Draw Connections: “The Author to Her Book” and “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
In these two poems, Bradstreet reflects on the perils of childbirth—both literal and metaphorical. The poems have much to tell us about the lives of women in the seventeenth century. Giving birth to a child was joyous, as we would expect, but due to high mortality for both infants and mothers, it could also cause great anxiety. While motherhood was well within the acceptable roles for women, other kinds of creation, including writing, were generally viewed as out-of-the-ordinary and even inappropriate. Study the annotated texts of the two poems, The Author to Her Book and Before the Birth of One of Her Children, then answer the following questions about these two views on the role of motherhood.