How do poets from the pre 1914 poetry present their ideas about love and relationships?

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How do poets from the pre 1914 poetry present their ideas about love and relationships?

The poems I have chosen to write about are ‘They flee from me’ by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), ‘The unequal fetters’ by Anne finch (1661-1720) and ‘To his coy mistress’ by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678). I chose these poems because I found them attention-grabbing and remarkable as they all are based around the same topic of love and pretence. Also I liked these poems because of the fact that they have a message that is still true even in today’s world. Wyatt wrote this poem as an epigram of what court life would be like and what would come along with it.

‘They flee from me’ is a poem of love and what Thomas Wyatt’s attitudes are of love and hat it can do to you. The main theme of this poem is that women did just about anything to be with Thomas but eventually in hardly a long time they fled from him as the title suggests ‘They flee from me’. However an important theme is the uncertainty of life in the court of a cruel, fickle tyrant like Henry VIII. This suggests that although the life in the court of Henry VIII may be appealing and attractive it also comes with great dangers. The poem is set in the 16th century. And is basically about Thomas Wyatt’s life and mainly in relation to women and what he thought of them. Coming from the title ‘They flee from me’ something is running away from Wyatt. And this something is women. The poem was written from a male point of view so this could mean that the whole poem was to one side i.e. biased in the favour of men.

The type of language used is 16th century and uses words that we do not usually use now. Some of these words are ‘guise’, ‘forsaking’ and ‘newfangleness’. Although there are these words, the poem is still understandable and they all blend in with the poem. Similes are used such as ‘gentle’, ‘tame’ and ‘meek’ and they are In the poem Wyatt mentions ‘They flee from me that sometime did me seek’ which implied that women would ‘seek’ for him wanting to be with him and now ‘They flee from me’ as if they have found someone else to love and desire.

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Wyatt’s use of this language is significant for the reason that all the words a written as if they have their own special meaning and have a relation to the poem which helps explain the message within the poem. In the first verse women are considered to be ‘gentle’, ‘tame’ and ‘meek’. This is all of what Wyatt’s first impressions of women were when he would encounter them at the beginning. However, Wyatt’s first impressions on women would change not long after due to them moving on to the next man that caught their eye, as if they were ...

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