Anne Finch’s body of work covers personal themes and reveals social undertones at the same time. She began to seriously write during the testing times of her marriage with her husband and dedicated many of her poems to him. Much of her work is an extensive exploration of love.
Finch shows the intricate connection between verse and love. In A Letter to The Same Person, she fuses the two ideas of poetry and love. Her poetry is an extensive demonstration of the poetic conventions of her day, yet also addresses the hindrance they cause to expressing inner thoughts. This dichotomy is presented in To Mr F., now Earl of Winchilsea.
On a more ideological note, Finch was a devout Catholic and wrote an elegy for James II titled Upon the Death of King James the Second. Here, she demonstrated her acumen for social and political ideas.
Adam Posed
"Adam Posed" is a poem by Anne Finch. It is a classical poem and an allegory. It is a satirical poem. It is based on the biblical myth of Adam. The title of the poem is Adam Posed, where "pose" means perplexed, baffled, or challenged. This means that Adam is shocked by the appearance of an artificially adorned woman. For context, in the Bible, Adam was given the task of naming all living creatures. However, in the poem, he is confronted with something so artificial that he gets confused about what he should name this creature. "Our first father" refers to Adam. "Toilsome plow" suggests the biblical punishment after the Fall, where Adam was condemned to labor for survival. "Thorns in his path" symbolizes the difficulties of his life that he brought upon himself. "Labor on his brow" refers to sweat and effort needed for survival after the Fall. In the next lines, Adam is described as wearing rough, primitive clothing made of animal skin to hide himself as he became aware of "shame." In the next lines, we are introduced to another character—a vain fantastic nymph. This refers to a highly fashionable, artificial woman of the late 17th century. The woman is described as "In all her airs, in all her antic graces," which means that she has pretentious mannerisms and exaggerated gestures of elegance. The women of the late 17th century are described as constantly changing their clothes and appearance, wearing their makeup in different styles. "More various faces" may also refer to fickleness in personality. The sight of this woman left Adam baffled, as he had just completed naming all creatures, a task which was given to him by God. He could easily classify natural creatures, but it was very hard for him to name this artificial creature which had just appeared in front of his eyes. Adam struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. He would be unable to determine which element (earth, water, air, fire) this strange creature belonged to. This implies that the fashionable woman is so unnatural that she doesn’t fit into the natural world. The woman is described as "hit the wav’ring form," which implies that the woman's appearance was very unstable and ever-changing and took different forms. The poem concludes with "Giv’n this thing a name," which again emphasizes the difficulty of naming such an artificial, ever-changing being. Anne humorously suggests that if Adam, who named all living things, saw a late 17th–18th century fashionable woman with her luxurious dresses, makeup, and mannerisms, he would be completely baffled. To Adam, she is so artificial that she seems unnatural, making her beyond Adam’s ability to categorize. This is a critique of vanity and excess, mocking how far society has strayed from natural simplicity.
