Worship in the New World: Anne Bradstreet’s “Contemplations” on Her Environs Lauren Everhart-Deckard College

Anne Bradstreet, the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished writer from the New England colonies, is still broadly considered to be an important early American poet. Her work was first published in London in 1650 and achieved popular success. Bradstreet benefited from the Elizabethan tradition that valued female education and well-read, and she carried her knowledge with her when she immigrated to the New World in 1630. Despite the difficulty of cultivating a new life in previously uncolonized land whilst raising eight children basically by herself, Bradstreet still found time to dedicate to the craft of writing. She composed impressive pieces, such as “Contemplations,” which is widely considered to be her greatest poem. In thirty-three rime royal stanzas, Bradstreet weighs the value of both the physical world and the eternal afterlife. By conceptualizing her natural surroundings as a sanctuary in which she should worship, Bradstreet copes with the Puritan struggle against sin and validates her faith.

“Contemplations” opens with the establishment of the natural world as Bradstreet’s Puritan meeting house. The first several stanzas are heavy with imagery describing autumn in Massachusetts, and the landscape is depicted...