Mary Rowlandson verses Anne Bradstreet

Bradstreet’s work seems much more lively and realistic than others, making the pieces more readily available to readers today. Her writing however, differs from that of many others interpretation both of God, and of their new lives. ” In a poem, Bradstreet is honest about her feelings and not afraid to let them be known to others, even the Puritans if they were able to read it. In “The Author to Her Book,” she very imaginatively characterizes her book as her own small child who has been “snatched from thence friends, less wise than true. She believed that since the colonists deviated from their covenant with God, He used the Indians as a means of punishment. This not only proved that women are more than capable of reading and understanding the classics, but it also proved that the Puritans read things outside of the Bible. ” In her interpretation of God and the way He works and can be seen, Bradstreet appears very modern in her thinking and is much more likeable and believable than her slightly earlier Puritan counterparts. ” Rowlandson believed that “our perverse and evil carriages in the sight of the Lord have so offended Him that, instead of turning his hand against the Indians, the Lord feeds and nourishes them. ” The latter set of these poems offers such a sharp distinction to the stern beliefs of the Puritan society in which Bradstreet lived.

Rowlandson’s Puritan-centered perception of her captivity showed that she perceived the Indians as mere instruments used by God within the terms of his covenant with the Puritans. When pondering the escape of the Indians, weighed down with the burden of their wounded captives, from the English army, Rowlandson concluded, “God strengthened the Indians to be a scourge to His people. Without their divine devotion to God and will to survive, both mentally and physically, they wouldn’t be a part of our history and we would not have learned the importance of the foundation of the world today.