The "Raping Numbers" of Bradstreet's Admirers: Petrarchan Verse and Sexual Violence in Colonial Massachusetts

At least one of Anne Bradstreet's contemporaries thought of her as a writer of sonnets, and several of her extant poems play with the conventions of Petrarchan verse. Although Bradstreet embraced Petrarchism as a poetic language, she objected to the ways in which male poets used the sonnet to objectify and silence women; her experiments in the form legitimize the desires, bodily presence, and subjectivity of women. Her experience of sexual harassment and linguistic violence at the hand of male gatekeepers in the arts led Bradstreet to propose an alternative model for poetic prowess and recognition, a model that eschews the sexual violence construed by her contemporaries as an honor.