Wilderness in Anne Bradstreet's Poetry

            The two different voices we hear in Anne Bradstreet’s poetry – that of Anne, the emotional and questioning woman, and that of Mistress Bradstreet, the proper Puritan wife and mother – create an interesting tension between individuality and conformity.  Although at first glance this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the concept of wilderness, I think that it actually does.  In my last blog posting I explored the idea of wilderness as a personal condition of being alone and friendless, cut off from the social and material support of one’s community.  Fear of this kind of wilderness can be a compelling reason to conform to the social norms of that community, so as not to be cast out from its safety and security.  This was much more the case in Anne Bradstreet’s time than in ours (at least for American culture in general). 

            I think this is probably one of the main reasons why Mistress Bradstreet’s poetic voice seemed to overrule Anne’s most of the time.  For example, in her poem “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment,” Anne’s voice speaks passionately throughout most of the poem of her intense longing for her absent husband:  “I, like the Earth this season, mourn in black, My Sun is gone so far in’s zodiac, Whom whilst I ‘joyed, nor storms, nor frost I felt, His warmth such frigid colds did cause to melt” (7-10).  But Mistress Bradstreet’s voice speaks in the last few lines of the poem, paraphrasing a Scriptural description of marriage:  “Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone, I here, thou there, yet both but one” (25-26).  A similar sequence of poetic voices occurs in the poems “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and a Half Old” and “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10^th, 1666.” 

            I think this pressure to conform is also evident in her poems “The Prologue” and “The Author to Her Book.”  Because it was highly uncommon in Anne Bradstreet’s time for a woman to be so erudite and articulate, she found it necessary to display the modesty required of a Puritan woman by criticizing and discounting her own literary work:  “If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes Give thyme or parsley wreath, I ask no bays; This mean and unrefined ore of mine Will make your glist’ring gold but more to shine” (“The Prologue” 45-48).  In “The Author to Her Book,” Anne characterizes her poems as “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain” (1) and cleverly uses a sewing metaphor (women’s work!) to lament, “In better dress to trim thee was my mind, But nought save homespun cloth i’ th’ house I find” (17-18).

Rip Van Winkle and the Captivity Tales

            In both captivity narratives and “Rip Van Winkle,” wilderness is depicted in several different ways:  as a sanctuary, as a mysterious and utterly unfamiliar place, and as a personal condition of being helpless and far from friends. 

            For Rip Van Winkle, the wooded peaks and valleys of the beautiful Kaatskill mountains are a place of refuge, the only place where he can escape from his wife’s verbal and emotional abuse.  “Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative to escape from the labour of the farm and the clamour of his wife, was to take gun in hand, and stroll away into the woods” (459).  He meets a mysterious stranger who demands his assistance, but Rip is unable to talk to him because “…there was something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe, and checked familiarity” (460).  After his long sleep on the “wild mountain” (460), Rip makes his way back down to his village, where he encounters a different – and profoundly disorienting – kind of wilderness:  rapid changes have rendered his once-familiar village bewilderingly different.  His dog, his wife, even his friends are gone.  You can imagine his confusion and anxiety, and that sinking “we’re not in Kansas anymore” feeling.  This terrifying aloneness is finally relieved when an old neighbor recognizes him, and Rip’s daughter takes him home to live a peaceful life with her family.  Thus he is rescued from the wilderness of feeling lost and alone by being included once again in a human community.

            This theme of human community helping a person to survive the dangers of the wilderness is also present in both captivity tales.  For Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, this doesn’t happen in the way we might expect.  After he is abandoned in the wilds of North America by the captain of his expedition, Cabeza de Vaca  is treated with generosity and kindness by the Native Americans.  When he eventually meets up again with the people of his own culture, they mistreat him and arouse his anger by mistreating and exploiting the Native Americans.  “The Avavares always treated us well.  We lived as free agents, dug our own food, and lugged our loads of wood and water” (32).  “The observing Arbadaos…took each of us by the hand and led us to their dwellings” (33).  “…the Indians were always diligent to bring us all they could” (35).  “After this we had a hot argument with them [the Christians] for they meant to make slaves of the Indians in our train” (35).  “…the Christians had lied…we healed the sick, they killed the sound; we came naked and barefoot, they clothed, horsed, and lanced; we coveted nothing but gave whatever we were given, while they robbed whomever they found and bestowed nothing on anyone” (35).

