Literary Criticism: Bradstreet and Taylor

Taylor v. Bradstreet: How Irresistible is God’s Grace?

Puritan poets often wrote about nature from a pious point of view. They perceived nature as God’s means of communication and treated anything they could learn in the natural world as a message from heaven. Edward Taylor and Anne Bradstreet incorporate this specific theological interpretation into many of their poems. A majority of Bradstreet’s poems focus on a piece of personal tragedy described in terms of nature. Taylor writes poems that justify Puritan theology using the imagery found in the natural world. Bradstreet composed elegies that describe her struggle to grasp the concept of God’ will. Taylor writes “Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children” as a personal example of how he came to terms with tragedy through a nature metaphor. Taylor and Bradstreet both try to find solace in poetry, but only Taylor seems to accept his turmoil as God’s will. The reason Taylor is able to accept the death of his children is because, unlike Bradstreet, he focuses purely on Puritan theology and not the human condition or internal emotion. The contrast between Bradstreet’s and Taylor’s elegies demonstrates the Puritan concept of total depravity and its subsequent effect on the limits of human belief.

In the late 1660’s, Anne Bradstreet encountered the tragic deaths of three of her grandchildren. She composed elegies to as a way to memorialize each child. These elegies are a manifest of her grief and they display a cumulative opposition to the will of God. Bradstreet’s first elegy, “In Memory of my Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year And Half Old”, begins as an elegy to console the loss. The elegy’s first stanza states “Farewell fair flower that for a space was lent, /Then ta'en away unto eternity” (Bradstreet, 1665). Bradstreet expresses her grief and assuages her pain by reminding herself that all life is spent on borrowed time; however, Bradstreet adds a second stanza where she inserts the will of God and contrasts it with the will of nature. “By nature trees do rot when they are grown,... Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate” (Bradstreet, 1665). This contrast constructs a dichotomy between God and observable nature, whereas Puritan theology would state they are the same. Bradstreet acknowledges this tragedy as the will of God. In the reasoning of Bradstreet, this death could only be the God’s hand because in nature things die after they are “both strong and tall” (Bradstreet, 1665). Bradstreet concludes that the child’s time in nature was cut short directly by the will of God, and that must mean that the child will make it to heaven.

In Bradstreet’s third elegy, she compares all her grandchildren to flowers again, but this time she outright questions why the will of God so is starkly opposed to what happens in nature. The grandchildren are like flowers who were cropped before they had a chance to bloom. Bradstreet says in elegy one that, in nature, plants grow to maturity and bear fruit, then die. In her eyes, her grandchildren are taken out of the state of nature directly by God. Bradstreet works to console herself through the belief that God’s will is good. By the time her third grandchild dies she mourns, “yet is He good” (Bradstreet, 1669). Although not denoted with a question mark, this statement is a question of doubt. The statement follows her metaphor of God as a gardener. Her grandchildren were “Cropt by th’ Almighty's hand” (Bradstreet, 1669). To Bradstreet, the natural progression of her grandchildren has been interrupted by God three times. By the third time, she doesn’t console herself with the gracious affliction theology, the theology that rationalizes adversity as a sign from God and one should be thankful for it. Instead Bradstreet questions this ethical matrix of God and the complacency of her community.

Bradstreet dialogues with the Puritan community through her third elegy. She writes, “With dreadful awe before Him let's be mute, /Such was His will, but why, let's not dispute” (Bradstreet, 1669). In this couplet Bradstreet changes the poem’s speaker; originally the poem spoke in first person, now the poem speaks as if speaking to or for a group of people. She not only begins to have doubts herself, but she starts attributing the same doubts to the community around her. God desires for Bradstreet and all of his followers to silently and passively obey. Bradstreet wants to know why she’s unable to question God. The Puritan community undoubtedly has encountered the death of infants and experienced grief very similar to Bradstreet’s, but the community as a whole is told not to dispute the will of God, it is final and always “good.” Bradstreet gathers their grief and petitions to know why their collective devoutness is never rewarded, only ever punished with horror.

Edward Taylor uses the exact same metaphor Bradstreet does; instead he uses it to justify Puritan theology. The only way he is able to do this is through subjecting himself, his children, and nature to the Puritan concept of total depravity, the notion that all humanly conceivable things are always soiled with sin and therefore corrupted. Taylor’s poem, “Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children,” creates a metaphor in which God is the gardener and humans are plants growing his garden. Two of Taylor’s children encounter God’s fate, “But oh! a glorious hand from glory came/ Guarded with Angels, soon did Crop this flowere” (Taylor). In Taylor’s poem, God also intervened in nature to take the life of children. After the loss of two of his children, Taylor responds differently than Bradstreet does. He finds joy that he could “sweet Flowers for Glory breed, / Whether thou getst them green, or lets them seed” (Taylor). Taylor becomes devoted and pleased to serve at the pleasure of his Lord, even if that means producing more children for God to take the lives of.

