The poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband” is written by a North American poet, Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672). She was the first Puritan figure in American Literature and was the first author in England’s North American colonies to be published. The poem was first published in 1678 as a part of Anne Bradstreet’s posthumous collection Several Poems.
The poem seems autobiographical as the speaker describes the love between her and her husband. Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan and Puritans considered love poems as sinful, but this poem argues against those religious poets who considered love poetry as an unholy act.
The speaker presents the love between her and her husband as a holy and sacred bonding.
Background of the Poem
Literary Context
The poem was written in the mid-seventeenth century when European poets had developed a tradition of love poetry called the Petrarchan tradition. The fathers of this tradition were Petrarch and Dante, two Italian poets from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
According to this tradition, the male poets wrote about a distant and inaccessible woman with whom they were in love. The speaker would idealize the woman which would result in a melodramatic poem.
Anne Bradstreet scrambles the tradition and instead of writing about a distant and inaccessible love, she writes about her husband with whom she is already sharing a bonding of marriage.
She introduces a new kind of love poem that does not altogether follow the prevailing tradition of poetry at that time.
Historical Context
Anne Bradstreet was born in England in the early seventeenth century. But in 1630 she and her husband migrated to Massachusetts Bay Colony. Anne’s father and husband became the governors of the colony.
They had emigrated to America in order to protect their religious beliefs since in England they were persecuted being Puritans.
The colony was controlled by male political and religious members and women who questioned or challenged their positions were exiled. Being a poet, it was a difficult situation for Anne Bradstreet, whose writings could be potentially threatening to her male relatives. That might be the reason, she suppresses the historical context throughout her writings.
She never writes about her time and age. She does not engage in her life and political system of that time, instead she writes to classical and European models.
To My Dear and Loving Husband Summary
The poem begins with the speaker saying that if two people were to become one, they would surely be us. The speaker addresses her husband that if a husband was ever loved by his wife, then he is surely loved. Then she says that if a wife is happy with her husband, then she is surely happy.
The speaker addresses women in general saying that if they can compare their marriages with her. She says that she values his love more than the mines of gold or all the treasure that are in the East. She says that her love is like a thirst that cannot be quenched by rivers.
She says that nothing but the love from his side can satisfy her. She says that she cannot repay his love. She then says that she prays that may he be rewarded manifolds in return for his love.
She says that they should keep on loving each other and should remain true towards each other so that when they die, they will be alive forever.
To My Dear and Loving Husband Themes
Love
Since the poem is about the love between a husband and wife, one of its important themes is love. The wife loves her husband so much that she feels herself and her husband to be one. She feels spiritually as well as physically connected to her husband.
She expresses the intensity and depth of her love by saying that it is more valuable for her than all the riches of the world. She values it more than all the earthly pleasures and delights that one wishes for.
The speaker seems to be happy and satisfied with her marriage. She says that the love between her and her husband is so deep that if they kept on loving the same way, they will live forever even after their deaths. This means that she believes in life after death and hopes for a life with her husband after her death.
Marriage
Since the poem is titled “To My Dear and Loving Husband”, it talks about the institution of marriage. The speaker of the poem expresses her love for her husband in a grand style which means she considers the institution of marriage as important as any other social issue.
The speaker even says that if they both keep loving each other deeply and sincerely, they will have eternal life after death.
To My Dear and Loving Husband Literary Analysis
“To My Dear and Loving Husband” is a short love poem by Anne Bradstreet in which she uses relatively plain language. This love poem is applicable to any loving couple anywhere in the world. It is a short poem that consists of short, simple, and independent lines that stand alone.
The poem consists of six heroic couplets – twelve lines in total. She chooses heroic couplets for her poem in order to show the significance of the institution of marriage.
The rhyme scheme is AABBCCDDEEFF and the tone is happy and romantic.
The poet adopts Puritan Plain Style which is characterized by plain and simple language in order to express herself clearly. Another characteristic of such style is the inversion in which the normal order of words is reversed. This shows the Puritan background of Anne Bradstreet.
