Imagery In Anne Bradstreet's The Author To Her Book

An Unwanted Book In “The Author to Her Book”, by Anne Bradstreet, the speaker takes on the perspective of an angry and verbally abusive mother towards her own work which she sees as a deformed child. Bradstreet uses metaphors to see her work as a monstrous child that is unwanted, yet she is forced to take care of. The author’s use of imagery gives the reader a picture of an angry women berating a young child for just existing and being seen in the public eye, and makes you wonder why she is so ashamed of her own work. Finally, the speakers tone is harsh and scolding making the poem serious and draining enjoyment out of the reading. In the “The Author to Her Book” by Bradstreet the Line “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain.” (1) opens the poem using a metaphor to describe he book as a deformed child. Later in the poem Bradstreet’s speaker claims “I washed thy face, but more defects I saw.” (13) which gives the reader insight that the more she edited and wrote her book the more she was disgusted by her own work. In this way, the reader can clearly see that Bradstreet’s speaker is like a mother with long term postpartum depression. …show more content…
The woman is an embarrassed single mother illustrated in the lines “If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none; // And for thy mother, she alas is poor.” (22-23) While this may not ring true for the actual author she uses it to speak her shame of her book, like a poor woman doing something out of desperation to survive. While some may feel pity for the speaker, however the speaker is not a poor woman doing things out of desperation, the speaker is a cruel woman casting out her child to the streets “In this array ‘mongst vulgars may’st thou roam. // In critic’s hands beware thou dost not come, // And take thy way where yet thou art not

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Imagery In Anne Bradstreet's The Author To Her Book

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