Purtian Men and Women in Edward Taylor and Anne Bradstreet Essay

Purtian Men and Women in Edward Taylor and Anne Bradstreet Crossing the Atlantic, Puritans faced not further the physical hardships of an uncultivated land, but also difficulties within the structure of their religion. In The Puritan Dilemma, Edmund Morgan details the contradicting tenets of Puritanism. Puritans were to seek salvation even though they were helpless to do anything but evil they were to rely entirely on savior for salvation even though salvation was only possible if preordained by God (7). Additionally, in the Puritan paradigm, the relationship between Christ and the perform was analogous to that of husband and wife. Husbands took pre-eminence over wives, just as Christ reigned sovereign over His flock. This layered system of servants and masters caused men and women to experience Puritanism very differently. The poetry of Edward Taylor and Anne Bradstreet demonstrates that while Puritan men focused on loving their Heavenly Father, Puritan women sought the approval of earthly men.Studying egg-producing(prenominal) authorship in colonial America, William Scheick notes that Puritans supported this attitude of mastery with biblical passages. In the Old Testament, Adam declares Eve the bone of his bones and the digit of his flesh. Because she was taken out of man, Adam resolves on calling her woman. Similarly, in the brand-new Testament, capital of Minnesota describes Christians as members of the Lords body, of his flesh, and of his bones. Whereas the Genesis passage refers to earthly matrimony, Paul addresses the spiritual marriage between Christians and the Bridegroom Christ. Scheick observes how these passages imply the silent subordination of the second sex to men, and the reverence wives owe to their husbands (62).... ...ism in early bare-assed England. Works CitedBradstreet, Anne. The Prologue To Her Book. The heathland Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lautier. crude York Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004 188-190.Hambrick-Stowe, Charles E., ed. Early New England Meditative Poetry. New York Paulist Press, 1988.Morgan, Edmund S. The Puritan Dilemma The Story of John Winthrop. capital of Massachusetts Little, Brown and Company, 1958.Stanford, Ann. Anne Bradstreet Dogmatist and Rebel. The New England Quarterly 39 (1966) 373-389. JSTOR. Colorado acres University, Fort Collins, CO. 3 Oct. 2005 .Taylor, Edward. Prologue. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lautier. New York Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004 239-240.---, Huswifery. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lautier. New York Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004 236-237.