Mistress Bradstreet (25 page)

It was unsettling to live with this constant vigilance. Any unusual sound in the middle of the night could foreshadow a violent invasion. In this first year, Anne would find the nearness of the other houses a great comfort, but over time the cramped and huddled town began to seem somewhat stifling. Safety was sometimes a poor exchange for the narrowed eyes of her neighbors.
²³

As spring turned into summer and no attacks came, Anne and her family began to settle into the routine of life on the edge of the forest. As she and her sisters felt braver, they may have ventured beyond the common green to gather berries, herbs, and kindling. Like New Towne, Ipswich was situated on a pleasant river that curled through the settlement toward the ocean. That meant there was plentiful fresh water and fish and a convenient meeting place for the women, and their servants, especially during the long hot days of August.

If Anne or her friends felt ambitious, or if they could persuade one of their husbands to escort them with his gun, they could tramp through the grass until they reached the longest, whitest beach that anyone had ever seen. Although it was hard work to clamber over the dunes to reach the water’s edge, it was worth the struggle because of the enormous clams that shot up their little spouts of water. Anne and her sisters had never seen such natural bounty, and it began to seem that God truly intended them to flourish here in this new little settlement.

Chapter Thirteen

Such Things as Belong to Women

For if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men . . . she had kept her wits, and might have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set for her.

—
JOHN WINTHROP

A good name is as a precious ointment, and it is a great favour to have a good repute among good men.

—
ANNE BRADSTREET
,
“Meditation 73”

A
RT IS NOT ALWAYS
created under auspicious circumstances, and the years
1636-38
not only were a politically dangerous time for New England but also represented an especially demanding era in Anne’s life. Yet these were the years in which Anne set her mind to starting her poetry career in a serious manner, despite the fact that her days were spent with a baby daughter and a little boy who could race into any number of threatening situations.

Her duties were seemingly endless; she had to convert her rough frontier household into a safe and civilized home, and oversee the servants, the health of the livestock, and the crops—which meant everything from monitoring the size of the pigs to making cheese and pressing cider apples—and so Anne did not have much opportunity for leisure or for time to herself. Indeed, the idea of reading, writing, or poring over literature of any kind must have seemed an unlikely dream to this young mother. But when life on the frontier felt unbearable, she would discover that it was poetry that enabled her to survive without falling into depression.

Anne’s life during these years was made more difficult because Simon and Dudley were often called to Boston. By the spring of 1636 Mistress Hutchinson and her followers had become increasingly obstreperous. The woman’s “apostles” were now declaring that they had no need of any minister, or any church, for that matter, except one directed by the mistress herself. One avid follower had been heard to declare that Hutchinson “preaches better Gospel than any of your black-coates that have been at the Ninneversity,” and that she would “rather hear such a one that speakes from the meere motion of the spirit, without any study at all, than any of your learned Scollers, although they may be fuller of Scripture.”
¹

Inflamed by Hutchinson’s teachings, her followers, who now included men as well as women, had taken to the road, “gadding” to other churches in the colony to heckle the ministers during their sermons. One minister underscored how alarming their “attacks” were by writing that they “discharged” their criticisms like “pistols . . . at the face of the Preacher.”
²
Simon and Dudley were simultaneously disturbed by the news and relieved that they had exiled themselves and their families from the poisonous heresies that were polluting the southern settlements, as Ipswich was too far north for any of the Hutchinsonians to attempt to visit. However, their presence at the meetings of the General Court was urgently necessary, because the new governor, Sir Henry Vane, seemed to be doing nothing to quell the disturbances Mrs. Hutchinson was creating. In fact, he was one of her biggest fans.

