Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Bradstreet and Cavandish Discussion
Okay, so since I haven't seen any posts up yet I figured I would go ahead and be the first. I have never done one of these blog posts before, either for a class or in my spare time, so please bear with me. I have read Anne Bradstreet's poem, "The Author to her book" in two of Dr. H's previous classes so I feel that i have a pretty good handle on that particular poem. I know we haven't went over it in class as of the time I am writing this post, but I am going to go ahead and make a few comments of mine on it. I feel that Bradstreet is playing the expected role of a woman in her time period. Women in 1678 did not publish their poems. Bradstreet's friends thought her poems were very good and had them published, even though Bradstreet herself did not want them published. Bradstreet says that her poems were "irksome" to her sight, but she tried to dress them up and send them out the door. She is saying to the audience, "I know these poems are not very good because I wrote them." that is the feeling I am getting anyway. I also like how she attributes her poem as a child. That domestic role of child-rearing would fit in with a woman of Bradstreet's time. The unusual part about this is the fact that Bradstreet does not seem to like this "child" at all. This could just be due to the fact that she did not want her poems published or it could mean something deeper. As for Cavandish, I do not believe she has the same poetical chops as Bradstreet. I just could not get over that she asks for pity and for people to tell her that her poem is good. That just made me dislike her.
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So I am guessing that this will count as one of the two comments per week we are all supposed to do, right? Well here it goes. I haven't really read too much of Bradstreet in my life, but one of her poems that has really stuck with me was the "Lines upon the Burning of my House", or something along those lines. I read it two years ago in Dr. Cantrell's 204 class, and whenever I think about Bradstreet I think about this poem. I know this doesn't really have much to do with the poem we will be discussing in Dr. H's class, but it just strikes me how different it was in Bradstreet's time compared to ours. For instance, her house burned down, and she lost everything. This is still a tragic event today, but with insurance companies and fire departments, the possibility of losing EVERYTHING is drastically lower. Therefore, Bradstreet's poems just always seem so real to me because all of them are so personal and come straight from her experiences. I have enjoyed the small collection of poems that I have been able to read from Bradstreet. I look forward to discussing her more in class.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your analysis of Bradstreet. I too believe that she is stepping into the gender role society has placed her in. I also believe that Cavendish is doing this as well. She states in "The Poetess's Hasty Resolution" that another woman has questioned her why she wastes her time writing poetry "Will you, said she, thus waste your time in vain, On that which in the world small praise shall gain?" I think what I got from that poem was a lame 'I think my poems are good and unless you want to make me cry you will say they are good too.' Since men will be the deciders on whether her work gets published or not she is simply playing the crying card to get her way. Sometimes a girl has got to do what a girl has got to do! :)
ReplyDeleteContinuing with Ryan's tangent because "Verses Upon the Burning of Our House" is a fabulous poem, I remember reading a very interesting (if confusing) critical essay about this poem last year. I think the essay that I'm thinking about was "Anne Bradstreet: Dogmatist and Rebel" by Ann Stanford. In the article, Stanford argued that Bradstreet's grief and pain over losing her house and her belongings was actually stronger and more sincere than her resigned acknowledgment of God's sovereignty and goodness as shown in this incident. In other words, she said, in essence, "God is good anyway" not because she really believed it, but because as a good Puritan, she had to. Personally, I think (or want to think!) that she wrote out of desperation, not resignation, trying to remind herself that God was good despite her circumstances. It could be argued that Edward Taylor did the same thing in his poetry - he also wrote about losses as personal as the deaths of his children and tied God's sovereignty and goodness into the events. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with discussing gender in literature, but anyway...
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily believe that Bradstreet didn't like her "child", or work, rather that she was fearful of how society would react to her poetry. As a creative writing concentration, I have always been somewhat hesitant to show my work to anyone due to the fact that often times I feel as though my writing is not good enough. Perhaps this was the case for Bradstreet, and she thought of her poetry more as a journal due to the genuine honesty that is present throughout her writing.
ReplyDeleteI personally thought Cavendish's poem was funny. She's playing at being a maiden in distress and instead of needing to be saved she needs approval and praise or she could want saving from harsh criticism. I really liked the lines "Thinking them so good, I thought more to write;/Considering not how others would them like" I like these lines because when you write you should write what you enjoy not what others want you to write, it takes away the passion/joy of writing if you do it for others instead of yourself.
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