American Literature / Unit 4 AML 0316 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Bradstreet's Quarrel With Her Own Consolations
Captions available
The idea
Bradstreet's best poems record an argument with herself. Doctrine says the world is dust; affection says the house, the husband and the children are precious. She resolves it in the last lines and lets a reader hear what resolving cost.
In practice
Doctrine wins the ending; feeling keeps the middle.
Where people slip
The resolution's difficulty is the poem's subject.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it