Author To Her Book Essay

Katie Lopes-Raftery
Ms. Clapp
AP Literature and Composition
31 December 2008

Open Response: Bradstreet

In Anne Bradstreet’s The Author to Her Book, the speaker reflects on her internal conflicts over the effects of having published a book. This internal struggle between pride and shame is portrayed in the extended metaphor where she compares her book to her own child. Bradstreet uses this method to emphasize her dissatisfaction with the publishing of her poems, but tells how she cannot turn her back on her own creation. The parallels Bradstreet creates conveys the embarrassment she feels because of her imperfect work.

Through Bradstreet’s use of extended metaphor, she weaves an intricate web of parallels between a parent and an author and between a child and a book. This use of metaphor allows the reader to relate emotionally to Bradstreet’s situation. In line seven, the speaker says, “At thy return my blushing was not small,” expressing the depth of her embarrassment. She also uses metonymy expressing her pain more clearly, “My rambling brat should mother call” (8). The simile used in line nine stresses her uneasiness about the published work, “I cast thee by as one unfit for light.” Bradstreet links the rewarding and uneasy parts of being an author with the pain and pleasure of creating a human life.

This poem also presents a contrast between the speaker’s professional and personal life. She cast her book as one “unfit for light” (9) yet being her own, her affection for her work (son) “thy blemishes amend” (12). Once more, she tried to “wash thy face, [the] more defects [she] saw” (13). This idea reflects the complex attitude of the speaker. In trying to make her look better, she just made it worse.

Bradstreet’s poem reveals a feeling of being exposed to the world for all to view and critique, a situation which every writer can relate to. The intertwinement of a son and a book reveals the degree to which an author is like a mother in writing which allows the readers to understand not only the speaker’s nature, but our own as humans.