JOURNAL #1 (Anne Bradstreet)

Michelle Romero
Eng. 48B, Dr. Scott Lankford
10-10-07

"But when thou northward to me shalt return,/
I wish my Sun may never set, but burn/
Within the Cancer of my glowing breast,/
The welcome house of him my dearest guest."

From "A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment."

This quote is from a letter Anne wrote expressing her deepest longing and desire for her husband to return, while he was away.

Quite a bold statement for a woman of her time! I understand that it was permissible to write as a Puritan woman of the love for her husband, but talk about crossing the line! No wonder she was angry that these poems were published without her knowledge.

The descriptive language clearly expresses her longing and desire for her husband in a very intimate way. One line says, "I wish my Sun may never set, but burn." A yellow sun is often symbolic of sexual passion and is consistent with the way Anne uses it. She obviously misses her husband, but this passage of the letter reveals that she has a very physical longing for him as well. We in the 21st century would say that it is natural for women to have these feelings, especially for her husband. However, this was not always the case and I imagine that in 1678 when these poems were published, it was unthinkable and certainly unmentionable. Her expression of sexual/intimate longing is purely to satisfy her own selfish desires.

If that is not enough, she also references the zodiac sign Cancer which represents summer, which is of course a season of heat. She also describes her "glowing breast."

I love this poem because it begins typical of a wife who misses her absent husband and then all of a sudden, there is this one stanza that just explodes in these sexually explicit lines. It is like she begins calmly but all of a sudden just can't contain the way she feels.

It is a raw moment of expression within the beauty of her language.