Compare And Contrast To My Dear And Loving Husband

Anne Bradstreet emphasizes romantic love and eternal love in her writing, which are not typical puritan beliefs. In her poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband”, she expresses her unconditional love towards her husband, which makes the readers assume that, for her, the most important person was her husband. Anne Bradstreet emphasizes romantic love in her writing, which is not a typical puritan belief. Free Reformed Churches of North America states that puritans “emphasized that married love should always be subordinate to the love of God” (Rev. C. Pronk) meaning that it was not right for Anne Bradstreet to have these strong emotional feelings towards her husband because they were bigger than her feelings towards God. She uses different literary devices to emphasize her romantic love like hyperboles and metaphors. In her poem she states that she “prizes [his] love more than wholes mines of gold, Or all the riches that the East doth hold” (Bradstreet 5, 6), where she exaggerates the fact that she sees her husband’s love as the most valuable prize she has ever won. Not even the wealth that existed in Asia in that period could compare to it. This shows that her ultimate prize was her husband, rather than God’s gift of salvation. It is also evident that she has sexual desire for her husband when she says “[Her] love is such that rivers cannot quench” (Bradstreet 7), the usage of this hyperbolic metaphor emphasizes the fact that her desire for her husband is so big that not even all