan New World. The poet used her wits to express her discomfort with the limited and defamed female world, becoming assertive and explicit in her thoughts upon the rights of women to expand their contribution as part of society. Martin explains:

These assertive lines claim for Elizabeth what Bradstreet dared not claim for herself – power, judgment, wisdom, achievement. Certainly it was less stressful and less dangerous to make this bold declaration praising female abilities in a historical context than it would have been for Bradstreet to publicly proclaim the worth of her own work. (MARTIN, 1984, p. 23).

Feminist theory was non-existent in Bradstreet’s time, but that does not mean there had not been women fighting for the rights of the female sex in different ways. There are many aspects of Bradstreet’s writing which lead us to believe that she was willing to vindicate female sex’s dignity; at times within the limits imposed to her, at others pushing such limits a little further. Such aspects are the use of irony when talking about her worth as a poet and the worth of women as a whole; the reference she makes to important women in History in “In Honour of That High and Mighty Queen Princess Elizabeth”; and the subversive lines in which she vindicates women’s capability of reasoning “As a poet, Bradstreet’s creation of a socially and religiously acceptable feminine wisdom offers a new perspective on the tradition of American verse”. (HUCTHINS, 2010, p. 54) As I hope to have demonstrated, there have been many women vindicating the female worth and right to equality. Even though Bradstreet tended to follow the male poetic tradition in her early poems, it was precisely with such poems that she claimed women’s worth. Thus, Anne Bradstreet should be regarded as a feminist writer who, though carefully, contributed to feminist literature.

CONCLUSION

Anne Bradstreet, born and raised in England, followed her Puritan family to the New World at which her “heart rose” in dismay. As a young girl, Bradstreet was used to an aristocratic life and knew how to take advantage of such condition: she read classic and contemporary authors who wrote about a great variety of subjects, becoming thus, a knowledgeable woman. She began writing in England but there are no records of her intention to publish. On the contrary, as I have shown, there is only evidence of her lack of intention. After moving to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Bradstreet faced harsh life conditions and became a mother who managed the household most frequently all by herself due to her husband’s constant absence. Her busy life did not prevent her from writing and her religion did not prevent her from expressing her conflicts towards it. Throughout this dissertation, I have explored selected poems which I believe illustrate such conflicts, as well as facilitate the understanding of her transgression. Revisiting her humanist and Puritan background allowed me to make a fairer analysis of such poems, as I shall conclude.

There have been two opposite readings regarding Bradstreet’s poems; especially her early imitative ones. Critics such as Adrienne Rich, Ivy Schweitzer and Kenneth Requa believe that Bradstreet’s tendency to follow the male poetic tradition in her early poems led such works to lack feminine representation and that the poet was only able to fully express her poetic ability comfortably when writing about her preestablished feminine roles, such as motherhood and wifehood. Bradstreet did not deny her female roles but frequently questioned through her poems whether such roles should be the only ones. Other critics such as Ann Stanford and Tamara Harvey focus on the power of her feminist lines and the way with which she subverted the boundaries imposed to her and her contemporary women. In some cases, such feminist lines are covered with irony and might not be clearly identified, as I have discussed in her “Prologue”. In other cases, her resentment towards the patriarchal society becomes clearer, as I have presented in her “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth”. By addressing her male contemporaries and defying them concerning the female power as she did in her elegy to the queen and in her response to Nathaniel Ward, Bradstreet showed herself as a strong representative of her sex. 95

Although Bradstreet is commonly studied as an American poet, considering her English upbringing and reading her poems through a humanist perspective enable the reader to further identify rhetorical elements in her works, without which her poems may be considered mere copy of the male tradition. The debate tradition which she followed is an evidence of such perspective. Besides debating over women’s worth and right to reason, Bradstreet often inserted female figures engaging in debates in her poems as I have explored in my analysis of “The Flesh and The Spirit” and others. Instead of denying femininity, Bradstreet tried to broaden the female scope. While it was not possible for real women to debate over public issues in the colony without being banished, her female characters and herself were often in control of their voices in her poems.

By exploring her English and religious backgrounds, I was able to come to the conclusion that, instead of adhering to the male poetic tradition because she admired men and wanted to be one of them, Bradstreet chose to use such tradition as an attempt to subvert it. In her A Poetics of Postmodernism Linda Hutcheon claims that postmodernism […] is a contradictory phenomenon, one that uses and abuses, installs and then subverts, the very concept it challenges […].” (HUCTHEON, 1988, p. 3). Although Bradstreet was not a postmodern poet, she installed in her works such tradition while subverting it, as Hutcheon discusses. She wrote about the same themes male poets would write and used the same devices; yet, she found room for questioning the female position in society not by denying tradition, but by using it in her favor. She used elements such as debating, irony, self-deprecation and other features which she had borrowed from male writers and used such knowledge to claim for women’s capability of reasoning. Without the awareness of the Rhetorical Culture embedded in Bradstreet’s poems, one might not be able to identify, for instance, that her self-deprecatory lines were in fact a common feature which most Renaissance poets were used. Such understanding is of paramount importance in Bradstreet’s case; without which the reader might think that Bradstreet in fact believed women were inferior to men, as her religion and male contemporaries claimed.

Puritanism reinforced female submission towards men. Women were supposed to obey their fathers and husbands as well as admire them for their superiority. Children were taught since a very early age to recognize their mother’s inferiority in order to learn obedience to their fathers. The position of a woman in the Puritan society of the colony was very clear and women 96

who dared crossing the line would run the risk of being banished. The misogynistic society to which Bradstreet belonged would never allow a woman to express her thoughts concerning public issues. The poet’s love towards her husband, her devotion to God, as well as her religion itself, may be read as an evidence of her submissiveness, as if she agreed to the Puritan belief that a woman was not entitled to an opinion because the female brain had no capacity of reasoning about such complex issues. However, Bradstreet often expressed her questionings towards the Puritan doctrine, especially regarding women’s supposed inferiority. Bradstreet’s ambivalence towards Puritanism is another sign that the poet was not blindly conforming to the dogma imposed to her but shows the very female capability of reasoning which she frequently defended in her poems. The poet was not a rebel who voiced her opinion publicly, but the very act of writing about such questionings can be alone regarded as boldly transgressive.

