Ane Bradstreet: To my Dear and Loving Husband

Temmi Adeyeni
Ms. Brown
AP English III
Per.11

Anne Bradstreet: To My Dear and Loving Husband

Anne Bradstreet’s poem, To My Dear and Loving Husband, is just Anne Bradstreet’s way of expressing her love for her husband Simon. Knowing from her biography, her husband, Simon was her strength and her backbone. When she came to the New World the things that were going on around her overwhelmed her. Whether it was the fact that she had to take care of eight children on her own or all the diseases that wanted to take a hold of her and her family. Though her husband, Simon, was not there to help (due to the fact that he was a man in that era and that he was protecting and helping to hold up the Puritan beliefs) her take care of the children she still loved him. The main argument presented to the reader in this poem is that she holds the love that she has for her dear and loving husband, Simon, very close to her heart and that no one thing, person, or situation can ever come between their loves or replace what they have together. She proves this argument by establishing pathos. “I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold Or all the riches the East doth hold” (Anne Bradstreet 1608). Here, she is saying that the love that she has for her husband surpasses any other valuables that the world may have. She uses gold, because gold is very valuable. Gold at that moment in time was a sign of wealth. It was known of as monetary value. Anybody who had gold at that time was well respected and looked up to. So therefore, if she values the love that she has for her husband more than gold, it means that she respects it and she cares for it a whole lot. That line just validates how she feels for her husband. She would rather have the love of her husband rather than all of the riches of the east. She also justifies her point by saying that she prizes her love more than all the riches of the east. Back then, the east was the “Mecca” of the European society. All of the valuable goods were coming from Asia. Goods that include spices and fragrances. Those were the most prized possessions of that time. Anne Bradstreet clearly does not care about these things all that she cares about is the love of her husband. It really hits home, because at this point in her life you would have thought that she would really be more interested in the pursuit of the wealth and the riches rather than the love of her husband. In including the preceding line, she establishes ethos and therefore proves her argument and makes it more believable. In Conclusion, Anne Bradstreet expresses the love that she has for her husband by using ethos and comparing it to things that are much more valuable to others.