“This coyness, lady were no crime”
Here the man is annoyed that his lover will not consummate her love to him, because of her coyness and her persistence to not lose her virginity before marriage. However it would be a crime if she did lose her virginity to him. The woman would usually not accept her lover’s offer before marriage as having sex before marriage goes against religion and the social codes.
This shows the man’s unromantic love for his lover by persisting to have sexual relations with her and putting himself first without thinking what would happen to his lover if she lost her virginity. There is unromantic love shown when he tires to persuade his lover to have sex with him by using shocking imagery:
“…then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your greater honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:'
He is saying that after death no one will be able to get to you but the worms and that her honour in preserving her virginity is going to be worth nothing when she's dead. Through use of penetrating words and displeasing imagery, he is able to shock his lover.
Similarly, John Donne’s ‘The Flea’ written in the 17th century, is also about a man persuading his lover to lose her virginity with him and this poem does not come across as being romantic and is more about lust than love. It focuses entirely on the man trying to persuade the woman to go against all of her religious and moral beliefs and sleep with him.
‘It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be;’
Here Donne who takes on the narrative voice uses sexual connotations. Here he is saying the flea has sucked first his blood, then her blood, therefore, inside the flea, they are mingled; and it is not a "sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead." So an exchange in the form of sex is no less honourable. The purpose of this use of connotations is to give the reader insight into the speaker’s intentions. This also helps to set the tone of a poem.
Donne’s use of the flea in ‘The Flea’ is engineered very successfully, conveniently, just as this gentleman is attempting to convince his lover to sleep with him; a flea comes along and proceeds to bite him. The flea then bites his lady friend and the speaker finds the perfect excuse for his argument. The speaker moves beyond talking of the flea as their union and has begun to build an entire world within the flea. Donne uses many metaphors throughout the poem, most having to do with the flea itself. He uses the flea as an extended metaphor:
“This flea is you and I…”
This method of using metaphors is what the entire poem is about. Both ‘The Flea’ and ‘To His Coy Mistress’ are metaphysical poems in which Marvell and Donne uses the structure of a syllogistic argument. In both poems, the male speakers use many techniques to persuade their beloved to have sex with them. Both Donne and Marvell use things such as wit, emotional language, hyperbole and persuasive languages in order to persuade their beloved. Marvell uses sarcasm in a humorous way as a persuasion method:
‘My vegetable love should grow’
Marvell using a sexual connation as a phallic image is saying his undeveloped love should grow, showing this idea of teasing and humour throughout the first section. This is a sexual connation which is also used by Donne in “The Flea.” In comparison Donne uses less sarcasm in ‘The Flea’. There is a lot of exaggeration used by Donne and to reinforce this he uses a hyperbole:
‘Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Here Donne as the narrator is exaggerating using a hyperbole to convince his lady that the death of the flea would mark the death of their love. Similarly in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ Marvell uses a hyperbole as a form of persuasion from lines 5-8:
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; …’
Here Marvell is exaggerating that the gentleman would do if he had time. Marvell mostly uses persuasion by trying to scare the gentleman’s lover and uses imageries of time and deaths:
‘Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast Eternity.’
The gentleman is saying she should, therefore, sleep with him and not waste her life. Here Marvell uses a metaphor, ‘Time’s winged chariot hurrying near’, and he is saying that time is running, out and expresses this by saying the chariot is time and its hurrying near, so they must sleep with each other before time is over.
Donne on the other hand cleverly uses a flea as an extended metaphor throughout the poem.
Marvell’s use of wit in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ to persuade his lover to have sex with him is engineered into form of a pun:
‘Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run’
He is saying here that though we cannot extend our lives, we can shorten them in sexual relations. The pun here is the use of sun is a homophone of son. Therefore having sexual relations may lead to a son and the use of this makes reference to sleeping with each other.
Marvell’s and Donne’s poems also contrast each other. In Marvell’s poem, the gentleman tries to worry his mistress that if she does not sleep with him 'then worms shall try…. That long preserved virginity.' In ‘The Flea’ after the man’s lover has killed the flea he starts accusing her and naming her as 'cruel and sudden'. He then tries to relax his beloved by saying that if she does sleep with him, she would lose no more honour than she lost when she killed the flea. Both poets have a rhyming scheme so the poem sounds smooth and this is a technique of persuasion as having a poem which rhymes is nicer to listen to.
Both ‘To His Coy Mistress’ and ‘The Flea’ use lust as a dominant theme of love to persuade their lovers to lose their virginity with them, before marriage. They have lustful desires of their lovers and this is shown in the number of sexual connatations used both poems. Both writers use metaphysical combinations of strong ideals and complex intellectual ideas to bring across their strong feelings.
As Marvell and Donne portray lust as an aspect of love in their poems, ‘Upon Julia’s Clothes’ written by Robert Herrick in the 17th century also portrays lust as an aspect of love. It is about the lustful musings of a man for a woman.
Herrick uses sexual connotation similarly used by Donne in ‘The Flea’ and portrays the man to only see his lover, Julia purely for sex:
‘Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes!’
This signifies that the man thinks deeply about Julia, and the admiration for he shows how powerful Julia is over him. In ‘The Flea’ and ‘To His Coy Mistress’ there is more punctuation used whilst Herrick uses less and short sentences in his poem. This allows the swiftness of the poem to build up momentum. The structure of this poem is different to the other two poems. Herrick’s poem rhymes like AAABBB, the rhyming triplets allows the poem to sound smoother than the other poems.
Whilst these three poems cover lust as an aspect of love, which is a man’s lust over a woman, ‘The Sick Rose’ written by William Blake in the 17th also covers lust as an aspect of love but the warnings offers a warning about the darker side of lust. So this is completely the opposite of ‘The Flea’ and ‘To His Coy Mistress.’ In this poem Blake portrays the dangers of seduction and the loss of innocence. Blake like Donne uses unnatural images to portray a man sleeping with a woman:
‘The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,”
The worm is a phallic image and like ‘The Flea’ it is partly used as an extended metaphor. The howling storm shows that the woman is being forced to sleep with her lover and this reveals the darker side of lust/love. It is a basic message saying you will get ruined and be an outcast of your society, as sex before marriage goes against religious beliefs. Blake uses little punctuation and short sentences, which lets the poem build up momentum, which is similarly done by Herrick in ‘Upon Julia’s Clothes.’ Rose who is the woman can also symbolise the flower and this represents innocence and it’s a weak and delicate picture. So she is easily forced to sleep with a man and Blake says this is going to kill her.
Whilst all four of these poems have an aspect of love in different poetic forms, ‘A Woman to Her Lover’ written by Christina Walsh in the Victorian era is a very sophisticated piece of poetry and it is written in free verse. In contrast the other four poems have a certain rhyme scheme. It is about a woman who has received a proposal of marriage from a man and is considering all of the reasons why he wants to marry her. This is the only poem that I have covered which is about the views of a woman about her lover and marriage.
The poem shows that men in Victorian era expected their lovers to please and be a slave to them:
‘In drudgery and silence
No servant will I be’
Walsh proves here that women in the Victorian era are overpowered by men and that men are very possessive. In the first three verses the woman uses strong views about a typical man’s attitude towards women:
‘Go!-I am no doll to dress and sit for feeble worship
If that be what you ask, fool, I refuse you!’
Walsh’s use of very strong imagery of the doll signifies the woman disgust of being overpowered by her lover. Similarly in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ Marvell uses very strong images, “Deserts of vast eternity.” The last verse depicts her ideal marriage partnership. The language and imagery of the final lines present this ‘ideal’:
‘And we shall have the music of the spheres for bridal march
And to its circling fugue pass, hand holding hand’
Walsh uses religious images of heavenly music and this shows how important religion is to marriage for women of the 1900s. In contrast to the other four poems there are less religious images and this is probably because religion was not important for a man when it is associated with love between them and their lover.
In conclusion from studying these poems, I have my dominant impressions of love in a man’s point of view which explores the physical side of love and their lust for their lovers. They tried to control their lovers to do what they want and this is evident in the persuasive techniques used by both Donne and Marvell. The sexual imagery used by Donne in ‘The Flea’ depicts a man’s view in those times, of only having a physical relationship with their lovers. Herrick in ‘Upon Julia’s Clothes’ also has a dominant theme of lust and uses sexual connation like Donne and Marvell has done. Both Donne and Marvell use syllogism and I like metaphysical poems very much, like ‘To His Coy Mistress’, because reading those poems is filled of surprises and you can never imagine how the poet be so creative to take the flood, the Jews or the worms in graves to link with his great love and lust; the flea links to their sexual relationship. Walsh’s poem, ‘A Woman to Her Lover’ explores a woman’s view of a marriage and her relationship with her lover. This poem reinforces that in those times men wanted their lovers to please them and made them act like slaves. It also portrays that women were extremely religious and it is evident that they are reluctant to have sex before marriage. ‘The Sick Rose’ shows the dangers that having sex before marriage will turn the woman into an outcast and this again shows that these were the problems the society had in those times. It reveals the darker side of love/lust which was portrayed to be good by Marvell, Herrick and Donne in their poems. So these poems using many literary devices show what love was depicted by both men and women in those times.
