fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007 - Ethical Culture ...

Hutchinson: Do you ask me on a point of conscience?Court: No, your conscience you may keep to yourself, but ifin this cause you shall countenance and encourage those thattransgress the Law, you must be called into question for it, andthat is not for your conscience, but for your practice.Hutchinson: What have they and I transgressed? The Law ofGod?Court: Yes, the fifth Commandment, which commands usto honour Father and Mother, which includes all in authority,but these seditious practices of yours have cast reproach anddishonor upon the Fathers of the Commonwealth...Governor Winthrop: The court hath already declaredthemselves satisfied with the things you hear, concerning thetroublesomeness of her spirit, and the danger of her courseyou hear among us, which is not to be suffered. Therefore, ifit be the mind of the Court, that Mrs. Hutchinson, for thesethings that appear before us, is unfit for our society, and if itbe the mind of the Court that she shall be banished out of ourliberties, and imprisoned until she be sent away, let them holdup their hands.[All but three hold up their hands.]Governor Winthrop: All that are contrary minded, hold upyours.[Two men hold up their hands.]Mr. Jennisons: I cannot hold up my hand one way or another,and I shall give my reason if the Court require it.Governor Winthrop: Mrs. Hutchinson, you hear the sentenceof the Court. It is that you are banished from our jurisdictionas being a woman not fit for our society. And you are to beimprisoned till the Court send you away.Hutchinson: I desire to know wherefore I am banished.Governor Winthrop: Say no more. The Court knows wherefore,and is satisfied.Anne Bradstreet 1612—1672: PoemsAnne Bradstreet was the first notable poet in American literature,an authentic Puritan voice with a simplicity and force rarely foundin her contemporaries. She was born in England, and raised incomparative luxury on the estate of the Earl of Lincoln, where herfather, Thomas Dudley, was steward (manager of business affairs).She had a childhood common to Puritan children seized by the forceof Calvinist doctrine, but Thomas Dudley saw to it that his highspiritedyoung daughter was educated beyond the simple householdskills and the lessons in submission often given to women of her timeand station.At sixteen, she married Simon Bradstreet, a sturdy Puritan anda graduate of Cambridge University. Two years later, in 1630,she left England with her husband and her parents on the shipArabella, sailing to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In Massachusettsher father became one of the Colony’s leaders and succeeded JohnWinthrop as Governor. Anne and her husband settled on a farmnear the frontier village of Andover, on the Merrimac River. Thereshe confronted a primitive life at which her heart rebelled until she“was convinced it was the way at God and submitted. She became adutiful housewife and raised eight children, and, in the most of herhousehold tasks, stole time to read and write poetry. Verifiers werecommon enough in colonial New England, but few were women.Anne Bradstreet recognized that a Puritan community frowned onwriting as unseemly behavior for a woman, especially the daughterof the Governor:I am oblivious to each carping tongueWho says my hand a needle better fits.In 1647 her brother-in-law, John Woodbrulge, pastor of the Andoverchurch, sailed to England taking copies of her poems with him. There,in 1650, and without her knowledge, they were published underthe title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America or SeveralPoems, Compiled With a Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Fullof Delight . . . By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts. It was the firstpublished volume of poetry written by a settler in the Englishcolonies.The Tenth Muse was obviously imitative, filled with well-wornpoetic stock. In laboring and tedious couplets it dwelt on the vanityof worldly pleasures, the brevity of life, and resignation to God’swill. It reflected the influence of the Bible and the translations of theFrench poet Guillaume du Bartas (1544—1590), who had decoratedhis scriptural epics with an overabundance of strained metaphorsand conceits. When Anne Bradstreet saw her own imperfect poetryin print, she ca/led it an “ill-formed offspring,” “my rambling bratin print,” but in London her volume of poems was a success and soonwas listed among “the most venerable books” of the age.Little is known of the remaining years of her life except that in themidst of her daily routine of caring for her family in an isolated28 fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007