In revisiting the poems present in this dissertation, I was able to identify Anne Bradstreet’s feminist thoughts. Although feminist theory was non-existent in the seventeenth century, the poet was already concerned with such matter. In the twenty-first century, feminist theory has advanced considerably and deals with different branches of feminism concerning different women from contrasting cultural, ethnic, sexual and economic backgrounds. That was not Bradstreet’s case: the poet did not write about fully conquering equality of the sexes (although she gave her contemporaries food for thought), neither did she write about native women’s rights, for instance. She never published any poems in defense of a specific group of women, but she wrote in defense of women as people who were equally capable of debating over various subjects. Even though she might have intended to be ironic, she never wrote claiming her sex should have all the same rights as men, for she did not ask for “Bays”; that is, she did not want the laurel crown given to winners of poetry competitions). She did not refuse to play the roles to which women were entitled either, for she asked for a “thyme or Parsley wreath”. Ironically or not, that does not necessarily mean that Bradstreet did not have feminist thoughts, but it might mean she knew how far her protest could go before being banished from the colony as her friend Anne and sister Sarah were.

Some readers might believe she protested as much as her limitations allowed her. However, I believe she protested beyond her limitations, for she directly addresses men in her “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth”, includes female figures in debates in 97

her “The Flesh and The Spirit”, and “The Four Elements”, criticizes men for accusing her of stealing/copying their style in “The Prologue”, presents herself as a single mother who rejects her own child in “The Author to Her Book”, and writes about her husband sensually in “A Letter to Her Husband Absent Upon Publick Employment”.

Anne Bradstreet wrote about different issues of her time in the privacy of her home at first and when her works were exposed to public view she did not refrain from restating her strong views. Her family status allowed her to educate herself through books and she used such privilege in her own favor and in favor of women’s worth. Her accomplishments as a poet were generally praised. Nonetheless, the male-centered society in which she lived did not leave much room for further recognition in her own time. Feminists of the twentieth-century rediscovered her works and a close study of Bradstreet’s poems began and has never stopped ever since. It is important to continue studying the works of this one woman as well as other women who dared to defy the patriarchal limitations, for they are a fundamental part of history who contributed, each in their own specific way, to a more egalitarian society.

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GORDON, Charlotte. Mistress Bradstreet: the untold life of America’s first poet. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005.

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MARTIN, Wendy. An American triptych: Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

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APPENDIX A – Nathaniel Ward’s commendatory poem

MErcury shew'd Apollo, Bartas Book, Minerva this, and wisht him well to look, And tell uprightly, which did which excell; He view'd, and view'd, and vow'd he could not tell. They bid him Hemisphear his mouldy nose, With's crackt leering-glasses, for it would pose The best brains he had in's old pudding-pan, Sex weigh'd, which best, the Woman, or the Man? I'me even as wise now, as I was before: He peer’d, and por’d , and glar’d, and said for wore, They both 'gan laugh, and said, it was no mar'l The Auth'resse was a right Du Bartas Girle. Good sooth quoth the old Don, tel, ye me so, I muse whither at length these Girls wil go; It half revives my chil frost-bitten blood, To see a woman once do, ought, that's good; And chode buy Chaucers Boots, and Homers Furrs, Ler men look to't, least women weare the Spurs.

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APPENDIX B – The Prologue

TO sing of Wars, of Captaines, and of Kings, Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun, For my mean Pen, are too superiour things, And how they all, or each, their dates have run: Let Poets, and Historians set these forth, My obscure Verse, shal not so dim their worth.

But when my wondring eyes, and envious heart, Great Bartas sugar'd lines doe but read o're; Foole, I doe grudge, the Muses did not part 'Twixt him and me, that over-fluent store; A Bartas can, doe what a Bartas wil, But simple I, according to my skill.

From School-boyes tongue, no Rhethorick we expect, Nor yet a sweet Consort, from broken strings, Nor perfect beauty, where's a maine defect, My foolish, broken, blemish'd Muse so sings; And this to mend, alas, no Art is able, 'Cause Nature made it so irreparable.

Nor can I, like that fluent sweet tongu'd Greek Who lisp'd at first, speake afterwards more plaine By Art, he gladly found what he did seeke, A full requit all of his striving paine: Art can doe much, but this maxime's most sure, A weake or wounded braine admits no cure.

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I am obnoxious to each carping tongue, Who sayes, my hand a needle better fits, A Poets Pen, all scorne, I should thus wrong; For such despight they cast on female wits: If what I doe prove well, it wo'nt advance, They'l say its stolne, or else, it was by chance.

But sure the antick Greeks were far more milde, Else of our Sex, why feigned they those nine, And poesy made, Calliope's owne childe, So 'mongst the rest, they plac'd the Arts divine: But this weake knot they will full soone untye, The Greeks did nought, but play the foole and lye.

Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are, Men have precedency, and still excell, It is but vaine, unjustly to wage war, Men can doe best, and Women know it well; Preheminence in each, and all is yours, Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.

And oh, ye high flown quils, that soare the skies, And ever with your prey, still catch your praise, If e're you daigne these lowly lines, your eyes Give wholsome Parsley wreath, I aske no Bayes: This meane and unrefined stuffe of mine, Will make your glistering gold but more to shine.

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APPENDIX C – The Flesh and The Spirit

In secret place where once I stood Close by the Banks of Lacrim flood, I heard two sisters reason on Things that are past and things to come. One Flesh was call'd, who had her eye On worldly wealth and vanity; The other Spirit, who did rear Her thoughts unto a higher sphere. 'Sister,' quoth Flesh, 'what liv'st thou on Nothing but Meditation? Doth Contemplation feed thee so Regardlessly to let earth go? Can Speculation satisfy Notion without Reality? Dost dream of things beyond the Moon And dost thou hope to dwell there soon? Hast treasures there laid up in store That all in th' world thou count'st but poor? Art fancy-sick or turn'd a Sot To catch at shadows which are not? Come, come. I'll show unto thy sense, Industry hath its recompence. What canst desire, but thou maist see True substance in variety? Dost honour like? Acquire the same, As some to their immortal fame; And trophies to thy name erect 105

Which wearing time shall ne'er deject. For riches dost thou long full sore? Behold enough of precious store. Earth hath more silver, pearls, and gold Than eyes can see or hands can hold. Affects thou pleasure? Take thy fill. Earth hath enough of what you will. Then let not go what thou maist find For things unknown only in mind.' pirit. 'Be still, thou unregenerate part, Disturb no more my settled heart, For I have vow'd (and so will do) Thee as a foe still to pursue, And combat with thee will and must Until I see thee laid in th' dust. Sister we are, yea twins we be, Yet deadly feud 'twixt thee and me, For from one father are we not. Thou by old Adam wast begot, But my arise is from above, Whence my dear father I do love. Thou speak'st me fair but hat'st me sore. Thy flatt'ring shews I'll trust no more. How oft thy slave hast thou me made When I believ'd what thou hast said And never had more cause of woe Than when I did what thou bad'st do. I'll stop mine ears at these thy charms And count them for my deadly harms. Thy sinful pleasures I do hate, 106

