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Analysis Of Bradstreet's Poem Before The Birth Of Her Children

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As mentioned before, Bradstreet gave birth to eight children during her lifetime. Women in New England spent a great deal of their adult life pregnant. Due to the high rate of death during childbirth, a women’s life expectancy only reached the age of 62. Bradstreet often likely feared her own death during each one of her deliveries. This fear is expressed in her poem titled “Before the Birth of One of Her Children.” She begins this poem reflecting on life, and the reality of death for all human beings, writing, “All things within this fading world hath end” (Bradstreet 225). Bradstreet continues on to say, “The sentence past is most irrevocable, a common thing, yet, oh, inevitable.” By the “common thing” she could be referring to the risks

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