Essays

Analyzing Poetry: "The Author to Her Book" and "The Road Not Taken"

(2020)

Analyzing Poetry Through the Patriarchal Lens 

Throughout literary history, certain themes have endured despite changes in time and geographic location, highlighting persistent facets of the human condition. One such theme is individualism, and specifically a person's psychical and artistic agency and autonomy in their own lives. Anne Bradstreet's poem, "The Author to Her Book," and Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken," the poets utilize both literal and figurative language to express this theme of personal agency and its role in the construction of individualism and identity, although each accomplishes this task from subjective perspectives. For Bradstreet, a Puritan woman oppressed by the patriarchal social structure, her poetry reflects oppression and self-consciousness through the use of metaphor, while Frost is more liberated and less self-conscious in his theme of individualism. The following will compare and contrasts these poems, showing how Bradstreet and Frost's works exemplify how a shared theme can be embodied by such different perspectives.

Bradstreet's poem, "The Author to Her Book," begins with a metaphor, which extends throughout the entirety of the work, as the poet personifies her book of poetry as her child. She writes:

Thou ill-form'd offspring of my feeble brain,

Who after birth didst by my side remain,

Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,

Who thee abroad, expos'd to publick view,

Made thee in raggs, halting to th' press to trudge,

Where errors were not lessened (all may judg).

Here, Bradstreet describes how her poor poetry is a product of her "feeble" brain, immediately making it known that she does not view her work in a favorable light. However, the fact that she personifies it as an infant that remains by her side shows that she loves and nurtures her poetry despite its purported flaws. She then describes how her friends stole her child, or her book of poetry, setting into motion the speaker, or Bradstreet's, thought process. This theft and subsequent bid for publication is equated with an innocent, vulnerable, and defective baby being put on display for an uncaring public to judge, something that wounds Bradstreet deeply despite her friend's seemingly good intentions.

When considering these lines from Bradstreet, it is necessary to understand some of her personal contexts. As a Puritan woman in the seventeenth century, Bradstreet belonged to a rigidly patriarchal society that viewed women as psychically, intellectually, and psychologically less than their male counterparts (Schweitzer, 291). While Bradstreet herself benefitted from belonging to a prominent, educated, and wealthy family during her life, she still endured the institutional sexism present during her lifetime (Schweitzer, 294). As a female poet, especially in a puritanical society, Bradstreet would not have initially been regarded in a positive light by the general public. Her high anxiety at the prospect of her poetry being exposed to the public shows the deeply rooted insecurity that evolved out of this imbalanced power structure and may also be viewed as a tool through which she processes this imbalance (Schweitzer, 292). This is reflected in the title of the poem, "The Author to Her Book," which emphasizes her role as a woman within a broader sociocultural context. As such, her metaphor as a mother, one of the only social designations allowed to Puritan women, is an apt one in giving insight into Bradstreet's life and poetry.

Despite her unprecedented literary success, Bradstreet cannot help but have a constant awareness of her designation in society as a woman; it is part of her identity as a poet. The understanding of her position within the patriarchy manifests as self-consciousness in her poetry, as Bradstreet writes: