Literary scholars have always professed that Anne Bradstreet did not originally intend for her poetry to be published. While she was an educated woman and wrote poetry for her father growing up, she understood where women writers stood in Puritan society. Thus, when reading "To My Dear and Loving Husband," the reader does not doubt that Bradstreet certainly felt the level of love that she writes about.
We study Anne Bradstreet's poetry because it gives the modern reader the feeling that human emotions have not changed over time—people still feel love, hate, despair, sorrow, etc. Thus, the Puritans were very much like the rest of us. However, the published texts of the time, historical and theological pieces, only give the view that Puritans wanted to give. They wanted to be seen as John Winthrop's "city upon a hill." Anne Bradstreet shows us that she loved her husband beyond what the church would have deemed necessary, but she was human after all.
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