Transatlantic Dame School: The Early Poems of Anne Bradstreet as Pedagogy

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. ¹See the Winthrop Society for more info on Cambridge: http://www.winthropsociety.com/doc_cambr.php

2. ²Apparently, needlework was a regular curricular subject taught in all girls’ schools or by tutors. Even Makin’s school at Putney taught needlework. Thus, when Bradstreet quips in “The Prologue” to The Tenth Muse, “I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/Who says my hand a needle better fits,” often descried by feminists as proof of Bradstreet’s proto-feminist leanings, this line might instead simply mean that she had not yet mastered the curricular skill of needlework in her normal studies.