PowerPoint

To My Dear and Loving Husband - Anne Bradstreet -

- Author Biography -

Anne Dudley Bradstreet was born in 1612 in England.

Upon two years of marriage, she and her husband moved to the United States and raised eight children there.

She is considered to be one of the first few poets to write English verse in the American colonies. Some important works of hers are:

• The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America, was poems about her personal life and got very popular when it was first published,

• Contemplation, which was a sequence of religious poems.

Her works explore a lot of different themes, from religious to personal, which often revolves around her own thoughts towards what was happening at the time.

- Summary -

• In accordance with the title, the poem To My Dear and Loving Husband is about Anne Bradstreet’s feelings of love and gratitude towards her husband.

• The poem starts with her views about marriages, where after a marriage, the couple becomes one and shares mutual love. In line 4, she continues with showing off her relationship to other women.

• Lines 5-9, she compares her love towards her husband with measurements, using hyperbole.

• Lines 10 towards the end are her hopes to be able to repay and be with her husband forever, even after the separation from death.

- Analysis Paragraph -

The poet refers towards other women to compare their marriages with her own. The previous lines mention the greatness of her relationship with her

husband, showing how happy she is in the marriage. This is then followed by the line “compare with me, ye women, if you can,” which is the poet asking other women, as if challenging, whether their marriages can be as fulfilling

as hers, that her marriage is the happiest. By using “ye women”, it can give off a mocking vibe, as if bragging or being arrogant about it. These bold

words can show how confident she is about her marriage.

- Additional Quotations -

“I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.”

“Thy love is such I can no way repay; The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.”

- Works Cited -

“Anne Bradstreet.” Poets.org, https://poets.org/poet/anne-bradstreet.

Bradstreet, Anne. “To My Dear and Loving Husband.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Kelly J. Mays, Shorter 13th ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2018, pp. 911.