To My Dear and Loving Husband Explication

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Explication- Anne Bradstreet’s “To My Dear and Loving Husband” Anne Bradstreet, the first colonial female in Massachusetts Bay Colony to publish poetry, was a close friend and follower of Anne Hutchinson. Bradstreet supported Hutchinson’s antinomianism, the belief that faith alone was necessary for salvation. 15 years after Hutchinson was banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony for denouncing Puritan theology, Bradstreet published her poem, “To My Dear and Loving Husband.” From contemporary perspective it literary reads as a normal love poem to her husband, however Bradstreet cleverly disguises her poem through figurative language to argue against Puritan belief. Through paradox and figurative language, Bradstreet disguises her denouncement of Puritan Ideology so that she could support Hutchinson’s ideology, without receiving the same fate as her friend. Bradstreet’s poem, “To My Dear and Loving Husband” argues how an individual should live life on Earth opposed to the Puritan belief that one should devote all their time to God in order to seek salvation. Bradstreet opens up with the paradox: “If ever two were one, then surely we.” This paradox defies logic because it is impossible for two individuals to be one. It emphasizes Bradstreet’s love to her husband because she is stating that their love was beyond logic connoting that her love for her husband wasn’t rational, that it was something more. This brings on the ideology of marital unity, which their souls were joined together into one entity opposed to a representation of two individual beings, emphasizing that their love was everlasting. This denounces Puritan belief because only one individual was above reasoning and rationalization, God. To state that Bradstreet’s love was above logic suggests that her love for her husband was in the same realm of God and according to Puritan belief, God
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