            In Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, members of her family are murdered by Native Americans, who also burn down her house and take her “…to travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness” (121).  During her captivity, helpless and far from her friends, she is greatly comforted by her religious faith (a form of human community) and by reading the Bible (the most important – to her – repository of the sacred stories and wisdom of her culture, another form of human community).  One cold night she is sent out of the wigwam to sleep outside, and eventually is given shelter by an elderly Indian and his squaw, who also give Mary some ground nuts to eat.  “She gave me also something to lay under my head, and a good fire we had; and through the good providence of God, I had a comfortable lodging that night” (126).  In her narrative, Mary is much less effusively appreciative of this hospitality than she is of the hospitality and emotional support she receives from members of her Christian community after she is ransomed.  “I was not before so much hemmed in with the merciless and cruel heathen, but now as much with pitiful, tender-hearted and compassionate Christians.  In that poor, and distressed, and beggarly condition I was received in; I was kindly entertained in several houses” (131).  Through the generosity of members of her faith, Mary and her husband are provided with the necessities of survival:  “The Lord hath been exceeding good to us in our low estate, in that when we had neither house nor home, nor other necessaries, the Lord so moved the hearts of these and those towards us, that we wanted neither food, nor raiment for ourselves or ours” (133).  Whether it is by sharing food, shelter and warmth, or providing companionship and social and emotional support, community is an essential element of human life.  Without it, we can’t survive.

Native American Creation Stories

           In the video we watched in class ("American Passages – A Literary Survey:  Native Voices"), one of the Native American speakers made the point that “storytelling always begins with the land…the land told us the stories.”  This seems to me to be different from the way I viewed wilderness in my original definition.  While I viewed wilderness as a place set apart, free from human technology and restrictions, Native American authors don’t seem to view humanity and wilderness as being separate from one another.  As another quote I have written in my notes from the video puts it, “human beings emerged from the Earth and are part of the Earth."

            In the Iroquois creation story, Sky Woman’s twin sons  – in whose image humans beings are made – create the world.  Using parts of his mother’s body, Enigorio (good mind) creates the sun, moon, and stars, then goes on to form “numerous creeks and rivers on the Great Island…and numerous species of animals of the smallest and the greatest…and fishes of all kinds to inhabit the waters” (20).  He then goes on to create human beings, “two images of the dust of the ground in his own likeness, male and female” (20).  So humanity is literally made from the land, the Earth (which is also the way it happens in our own Judeo-Christian culture’s creation story).  Enigonhahetgea’s (bad mind’s) contribution to creation was “numerous high mountains and falls of water, and great steeps, and also…various reptiles which would be injurious to mankind” (20).  The inclusion of both beautiful and dangerous elements in this view of wilderness is similar to the view I expressed in my first blog.

            In the Pima creation story, the earth is created by a supernatural shaman, Juh-wert-a-Mah-kai, using “perspiration, or greasy earth” (22) from his breast.  From this he creates the greasewood bush, a very important local plant, and ants who build the earth.  After creating Nooee, the buzzard person, and the sun, moon, stars, mountains, and plants, the shaman creates people:  “And now Juhwertamahkai rubbed again on his breast, and from the substance he obtained there made two little dolls, and these he laid on the earth.  And they were human beings, man and woman” (23).  Again, human beings are formed from the same substance as the Earth they live upon. 

            This view of humanity as being an element of the natural world, formed from it and an integral part of it, feels oddly reassuring to me.  It contrasts with the Euro-American cultural view which seems to suggest that humanity is somehow separate from nature – either that we’re supposed to subdue it and have dominion over it or, conversely, that our very existence is an insupportable strain on the earth and we ruin everything we touch.  The Native American perspective as articulated in the video is that humans and all of nature are part of a living whole that is evolving together.  Another memorable quote from the video:  “That which does not grow and change is dead.”  To me, this statement offers hope.  Growth and change often feel slow, difficult, and painful to us, but it is the nature of evolution – and life.  To be alive is to evolve.