Thy riches are to me no bait. Thine honours do, nor will I love, For my ambition lies above. My greatest honour it shall be When I am victor over thee, And Triumph shall, with laurel head, When thou my Captive shalt be led. How I do live, thou need'st not scoff, For I have meat thou know'st not of. The hidden Manna I do eat; The word of life, it is my meat. My thoughts do yield me more content Than can thy hours in pleasure spent. Nor are they shadows which I catch, Nor fancies vain at which I snatch But reach at things that are so high, Beyond thy dull Capacity. Eternal substance I do see With which inriched I would be. Mine eye doth pierce the heav'ns and see What is Invisible to thee. My garments are not silk nor gold, Nor such like trash which Earth doth hold, But Royal Robes I shall have on, More glorious than the glist'ring Sun. My Crown not Diamonds, Pearls, and gold, But such as Angels' heads infold. The City where I hope to dwell, There's none on Earth can parallel. The stately Walls both high and trong Are made of precious Jasper stone, 107

The Gates of Pearl, both rich and clear, And Angels are for Porters there. The Streets thereof transparent gold Such as no Eye did e're behold. A Crystal River there doth run Which doth proceed from the Lamb's Throne. Of Life, there are the waters sure Which shall remain forever pure. Nor Sun nor Moon they have no need For glory doth from God proceed. No Candle there, nor yet Torch light, For there shall be no darksome night. From sickness and infirmity Forevermore they shall be free. Nor withering age shall e're come there, But beauty shall be bright and clear. This City pure is not for thee, For things unclean there shall not be. If I of Heav'n may have my fill, Take thou the world, and all that will.'

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APPENDIX D – A Dialogue Between Old England and New

New England. Alas, dear Mother, fairest Queen and best, With honour, wealth, and peace happy and blest, What ails thee hang thy head, and cross thine arms, And sit i’ the dust to sigh these sad alarms? What deluge of new woes thus over-whelm The glories of thy ever famous Realm? What means this wailing tone, this mournful guise? Ah, tell thy Daughter; she may sympathize.

Old England. Art ignorant indeed of these my woes, Or must my forced tongue these griefs disclose, And must my self dissect my tatter’d state, Which Amazed Christendom stands wondering at? And thou a child, a Limb, and dost not feel My weak’ned fainting body now to reel? This physic-purging-potion I have taken Will bring Consumption or an Ague quaking, Unless some Cordial thou fetch from high, Which present help may ease my malady. If I decease, dost think thou shalt survive? Or by my wasting state dost think to thrive? Then weigh our case, if ‘t be not justly sad. Let me lament alone, while thou art glad.

New England. And thus, alas, your state you much deplore In general terms, but will not say wherefore. 109

What Medicine shall I seek to cure this woe, If th’ wound’s so dangerous, I may not know? But you, perhaps, would have me guess it out. What, hath some Hengist like that Saxon stout By fraud and force usurp’d thy flow’ring crown, Or by tempestuous Wars thy fields trod down? Or hath Canutus, that brave valiant Dane, The regal peaceful Sceptre from thee ta’en? Or is 't a Norman whose victorious hand With English blood bedews thy conquered Land? Or is ‘t intestine Wars that thus offend? Do Maud and Stephen for the Crown contend? Do Barons rise and side against their King, And call in Foreign aid to help the thing? Must Edward be depos’d? Or is ‘t the hour That second Richard must be clapp’d i’ th’ Tower? Or is it the fatal jar, again begun, That from the red, white pricking Roses sprung? Must Richmond’s aid the Nobles now implore To come and break the tushes of the Boar? If none of these, dear Mother, what’s your woe? Pray, do not fear Spain’s bragging Armado. Doth your Ally, fair France, conspire your wrack, Or doth the Scots play false behind your back? Doth Holland quit you ill for all your love? Whence is this storm, from Earth or Heaven above? Is ‘t drought, is ‘t Famine, or is ‘t Pestilence? Dost feel the smart, or fear the consequence? Your humble Child entreats you shew your grief. Though Arms nor Purse she hath for your relief— Such is her poverty,—yet shall be found 110

A suppliant for your help, as she is bound.

Old England. I must confess some of those Sores you name My beauteous Body at this present maim, But foreign Foe nor feigned friend I fear, For they have work enough, thou knowest, elsewhere. Nor is it Alcie’s son and Henry’s Daughter Whose proud contention cause this slaughter; Nor Nobles siding to make John no King, French Louis unjustly to the Crown to bring; No Edward, Richard, to lose rule and life, Nor no Lancastrians to renew old strife; No Crook-backt Tyrant now usurps the Seat, Whose tearing tusks did wound, and kill, and threat. No Duke of York nor Earl of March to soil Their hands in Kindred’s blood whom they did foil; No need of Tudor Roses to unite: None knows which is the Red or which the White. Spain’s braving Fleet a second time is sunk. France knows how of my fury she hath drunk By Edward third and Henry fifth of fame; Her Lilies in my Arms avouch the same. My Sister Scotland hurts me now no more, Though she hath been injurious heretofore. What Holland is, I am in some suspense, But trust not much unto his Excellence. For wants, sure some I feel, but more I fear; And for the Pestilence, who knows how near? Famine and Plague, two sisters of the Sword, Destruction to a Land doth soon afford. 111

They’re for my punishments ordain'd on high, Unless thy tears prevent it speedily. But yet I answer not what you demand To shew the grievance of my troubled Land. Before I tell the effect I’ll shew the cause, Which are my sins—the breach of sacred Laws: Idolatry, supplanter of a Nation, With foolish superstitious adoration, Are lik’d and countenanc’d by men of might, The Gospel is trod down and hath no right. Church Offices are sold and bought for gain That Pope had hope to find Rome here again. For Oaths and Blasphemies did ever ear From Beelzebub himself such language hear? What scorning of the Saints of the most high! What injuries did daily on them lie! What false reports, what nick-names did they take, Not for their own, but for their Master’s sake! And thou, poor soul, wast jeer’d among the rest; Thy flying for the Truth I made a jest. For Sabbath-breaking and for Drunkenness Did ever Land profaneness more express? From crying bloods yet cleansed am not I, Martyrs and others dying causelessly. How many Princely heads on blocks laid down For nought but title to a fading Crown! ‘Mongst all the cruelties which I have done, Oh, Edward’s Babes, and Clarence’s hapless Son, O Jane, why didst thou die in flow’ring prime?— Because of Royal Stem, that was thy crime. For Bribery, Adultery, for Thefts, and Lies 112

