'A Brilliant projection of a very common male viewpoint whereby women are to be denigrated (perhaps out of fear) and also celebrated as objects for male gratification'(George Parfitt). Is this an accurate description of the presentation of women in male-a

        Virtue of late, with virtuous care to stir

        Love of herself, takes Stella’s shape, that she

        To mortal eyes might sweetly shine in her.

        Robert Herrick, too, in his ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time’ also shows the value of a woman’s virtue, as he claims that:

        “That age is best which is the first,

        When youth and blood are warmer;

        But being spent, the worse.’

        Yet, the same poet is as guilty of trying to remove the virtue of virginity from his lover as Marvell or Donne: he entreats his lover to ‘Display thy breasts, my Julia’, and in his ‘Upon Julia’s clothes’, he dreams of the ‘liquefaction of her clothes’. Whilst this could be seen to be merely a comment on her silks, it also brings to mind the melting of her clothes, rather than just the flow of them, suggesting that Herrick is in fact contemplating Julia in a more sexual sense that might at first be observed. He is well aware of his misdoings, he entreats his conscience not to reproach him: ‘Can I not sin, but thou wilt be/My private protonotary’

        John Wilmot’s ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’ shows us that even when men knew the disgrace of taking a woman’s virtue, it did little to stop them. The title itself shows that his happiness is marred, as it is imperfect. Whilst the poem begins with ‘I filled with love, and she all over charms;/Both equally inspired with eager fire’, by line 50, he sees the difference between ‘lewdness’ and ‘love’, just as Philip Sidney sees that ‘a strife is grown between Virtue and Love’. Wilmot recognises that love should mean more to him than simple carnal pleasures, and so feels guilt, just as Herrick did.

        However, whilst the poet claims love for the woman, nowhere is it claimed that the woman, Corinna, feels any love for him. This could suggest that he feels women less capable of the emotion, which would make them mere objects, indeed, as George Parfitt claimed, women are being ‘celebrated as objects for male gratification’. This can be seen in the blazon, especially of the sonnets. Even in love which supposedly surpasses the need for beauty, Shakespeare still feels the need to list the physical appearance in his ‘Sonnet 130’. This, again, heightens the sense of objectification. It has been claimed that ‘the objectification of women had been a constant in lyric poetry since its inception’.

        Of course, in much male authored poetry, there is no sign of the female, or very little. For example, in Wordsworth’s ‘Ode’, he refers only to ‘the growing Boy’, the use of the masculine seems to eradicate and exclude the feminine, except, perhaps, in the use of the female as the earth: ‘Earth fill her lap with pleasures of her own’, but yet, the male comes ‘trailing clouds of glory’ from heaven, and so is higher than the female, who is restricted to earth.

        In some male-authored poetry, there can appear to be an undercurrent of something like feminism, especially in the courtly tradition. The woman was often seen to be in control, inflicting pain upon the man in her refusal to love him. In Thomas Wyatt’s ‘Whoso List to Hunt’, it seems that the deer is in control, drawing the poet on, and forcing him into an impossible task: ‘since in a net I seek to hold the wind’. However, despite the fact that the poet is unable to have the deer, or, more accurately, the woman, it is made clear that it is only through another man’s ownership: ‘Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am’. The woman is not, in fact, in control of the situation, it is merely a man more powerful who is controlling her. Shakespeare, in his Sonnet 71, ‘No longer mourn for me when I am dead’ appears to be showing his great love for the subject of the sonnet, placing them, in the tradition of the sonnet, in control, but yet, at the same time, gives orders, and threats for if they are not obeyed, just as Marvell does in ‘To his Coy Mistress’. Shakespeare orders his love to let their ‘love even with my life decay’ for fear of the consequence that ‘the wise world shall look into your moan,/and mock you with me after I am gone’. In Sonnet 55, he tells his lover that ‘you live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes’. At first, this too may seem a declaration of love, and may appear to give honour to the female, but on closer observation, it could also mean that the beloved is worth little or nothing to the world unless seen through lovers’ eyes, and therefore has little real worth except as an object to be admired by men.

