During the peak of Puritan ideology, the people strived for the warmth and relief of God's grace. Their numerous sacrifices determined what kind of people they were, and how much faith in God they possessed. Puritan literature reflects the desire for grace because the citizens of the colonial age believed that God decided their true fate. Through this belief, they prayed for God to maintain a direct influence on their daily lives. To achieve grace, they often spoke of these ideas through their writing. "Huswifery," by Edward Taylor, describes how simple imagery can depict the desire for grace. It also shows the redemptive power of faith through one man's plea to Christ. In the poem, the poet subtly, as opposed to overtly, uses conceits and imagery to show how Puritans alleviated their sins.
Grace, in Puritan ideology, is the condition of being free of sin, for example, through repentance to God. Taylor depicts this through conceits in his poem. He uses an imaginative, poetic image, or writing style that contains a far-fetched comparison between his desire for grace and a woman who spins wool on a loom.
Make me, O Lord, thy Spinning Wheels complete;
Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make for mee.
Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers neate,
And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to bee.
My Conversation make to be thy Reele,
And reele the yarn thereon spun of thy Wheele. (pg39/stanza1)
In this first line, Taylor simply asks that god be the empowering spinner behind his spinning wheel self, which implies his everlasting desire for the lord to take control of his life and use it to supply Taylor with an enhanced inner soul. He then expands on this conceit and incorporates various other parts of the spinning wheel into the correlation. Essentially, in the first stanza, he is asking God to acquire his soul and shape it for the better. Not only does Taylor use metaphysical Conceit to express his desire for grace, but he also uses the c...