Where is the Nation I can’t paralyze? With Usury, Extortion, and Oppression, These be the Hydras of my stout transgression; These be the bitter fountains, heads, and roots Whence flow’d the source, the sprigs, the boughs, and fruits. Of more than thou canst hear or I relate, That with high hand I still did perpetrate, For these were threat’ned the woeful day I mocked the Preachers, put it fair away. The Sermons yet upon record do stand That cried destruction to my wicked Land. These Prophets’ mouths (all the while) was stopt, Unworthily, some backs whipt, and ears crept; Their reverent cheeks bear the glorious marks Of stinking, stigmatizing Romish Clerks; Some lost their livings, some in prison pent, Some grossly fined, from friends to exile went: Their silent tongues to heaven did vengeance cry, Who heard their cause, and wrongs judg’d righteously, And will repay it sevenfold in my lap. This is fore-runner of my after-clap. Nor took I warning by my neighbors’ falls. I saw sad Germany’s dismantled walls, I saw her people famish’d, Nobles slain, Her fruitful land a barren heath remain. I saw (unmov’d) her Armies foil’d and fled, Wives forc’d, babes toss’d, her houses calcined. I saw strong Rochelle yield’d to her foe, Thousands of starved Christians there also. I saw poor Ireland bleeding out her last, Such cruelty as all reports have past. 113

Mine heart obdurate stood not yet aghast. Now sip I of that cup, and just ‘t may be The bottom dregs reserved are for me.

New England. To all you’ve said, sad mother, I assent. Your fearful sins great cause there ‘s to lament. My guilty hands (in part) hold up with you, A sharer in your punishment’s my due. But all you say amounts to this effect, Not what you feel, but what you do expect. Pray, in plain terms, what is your present grief? Then let’s join heads and hands for your relief.

Old England. Well, to the matter, then. There’s grown of late ‘Twixt King and Peers a question of state: Which is the chief, the law, or else the King? One saith, it’s he; the other, no such thing. My better part in Court of Parliament To ease my groaning land shew their intent To crush the proud, and right to each man deal, To help the Church, and stay the Common-Weal. So many obstacles comes in their way As puts me to a stand what I should say. Old customs, new Prerogatives stood on. Had they not held law fast, all had been gone, Which by their prudence stood them in such stead They took high Strafford lower by the head, And to their Laud be ‘t spoke they held ‘n th’ Tower All England’s metropolitan that hour. 114

This done, an Act they would have passed fain No prelate should his Bishopric retain. Here tugg’d they hard indeed, for all men saw This must be done by Gospel, not by law. Next the Militia they urged sore. This was denied, I need not say wherefore. The King, displeased, at York himself absents. They humbly beg return, shew their intents. The writing, printing, posting to and fro, Shews all was done; I’ll therefore let it go. But now I come to speak of my disaster. Contention’s grown ‘twixt Subjects and their Master, They worded it so long they fell to blows, That thousands lay on heaps. Here bleeds my woes. I that no wars so many years have known Am now destroy’d and slaughter’d by mine own. But could the field alone this strife decide, One battle, two, or three I might abide, But these may be beginnings of more woe— Who knows, the worst, the best may overthrow! Religion, Gospel, here lies at the stake, Pray now, dear child, for sacred Zion’s sake, Oh, pity me in this sad perturbation, My plundered Towns, my houses’ devastation, My ravisht virgins, and my young men slain, My wealthy trading fallen, my dearth of grain. The seedtime’s come, but Ploughman hath no hope Because he knows not who shall inn his crop. The poor they want their pay, their children bread, Their woful mothers’ tears unpitied. If any pity in thy heart remain, 115

Or any child-like love thou dost retain, For my relief now use thy utmost skill, And recompense me good for all my ill.

New England. Dear mother, cease complaints, and wipe your eyes, Shake off your dust, cheer up, and now arise. You are my mother, nurse, I once your flesh, Your sunken bowels gladly would refresh. Your griefs I pity much but should do wrong, To weep for that we both have pray’d for long, To see these latter days of hop’d-for good, That Right may have its right, though ‘t be with blood. After dark Popery the day did clear; But now the Sun in’s brightness shall appear. Blest be the Nobles of thy Noble Land With (ventur’d lives) for truth’s defence that stand. Blest be thy Commons, who for Common good And thy infringed Laws have boldly stood. Blest be thy Counties, who do aid thee still With hearts and states to testify their will. Blest be thy Preachers, who do cheer thee on. Oh, cry: the sword of God and Gideon! And shall I not on them wish Mero’s curse That help thee not with prayers, arms, and purse? And for my self, let miseries abound If mindless of thy state I e’er be found. These are the days the Church’s foes to crush, To root out Prelates, head, tail, branch, and rush. Let’s bring Baal’s vestments out, to make a fire, Their Mitres, Surplices, and all their tire, 116

Copes, Rochets, Croziers, and such trash, And let their names consume, but let the flash Light Christendom, and all the world to see We hate Rome’s Whore, with all her trumpery. Go on, brave Essex, shew whose son thou art, Not false to King, nor Country in thy heart, But those that hurt his people and his Crown, By force expel, destroy, and tread them down. Let Gaols be fill’d with th’ remnant of that pack, And sturdy Tyburn loaded till it crack. And ye brave Nobles, chase away all fear, And to this blessed Cause closely adhere. O mother, can you weep and have such Peers? When they are gone, then drown your self in tears, If now you weep so much, that then no more The briny Ocean will o’erflow your shore. These, these are they (I trust) with Charles our king, Out of all mists such glorious days will bring That dazzled eyes, beholding, much shall wonder At that thy settled Peace, thy wealth, and splendour, Thy Church and Weal establish’d in such manner That all shall joy that thou display’dst thy banner, And discipline erected so, I trust, That nursing Kings shall come and lick thy dust. Then Justice shall in all thy Courts take place Without respect of persons or of case. Then bribes shall cease, and suits shall not stick long, Patience and purse of Clients for to wrong. Then High Commissions shall fall to decay, And Pursuivants and Catchpoles want their pay. So shall thy happy Nation ever flourish, 117

When truth and righteousness they thus shall nourish. When thus in Peace, thine Armies brave send out To sack proud Rome, and all her vassals rout. There let thy name, thy fame, and valour shine, As did thine Ancestors’ in Palestine, And let her spoils full pay with int’rest be Of what unjustly once she poll’d from thee. Of all the woes thou canst let her be sped, Execute to th’ full the vengeance threatened. Bring forth the beast that rul’d the world with’s beck, And tear his flesh, and set your feet on’s neck, And make his filthy den so desolate To th’ ‘stonishment of all that knew his state. This done, with brandish’d swords to Turkey go,— (For then what is it but English blades dare do?) And lay her waste, for so’s the sacred doom, And do to Gog as thou hast done to Rome. Oh Abraham’s seed, lift up your heads on high, For sure the day of your redemption’s nigh. The scales shall fall from your long blinded eyes, And him you shall adore who now despise. Then fullness of the Nations in shall flow, And Jew and Gentile to one worship go. Then follows days of happiness and rest. Whose lot doth fall to live therein is blest. No Canaanite shall then be found ‘n th’ land, And holiness on horses’ bells shall stand. If this make way thereto, then sigh no more, But if at all thou didst not see ‘t before. Farewell, dear mother; Parliament, prevail, And in a while you’ll tell another tale. 118

APPENDIX E – Upon Some Distemper of Body

In anguish of my heart replete with woes, And wasting pains, which best my body knows, In tossing slumbers on my wakeful bed, Bedrenched with tears that flowed from mournful head, Till nature had exhausted all her store, Then eyes lay dry, disabled to weep more; And looking up unto his throne on high, Who sendeth help to those in misery; He chased away those clouds and let me see My anchor cast i' th' vale with safety. He eased my soul of woe, my flesh of pain, and brought me to the shore from troubled main.

