Anne Bradstreet's poem, "The Prologue," portrays the struggles of being a woman in a Puritan society. She realized that in a Puritan society, women were not meant to speak their mind and have strong opinions. With this poem she acknowledges her role as a woman in society even if she doesn't agree with it. Anne Bradstreet shows her recognition of men's supposed superiority in that time period with this line: "Men can do best, and women know it well" (40). Regardless of her acknowledgment of her role in society, she uses her poetry to convey her feelings and opinions about it through honesty and humor. Anne Bradstreet lived in a time where women were meant to keep quite and tend to the children and home. She wrote "The Prologue"
This first stanza shows the irony that is displayed throughout the entire poem. In the second stanza, Anne Bradstreet speaks of the "Great Bartas," who is formally known as Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas. Du Bartas was known to be her favorite poet and she deeply respected him and emulated him at times. The third stanza she basically is explaining that readers should not expect too much from her as evidenced by these lines, "My foolish, broke, blemished Muse so sings; / All this to mend, alas, no art is able / Cause nature made it so irreparable" (16-18). The fourth stanza shows Anna Bradstreet apologizing. The fifth stanza is the most honest stanza I think. She wrote "If what I do prove well, it won't advance; / They'll say it's stol'n, or else it was by chance" (29-30). She is saying that even if she wrote a good poem, most people would think that it was either stolen from a man or even written out of luck. The seventh stanza shows her admittance that men are at the top of the sociological pyramid and women are only there to compliment them. The statement "Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are" (39) isn't an acknowledgment of a deficient woman, but a plea for people to realize that women are very capable despite the suppression of patriarchy and Puritanism (Blackstock, 1997). But at the same time she asks for a little recognition as a woman too as shown in these two lines: "Pre-eminence in all and each is yours; / Yet