Anne Bradstreet was one of the most prominent early English poets of North America. She was also the first significant Puritan figure in American literature.
Anne Bradstreet often wrote about the traditions of Puritan life. More importantly, she often questioned and challenged them, a feature that was not common among women at the time. She was an educated woman, and her poems touch on a great variety of topics. However, most of them focus on her everyday life as a wife and mother.
Bradstreet questioned the traditional stereotypes of women at the time. She believed that women could excel at roles that were typically reserved for men, such as government. She also believed that men were not superior to women, but that each gender complemented the other one. In fact, she expressed great respect for the institution of marriage. She also defied Puritan norms by writing about the romantic love she had for her husband, and the intensity of her feelings, which would have been improper at the time,