Anne Bradstreet and the Puritan ideology Among the Puritans, in their society, women did not enjoy the same equality as men did. Despite this fact, however, the women did occupy a very important place in the Puritan community and system of values. The Puritan ideology saw in family structure the most important component of their world. The truth is that family structure was almost entirely based on woman and on how well she performed her many functions and responsibilities: first of all, a woman was seen as a true instructor and educator of her family. She was like a means of transmitting the message of the Puritan ideology to future generations and to inspire them with the right spirit. In addition, she was also dealing with the entire household: children, servants, etc. Finally, she was even dealing with life and death: she delivered babies and attending to death beds. On the one hand, women were so much present in the community life and so much absent from it, on the other hand, because they were not allowed to express themselves in public. They were just retelling to their children what they knew from men. This was a paradox; a woman was fully included in the society and totally excluded from it as an equal citizen and human being. The poetry of Anne Bradstreet demonstrates how this paradox is expressed, the main contradiction of her writing is also how she questions the legitimacy of her own place in her society, even starting with such a thing that the expression itself "a woman-writer" sounds unheard-of for the Puritans – it's like an impossible thing for them, because the woman was supposed to be silent outside her ….