Body Paragraph - Chapter 5 - "The Author to Her Book" by Anne Bradstreet

The author of the poem uses personification to emphasize that speaker's book is like her child, for she brought it into the world . The first indication of this is the words used to describe the book throughout the poem. The speaker refers to her book as "offspring", which can mean both child and also the product of something, in this case, her writing (1). The use of this word starts the idea of the book being her child and the idea is carried on throughout the poem. The word "birth" is used to describe when the book came into being after it was written by the speaker, which makes the book seem as if it were a baby being brought into the world (2).

The speaker does not like her book, for she calls it "ill-formed" and created from her "feeble brain", showing how she feels inadequate as a writer and that this book of hers is not what she wanted it to be (1). The speaker constantly sees flaws in her work, which she is constantly trying to change: "I washed thy face, but more defects I saw, / And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw" (13-14). The personification in giving the book a "face" gives the imagery of a mother trying to clean off her child to make them look proper; Yet the speaker sees herself in her book: "Thy visage was so irksome in my sight; / Yet being mine own, at length affection would / Thy blemishes amend, if I so could" (10-12). She tells herself that overtime she will try to oversee what she feels is wrong with her creation and learn to love it, since it is really a reflection of herself. The use of the word "visage" underscores the personification of the book, for the word visage is even more descriptive than the word "face", for it refers to the features and emotions on a face.

The last two lines give the poem a sad undertone: "And for thy Mother, she alas is poor, / Which caused her thus to send thee out of door" (23-24). She refers to herself as the "Mother" of the book, her child. She seems to be explaining to this child that, since their mother is poor, she needs to send them out into the real world. Since her child is her book, she's referring to having to sell her writing, her book, to get money.