Anne Bradstreet's Life As A Puritan Woman

During the 17th century, the combined New England colonies formed a virtual puritan commonwealth. The entire social and political system they established was built on the puritan religion. It was a mans world within this so called puritan commonwealth. Women did not participate in town meetings or had no authority to make decisions within the church. Puritan women were to be seen, but not heard. Rather than demanding their rights and rebelling against authority, women had their ways of being heard and sharing of their personal experiences. Anne Bradstreet chose to write about her experiences as a puritan woman through poetry, whereas some puritan women wrote about their lives before, during, and after their captivity by the Native Americans
She did not complain about maintaining her household and family. Women may not have had the same advantages and opportunities as men do, but they certainly are capable of great things. Like Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson also used similar techniques in writing about God’s greater plan for the Puritans in her captivity narrative, “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.” In an effort to bring forth societal issues and urge early Americans to follow the righteous path, Rowlandson inserts scripture and biblical imagery into her narrative in an effort to remind Puritans of their covenant with God and to encourage them to reinsert God into their lives. Mary Rowlandson relied on her faith in the providence of God to sustain herself during her period of captivity. Indians ransacked the town of Lancaster in 1675. Rowlandson, the wide of a minister, was one of 24 town’s people to be taken captive. Separated from her husband and all but one of her children during her captivity she depended upon a bible obtained from an Indians plunder for spiritual survival. The Indians success over the Puritans was a result of the failure of the Puritans to uphold their covenant with God. Her eventual redemption and reunification with her surviving children and husband affirmed her faith in the providence
God had manipulated the relationship between the Indians and the Puritans, favoring the Indians when the puritans had fallen to sinful ways. God was neither punishing nor rewarding the Indians, who were merely agents whom god controlled as a manifestation of his wrath on the New England Puritans. Because Rowlandson believed in the covenant between the Puritans and God she strove to live by the scripture and fulfill her side of the covenant. Her eventual redemption affirmed her faith in Gods special relationship with his