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APPENDIX F – From Deliverance from Fever

When Sorrowes had begyrt me rovnd, And Paines within and out, When in my flesh no part was sovnd, Then didst thou rid me out. My burning flesh in sweat did boyle, My aking head did break; From side to side for ease I toyle, So faint I could not speak. Beclouded was my Soul with fear Of thy Displeasure sore, Nor could I read my Evidence Which oft I read before. Hide not thy face from me, I cry'd, From Burnings keep my soul; Thov know'st my heart, and hast me try'd; I on thy Mercyes Rowl. O, heal my Soul, thov know'st I said, Tho' flesh consume to novght; What tho' in dust it shall bee lay'd, To Glory't shall bee brovght. Thou heardst, thy rod thou didst remove, And spar'd my Body frail, Thou shew'st to me thy tender Love, My heart no more might quail. O, Praises to my mighty God, Praise to my Lord, I say, Who hath redeem'd my Soul from pitt: Praises to him for Aye!

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APPENDIX G – A Letter To Her Husband, Absent Upon Publick Employment

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APPENDIX H – The Author To Her Book

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APPENDIX I – The Four Elements

The Fire, Air, Earth and Water did contest Which was the strongest, noblest and the best, Who was of greatest use and might'est force; In placide Terms they thought now to discourse, That in due order each her turn should speak; But enmity this amity did break All would be chief, and all scorn'd to be under Whence issued winds &rains, lightning &thunder. The quaking earth did groan, the Sky looked black, The Fire, the forced Air, in sunder crack; The sea did threat the heav'ns, the heavn's the earth, All looked like a Chaos or new birth; Fire broyled Earth, &scorched Earth it choaked Both by their darings, water so provoked That roaring in it came, and with its source Soon made the Combatants abate their force; The rumbling, hissing, puffing was so great The worlds confusion, it did seem to threat Till gentle Air, Contention so abated That betwixt hot and cold, she arbitrated The others difference, being less did cease All storms now laid, and they in perfect peace That Fire should first begin, the rest consent, The noblest and most active Element.

Fire What is my worth (both ye) and all men know, In little time I can but little show, But what I am, let learned Grecians say 123

What I can do well skil'd Mechanicks may; The benefit all living by me finde, All sorts of Artists, here declare your mind, What tool was ever fram'd, but by my might? Ye Martilisk, what weapons for your fight To try your valor by, but it must feel My force? Your Sword, &Gun, your Lance of steel Your Cannon's bootless and your powder too Without mine aid, (alas) what can they do; The adverse walls not shak'd, the Mines not blown And in despight the City keeps her own; But I with one Granado or Petard Set ope those gates, that 'fore so strong were bar'd Ye Husband-men, your Coulters made by me Your Hooes your Mattocks, &what ere you see Subdue the Earth, and fit it for your Grain That so it might in time requite your pain; Though strong-limb'd Vulcan forg'd it by his skill I made it flexible unto his will; Ye Cooks, your Kitchen implements I frame Your Spits, Pots, Jacks, what else I need not name Your dayly food I wholsome make, I warm Your shrinking Limbs, which winter's cold doth harm Ye Paracelsians too in vain's your skill In Chymistry, unless I help you Still.

And you Philosophers, if e're you made A transmutation it was through mine aid, Ye silver Smiths, your Ure I do refine What mingled lay with Earth I cause to shine, But let me leave these things, my fame aspires 124

To match on high with the Celestial fires; The Sun an Orb of fire was held of old, Our Sages new another tale have told; But be he what they will, yet his aspect A burning fiery heat we find reflect And of the self same nature is with mine Cold sister Earth, no witness needs but thine; How doth his warmth, refresh thy frozen back And trim thee brave, in green, after thy black. Both man and beast rejoyce at his approach, And birds do sing, to see his glittering Coach And though nought, but Salamanders live in fire And fly Pyrausta call'd, all else expire, Yet men and beasts Astronomers will tell Fixed in heavenly Constellations dwell, My Planets of both Sexes whose degree Poor Heathen judg'd worthy a Diety; There's Orion arm'd attended by his dog; The Theban stout Alcides with his Club; The valiant Persens, who Medusa slew, The horse that kil'd Beleuphon, then flew. My Crab, my Scorpion, fishes you may see The Maid with ballance, twain with horses three, The Ram, the Bull, the Lion, and the Beagle, The Bear, the Goat, the Raven, and the Eagle, The Crown, the Whale, the Archer, Bernice Hare The Hidra, Dolphin, Boys that water bear, Nay more, then these, Rivers 'mongst stars are found Eridanus, where Phaeton was drown'd. Their magnitude, and height, should I recount My Story to a volume would amount; 125

Out of a multitude these few I touch, Your wisdome out of little gather much.

I'le here let pass, my choler, cause of wars And influence of divers of those stars When in Conjunction with the Sun do more Augment his heat, which was too hot before. The Summer ripening season I do claim, And man from thirty unto fifty framed, Of old when Sacrifices were Divine, I of acceptance was the holy Signe, 'Mong all thy wonders which I might recount, There's none more strange then Aetna's Sulphry mount The choaking flames, that from Vesuvius flew The over curious second Pliny flew, And with the Ashes that it sometimes shed Apulia's 'jacent parts were covered. And though I be a servant to each man Yet by my force, master, my masters can. What famous Towns, to Cinders have I turned? What lasting forts my Kindled wrath hath burned? The Stately Seats of mighty Kings by me In confused heaps, of ashes may you see. Where's Ninus great wall'd Town, &Troy of old Carthage, and hundred more in stories told Which when they could not be o'ercome by foes The Army, thro'ugh my help victorious rose And Stately London, our great Britian's glory My raging flame did make a mournful story, But maugre all, that I, or foes could do That Phoenix from her Bed, is risen New. 126

Old sacred Zion, I demolished thee Lo great Diana's Temple was by me, And more than bruitish London, for her lust With neighbouring Towns, I did consume to dust What shall I say of Lightning and of Thunder Which Kings &mighty ones amaze with wonder, Which make a Caesar, (Romes) the world's proud head, Foolish Caligula creep under 's bed. Of Meteors, Ignus fatuus and the rest, But to leave those to th' wise, I judge it best. The rich I oft made poor, the strong I maime, Not sparing Life when I can take the same; And in a word, the world I shall consume And all therein, at that great day of Doom; Not before then, shall cease, my raging ire And then because no matter more for fire Now Sisters pray proceed, each in your Course As I, impart your usefulness and force.

