Anne Bradstreet is one of the most important literary figures of the colonial era in American history, and she is often cited as one of the main sources. of Puritan literature. Some of her work had pre-First Wave feminist overtones, as she subtly alluded to certain gender inequalities, at least to those who could read between the lines. “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent at Public Employment” is one of the prime examples of how she accomplished this, particularly in a way that was always endearing to men who only heard this that they wanted to hear. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent at Public Employment,” the speaker discusses the differences between her mind and her heart, as well as between her eyes and her life; what many men probably missed in their time is that she alludes to her husband with each of these things. The reader only knows this because the speaker keeps calling her joy and her "magazine of earthly reserves" and then personifies these things by suggesting that they collectively constitute a single entity that is distant from her. She describes this period of absence as winter and she mourns him as if he were dead. In contrast, she goes on to describe the moments of his presence as periods in which she feels neither storm nor cold, so she pleads for him to come back to her and end his "dead time." She even mentions that it's hard to look at their children because they remind her of him. Calling her husband her “earthly store magazine” refers to the biblical notion expressed in similar terms of inhabiting this sinful world before ascending to heaven in the afterlife. She uses this to mean that, aside from God himself, her husband is everything to her. It is, however, very important that the reader understands that her husband is not dead, which is an easy misconception to make; rather, he is simply on a business trip. The first feminist nuance appears here implicitly in the simple fact that she is housebound, and the speaker goes on to describe her situation. She doesn't want to be there while her husband is away and she describes it as a winter time. She also says that her limbs are cold without him, painting a picture of a house that is not so much a home as a cold prison. The speaker uses zodiac imagery to describe the seasonal cycle mentioned earlier, and she references zodiac signs throughout the poem. The sun occupies its highest point where the constellation Capricorn was in summer, and in winter the days are shorter and colder. The coldness now takes on both a literal and figurative meaning as it draws the reader's mind toward the solitude it describes while directly referencing the seasonal cycle. This is why the return of her husband is likened to the period when the sun occupies Cancer, a hot period which occurs in summer. The underlying issue of this poem, however, is not seasonal or sexual and concerns only the speaker's loneliness. The poem really points to something that is even more significant than these things. Ultimately, she examines her situation in a very literal way, but the poet Bradstreet wants the reader to critically analyze the feelings expressed by the speaker of the poem. The speaker talks about this coldness, this loneliness, etc. in a very specific and deliberate way. She chooses her words carefully and often has many choices about what to say..