Huswifery

Simone Sutton

9/9/09

AP English III

“Huswifery”

Huswifery is a poem written by a man named Edward Taylor in colonial period of America. The word Huswifery is a variation or misspelling of the word housewifery, meaning the things a woman would do in the house, such as cleaning, cooking, sewing etc. Many of the analogies, metaphors, similes and such Taylor makes in the poem have to do with sewing.

This poem has a very simple ab ab cc rhyme scheme in all three of the stanzas. This poem is also very short and simple, and has a very simple message.

The general meaning of the poem is Taylor asking of God to make him in to the good and righteous person He wants him to be. Taylor is asking God to weave his soul into goodness and make it holy. He says things like; “… make my soul thy holy spoole to bee”, meaning make him into Gods own personal spool of yarn or thread in which to,”…weave the web thyself” weave it into,”… Holy robes for glory”. He is using words like Spinning Wheel, Spool, knit twine and web to show the obvious relationship between sewing and his soul

Taylor Pray that God helps him become the best person he was ever meant to be. He is insinuating that it was God who made him in simplest terms, yarn. He implies that it is also God who will make him into something greater and more complex. The last four lines I think are meant to described how Taylor will look like to God after he has died and gone to heaven.

I find it interesting that Taylor used a woman’s work to describe Gods work. Normally in Christianity women are on the bad sides of things, often on the opposite spectrum of God. I would think using Housewifery to describe Gods work as offensive, but as far I know it must have been seen as creative.

The poem was simply written and was very easy to understand. It was almost too easy because the message it portrays is so easy to explain. The spellings of the words are interesting because they are spelled almost how they sound. I know that back in those days the only rules on spelling were if the word looks correct then it correct, so that made reading and understanding the poem that much easier.