Before the Birth of One of Her Children, Essay Example

“Theme and Imagery in Bradstreet’s “Before the Birth of one of her Children”

Anne Bradstreet (nee Dudley) was born in England in 1612, and later came to colonial Massachusetts as the teenaged bride of Simon Bradstreet. Anne Bradstreet is notable for being the first female poet and author to have her works officially published in the British colonies, and centuries later her works remain popular both for their historical significance and for the manner in which they resonate with contemporary readers. In the poem “Before the Birth of One of Her Children” Bradstreet writes in the voice of an expectant mother speaking to her husband, and expressing her thoughts and feelings on both the importance and fleeting impermanence of life and love. Through the poem, Bradstreet balances structure and imagery to deftly symbolize seemingly simple, yet timelessly universal, themes of motherhood and mortality.

Several of Bradstreet’s significant poems take the form of missives to her husband, and serve both as direct, personal communications to her beloved spouse and as metaphors for the nature of the relationship between and among family members of her day. Childbirth was an inherently dangerous, and sometimes fatal, experience for women of Bradstreet’s time, and “Birth” serves as a message to her husband to remember her and care for their children should she die giving birth to their next child (Emerson, p.47). Bradstreet describes the “parting blow” of death, calling to mind how it is not merely a peaceful exit from life, but a violent and injurious experience. Bradstreet notes that “death may my steps attend,” raising a symbolic specter of death as Death, as a nearly-corporeal figure who “may” carry Bradstreet away just as the new life of her child begins. This looming fear may be a private and personal concern for Bradstreet, but it symbolizes the nearly-banal commonality of such fear for all women in her time.

As she addresses her husband, Bradstreet is largely concerned that he remembers her fondly, and again she uses powerful imagery to express herself. She asks that her husband “let be interr’d in my oblivious grave” her faults and shortcomings, and that he only remember “any worth of virtue” she may have possessed. Although Bradstreet will be, in death, “oblivious” to the thoughts and memories of her husband and her children, she still wishes for those memories to be happy and good. While virtually anyone can empathize with such sentiments, it is especially resonant in the context of motherhood and the maternal drive to see offspring be happy and loved. Bradstreet is understandably emotional, but the focus of her emotions is on her children and husband, and her concerns about the lives they will lead in her absence.

In the final lines of “Birth” Bradstreet practically admonishes her husband to remember that the children they had together are a living part of her, and to treat them as such. Bradstreet describes her children as “my little babes, my dear remains,” which is evocative of the term “remains” as a reference to the body of someone who is deceased. Bradstreet is hardly concerned with her physical remains in her “oblivious grave;” she is instead concerned only with her living remains, her children. Bradstreet recognizes the likelihood that a “step Dame” –i.e.- a stepmother- will enter the lives of her children should she depart them, but warns her husband that if he “love thyself, or loved’st me” he will protect them from “injury” at the hands of the stepmother. Every thought Bradstreet expresses is to demonstrate her concern for her children if she is no longer there to watch over them.

The language Bradstreet uses in “Birth” is slightly archaic to contemporary readers, but the themes she expresses –and the imagery she uses to express them- is timeless. Bradstreet infuses every line with texture and emotion, alternating images of death and graves with the happy memories of her she hopes will “live freshly” in his memory should she not survive childbirth. As the poem concludes, she does express her hope that “chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,” and that he will know of and remember her love for him. These lines are, however, nearly an afterthought; as a mother, Bradstreet‘s overarching concern is her love for her children. “Before the Birth of One of Her Children” may be three hundred years old, but the themes Bradstreet shares, and the imagery she uses to express them, are as resonant today as the day the poem was written.

Works Cited

Emerson, Everett H. Major Writers Of Early American Literature. 1st ed. [Madison]: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972. Print.

McMichael, George L, Frederick C Crews, and Shelley Fisher Fishkin. Concise Anthology Of American Literature. 7th ed. New York: Macmillan, 2009. Print.