Love and False Love!- Explore how poets portrayed love during the Victorian era.

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Love and False Love!

                                - Laura xoxo

        I intend to explore how poets portrayed love during the Victorian era.

Our view today of Victorian relationships is that of love, money, and marriage – and sex only happening after marriage.  The poems I have studied give a clear view of relationships.  What was wanted from them, feelings, Victorian views etc, which appear to be different to our initial ideas!

Firstly, I looked at Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, which is an example of a 17th century Carpe Diem poem.  A “seize the day” poem Marvell is having his speaker direct his words at a particular women that he is courting, and by extension, to all young women with advice that urges them to act upon their hormonal instincts as soon as possible.  Back then, “mistress” simply meant “young woman”, he is not instructing them to be licentious and “easy” whores.  That is exactly the opposite of what men wanted then.  He does however, urge them to catch the fancy of an upstanding man and marry him while still young and with the physical beauty that would first catch the eye of a man.  He does not believe there is enough time for extended flirting as leading a man on without allowing him full sexual satisfaction will cause him to lose interest.

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These views portrayed in Marvell’s poem say a lot about feelings on love and relationships during the Victorian era.  By all of Marvell’s talk about finding a man and getting married while you still have looks and fulfilling sexual desires tells us two things straight away.  Feelings felt towards a woman then did not start because she may have had a beautiful personality, it was more like the beautiful looks that counted, as did sex.  The male figure fits in entirely with these ideas.  He is pushy, impatient and arrogant.  He also sees her as a sexual object rather than ...

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