Earth The next in place Earth judg'd to be her due, Sister (quoth shee) I come not short of you, In wealth and use I do surpass you all, And mother earth of old men did me call Such is my fruitfulness, an Epithite, Which none ere gave, or you could claim of sight Among my praises this I count not least, I am th' original of man and beast, To tell what Sundry fruits my fat soil yields In Vineyards, Gardens, Orchards &Corn-fields, Their kinds, their tasts, their Colors &their smells Would so pass time I could say nothing else. 127

The rich, the poor, wise, fool, and every sort Of these so common things can make report. To tell you of my countryes and my Regions, Soon would they pass not hundreds but legions; My cities famous, rich and populous, Whose numbers now are grown innumerous, I have not time to think of every part, Yet let me name my Grecia, 'tis my heart. For learning arms and arts I love it well, But chiefly 'cause the Muses there did dwell.

Ile here skip ore my mountains reaching skyes, Whether Pyrenean, or the Alpes, both lyes On either side the country of the Gaules Strong forts, from Spanish and Italian brawles, And huge great Taurus longer then the rest, Dividing great Armenia from the least; And Hemus, whose steep sides none foot upon, But farewell all for dear mount Helicon, And wondrous high Olimpus, of such fame, That heav'n itself was oft call'd by that name. Parnapus sweet, I dote too much on thee, Unless thou prove a better friend to me: But Ile leap ore these hills, not touch a dale, Nor will I stay, no not in Temple Vale, He here let go my Lions of Numedia, My Panthers and my Leopards of Libia, The Behemoth and rare found Unicorn, Poyson's sure antidote lyes in his horn, And my Hiaena (imitates man's voice) Out of great numbers I might pick my choice, 128

Thousands in woods &plains, both wild &tame, But here or there, I list now none to name; No, though the fawning Dog did urge me sore, In his behalf to speak a word the more, Whose trust and valour I might here commend; But times too short and precious so to spend. But hark you wealthy merchants, who for prize Send forth your well man'd ships where sun doth rise, After three years when men and meat is spent, My rich Commodityes pay double rent. Ye Galenists, my Drugs that come from thence, Do cure your Patients, fill your purse with pence; Besides the use of roots, of hearbs, and plants, That with less cost near home supply your wants. But Mariners where got your ships and Sails, And Oars to row, when both my Sisters fails Your Tackling, Anchor, compass too is mine, Which guides when sun, nor moon, nor stars do shine. Ye mighty Kings, who for your lasting fames Built Cities, Monuments, call'd by your names, Were those compiled heaps of massy stones That your ambition laid, ought but my bones? Ye greedy misers, who do dig for gold For gemms, for silver, Treasures which I hold, Will not my goodly face your rage suffice But you will see, what in my bowels lyes? And ye Artificers, all Trades and forts My bounty calls you forth to make reports, If ought you have, to use, to wear, to eat, But what I freely yield, upon your sweat? And Cholerick Sister, thou for all thine ire 129

Well knowst my fuel, must maintain thy fire.

As I ingenuously with thanks confess, My cold thy fruitfull heat doth crave no less; But how my cold dry temper works upon The melancholy Constitution; How the Autumnal season I do sway, And how I force the gray-head to obey, I should here make a short, yet true narration. But that thy method is mine imitation Now must I shew mine adverse quality, And how I oft work man's mortality; He sometimes finds, maugre his toiling pain Thistles and thorns where he expected grain. My sap to plants and trees I must not grant, The vine, the olive, and the fig tree want: The Corn and Hay do fall before the're mown, And buds from fruitfull trees as soon as blown; Then dearth prevails, that nature to suffice The Mother on her tender infant flyes; The husband knows no wife, nor father sons. But to all outrages their hunger runs: Dreadful examples soon I might produce, But to such Auditors 'twere of no use, Again when Delvers dare in hope of gold To ope those veins of Mine, audacious bold; While they thus in mine entrails love to dive, Before they know, they are inter'd alive. Y' affrighted nights appal'd, how do ye shake, When once you feel me your foundation quake? Because in the Abysse of my dark womb 130

Your cities and yourselves I oft intomb: O dreadful Sepulcher! that this is true Dathan and all his company well knew, So did that Roman far more stout than wise Bur'ing himself alive for honours prize. And since fair Italy full sadly knowes What she hath lost by these remed'less woes. Again what veins of poyson in me lye, Some kill outright, and some do stupifye: Nay into herbs and plants it sometimes creeps, In heats &colds &gripes &drowzy sleeps; Thus I occasion death to man and beast When food they seek, &harm mistrust the least, Much might I say of the hot Libian sand Which rise like tumbling Billows on the Land Wherein Cambyses Armie was o'rethrown (but winder Sister, 'twas when you have blown) I'le say no more, but this thing add I must Remember Sons, your mould is of my dust And after death whether interr'd or burn'd As Earth at first so into Earth returned.

Water Scarce Earth had done, but th' angry water moved. Sister (quoth she) it had full well behoved Among your boastings to have praised me Cause of your fruitfulness as you shall see: This your neglect shews your ingratitude And how your subtilty, would men delude Not one of us (all knows) that's like to thee Ever in craving from the other three; But thou art bound to me above the rest, 131

Who am thy drink, thy blood, thy Sap, and best:

If I withhold what art thou? dead dry lump Thou bearst nor grass or plant, nor tree nor stump, Thy extream thirst is moistn'ed by my love With springs below, and showres from above Or else thy Sun-burnt face and gaping chops Complain to th' heavens, if I withhold my drops Thy Bear, thy Tiger and thy Lion stout, When I am gone, their fierceness none needs doubt Thy Camel hath no strength, thy Bull no force Nor mettal's found in the courageous Horse Hinds leave their calves, the Elephant the fens The wolves and Savage beasts forsake their Dens The lofty Eagle, and the stork fly low, The Peacock and the Ostrich, share in woe, The Pine, the Cedar, yea, and Daphne's Tree Do cease to nourish in this misery, Man wants his bread and wine, &pleasant fruits He knows, such sweets, lies not in Earth's dry roots Then seeks me out, in river and in well His deadly malady I might expell: If I supply, his heart and veins rejoyce, If not, soon ends his life, as did his voyce; That this is true, Earth thou can'st not deny I call thine Egypt, this to verifie, Which by my falling Nile, doth yield such store That she can spare, when nations round are poor When I run low, and not o'reflow her brinks To meet with want, each woeful man bethinks; And such I am in Rivers, showrs and springs 132

