Women’s Experience in Puritan America Through Anne Bradstreet and Mary Rowlandson’s Literature

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Women’s Experience in Puritan America through Anne Bradstreet and Mary Rowlandson’s Literature

Historians have endeavoured to comprehend the experience of Puritan women in the 17th century in America. Since the emergence of feminism many ideologies are issued, principally from women historians (Hall 9). However, these feminists alter the Puritan women’s encounters by putting it under the notion of patriarchy. They contend that historically male dominate over women. Therefore, they describe American history as women’s domination or liberation. Since Puritan woman centred her interests within the household realm, feminists presume that such a woman empowered herself in other ways or tolerated suppressive male domination (Hall 17). One considerable problem caused by this notion is the risk of reducing as well as deforming the complete social meaning of females in this society as illustrated in the text of Rowlandson and Bradstreet (De Luise 14). In this essay, the writer shall demonstrate through the works of Bradstreet and Rowlandson that Puritan women liked their duties, as family makers, mothers as well as wives, and that these women were not shackled to these duties through patriarchal domination.

Women’s Experience In Puritan America

These authors epitomize how Puritan faith was the main inspiration in initial American literature and were agents of the experiences women underwent in the Puritan society. The works of these authors portray a female point of view and show women who pleased with their spouses, kids as well as God. Therefore, these works symbolize the Puritan woman whose say is in history and within the historical situation; the Puritan way of thinking is vitally dissimilar from the contemporary, secular way of thinking (De Luise 27).

First, these authors imply that Puritan women liked their Christian autonomy, shown in the life's marvels, and they ardently conveyed their relationships. The spouses were the largely bold in expressing their love. In the poem “A letter to her husband,” Bradstreet composed to her spouse “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/ Within the Cancer of my glowing breast/The welcome house of him my dearest guest (Line 1-3 & 21-22).” These sentences show passionate love to a spouse with yearning, delight and respect. Such expression implies a feeling of real strength that featured their matrimony that was typical of the Puritan women’s encounter. This is because Puritans demonstrated their belief of marriage and an essential belief to their comprehension of matrimony was the Biblical covenant love. Laurel Ulrich  asserts that the duties of the spouses in puritan society were founded on creation principle that emphasized man and woman equality (1655).