Puritanism
Puritanism is extreme in the way that it gave people a meaning to their life. The precariousness of this is constantly questioned by Bradstreet. Rather than be enfolded into Catholicism, wherein she would have simply been told what to do, and what was right or wrong, she was forced to ask these questions and it became what appeared to be a severe burden on her. While this commitment was likely intolerable at time, it is just as likely that the commitment was viewed as absolute, and was the primary motivation for many of her actions. For example, her family relocated from England to America, and she was raised in a family of eight children. While her faith likely was the catalyst that brought these hardships upon her family, these very hardships were also what sustained her through life. Subsequently, her faith, then also sustained her, despite her constant questioning.
A specific work, and proof of Bradstreet’s commitment to the Puritan ways, was written sometime during the Civil War. It was over a decade after her family had traveled to and settled in America. Bradstreet wrote many works that rejected England’s traditional religious values, complete with visualizations of Rome burning to the ground. It was, of course, her rebirth. She was bring forth a literary display that showed she no longer pronounced England’s values as her own and instead had adopted the Puritan values only, despite the fact they had brought so many hardships onto her and her family. She began to recognize during this period of her writing that, though becoming a Puritan mean an immigration to a new world, a family that was sometimes too large to feed, and a constant questioning of one’s faith, it freed her from the old ways of England. The Civil War with England reminded her of all she had been freed from and while she was faced with incessant adversity that was colonial life, she remained consoled in her poetry, reflecting in the god decision she believed she had made in her faith. She was skeptical at times of her choice, but overall appeared to believe she has made a good decision.
