Anne Bradstreet’s “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” presents the reader with a vivid picture of a woman yearning for her beloved spouse to return to her and her children. Given the fact that the author lived in 17th century Puritan Massachusetts, one could expect that the poem would depict a patriarchal family with a strict power division along the gender line. However, it proves not to be the case – if anything, Bradstreet offers a vision of a marital union when the issue of power distribution between the husband and wife is barely noticeable. Instead, the poem represents the family as a union of two inseparable entities bound together by nature itself, up to the point where it would be absurd to deem either of them more important. Moreover, Bradstreet does it in a literary piece that demonstrates all the qualities of an exceptional poem. The author uses the first-person perspective to immerse the reader into the narrative right from the beginning. Apart from that, the ample use of metaphors emphasizes husband and wife’s mutual need for each other and the fact that, together, they constitute a union of a higher order than while being apart. Finally, the imagery of sun and earth signifies that the love that brings the spouses together is as potent as the fundamental cosmic forces of creation. Thus, “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” is an exemplary poem because it combines the effective use of a first-person narrator, metaphors, and vivid imagery to live a lasting and impactful impression.
Before discussing the poem in detail, it is necessary to provide some biographical information on the poet to understand the historical context of the piece better. Anne Dudley by birth, she was born into a well-to-do Puritan in Northampton, England, in 1612. Having married Simon Bradstreet in 1628, she then moved to Massachusetts in 1630 together with her parents and spouse (Chowdhury 48). As high-ranking public officials, both her father and her husband were often absent performing their duties, as the title of the poem clearly suggests. Still, Bradstreet’s marriage was, by all accounts, happy, and she bore eight children between 1633 and 1652 (Chowdhury 48). Being an educated woman well-versed in literary English, Bradstreet took to writing poetry despite the strain of recurring illness and domestic and familial duties. In her verses, she explored the issues of death, immortality, sin, redemption, and the frailty of human nature (Chowdhury 48). One of the central themes of her poetry was the conflict between “the pleasures of sensory and familial experience,” which she describes so vividly, and religious obligations (Chowdhury 48). A compilation of Bradstreet’s poetry titled The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America was completed in 1650 but only published after her death and to significant acclaim (Chowdhury 48). Bradstreet died in 1672 and is posthumously recognized as the first female poet of English North America.
First-person narration is one of the defining traits of “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment.” The very first lines of the poem immediately overwhelm the reader with the abundance of first-person possessive pronouns: “My head, my heart, mine Eyes, my life… /My joy, my Magazine of earthly store” (lines 1-2). Thus, the author informs the reader from the outset that the speaker is not a detached omniscient entity speaking of someone else, but a woman who speaks for herself – and a passionate woman at that. Personal pronouns follow the possessive ones, and, in the third line of the poem, the author refers to herself directly for the first time: “If two be one, as surely thou and I” (line 3). After that, ‘I,’ ‘me,’ and ‘my’ continue to resurface regularly – in fact, only nine lines out of twenty-six do not feature at least one of these words. As a result, the poem becomes an intensely private statement of personal issues. This limits the focus to gender relations within a single family, as opposed to making statements on genders as a whole. Apart from emphasizing this focus, the first-person perspective also serves to immerse the reader into the world of the narrator’s feelings and engulf the readers into the sweet sorrow of waiting for a loved one. Thus, the skilled use of the first-person narration is certainly a mar of poetic excellence on Bradstreet’s part.
Apart from the point of view that serves to personalize the experiences and engage the deader, the author also makes ample use of metaphors. Generally, they invoke the image of the human body in order to represent the husband and wife as two parts of one entity that can never be separated altogether. In the first line of the poem, the narrator calls the absent spouse “My head, my heart, mine eyes,” signifying that he is as essential to her sense of self as the parts of her body (line 1). She also metaphorically likens the separation from her husband to an attempt to sever “head from the heart” – that is, separate two things that should naturally be together rather than apart (line 5). Essentially, Bradstreet represents her relationship with her husband as a body shared by two souls simultaneously, as in “If two be one, as surely thou and I” (line 3). This bodily metaphor is central to the poem, especially considering that the final line “I here, thou there, yet both but one” also stresses the unity of two souls within one metaphorical body (line 26). As far as the speaker is concerned, she and her husband are inseparable, and metaphors referring to the human body are an excellent way to underline this point.
However, bodily metaphors are not the only literary device that Bradstreet uses to emphasize the mutual interdependence of husband and wife, as the imagery of sun and earth serves the same purpose. It is first introduced in the lines “I like the earth this season, mourn in black, / My Sun is gone so far in’s Zodiac” (lines 7-8). In this passage, the narrator merely compares herself to earth, longing for the sun’s touch, but it is only a sign of what is to come. The same image resurfaces later in the course of the poem, with the author urging “sweet Sol” (line 12) – i.e., “sun” in Latin – to return to her. This time, the narrator already identifies her spouse with the sun directly. Finally, closer to the end of the poem, the speaker prays that her “Sun may never set, but burn,” thus expressing hope that her reunion with the beloved husband will be permanent (line 20). This imagery is essential in three ways simultaneously. First of all, it stresses the mutual need that the sun and earth have for each other. Secondly, it imagines a union without strict hierarchic undertones – after all, it would be senseless to declare either sun or earth to be superior because they are both necessary for life to thrive. Finally, it imbues the narrator’s marriage with additional significance by suggesting that the love between husband and wife is as potent as the cosmic forces governing the movement of celestial bodies. Considering this, the vivid imagery of the sun and earth is yet another mark of poetic excellence demonstrated in Bradstreet’s poem.
As one can see, “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” is, by all accounts, an excellent piece of poetry. Written in the 17th century by a female poet living in a deeply patriarchal society, it still paints an image of a loving marital union based on mutual need and respect rather than hierarchic subjugation. The author uses the first-person perspective to create a deeply private call that any reader who have ever waited for a loved one can relate to. At the same time, the numerous metaphors, often associating the narrator and her husband with different body parts, highlight the idea that they belong together. The evocative image of the narrator as earth and her spouse as the sun serves the same idea and emphasizes the acute mutual need for each other rather than subjugation of one to another. Put together, these literary devices depict the narrator’s marriage as a happy union of those who should be together because trying to separate them means going against the natural order of things. Once again, this is a sentiment that resonates deeply with a reader who ever experienced love. Skilled use of the aforementioned literary devices within a concise text leaves a lasting impression on the audience and makes “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” a truly exceptional poem.
Works Cited
Bradstreet, Anne. “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment.” Poetry Foundation.
Chowdhury, Rowshan. J. “Restriction, Resistance, and Humility: A Feminist Approach to Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley’s Literary Works.” Crossings: A Journal of English Studies, vol. 10, 2019, pp. 47-56.