1. 1612 - 1672 Some Key Features Of Her Writing
Anne Bradstreet
Some Key Features Of Her Writing

2. Early Writing Classical Poetical Devices and Form
Iambic pentameter: five iambs per lines. (See "Metrical Forms")
Quatrains: four rhyming lines per stanza
References and allusions to classical cultures
Intentional variation to signify rhetorical effect or emphasis
in rhythms: variations on the iamb
syntax: a grammatical arrangement of word
End rhymes: slant rhymes or imperfect rhymes
Extended metaphor and metaphysical conceits
In the tradition of English Metaphysical Poets George Herbert ("Love"), Andrew Marvell ("The Mower’s Song") and John Donne ("Death be not proud . . .")
A sophisticated use of wit and irony to explore complex spiritual paradoxes
Dominant Puritan conceits: Fire and Dust (“Ashes to ashes “).

3. Subtext
Use of traditional poetical devices belies a non-traditional view of the role of women in Puritan society
Alternatives to the Bible for sources of authority
Literature and mythology
Mythic and historic heroines
The maternal domestic role
The use of irony to allow her to say what she could not otherwise say openly
Self-effacing apologies
A subdued confidence in her own ability to instruct and to experience life

4. Early Influences An educated and literary background Themes Audiences
European audiences who were reading the experiences of a colonist
Self-consciousness about the creation of a divergent literary tradition in the Colonies
Themes
Dangers of living in the Colonies
Challenges of living in Puritan society
Audiences
Other Puritan women who did not receive her level of education
Puritan male audiences who were reading the work of a Puritan woman

5. Later Influence Authorial Voice: Life Experience Spirituality
more plain spoken
Expansive symbols and images abandoned
Uses the self by example of victory over doubt (crisis of faith)
Identifies strongly with the content of her own poems:
As a Puritan
As a woman
As a writer
As a Colonist
Life Experience
Love and Sex
Motherhood and infant mortality
Loss and disaster
Political change
Spirituality
Crisis and reconciliation of faith
Puritan role of "mother"
The increasing importance of Puritan life over her "career" as a writer (from feminist to traditionalist)

6. Other Notable Colonial Women
Ann [nee Marbury] Hutchinson (1591–1643)
religious dissenter labeled "dangerous" by John Winthrop and others
acknowledged retrospectively for a kind of American Colonial feminism
thought to be the inspiration for Hester Prynne in Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
authored papers and letters
Sarah Kemble Knight (1666 –1727)
The Journal of Madam Knight (1825), published by Theodore Dwight.
diary of Knight’s journey, from Massachusetts Bay Colony to Province of New York
Lady Deborah [nee Dunch] Moody ( ), a.k.a. Lady Moore
first female landowner; only woman colonial settlement founder, of Gravesend, in 1645, in
New Netherland, which would later become part of Brooklyn, New York
staunchly against baptism of infants (who did not have a choice)
Mary [nee White] Rowlandson (c –1711)
The Sovereignty and Goodness of God
made captivity narratives [a form of literary romance] a popular genre