Anne Bradstreet and Predestination

Hi, it's Jasmine.

Anne Bradstreet's writing is definitely easier to understand than Edward Taylor's, but some sections of her poems still confuse me.

In "Prologue [to her book]", she emphasized the importance of knowing one's position and duty on earth by stating,
A Bartas (French poet she admired) can do what a Bartas will,
But simple I according to my skill.

I thought this meant that Bradstreet thought each person should "strive not above what strength hath got" (as stated by Taylor in one of his poems), because humans don't have the strength to fight against what is destined by God. She again emphasizes this when she writes, Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are. I felt like she contradicted herself, because she had written earlier that she did not want to conform to the notion of what a woman should be like - one that has a needle, not a pen, in her hand. But wasn't people's belief that women should be inferior to men destined by God?

Also, in "Verses upon the Burning of our House," she wrote that she cried out to God, asking for help, when she saw the fire. Why would she plead to God for help if she thought that the fire was predestined? She could pray, but nothing would happen. In Taylor's "Upon a Wasp Chilled With Cold," we learned although the wasp reaches out to the sun, the sun merely does what it always does - prayer has no effect.

I guess what really confuses me is predestination. Do you think Bradstreet started to doubt it, but felt like she was being disloyal to God? I feel like Bradstreet often started to doubt God's plan, but always caught herself and reaffirmed her loyalty to him ("He knows it is the best for thee and me"). Since Puritans were taught to believe in predestination from a very young age, did that mean that they didn't see anything as unjust or unfair (since everything was determined by God)? Were they taught not to regret anything they did because their actions had been predestined? Did humans have any free will?