Taylor deprives himself from his own personal desires, the will of “natural man.” Natural men would find trouble in the loss of children, like Bradstreet did. Her reaction is characterized as the reaction of natural men. This reaction is focused on rationale, which directly opposes the ideas of total depravity and the gracious affliction. Taylor, instead, eliminates the will of the natural man and fully embodies the will of God. He writes, “and nature fault would finde / Were not thy Will, my Spell, Charm, Joy, and Gem” (Taylor). Taylor suggests that the will of natural men would find fault and doubt in the will of God, but instead he finds joy. In order to find joy in the God of Puritan theology, Taylor has to subject himself to total depravity and dehumanize himself.

Bradstreet does not submit to the notion of total depravity, yet her metaphor works in the same way Taylor’s does. In order to learn about God, Puritans often studied the natural world, and if studied correctly, one could learn an essential religious truth. Bradstreet and Taylor studied and realized that in nature plants grow and then die, a truth relayed from God. It is unnatural for plants to be cropped before they reach their full potential. Each poet acknowledges that God can change the fate of humanity at any given moment regardless of nature. Taylor sees nature as the depraved system in which humanity functions. Any deviation from the natural processes is a result of God’s will. Bradstreet sees deviation from nature as God’s will, but questions why deviation is supposed to be good; therefore, Bradstreet does not function under the assumption of total depravity, she thinks for herself, which would be inherently flawed.

For Taylor to submit to total depravity, he gave up his own human authority. The will of God becomes so important to Taylor that he becomes willing to sacrifice, or offer, his own children if that is what pleases God. This presents Taylor as completely independent of earthly desires. After realizing the will of natural man is depraved, he relinquished attachment to everything that a natural man would covet. Taylor now only covets God’s will, irresistible grace (another central tenet of Puritanism). The deaths of Taylor’s children do not cripple him with grief because he is unattached to their existence, he only attaches himself to God’s grace; therefore, he allows himself to fully accept and understand the gracious affliction God has given him. Taylor’s tragedy becomes a sign of God’s loving, superior, and irresistible grace. Taylor distinctly abandons his human character by the end of his elegy. This can be seen as he begins describing his love for his wife, “Its Weddens Knot, that ne’re can be unti’de. / No Alexanders Sword can it divide” (Taylor). By the end he fully embraces the will of God despite all natural will. Taylor capitulates to depravity. His attachments, to either his children or his wife, do not matter in God’s grand scheme; therefore, they do not matter to him. To Taylor, God’s grace is so irresistible he willingly vacates the love for the people closest to him, a love that one could say characterizes the human condition.

Bradstreet doesn’t abandon her humanity; she begins to doubt the intentions of God’s will before she gives up on the love for family. Her elegies never fully rejoice in the death of her children like Taylor’s does. The role of nature becomes prominent in her elegies. She realizes that God’s will does override nature, but she begins to question why it is necessary to intervene. Bradstreet’s desire for her grandchildren to live and the attachment to their lives becomes more important to her than her attachment to God’s so-called good will. The will of natural man appears more desirable to Bradstreet than God’s will. She is not subjected to depravity, God’s gracious affliction, or irresistible grace. Instead of God’s will, Bradstreet chooses to covet mankind’s idiosyncrasies, like ideas of love, community, and material desire.

Both Bradstreet and Taylor recognize that nature bends to the will of God in Puritan theology. Taylor is able to conform to that same will by embracing his own depravity, so that he is only subjected to God’s irresistible grace. He is presented as a model Puritan minister in his poem. On the other hand, Bradstreet does not conform to God’s will. She, seemingly selfishly, wishes that God’s will would mimic the role nature plays, passive and logical. Her will is aligned with the will of natural man and opposed to God’s will. She is able to resist God’s “irresistible” grace and reclaim her own internal authority contrary to the community around her. Taylor sacrifices everything he loves in order to find joy in God’s will, he even gives up a portion of his own humanity. Within the context of these elegies and Puritan theology, it becomes increasingly impossible to totally accept God’s will and simultaneously find objective truth in nature without losing qualities that are fundamental to the human condition.

Works Cited

Bradstreet, Anne. “In Memory of my Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased

August, 1665, Being a Year And Half Old.” Print.

Bradstreet, Anne. “On my Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet who Died on 16 November, 1669,

Being but a Month, and One Day Old.” Print.

Taylor, Edward. “Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children.” Print.