The importance of this picture is that it is a visual representation of the transformation of women throughout history and literature. Phillis Wheatley, was a West African slave who was brought to America at the young age of 7. She was educated by the family that owned her and in 1767 her first poem was published in a Boston newspaper. The way Wheatley is looking up with a focused look on her face shows how deep and and in thought she is. Wheatley has the accomplishment of being the first African American to have her work published. This picture is also of importance because it is vastly different of how women were portrayed in most pictures. They usually were shown with a blank look on their face as if given the characteristic of being without emotion and intellect. What stands out in this picture is not only that she is pondering but that she is in the act of writing and Wheatley was famous for writing about what she knew and religion.

    Finding one's voice is the most important lesson to get from this source. Anne Bradstreet was a simple Puritan woman who happened to have the gift of words. She was an exception to women in this certain time period because she found a way for the world to see what exactly she was feeling. She was also one of the first poets to write English verse in the Americas. Her memoirs showcase the spirit of her soul and the love she had for others.

  "If what I do prove well,
   it won't advance,
   They'll say it's stolen,
   or else it was by chance"
site:http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=i&ID=52

    Like Wheatley, Bradstreet wrote about what she knew and experienced in life : love, family, God, and herself. While this article states of the absence of a portrait of this groundbreaking poet, it says that her picture consists of every poem she has ever written. The picture I have included shows so much insight as to who Bradstreet was. She looks as plain as Puritan women should have been back then. But the difference is is that she is looking directly at the reader. Yes she looks like an everyday person but the way her face is shown in the portrait and how her eyes are staring directly forward shows what type of person she was. 

    A captivity narrative is defined as a work of literature that often includes redemption by faith and the rescue of oneself from the evils that they have been subjected to. Mary Rowlandson, author of the captivity narrative The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, was kidnapped by Native Americans for eleven weeks during King Phillip's War. What she learned from this experience is a representation of the strength of Rowlandson. The Puritans believed that God's grace shaped the world and Rowlandson. Throughout her narrative, she talks about how human being must accept God's will and make sense of it.

"O the wonderful power of God that I have seen, and the experience that I have had. I have been in the midst of those roaring lions, and savage bears, that feared neither God, nor man, nor the devil, by night and day, alone and in company, sleeping all sorts together, and yet not one of them ever offered me the least abuse of unchastity to me, in word or action. Though some are ready to say I speak it for my own credit; but I speak it in the presence of God, and to His Glory."

    Both of the articles used to talk about Mary Rowlandson present key points as to why she is such a literary figure in literature. To a Puritan, God was everything. He was there at every moment in the day and was always watching. Rowlandson is such a great example of a strong female because she took from her terrible personal experience and instead of keeping it in she wrote about it. Her story became an example of the power of God in one's heart. During the narrative she makes comments and talks about certain aspects of her "redemption"that resemble that of Daniel in the Bible. She also goes against her communities beliefs by expressing her love for God. While God was the most important aspect in a Puritan's life, a woman was not to show emotions and love. Her story of redemption and that she was able to survive as a female is proof enough of her long-lasting effect on women and literature. To most women, the only way for people to see that they truly had feelings and opinions was to write them down on paper. But Rowlandson was given the opportunity to learn from the horrors she was subject to and show the world the strength of women and God.