Bradstreet Feminism
As a female in a highly patriarchal society, Anne Bradstreet uses the reverse psychology technique to prove the point of her belief of unfair and unequal treatment of women in her community. Women who wrote stepped outside their appropriate sphere, and those who actually published their work frequently faced social censure. Compounding this social pressure, many women faced crushing workloads and struggled with lack of leisure for writing. Others suffered from an unequal access to education, while others were dealing with the sense of intellectual inferiority offered to them from virtually every authoritative voice, that voice usually being male. Bradstreet was raised in an influential family, receiving an extensive education with access to private tutors and the Earl of Lincoln's large library. She was part of an influential family who encouraged her writing and circulated it in manuscript with pride. That kind of private support did much to offset the possibility of public disapproval.
that women in her society were treated unfairly, and that gender should be insignificant. In her "Prologue" she addresses conflict and struggle, expressing her opinion toward women's rights, implying that gender is unimportant and male dominance is wrong. Bradstreet asserts the rights of women to learning and expression of thought, addressing broad and universal themes. Bradstreet was a very gifted and talented poet, recording early stirrings of female resistance to a social and religious system that was prevalent at the time. She used different tones, moods, and sarcasm to bring her poetry to life, giving a vivid, clearly worded image of what she wants her reader to know, a strikingly radical notion that her writing could be as competent as any male's. Although much of her work was conventional puritan poetry, it shows a sensitivity to beauty that male writers of the time lacked. Continuing, Bradstreet mentions regret for her lack of skill, in which she laments the fact that "A weak or wounded brain admits n
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Approximate Word count = 690
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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