P. Pilgrim
Today people try to tell us that there were never any opportunities for women to learn and grow professionally in the past. That women were always treated as second-class citizens. In many ways that statement is true but only to a certain extent, you cannot say that it was always true. Even today women suffer discrimination in society and in some cultures, they are treated unfairly. Nevertheless, you cannot say it is true everywhere.
In history we find an interesting fact about the first book of published poems in America. The first book of poems written in America was written by a woman and published in 1650. Her name was Anne Bradstreet, she was born in England in 1612 and died in America in 1672, she was among a group of early English settlers in Massachusetts in the 1630s. She received considerable favourable attention when the book was first published. Eight years after its publication it was listed by William London in his Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England, and reports claim that King George III had a volume in his library. Bradstreet’s work has endured, and she is still considered to be one of the most important early American poets.
Although Anne Dudley Bradstreet did not attend school, she received an excellent education from her father, who was widely read. Cotton Mather described Thomas Dudley as a “devourer of books” and from her extensive reading at the well-stocked library of the estate of the Earl of Lincoln, where she lived while her father was steward from 1619 to 1630 she gained immense knowledge. The young Anne Dudley read the Latin classics, philosophers like Seneca, and Thucydides, Greek poets like Homer, natural history from Pliny, and the Geneva version of the Bible. In general, she benefited from the Elizabethan tradition that valued female education. In about 1628, Anne Dudley married Simon Bradstreet, who assisted her father with the management of the Earl’s estate in Sempringham. She remained married to him until her death on 16th September 1672. Bradstreet immigrated to the new world with her husband and parents in 1630.
She was so well read she wrote about history with an understanding and intelligence that rivaled any man of her time. The poem “The Four Monarchies” about Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires, are poems of commanding historical breadth. Bradstreet’s poetic version of the rise and fall of these great empires draws largely from Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World (1614). Another poem in the first edition of her selection in The Tenth Muse, reveals Bradstreet’s personal feelings, it is called “In Honor of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory,” written in 1643, in which she praises the Queen as a paragon of female prowess. Chiding her male readers for trivializing women, Bradstreet refers to the Queen’s outstanding leadership and historical prominence. Many of Ann’s poems speak of her desire to love God above all temporal blessings. One portion says ‘Farewell myself; farewell my store. The world no longer let me love, My hope, and treasure lies above.’ It is the same truth that the Lord Jesus Christ teaches us in the gospel of Luke when he tells us to store are treasure in Heaven and not in worldly goods that can be stolen, or corrupted. Even though Anne came from a wealthy family she exhorts her readers to seek a more secure treasure in Heaven through trusting in Christ Jesus. Life was difficult for her in America, in July 1666, a great fire consumed her home and much of the considerable library of books. But Bradstreet accepts the loss of her house and possessions with stoicism, detecting God’s hand in the disaster and interpreting the fire as a sign that she doesn’t need such worldly possessions, as her greatest treasure was the hope of eternal life by Jesus Christ. The writer of Titus says in chapter 1 verse 2 ‘ In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;’. Anne was a renowned poet and had fame during her lifetime but her desire was for that heavenly treasure of sins forgiven and eternal life with God the father.
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