Bradstreet’s evaluation of her own poetry as “ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain” is sincere. The poem elaborates on the pieces of creative work developed in the author’s mind. The poetess metaphorically presents her poetry referring to children born in the natural way. Bradstreet single-handedly coined every bit of the poem just like a mother gives birth to her offspring. Generally, the pain of writing poems is compared to the pain of bearing children.
Sincerity is also reflected as the poems were taken from Bradstreet and published without her knowledge by her brother. The poetess had no idea about the publishing until the work was completed. Moreover, Bradstreet had not made final corrections to the poems; according to her, those works were not yet ready to be presented to the public. Generally, no mother would like her children to be presented to the public in their innocence just after birth before she trains them up.
Bradstreet’s poetic evaluation is a kind of self-abasement that can be viewed as evidence of extreme insecurity. Intractably, Bradstreet wrote her poems at the time when the American woman was not free to express her views in the patriarchal era. As a puritan woman, she was expected to stay at home and never rise beyond her societal description. However, she kept writing being careful to present her work was to the public since there was a lot of criticism.
Being a woman writer, Bradstreet was rather insecure since puritans viewed women writers as hazardous both to themselves and to the society. Publishing of her works led to what she was afraid of because of her unedited work: critics of those days analyzed her poems and presented their views. However, other critical writers praised her ability to cite the gender indifference and oppression of women in the society.