Secondly, when the reader reads these poems, he/she might get a feeling that these poems are not treating women fairly. In poem: ‘To His Coy Mistress’ the main speaker is trying to get a women he’s speaking to, to have sex with him- this fact and arguments he uses “now therefore while the youthful hue sits on thy skin like morning dew”. This is the speaker saying she is going to grow old and they should have sex together while she is still young. This simile compares her to ‘dew’ in the morning – the air is nice, fresh and cold so it is paying her a compliment. He also says “let us roll our strength, and all our sweetness, up into one ball” which could have a double meaning of having sex. He is obviously a desperate man in a clever way – he doesn’t scare her off and persuades her that he’s the best guy. It makes women look a bit stupid or/and that they seem to be like prostitutes, in our eyes.
In the poem: ‘My Last Duchess’, women are treated quite similar to the other poem (THCM)- They are again shown a bit like prostitutes that would cheat on their husbands and have sex with everyone else that gives them a good smile. They are also shown as people who do not respect anything or anyone (especially when the main speaker says that his wife did not have enough respect for his ‘gift of a nine-hundred year old name’. It tells us the Duke has an old and powerful family, but still shows he is insecure because he says she will rank it with anybody’s gift. The fact that he keeps her painting behind a curtain shows he’s trying to keep her for himself, and doesn’t want anybody to see her smile.
Both poems use very powerful words and phrases, like: “let us open the iron gates of life”, which has a double meaning – saying ‘that he wants to have sex with her’, or it can mean, how much pleasure she will (or them both) get from their sexual contact. You would also find “iron gates” in Heaven, which makes her feel like them having sex will be an amazing experience. He also uses this to seem religious and not stand out, as people at the time were very religious.
In THCM, the speaker uses lots of words to do with death, such as “deserts of vast eternity” and “marble vault” and “worms shall try that long preserv’d virginity”. This is to make her think she can die at anytime and should have sex with him now. It shows he is a desperate person, and a bit of a bully.
In THCM, the narrator goes through three stages of convincing- first he tells her how much he loves her and how much he wants her, then saying that it’s good to do NOW because she can dye anytime and get her all-preserved virginity eaten by worms, which is particularly clever and makes her think that: ‘oh no I wouldn’t want that’ and convinces her to have sex with him quickly because she can die anytime, in the final stage he talks about that, that if she will not have sex with him now then she’s going to miss all the fun and will regret that she didn’t have sex with him now, making her feel, the reader could say- sometimes even guilty, making her think and really do it.
When ‘My Last Duchess’ was written, women didn’t really matter. They didn’t have a reputation or the social rank of men. We can see this in the poem with the Duke’s language. The statue of Neptune at the end of the poem could represent Neptune being a man and he is ‘taming’ a woman.
In conclusion, both men use clever language to describe and hide their feelings. They both treat women badly and as less important.