The poem talks about the love between the speaker, who is a loving wife, and her husband. The speaker deeply loves her husband and says that if two could be one, then they would become one with the strong feelings of love they have for each other.
She uses archaic words like “thee”, “thy” etc. (though they were not archaic at the time Anne Bradstreet was writing this poem) to give an informal tone to the poem.
The poem begins in the form of an apostrophe when the speaker addresses her husband directly to show her love. She says that if two were to become one, they would be them. She says that she is loved by her husband and is happy with him.
She does not compare her marriage with the marriages of other women but tells them to compare theirs with hers. Here is a shift in the apostrophe, she is now not addressing a single person, her husband but all the women.
She then uses hyperbole to express the intensity of her love. She says that she values her husband’s love more than all the gold and riches of the world. Here she uses personification for the East, by saying that it holds the riches of the world but she values her husband’s love more than all those riches.
Her love cannot be satisfied by anything in the world, nor all the rivers but by her husband’s love. She says that she cannot repay her husband’s love but prays that he might be granted manifolds by the heavens. Here a metaphor is used that compares the exchange of love between the husband and wife to a transaction.
Heavens in the 10th line refer to God. The reference to the heavens shows the poet’s religious mindset and background that belongs to Puritans.
The speaker keeps saying that they should love each other while they are alive, so when they die, they will remain alive after their deaths. Here again, we see the poet’s religious mind when she expresses a belief in life after death.
Here she expresses the strength and truth of their love that it will remain even after death. The last line repeats the word live in two different contexts. The first reference points towards death while the second one refers to eternal life after death.
Significance of the Title
It is apparent from the title of the poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband” that the poem’s speaker is a wife who is speaking about her husband. Since the title expresses the love of the wife for her husband, a reader can easily guess that it is a love poem.
Point of View
The poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband” is written in the first-person narrative where the speaker is most likely to be Anne Bradstreet herself. Because the poem seems autobiographical as Anne Bradstreet does not separate herself from the reader, rather she keeps on speaking in her own voice as the first-person narrator.
The poem addresses a specific person who is more likely to be Simon Bradstreet, Anne Bradstreet’s husband.
Though the poem does not give details about their marriage and daily routine or how they fell in love, it discusses an idealized marriage and the love between the husband and wife from the wife’s point of view.
Tone
The poem has an emotional, romantic tone full of strong feelings of love. From the beginning of the poem to the end, the tone of the poem remains the same. The speaker continues expressing her love for her husband. She seems to be quite happy about her marriage.
Form
The poem consists of six rhyming couplets that make a total of twelve lines in the poem. These couplets that are written in iambic pentameter are called heroic couplets, which is a form of poetry used to discuss important things. This form suggests how highly the speaker thinks of her love for her husband.
The poem is an end-stopped poem that has many of its lines as independent statements that stand on their own and do not have any relation with the other lines. Still, some of the lines do have relations with each other. For example:
Thy love is such that I can no way repay; (line 9)
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. (line 10)
Line 9 is actually a reaction to line 10, the idea in one line is completed in the next one where the speaker in one line says that she can not repay her husband’s love.
While in the next line she says that she prays that heaven may reward him for the love. So we see that though some lines stand alone and independent, others do have a relation between them.
Meter
The poem is written in iambic pentameter, the meter which was used by the poets, most admired by Anne Bradstreet such as William Shakespeare and Spencer. The use of this meter demonstrates Anne’s ability to write literary poetry. This shows the capacity of women that they can write as skillfully as men.
The meter is regular and precise. There are no metrical irregularities or variations except line 10:
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray (line 10)
The line has a metrically ambiguous opening as the unstressed and stressed syllables are followed by two unstressed syllables. We can read the first two syllables of the line as an iamb that is followed by a pyrrhic but then the rest of the line becomes trochaic.
