| Term Paper Title | Huswifery |
| # of Words | 491 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 1.96 |
"Huswifery"
Puritan language is the most striking in the doubleness of its
appeal. It looks both ways: to radical voluntarism, yet to utter submission; to absolute authority, yet to limited authority, defined as duties
more than powers and constrained by mutual obligation from God on down; to God the father, yet to God the mother; to the Word as strict
law, yet to the Word as spiritual milk; to the self filled with filth as lustful pride, or anger, yet to the self reborn of the Father in infantile ecstasy or collectively married to Christ in virgin purity
(Leverenz, 7).
It is possible that all of these traits that Leverenz describes in Puritan language exist in this poem. However, those that are most obvious are
the doubleness of God as both father and mother as well as the doubleness of radical voluntarism to utter submission.
In portraying God as a spinster, one who will "[Taylor's] Distaff make for [him]" and "knit therein this Twine," Taylor is essentially offering his soul up to a patriarchal and authoritative God, one who will "clothe" his "ways with glory" and who will "make [Taylor] [His] Loom." This authoritative and omniscient God coincides with that which is easily interpreted as a father figure, one to which both the individual and the community submit in reverence. This figure represents the patriarchy so evident in Puritanism but it is also
the existence of this patriarchy that Leverenz doubts.
Though God is being employed in this poe...Read entire document
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