The Author to Her Book

The mother in the poem is the poet herself. This mother is so conscientious that she “wash’d” (Line 13), attempted to “blemishes amend” (Line 12), and clothed the child in what cloth is at hand, “home-spun” (Line 18). These activities are nurturing, just what one would expect of a diligent but “poor” (Line 23) mother who is doing her best in the absence of a father for her child. In choosing to represent the poet as mother, Anne Bradstreet is implicitly urging the reader to see writing as a feminine activity.

The representation of the mother as trying but failing may be a nod to negative assumptions about the intellect and creativity of women. On the other hand, using the mother as a symbol of the struggling writer is a rhetorical strategy used by many of Bradstreet's contemporaries, describing their work as humble and flawed when it is in reality an example of artistic excellence in an exercise of conventional humility. The polished nature of “The Author to Her Book” represents the poet as a mother who is in fact skilled in her creation of poetry.