But what's the wealth, that my rich Ocean brings Fishes so numberless, I there do hold If thou should'st buy, it would exhaust thy gold:

There lives the oyly Whale, whom all men know Such wealth but not such like, Earth thou maist show. The Dolphin loving musick, Arians friend The witty Barbel, whose craft doth her commend With thousands more, which now I list not name Thy silence of thy Beasts doth cause the same My pearles that dangle at thy Darling's ears, Not thou, but shel-fish yield, as Pliny clears, Was ever gem so rich found in thy trunk As Egypts wanton, Cleopatra drunk? Or hast thou any colour can come nigh The Roman purple, double Tirian dye? Which Caesar's Consuls, Tribunes all adorn, For it to search my waves they thought no Scorn, Thy gallant rich perfuming Amber greece I lightly cast ashore as frothy fleece: With rowling grains of purest massie gold, Which Spains Americans do gladly hold.

Earth thou hast not moe countrys vales &mounds Then I have fountains, rivers lakes and ponds; My sundry seas, black, white and Adriatique, Ionian, Baltique, and the vast Atlantique, Aegean, Caspian, golden rivers fire, Asphaltis lake, where nought remains alive: But I should go beyond thee in my boasts, If I should name more seas than thou hast Coasts, 133

And be thy mountains ne'er so high and steep, I soon can match them with my seas as deep. To speak of kinds of waters I neglect, My diverse fountains and their strange effect: My wholsome bathes, together with their cures; My water Syrens with their guilefull lures, The uncertain cause of certain ebbs and flows, Which wondring Aristotles wit n'er knows, Nor will I speak of waters made by art, Which can to life restore a fainting heart. Nor fruitfull dews, nor drops distil'd from eyes, Which pitty move, and oft deceive the wise: Nor yet of salt and sugar, sweet and smart, Both when we lift to water we convert. Alas thy ships and oars could do no good Did they but want my Ocean and my flood.

The wary merchant on his weary beast Transfers his goods from south to north and east, Unless I ease his toil, and do transport The wealthy fraight unto his wished port, These be my benefits, which may suffice: I now must shew what ill there in me lies. The flegmy Constitution I uphold, All humours, tumours which are bred of cold: O're childhood and ore winter I bear sway, And Luna for my Regent I obey. As I with showers oft times refresh the earth, So oft in my excess I cause a dearth, And with abundant wet so cool the ground, By adding cold to cold no fruit proves found. 134

The Farmer and the Grasier do complain Of rotten sheep, lean kine, and mildew'd grain. And with my wasting floods and roaring torrent, Their cattel hay and corn I sweep down current. Nay many times my Ocean breaks his bounds, And with astonishment the world confounds, And swallows Countryes up, ne'er seen again, And that an island makes which once was main: Thus Britian fair ('tis thought) was cut from France Scicily from Italy by the like chance, And but one land was Africa and Spain Untill proud Gibraltar did make them twain. Some say I swallow'd up (sure tis a notion) A mighty country in th' Atlantique Ocean. I need not say much of my hail and Snow, My ice and extream cold, which all men know, Whereof the first so ominous I rain'd, That Israel's enemies therewith were brain'd; And of my chilling snows such plenty be, That Caucasus high mounts are seldome free, Mine ice doth glaze Europes great rivers o're, Till sun release, their ships can sail no more, All know that inundations I have made, Wherein not men, but mountains seem'd to wade; As when Achaia all under water stood, That for two hundred years it n'er prov'd good. Deucalions great Deluge with many moe, But these are trifles to the flood of Noe, Then wholly perish'd Earths ignoble race, And to this day impairs her beauteous face, That after times shall never feel like woe, 135

Her confirm'd sons behold my colour'd bow. Much might I say of wracks, but that He spare, And now give place unto our Sister Air.

Air Content (quoth Air) to speak the last of you, Yet am not ignorant first was my due: I do suppose you'l yield without controul I am the breath of every living soul. Mortals, what one of you that loves not me Abundantly more than my Sisters three? And though you love fire, Earth and Water well Yet Air beyond all these you know t' excell. I ask the man condemn'd that's neer his death, How gladly should his gold purchase his breath, And all the wealth that ever earth did give, How freely should it go so he might live: No earth, thy witching trash were all but vain, If my pure air thy sons did not sustain, The famish'd thirsty man that craves supply, His moving reason is, give least I dye, So both he is to go though nature's spent To bid adieu to his dear Element.

Nay what are words which do reveal the mind, Speak who or what they will they are but wind. Your drums your trumpets &your organs found, What is't but forced air which doth rebound, And such are ecchoes and report of th' gun That tells afar th' exploit which it hath done, Your songs and pleasant tunes they are the same, And so's the notes which Nightingales do frame. 136

Ye forging Smiths, if bellows once were gone Your red hot work more coldly would go on. Ye Mariners, tis I that fill your sails, And speed you to your port with wished gales. When burning heat doth cause you faint, I cool, And when I smile, your ocean's like a pool. I help to ripe the corn, I turn the mill, And with myself I every Vacuum fill. The ruddy sweet sanguine is like to air, And youth and spring, Sages to me compare, My moist hot nature is so purely thin, No place so subtilly made, but I get in. I grow more pure and pure as I mount higher, And when I'm thoroughly varifi'd turn fire: So when I am condens'd, I turn to water, Which may be done by holding down my vapour.

Thus I another body can assume, And in a trice my own nature resume. Some for this cause of late have been so bold Me for no Element longer to hold, Let such suspend their thoughts, and silent be, For all Philosophers make one of me: And what those Sages either spake or writ Is more authentick then our modern wit. Next of my fowles such multitudes there are, Earths beasts and waters fish scarce can compare. Th' Ostrich with her plumes th' Eagle with her eyn The Phoenix too (if any be) are mine, The Stork, the crane, the partridg, and the phesant The Thrush, the wren, the lark a prey to th' pesant, 137

With thousands more which now I may omit Without impeachment to my tale or wit. As my fresh air preserves all things in life, So when corrupt, mortality is rife;

Then Fevers, Pmples, Pox and Pestilence, With divers more, work deadly consequence: Whereof such multitudes have di'd and fled, The living scarce had power to bury the dead; Yea so contagious countryes have we known That birds have not 'Scapt death as they have flown Of murrain, cattle numberless did fall, Men feared destruction epidemical. Then of my tempests felt at sea and land, Which neither ships nor houses could withstand, What wofull wracks I've made may well appear, If nought were known but that before Algere, Where famous Charles the fifth more loss sustained Then in his long hot war which Millain gain'd Again what furious storms and Hurricanoes Know western Isles, as Christophers Barbadoes; Where neither houses, trees nor plants I spare, But some fall down, and some fly up with air. Earthquakes so hurtfull, and so fear'd of all, Imprison'd I, am the original. Then what prodigious sights I sometimes show, As battles pitcht in th' air, as countryes know, Their joyning fighting, forcing and retreat, That earth appears in heaven, O wonder great! Sometimes red flaming swords and blazing stars, Portentous signs of famines, plagues and wars, 138

Which make the Monarchs fear their fates By death or great mutation of their States. I have said less than did my Sisters three, But what's their wrath or force, the fame's in me. To adde to all I've said was my intent, But dare not go beyond my Element.

