The Prologue Gender Quotes

Again, she agrees that there is an inherent, basic difference in skill between men and women. This is probably kind of hard for a lot of us to read, since we've been brought up in a society where ideas like this have fallen out of favor. It's important to remember that a woman growing up in Anne Bradstreet's time would have gotten this message all the time—in church, at home, in whatever education she got. With that in mind, we think the fact that the speaker of this poem raises these issues at all is pretty impressive.

Finally, the speaker of this poem gives up on the idea of being as good as her heroes, or matching up to the great male poets of the world. What she asks for instead is for men to be generous enough to give her a chance. You'd have to be a pretty big jerk to refuse a request as polite as that. But we think maybe making these guys look like jerks is all part of the plan.