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Essential Question: "By Night When Others Soundly Sleep"

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Essential Question: "By Night When Others Soundly Sleep"

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role of religion in everyday life
“By Night When Others Soundly Slept,” Bradstreet exemplifies the role of religion based on the clear path and relief she found in God.

Life Path of Religion:

“I’ll serve him here whilst I shall live / And Love him to Eternity” (15-16) shows her purpose for life

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Connection to Puritan Beliefs "By Night When Others Soundly Sleep"

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Connection to Puritan Beliefs "By Night When Others Soundly Sleep"

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A Puritan belief was the fact that all humans are naturally sinned

Bradstreet states, “What to my Saviour shall I give / Who freely hath done this for me?” (13-14).

This quote highlights the fact that Bradstreet feels unworthy of her treatment, stating “I’ll serve him here whilst I shall live” (15).

Feels the need to provide compensation for receiving help from the lord

Puritan’s saw grace as a gift from a kind and loving God

Humans were unworthy to receive grace due to their immoral nature

Anne Bradstreet states, “My hungry Soul he fill’d with Good; / He in his Bottle put my tears, / My smarting wounds washt in his blood, / And banisht thence my Doubts and fears” (9-12)

Bradstreet was subject to God’s grace as he healed her physical and mental ailments

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Meaning: Opposing Puritan Beliefs "By Night When Others Soundly Sleep"

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Meaning: Opposing Puritan Beliefs "By Night When Others Soundly Sleep"

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Anne Bradstreet subtly opposes Puritan beliefs by the display of her hesitation in faith.

Bradstreet states, “And hath at once both ease and Rest, / My waking eyes were open kept,” (2-3). While referring to those around her who were sleeping with “ease and rest,” she explicitly states her restlessness as she lay awake.
-In Puritan Beliefs, everyone in the community had to be content with and committed to their faith in God. Those who were sleeping soundly were conforming with this belief.
-Bradstreet seems to be unsatisfied with her faith in God, therefore she anxiously stays awake.

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Meaning: Ideal Puritan Beliefs "By Night When Others Soundly Sleep"

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Meaning: Ideal Puritan Beliefs "By Night When Others Soundly Sleep"

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In her poem, “By Night When Others Soundly Slept,” Anne Bradstreet displays her support for Puritan beliefs and exhibits elements of a conversion narrative through her expression of admiration for God and depiction of her intimate experience with God.

She states, “I sought him whom my Soul did Love, / With tears I sought him earnestly. / He bow’d his ear down from Above” (Bradstreet 5-7). By capitalizing above words like “Above,” she is referring to Heaven and she expresses her admiration and respect for God. Puritans believed that if they were faithful to God, their life would be preserved and enriched, which Bradstreet desired.

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Essential Question: "Upon the Burning of Our House"

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Essential Question: "Upon the Burning of Our House"

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How faith and religion blind people from the Truth

The story “Upon the Burning of our House,” exhibits a sole explanation to events by biblical allusions and repetition.

Biblical allusions: “Adieu, Adieu, all’s vanity.” (Bradstreet 36). This line alludes to Ecclesiastes 1:2, meaning that all is temporary and meaningless.

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Connection to Puritan Beliefs "Upon the Burning of Our House"

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Connection to Puritan Beliefs "Upon the Burning of Our House"

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In “Upon the Burning of Our House”, the narrator is constantly focused on her faith and religion through the act of praying, praising her God, and talking of her afterlife.

Puritanism, which values praying, praising God, and believing in the afterlife, is often alluded to and described in the poem through the ways stated above.

She praises God for causing a traumatic event even though most people would be extremely upset and questioning their God and faith. She also prays to Him towards the beginning of the poem. Praising and praying were encouraged in the Puritan faith.

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Meaning: Opposing Puritan Beliefs "Upon the Burning of Our House"

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Meaning: Opposing Puritan Beliefs "Upon the Burning of Our House"

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Bradstreet opposes Puritan beliefs through materialistic views. In Puritan beliefs family is important but Bradstreet shows too much importance to it and materialistic objects such her house.

“My pleasant things in ashes lie,” (Bradstreet 27).

Puritans believed strongly in the spiritual and opposed materialistic views that favored worldly possessions.

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Meaning: Ideal Puritan Beliefs "Upon the Burning of Our House"

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Meaning: Ideal Puritan Beliefs "Upon the Burning of Our House"

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Bradstreet's reverence to God is shown a lot in this poem. Puritans strictly believed in following the views of God and The Bible.

She expresses, “I blest His name that gave and took,” (Bradstreet 14). This shows her acceptance of God’s judgment.

“It was His own, it was not mine,” (Bradstreet 17).

Despite the great loss of her home, she rejects it to be ultimately devastating, which would support her conversion narrative.

“He might of all justly bereft, / But yet sufficient for us left.” (Bradstreet 19-20).

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Essential Question: "Author to Her Book"

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Essential Question: "Author to Her Book"

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What role does faith play in the lives of people?

Religion can be a source of tension in the lives of people.

Anne Bradstreet's poem, “The Author to Her Book”, depicts how faith and religion can play the role of a stressor in the lives of people in general as it causes tensions within the community. Anne opposed Puritan roles in her works in general, and the poem describes how she wrote a book with those views: “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain…”(Bradstreet 1). She went on to say that it was not meant to be published and it was criticized: “Who thee abroad, exposed to public view, / Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge, / Where errors were not lessened (all may judge)” (Bradstreet 3-6).

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Connection to Puritan Beliefs "Author to Her Book"

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Connection to Puritan Beliefs "Author to Her Book"

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Anne Bradstreet’s poem, “The Author to Her Book”, is connected to the Puritan time period and beliefs by the criticism of her thoughts about gender roles. Puritans were intolerant to any view different than their own and that of the Bible, so any views that challenged them was met with criticism, similar to that of Anne’s book.

Puritans during this time period viewed women to be weak and vulnerable, but in “The Author to Her Book,” Anne challenges these standards

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Meaning: Ideal Puritan Beliefs "Author to Her Book"

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Meaning: Ideal Puritan Beliefs "Author to Her Book"

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The figurative meaning of “The Author to Her Book” can be interpreted to support Puritan beliefs of shaping children from a young age.

“I washed thy face, but more defects I saw, / And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw. / I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet, / Yet still thou run’st hobbling than is meet” (Bradstreet 13-16).

Puritans believed that parents must care and give guidance to their children. This excerpt supports this belief as it draws parallels between how Puritan parents would care for their children like Bradstreet did with hers(book).

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Meaning: Opposing Puritan Beliefs "Author to Her Book"

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Meaning: Opposing Puritan Beliefs "Author to Her Book"

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The purpose of the poem, “The Author to Her Book,” opposes traditional Puritan gender roles and family depicted through Bradstreet’s role as a single mother character.

“If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none; / And for thy mother, alas she is poor, / which caused her thus to send thee out of door” (Bradstreet 21-24).

This quote demonstrates her role in society as a women diminished by the beliefs of Puritan society, but she still rises as a published female author (or single mother in the poem). This opposes Puritan belief of what is called a traditional family and what is accepted in their society. Bradstreet utilizes the metaphor of her book as a child in order to rebel against the idea that the husband must care for the family and the wife can not.