By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) was the first person in America, male or female, to have a volume of poems published. A fascinating figure, she herself wasn’t American and had been born in England, but she was among a group of early English settlers in Massachusetts in the 1630s.
‘To My Dear and Loving Husband’ is a short poem by Bradstreet; like many of her poems, its language is relatively plain, yet some words of analysis may shed a little more light on the meaning of Bradstreet’s poem.
Summary
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
Bradstreet praises her ‘dear and loving husband’, whom she regards as her complement, the one who completes her. They are two different people, and yet together, as husband and wife, they form a unity. Indeed, if any married couple could claim to be one unit, it is she and her husband, the poet argues.
Bradstreet also claims that she loves her husband more than any woman has ever loved a man.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
And just as she has loved him as much as it’s possible for a woman to love a man, so she, the poet, is as happy with her husband as it’s possible for a woman to be.
She then invites – indeed, challenges – other women to compare their happiness with hers; she is confident that the joy she feels with her husband will exceed any marital joy these other women have experienced.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
Bradstreet then turns back to her husband, telling him that she values his love more than she would whole goldmines, or all of the rich treasures found in the East (i.e., Asia).
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor aught but love from thee, give recompence.
The love that she bears her husband is like a fire that could not be ‘quenched’ or extinguished by all of the water in all the rivers of the world. And nothing in the world could match her love for him except his love for her, given in return.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
And yet, at the same time, she acknowledges that her husband’s love is something that she could never adequately ‘repay’ or equal; all she can hope and ‘pray’ for is that God and the heavens will reward him for the love he gives her.
Then while we live, in love lets so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
Bradstreet concludes her poem by calling on her husband to ‘persever’ (i.e., persevere) in their love for each other, as long as they both live. That way, when they die and go to heaven, they will live together forever, in heaven.
Analysis
In ‘To My Dear and Loving Husband’, Anne Bradstreet utilises some suggestive language, especially figurative language involving money, wealth, and riches.
Note just how many images of money and wealth we find in this short poem: gold, riches, recompence, repay, possibly picking up on the faint pun of ‘dear’ in ‘dear and loving husband’ (not just loved, but valuable to her – in a way that exceeds any monetary value).
Bradstreet and her husband lived among the early colonies of Massachusetts in the mid-seventeenth century, where life was hard. It was a nascent civilisation still developing.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that love and emotional sustenance are worth more than gold or treasure in such an environment. People relied upon a strong family unit, and the support of those around them, to survive.
The social conventions of her day meant that women were meant to be subordinate to their husbands, following the Christian idea of the father and husband as the head of the household. There is no ‘me’ in the first couplet of Bradstreet’s poem, yet the coupling that the lines describe could not exist without her. But she – that is, me – does not figure in the rhyme.
The closing lines of Bradstreet’s poem declare that, if they are true to each other in this world, she and her husband will live together forever in heaven:
Then while we live, in love lets so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
‘Live’ returns three times in two lines, but each time Bradstreet is using it slightly differently: first of all to refer to their earthly life, then to refer to their time of death (‘live no more’), and finally to refer to an eternal life (‘live ever’).
Thus ‘To My Dear and Loving Husband’ is not just a poem about wifely devotion to a husband. It is also a religious or devotional poem, in which the husband is cast as a figure worthy of her love and devotion, much as God in heaven is. And through loving her husband, the poet will gain access to heaven, just as love for God will gain her a place in heaven when she dies.
But the poem is more complex in its depiction of marital love than this would suggest. Although the first two couplets suggest that Bradstreet’s love for her husband, and his love for her, are equal, the poem becomes more ambivalent about this as it continues.
Note how Bradstreet asserts that the only sufficient ‘recompence’ for her love for her husband is the love he gives her in return: ‘My love is such that Rivers cannot quench, / Nor aught but love from thee, give recompence.’ But she immediately goes on to say that his love for her ‘is such’ that she ‘can no way repay’. So does the husband’s love equal the wife’s or exceed it?
In summary, Bradstreet is offering a snapshot of wifely devotion which at once asserts that her husband is worthy of the most devotional and intense love from her, but that whatever love she can offer him pales into insignificance next to the love he gives to her.
This is because she feels lucky and happy to have the love of such a good man, and – assuming the role of the modest spouse – Bradstreet suggests that she cannot ‘repay’ such love because she is not worthy. Only God can equal the love her husband is capable of giving.
Form
The poem takes the form of rhyming couplets, echoing the married couple of husband and wife. The poem is written in iambic pentameter, so we can technically call these rhyming couplets ‘heroic couplets’, which are associated with weighty, serious verse, including translations of classical epic poetry (about heroes: hence ‘heroic’).
By rhyming ‘we’ with ‘thee’ in that first couplet, Bradstreet joins her husband with her through their marriage, but does so in a self-effacing way: rather than coupling herself with her husband through rhyming me with thee, she uses the collective we. Bradstreet is among the least egotistical of poets.
In the last analysis, the poem is both a personal address to her husband and a poem about married love in a Christian society; it speaks for both Bradstreet and for many wives of the time, both at home and in the ‘colonies’ of America. That may help to account for Bradstreet’s popularity in England, when her poems were first published in London in 1650.
We include ‘To My Dear and Loving Husband’ in our pick of the best very short love poems in English. You might also enjoy our analysis of Andrew Marvell’s very different take on love.