        Women could be seen to hold power in some male authored poetry of the courtly tradition, perhaps creating the fear alluded to by George Parfitt in his quotation. Philip Sidney, in particular, looks up, not only to Stella, but to other females: his muse calls him a ‘fool’. He also makes reference to ‘stepdame study’, a sentiment repeated in his ‘Seventh Song’ of Astrophil and Stella, where study has been abandoned, and it is ‘stepdame nature’ that antagonises the poet. Boase suggests that this suggestion of female authority could demonstrate a Freudian theory in that ‘the poet ‘deliberately chose a woman whom he had o right to possess because he was sexually inhibited by a mother fixation’. Thomas Wyatt, too, seems to attribute great power to the woman: as previously mentioned, in his ‘Whoso list to Hunt’ he makes the assumption that the woman is, in fact, in control of him. The same sentiment is repeated in many of his sonnets, but in particular, in his ‘They flee from Me’, as the line ‘She caught me in her arms long and small.’, she appears to be the one in control of the situation. However, we must remember that Wyatt is writing at the court of Henry VIII, where women still had very little power. They were entirely subject to men, with a few notable examples- Elizabeth I, for example, never married, although she was still reliant on her male council for advice. ‘Women, it was understood, were either married or to be married “and their desires are subject to their husband”’. Perhaps it was not the woman that the man feared, but the men who controlled her. Thomas Wyatt was known to be an admirer of Anne Boleyn, indeed, ‘Whoso List to Hunt’ is generally accepted to be aimed at Anne Boleyn, and ‘Caesar’, Henry VIII, the King, the highest man in the country, and to be feared by every other man.

        ‘Furthermore, the majority of critics agree that courtly love was the product of a court environment, especially in its initial stages, it was far from being a collective or a uniform doctrine’ This suggests that it is not a realistic indicator of feelings towards women at the time, and that the power given to them in the poetry is, in fact, an illusion, and would not have been adhered to in life.  Boase also holds that ‘adultery was not tolerated, and that the social status of women in the Middle Ages was one of complete inferiority’. Whilst the Sonnets I have mentioned are not of the Middle Ages, they are based on the courtly tradition of chivalry stemming from that time, suggesting that the position of the woman in poetry was much the same as it had been some centuries previously.

        The courtly tradition has also been referred to as a ‘gamelike revolt against traditional morality’, again suggesting that it was not the everyday manner of things. The poetry of the time was not so much an expression of reality as a game: Boase claims that ‘there is a strong case for analysing Courtly Love in terms of a theory of a play’, making the position of women in the poems make-believe, a fantasy, which is further confirmed by the sense of the objectification of women gained through some of the pieces, as earlier mentioned. Just as in the later poetry, such as Marvell’s ‘To his Coy Mistress’, the sonnets are hiding their true intent behind a veil of something like feminism.

        George Parfitt claims that men denigrate women through fear, indeed, if this is the case, then the masking of the true intentions of the poets could be seen as a mark of this fear, as they attempt to soften their words and feelings, to make them more acceptable, or, so it seems to a modern, feminist audience.

        Much male authored poetry is indeed ‘a projection of a very common male viewpoint’, however the generalisation of this quotation is unable to encompass all of male authored poetry. It has been put forward that, as it is male authored poetry, the female has no place in it, as the man cannot truly comprehend the woman. The statement also does not apply to all male poets: Chaucer is often seen as something of a proto-feminist, or at least lacking in any leaning towards a male dominance: ‘Feminist criticism has made audiences aware that a male gender bias informs much (most?) Western fiction. The Canterbury Tales, however, has been viewed free of gender bias’. There are exceptions to the rule, as in almost every case, but I would agree that, in general, George Parfitt’s statement fits male authored poetry

Word count: 2431

Bibliography:

Boase, Roger, The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977)

Braxton, Phyllis N., and Grudin, Michaela Paasche, ‘Closure in the Canterbury Tales’ in PMLA, vol.108, no.5 (Oct. 1993)1170-1171  p.1170(accessed 9th December 2007)

Daniel, Samuel, ‘Fair is my love, and cruel as she’s fair’ in The Norton Anthology of Poetry ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy, 5th edition (New York: Norton, 2005) p231

Donne, John, ‘The Flea’ in The Norton Anthology of Poetry ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy, 5th edition (New York: Norton, 2005) p310

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Hogrefe, Pearl, ‘Legal Rights of Tudor Women and the Circumvention by Men and Women’ in the Sixteenth Century Journal, vol 3, no 1 (april 1972)97-105  

Howard, Donald, The Three Temptations: Medieval Man in Search of the World, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)

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