Not that stopping Hutchinson was an easy task. Though Winthrop, Dudley, and Simon were court officials, they were powerless to curb her actions until she committed some kind of obvious crime. She was not a minister with whom they could remonstrate, as they had Roger Williams. She was not a fellow magistrate whose disturbing ideas they could silence by stripping her of rank. As a woman, she was beyond their jurisdiction despite the fact that she was nominally lower in the hierarchy. Her footsteps were invisible, hidden as they were in the inner sanctums of females, inside birthing rooms and the chambers of her own house.
³
Thus, Dudley, Simon, and the others had no choice but to bide their time and trust in God’s providence.

As fall drew into winter, Anne would have heard reports that Hutchinson and her followers were becoming increasingly odd in their behavior, asserting their own righteousness and their ability to discern who possessed God’s grace and who did not. Many prominent Boston men had been drawn into her circle of admirers, and her enemies worried that her ideas had begun to contaminate the court itself and therefore the government of Massachusetts.

For Anne the immediate effect of the mounting crisis in Boston was that she was left in charge of the Ipswich household for weeks at a time. During the day this was not so terrible. There were the servants, her sisters, and her mother to help with the children and the chores. The male laborers, her brothers-in-law, and her own brother tended to the outdoor work, and she had little time to be lonely or to miss her husband.

But the nights were tedious, and these were the times she most felt the absence of the loving Simon. She had to admit to herself that she craved the “heat” of his passion, and although she knew that “my dumpish thoughts, my groans, my brakish tears / My sobs, my longing hopes, my doubting fears” could not bring him back to her, still she allowed herself to lament her loneliness. “If he love, how can he there abide?” she would cry in a future poem that was a surprising departure from the stoicism of her earlier years.
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And yet the nights afforded her a privacy that was otherwise impossible. At last the children and servants were asleep, and Anne found herself looking forward to the hours alone. Later she would write Simon, “The silent night’s the fittest time for moan.”
⁵
Not, of course, that the nights were ever particularly silent in Ipswich. Outside there was a veritable cacophony of knocks, rattles, and creaks that could be frightening since any sudden noise—the creak of a branch, the settling of the house, the call of an owl—could be the first sign of an Indian raid. But at least there was no chatter of human voices. No three-year-old Samuel asking the same questions over and over. No rage-filled infant demanding to be picked up and rocked and nursed. And so Anne did not give way to melancholy. Instead, during the hours that she “curtailed from her sleep,” she began to spill out her ideas, arguments, and visions in ambitious and fiercely opinionated verse.
⁶
With only a stick of pine tar that sputtered and filled the room with its dim light, and as baby Dorothy nestled in her little cradle and Samuel lay curled on the big bolster that served as the family bed, Anne turned back to her first love, poetry.

Although she never mentioned Hutchinson’s name in her work, it would have been impossible not to have the woman on her mind. Anne’s family was steeped in the political disaster that was clearly building toward a crisis. Of more personal concern to Anne, the Hutchinson dilemma had directed everyone’s attention more pointedly than ever to the question of the proper role for women in society and what should be done to those who had stepped out of bounds. The debate over the limits that should be placed on female behavior was alarmingly linked to the problem of being a woman and setting pen to paper. Anne had heard cautionary tales such as Winthrop’s declaration that one writing woman had committed suicide by throwing herself down a well because she had addled her wits by reading and thinking too much. Women were too frail in both body and mind to engage in much intellectual activity, or so most people believed, and Mistress Hutchinson was the proof. Her brain, Hutchinson’s male critics argued, was clearly too weak to discern between Satan’s blandishments and the word of God.

This was a terrible thought, but it was the one Anne had to confront if she were to move forward with her own writing life. That the “Scriptured,” older Hutchinson could be tricked by the devil meant that Anne herself could be deluded, since it was clearly no easy matter for a “foolish woman” to stave off Satan. Females, the Reverend Thomas Weld thundered in one of his texts criticizing Hutchinson, were generally “weaker to resist” temptation than men, as they were “more flexible, tender, and ready to yeeld.”
⁷

