An Analysis of Bradstreet's "A Letter to Her Husband, absent upon Publick Employment" Anne Bradstreet College

Anne Bradstreet is one of the most prominent literary figures of the colonial era of American history, and she is often cited as one of the primary sources of Puritan literature. Some of her work carried undertones of pre-First-Wave feminism because she subtly alluded to certain gender inequities, at least for those who can read between the lines. “A Letter to Her Husband, absent upon Publick Employment” is one of the staple examples of how she accomplished this, especially in a way that was still endearing to men who heard only what they wanted to hear.

In “A Letter to Her Husband, absent upon Publick Employment,” the speaker discusses the differences between her mind and her heart, as well as between her eyes and her life; what many men likely missed in their time was that she is alluding to her husband with each of these things. The reader only knows this because the speaker continues to call him her joy and her “magazine of earthly store” and then personify these things by suggesting that they are collectively one entity who is away from her. She characterizes this period of his absence as a winter, and she mourns it as though he were dead. In contrast, she goes on to characterize times of his presence as periods in which...