So it is better to read the first three syllables as an amphibrach (a foot that consists of one stressed syllable between two unstressed syllables). The amphibrach is then followed by four iambs.
The heavens | reward | thee man- | ifold, | I pray (line 10)
Though the use of amphibrach is unusual in English poetry, they were used in the seventeenth century. After the above irregularity, the meter again becomes regular, though lines 11 and 12 have feminine endings (syllables that end with unstressed syllables). With a few exceptions, the poem shows the mastery of the difficult iambic meter.
Setting
The setting of the poem is not clear since the speaker has not explicitly referred to any geographical location. The speaker only once refers to the East as a distant place which makes it clear that she is not from the East.
Without any specified location being mentioned, the poem can generally be applied to any marriage and any loving couple.
Symbolism
East
The word “East” in the 6th line of the poem does not point towards the East direction, rather she refers to a culture that was considered full of material riches and wealth by the people living in colonial America in the seventeenth century.
The speaker uses the term East for the riches and earthly delights that one may wish for. But the speaker values her husband’s love more than any earthly delight.
Heavens
In a literal sense, heavens refer to everything that is above the earth such as the stars, moon, sun, clouds, etc. But the word “heavens” in the 10th line of the poem is a symbol used for God, who according to Christian theology resides in the heavens.
The speaker prays that her husband’s devotion may be rewarded by God because she herself cannot repay for his love.
Literary Devices
Alliteration
It is the repetition of the same consonant sound in the initial syllables of successive words in a poetic line. For example:
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; (line 2)
The consonant sound “th” is repeated in the above line.
If ever wife was happy in a man, (line 3)
The consonant sound “w” is repeated at the beginning of words in the above line.
Assonance
It is the repetition of the same vowel sound in successive words in a poetic line. For example:
Thy love is such I can no way repay; (line 9)
The vowel sound “a” is repeated in successive words in the above line.
Consonance
It is the repetition of the same consonant sound in the middle or the end of successive words in a poetic line. For example:
My love is such that rivers cannot quench, (line 7)
The consonant sound “n” is repeated in words in the above line.
Anastrophe (inversion)
Since Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan, she has adopted Puritan Plain Style of writing in accordance with her religious beliefs. She has used inversion of syntax in the poem which means the normal order of words in a line is reversed.
Like most Puritan literature, Anne Bradstreet has also used a style similar to the style of the Bible. She uses inversion in the very first line of the poem saying:
If ever two were one, then surely we. (line 1)
If the word order of the above line is read without inversion, its modern version would be read as: “If there were ever two that were one, it would be us.”
Apostrophe
The poem is a direct address of the speaker to her husband. She addresses him directly in order to express her love for him. While expressing the intensity of her love, she compares her feelings with different things in order to show how much she loves her husband and that she values her husband’s love more than anything in the world.
Anaphora
It is the repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences. For example:
If ever two were one, then surely we. (line 1)
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; (line 2)
If ever wife was happy in a man, (line 3)
The above successive lines repeat the word “If” at the beginning.
Asyndeton
The omission of conjunction between parts of a sentence. For example:
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray (line 10)
There is no conjunction between the two parts of the above line.
Allusion
Or all the riches that the East doth hold. (line 6)
In the above line from the poem, the speaker alludes to the riches and wealth in the East in the seventeenth century. East was considered as the golden sparrow for the deposits of wealth and riches there. The speaker says that she values her husband’s love even more than the riches that lie in the East. This reference shows the intensity and depth of the speaker’s love for her husband.
End-stopped Lines
Most of the lines of the poem are end-stopped. This means each line of the poem is a separate and independent statement except for a few ones that depend on their neighboring lines for conveying complete meaning.
Most of the lines of the poem are independent and convey their own separate meanings that reversing their order does not affect the flow of the poem.
