An Analysis of Anne Bradstreet: In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabe

An Analysis of Anne Bradstreet: In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet    The Puritan woman's life was one entrenched in self-examination; bringing about the assembly of a spiritual armor in order to duel feminine sexuality to the death. In the elegy "In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and Half Old," Bradstreet does not to fight with the expected vengeance against the manifestation of her "evil," her child, as one would expect within the given spiritual context. Instead, Bradstreet refers to her daughter with terms of affection, calling her "dear" and "sweet babe." This rejection of the Puritan patriarchy while remaining within a loose form of elegiac style is a cunning method of subversion. The value-laden categorical relationship made between the initial section of the elegy concerned with connections of   femininity to nature, mother earth, and the body is juxtaposed with the secondary section of the elegy   referring to maleness. Maleness is related to death, the fall of nature, and time providing t...