Anne Bradstreet was a woman in conflict. She was a Puritan wife and a poet. There is a conflict between Puritan theology and her own personal feelings on life. Many of her poems reveal her eternal conflict regarding her emotions and the beliefs of her religion. The two often stood in direct opposition to each other. Her Puritan faith demanded that she seek salvation and the promises of Heaven. However, Bradstreet felt more strongly about her life on Earth. She was very . She was very attached to her family and community. Bradstreet loved her life and the Earth. There are several poems of Bradstreet that demonstrate this conflict. There is Upon the Burning of Our House July 10th, 1666 and the ones written on the deaths of her grandchildren. These are both examples of her feelings about life on Earth and her religious beliefs. In the critical essay of Robert D. Richardson Jr., he examines the poem Upon the Burning of Our House from a conventional Puritan point of view, an exercise in finding the hand of God behind every apparent disaster. Yet, the poem moves back and forth from the human level to the divine, and it is not impossible to argue that the human level fear of fire, the sense of loss is what genuinely moves the poet, while her submission to the will of God is somewhat forced acknowledgment of an arrangement that is not really satisfactory.(105) And when I could no longer look, I blest his Name that gone and took, That layd my goods now in the dust: Yea so it was, and twas just. It was his own: It was not mine; Far be it that I should repine. (311)These lines of submission are clipped and measured, grimly singsong: they sound forced when placed alongside the following lines which emphasize personal loss. (Richardson...
