Summary
“The Prologue” by Anne Bradstret (born Anne Dudley) is a poem in eight stanzas which utilizes a regular rhyme scheme (ababcc) and meter. Its subject is writing and the capacity of women to write, something which was in doubt at the time this poem was penned.
In the first stanza, Bradstreet describes the various “lofty” things—including wars, kings, and grand political events—for which her pen is too “mean.” She suggests that writing of these things is for historians and true poets and that she would never demean these subjects with her writing.
She goes on, however, to express her envy that her own skill is inadequate in comparison to that of others, such as the French poet Bartas. She wishes the “Muses” had granted her more—but also notes that it is unfair of people to expect too much of her. Schoolboys, she states, would never be expected to produce perfect rhetoric, nor a broken string instrument good music. Bradstreet suggests that nobody should expect perfection of her, because her own muse is “broken” too.
The picture Bradstreet paints of herself is exceptionally lowly—unlike the “sweet-tongued Greek” Demosthenes, who lisped before achieving fame as an orator, she is too mentally “wounded” to be cured. However, she goes on to state that she is “obnoxious,” nevertheless, to those who say women should not write but should sew instead. She states that “female wits” are thought so little of that if Bradstreet were to do well, people would say she had stolen her work or that it had happened “by chance.” Effectively, she is suggesting that men not only think women inferior and want women to think their own work inferior, but that men also want women to be inferior, because, otherwise, it threatens them. She also points out that the ancient Greeks conceived of poetry as the “child” of a female figure, the muse Calliope, and that the other arts were associated with muses of their own. The Greeks must have been fools and liars, Bradstreet ironically suggests, to have written such things.
Bradstreet tries to change the view that women are or should be inferior by addressing it directly. She asks men to let women “be what they are,” saying that men will always “excel” and have “precedency” but that it would still be nice for them to give some “acknowledgement” to women’s skill too. Indeed, if men allow women to write, the “gold” of their work (if it is indeed so much better than women’s) will simply shine more next to the raw “ore” of women’s output.
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