Thus if the brilliant and learned Hutchinson was an “Eve” who had poisoned the minds of the Bostonian Adams with her tempting words, if she had misled the women under her care and could not perceive the difference between good and evil, truth and falsehood, and if the leaders whom Anne admired deemed Hutchinson an “American Jezabel,” how could Anne dare to write even one word?
⁸

She did not want to raise the ire of the government like Hutchinson had, or fall into the snares of evil. According to the magistrates, Hutchinson had pitted wives against husbands and turned households upside down. Reverend Weld accused Hutchinson of purposely raising “disturbances, divisions, contentions . . . among us, both in Church and State, and in families, setting division betwixt husband and wife.”
⁹
The connection Weld made between civic unrest and familial discord was typical of the Puritan point of view; to set a wife above a husband was a challenge to the hierarchy as a whole. Hutchinson’s actions undermined not only individual families but the entire colony as well.

On the other hand, it was also conceivable that Anne harbored some admiration for Hutchinson and was inspired by her courage. Perhaps she secretly disagreed with Dudley and Simon’s assessment of the older woman. But even if this was the case, it was still dangerous for Anne to begin writing. With all of the rumors afoot, she could easily become the next target of wrath. As one critic of Hutchinson declared, it was “phantasticall madnesse” to believe that “silly Women laden with diverse lusts” could ever be held “in higher esteeme” than men, especially “those honored of Christ, indued with power and authority from him to Preach.”
¹⁰
At the very least, it could be seen as vanity for Anne to write her words on the precious parchment her family hoarded for use on special occasions.

God-fearing and devout, during these late nights Anne had to stare down her own belief in her weakness, as well as her fears of being attacked, to begin to commit her thoughts to parchment. Though she had never heard of any other woman attempting such a feat, perhaps the memory of her father’s voice, all those years ago in the paneled rooms of Sempringham, gave her courage. As it was, she prayed that each line she formed would be in the service of the Lord. If Hutchinson’s preaching was destroying New England, then Anne was determined to pen righteous words on its behalf, to help save the colony from the dissension, discord, and factional fighting that now plagued it. Perhaps she could also rescue the reputation of women, proving that they were capable of achieving work of Puritan merit.

But what did writing in the name of God mean? To begin with it meant stealth. Anne’s poetry had to be a covert activity because of the criticism she would face if anyone hostile to the idea of writing women found out. Her father supported her efforts right from the beginning, as did the rest of her family, but every day her neighbors flooded her home, borrowing supplies, exchanging recipes, helping her sew hems, hull strawberries, or knead the dough for bread. This was not the time for any female to disclose her ambitions as a writer or a thinker no matter how vividly she expressed her belief in Puritan orthodoxy.

So, during the day, Anne went about her duties as a Puritan wife and mother. On Sundays and Thursdays, whether it was raining, blowing sleet, or so blazing hot that her skirts clung to her clammy legs, Anne, like all Ipswich inhabitants, attended religious services in the little meetinghouse down the dirt track from her home. Undoubtedly she rejoiced that she was able to hear the word of God preached by such a learned man as Nathaniel Ward. But there were some troubling aspects to his sermons as well.

In support of the colony’s ministers and magistrates, who were faced with the “boldness” of Hutchinson and her followers, Ward railed against the effrontery of women in general and enjoined his congregation, especially the ladies, to avoid the sin of pride. Using humor and ridicule, he emphasized the terrible danger of allowing women to get out of hand. Few things were more dangerous than the “loose tongued Liberty” of females.
¹¹

Ward also hated the diversity of beliefs, or “poly-piety,” that was springing up in New England thanks to individuals like Anne Hutchinson. He reserved a good deal of his biting sarcasm for denigrating what he called “universall Toleration,” as such permissiveness would allow the ungodly the right to express their outrageous and destructive opinions.
¹²
Ward’s sermons could only reinforce Anne’s anxieties about toeing the line. People would read her words more suspiciously than those of a man, and even male Puritan writers had to stand up to the ministers’ scrutiny: Were their beliefs in keeping with orthodox opinion or not?