Metaphor
It is an indirect comparison between two, unlike things. For example:
Nor ought but love from thee recompense. (line 8)
Thy love is such I can no way repay; (line 9)
In the above lines, the speaker uses a metaphor to compare her life with a transaction by using words like recompense and repay. It seems more like a business or transaction where she compares the exchange of love between her and her husband to a commercial exchange.
Hyperbole
Since “To My Dear and Loving Husband” is a poem about love, the speaker keeps on praising her husband and her marriage in an exaggerated manner. Such as:
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, (line 5)
Or all the riches that the East doth hold. (line 6)
The reader, by no means, can doubt the sincerity of the speaker’s love for her husband but the language seems highly hyperbolic.
Renaissance love poetry particularly Petrarchan tradition highly used hyperbole where male poets would describe the women they love in a very idealized manner. The poet of “To My Dear and Loving Husband” uses hyperbole as a literary technique in order to show that a woman poet is capable of following the Petrarchan tradition just like male poets.
According to Patrachan tradition, poets would praise an inaccessible woman whom they would love but with whom they would have no relationship in reality. But the poet here brings a transformation, she does not praise a distant and inaccessible human being or an object of desire, rather she focuses on a real relationship.
She presents her real relationship as exalted and dramatic as the Petrarchan would do.
Personification
It is the attribution of human qualities to something non-human. For example:
Or all the riches that the East doth hold. (line 6)
The above line presents “East” as if it is a person which means it is personified. The speaker says that the East holds riches and wealth that one may desire for earthly pleasure and delight.
Paradox
A paradox is a self-contradictory statement. For example:
If ever two were one, then surely we. (line 1)
The above line says that if two were equal to one, which in no means is possible but the poet uses this paradox in order to show her spiritual bonding with her husband. She makes use of the paradox to express the intensity of her feelings of love towards her husband.
She says that if two were to become one, it would be them (she and her husband) who had so much love for each other that they were like one body and soul.
Repetition
The poem has a repetition of the word love throughout the poem at different lines. Since the poem is about love and the strong attachment of the wife to her husband, she uses the word love in order to express the intensity of her love.
She loves her husband more than all the riches of the earth. She cannot be satisfied with anything but the love of her husband which she values more than anything.
The word live is also repeated in the last line, but the sense is different both times. The first time she uses live, she means to point towards death when she says “That when we live no more…”. The word is repeated in the same line but with a different meaning. She says “…we may live ever.” Here she points towards eternal life.
Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme of the poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband” is AABBCCDDEEFF. None of the rhymes in the poem occur more than once in the poem. This makes the poem feel somewhat loosely structured.
The couplets seem to be randomly piled over each other, this is because if the order of two successive couplets is reversed, it would not seriously affect the narrative or the structure of the poem.
The poem generally uses direct and strong rhymes among which most are single syllables. These strong rhymes mirror the speaker’s sense of confidence. She makes bold claims and is certain about what she says.
An exception is encountered in the fourth couplet (line 7 and 8):
My love is such that rivers cannot quench, (line 7)
Nor ought but love from thee recompense. (line 8)
“Quench” and “recompense” are slant rhymes. The use of slant rhymes introduces hesitation in the otherwise smooth and plain poem. The use of the slant rhymes is appropriate here because the speaker shows the depth of her love and claims that nothing can satisfy her. The slant rhymes here show the failure of other things to satisfy her.
The lines are iambic pentameter couplets also known as heroic couplets, the form of poetry used to write about grand and important subjects such as battles and political events, etc.
Using such a grand form of poetry for the poem, the poet actually asserts that her marriage is an important and grand subject just as any traditional heroic subject.
The poem gradually justifies the assertion and its heroic form as the speaker begins with her personal happiness and love, she ends with salvation and eternal life. The poem thus justifies its formal and grand structure.
Regular Rhymes
we (line 1)
thee (line 2)
man (line 3)
can (line 4)
gold (line 5)
hold (line 6)
repay (line 9)
pray (line 10)
persever (line 11)
ever (line 12)
Slant Rhymes
quench (line 7)
recompense (line 8)
