Abstract

Anne Bradstreet’s poems about her family and her life on the frontier rhetorically negotiated a place of stability for the author amid the theology/praxis tension of Puritan life. This article argues that Bradstreet’s poems function rhetorically to define godliness as a public performance of community-sanctioned, gendered action, an inherently Puritan way of understanding life. This definition of godliness allows Bradstreet’s poems to function as a catechism for outlining exactly how a Puritan individual should perform in order to contribute to material stability on the frontier and an assurance of eternal election.