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APPENDIX J – An Apology

To finish what's begun, was my intent, My thoughts and my endeavours thereto bent; Essays I many made but still gave out, The more I mus'd, the more I was in doubt: The subject large my mind and body weak, With many moe discouragements did speak. All thoughts of further progress laid aside, Though oft perswaded, I as oft deny'd, At length resolv'd, when many years had past, To prosecute my story to the last; And for the same, I hours not few did spend, And weary lines (though lanke) I many pen'd: But 'fore I could accomplish my desire, My papers fell a prey to th'raging fire. And thus my pains (with better things) I lost, Which none had cause to wail, nor I to boast. No more I'le do sith I have suffer'd wrack, Although my Monarchies their legs do lack: Nor matter is't this last, the world now sees, Hath many Ages been upon his knees.

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APPENDIX K – In Honour of That High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth

Proem Although great Queen, thou now in silence lie, Yet thy loud Herald Fame, doth to the sky Thy wondrous worth proclaim, in every clime, And so has vow’d, whilst there is world or time. So great’s thy glory, and thine excellence, The sound thereof raps every human sense That men account it no impiety To say thou wert a fleshly Deity. Thousands bring off’rings (though out of date) Thy world of honours to accumulate. ‘Mongst hundred Hecatombs of roaring Verse, ‘Mine bleating stands before thy royal Hearse. Thou never didst, nor canst thou now disdain, T’ accept the tribute of a loyal Brain. Thy clemency did yerst esteem as much The acclamations of the poor, as rich, Which makes me deem, my rudeness is no wrong, Though I resound thy greatness ‘mongst the throng.

The Poem No Phoenix Pen, nor Spenser’s Poetry, No Speed’s, nor Camden’s learned History; Eliza’s works, wars, praise, can e’re compact, The World’s the Theater where she did act. No memories, nor volumes can contain, The nine Olymp’ades of her happy reign, Who was so good, so just, so learn’d, so wise, 141

From all the Kings on earth she won the prize. Nor say I more than truly is her due. Millions will testify that this is true. She hath wip’d off th’ aspersion of her Sex, That women wisdom lack to play the Rex. Spain’s Monarch sa’s not so, not yet his Host: She taught them better manners to their cost. The Salic Law had not in force now been, If France had ever hop’d for such a Queen. But can you Doctors now this point dispute, She’s argument enough to make you mute, Since first the Sun did run, his ne’er runn’d race, And earth had twice a year, a new old face; Since time was time, and man unmanly man, Come shew me such a Phoenix if you can. Was ever people better rul’d than hers? Was ever Land more happy, freed from stirs? Did ever wealth in England so abound? Her Victories in foreign Coasts resound? Ships more invincible than Spain’s, her foe She rack’t, she sack’d, she sunk his Armadoe. Her stately Troops advanc’d to Lisbon’s wall, Don Anthony in’s right for to install. She frankly help’d Franks’ (brave) distressed King, The States united now her fame do sing. She their Protectrix was, they well do know, Unto our dread Virago, what they owe. Her Nobles sacrific’d their noble blood, Nor men, nor coin she shap’d, to do them good. The rude untamed Irish she did quell, And Tiron bound, before her picture fell. 142

Had ever Prince such Counsellors as she? Her self Minerva caus’d them so to be. Such Soldiers, and such Captains never seen, As were the subjects of our (Pallas) Queen: Her Sea-men through all straits the world did round, Terra incognitæ might know her sound. Her Drake came laded home with Spanish gold, Her Essex took Cadiz, their Herculean hold. But time would fail me, so my wit would too, To tell of half she did, or she could do. Semiramis to her is but obscure; More infamy than fame she did procure. She plac’d her glory but on Babel’s walls, World's wonder for a time, but yet it falls. Fierce Tomris (Cirus’ Heads-man, Sythians’ Queen) Had put her Harness off, had she but seen Our Amazon i’ th’ Camp at Tilbury, (Judging all valour, and all Majesty) Within that Princess to have residence, And prostrate yielded to her Excellence. Dido first Foundress of proud Carthage walls (Who living consummates her Funerals), A great Eliza, but compar’d with ours, How vanisheth her glory, wealth, and powers. Proud profuse Cleopatra, whose wrong name, Instead of glory, prov’d her Country’s shame: Of her what worth in Story’s to be seen, But that she was a rich Ægyptian Queen. Zenobia, potent Empress of the East, And of all these without compare the best (Whom none but great Aurelius could quell) 143

Yet for our Queen is no fit parallel: She was a Phoenix Queen, so shall she be, Her ashes not reviv’d more Phoenix she. Her personal perfections, who would tell, Must dip his Pen i’ th’ Heliconian Well, Which I may not, my pride doth but aspire To read what others write and then admire. Now say, have women worth, or have they none? Or had they some, but with our Queen is’t gone? Nay Masculines, you have thus tax’d us long, But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong. Let such as say our sex is void of reason Know ‘tis a slander now, but once was treason. But happy England, which had such a Queen, O happy, happy, had those days still been, But happiness lies in a higher sphere. Then wonder not, Eliza moves not here. Full fraught with honour, riches, and with days, She set, she set, like Titan in his rays. No more shall rise or set such glorious Sun, Until the heaven’s great revolution: If then new things, their old form must retain, Eliza shall rule Albian once again.

Her Epitaph Here sleeps T H E Queen, this is the royal bed O’ th’ Damask Rose, sprung from the white and red, Whose sweet perfume fills the all-filling air, This Rose is withered, once so lovely fair: On neither tree did grow such Rose before, The greater was our gain, our loss the more. 144

Another. Here lies the pride of Queens, pattern of Kings: So blaze it fame, here’s feathers for thy wings. Here lies the envy’d, yet unparallel’d Prince, Whose living virtues speak (though dead long since). If many worlds, as that fantastic framed, In every one, be her great glory famed.