'The Seduction' written by Eileen McAuley.

Mark Postans GCSE English Coursework

‘To His Coy Mistress’ and ‘The Seduction’

Poetry Assignment

There are 2 Poems about Seduction that we can compare. One is called ‘The Seduction’ written by Eileen McAuley. It is about the seduction of a fifteen year old girl by a teenage boy, he has sex with her but ends the romance there leaving the girl pregnant and without help. It uses the scene of the river and the Birkenhead Docks to create a very sleazy and un-romantic atmosphere. The poem also shows the aftermath of the seduction and the effect that it has on the now pregnant girl. The other Poem is called ‘To His Coy Mistress’ written by Andrew Marvell in 1681. It is about a man trying to seduce a girl presumably for sex but through words describing his endless love for her. It is all about love, lust, passion and how time is running out for them together. Unlike in the poem ‘The Seduction’ we do not find out if the man is successful or not in seducing her.

In ‘To His Coy Mistress’ the main objective is to seduce the girl for sex. The poem is cleverly split up into three sections or verses. The first section/verse is about his endless love for her and is obviously aimed at persuading her that he is only interested in true love and that his intentions are honourable. He describes how he would spend an age at least praising every part of her and then says ‘And the last age should show your heart’, showing that if he had it then he would take all the time in the world to love her. The second section/verse talks about time and how it is catching up to them. Clearly he is rushing the situation which cannot be love, love would be worth waiting for and being patient for, whereas he is being lustful and wants everything now. He also slips up in the second verse mentioning the word lust instead of love ‘And into ashes all my lust’, he has now revealed to some extent that he is not totally honourable. ‘Times winged chariot hurrying near’ is an example of this concept of time chasing after them and is also an excellent example of personification, describing time like a person. He is basically reminding her that she wont always be beautiful, ‘Thy beauty shall no more be found’ is another example of this. ‘And your quaint honor turned to dust’, this is a quote that almost teases her into rushing herself. ‘The graves a fine and private place’, this is basically saying that she’ll be left alone with no-one to love her. The third section/verse tells us of what he wants to happen and how wonderful and amazing a time that they could have together. Despite this ‘romantic’ image that he is trying to convey to this girl he slips up on many occasions showing that what he is feeling is not true love. ‘Now let us sport us while we may’, implies that he just treats this as a game and so is actually thinking lustfully. ‘Like amorous birds of prey’ is another slip up for him because birds of prey swoop in for the kill which subtly and accidentally suggests that this man’s intentions are slightly dangerous and like the bird of prey he is just swooping in for the kill, i.e. he is just pulling out all the stops to seduce her into having sex with him. This ‘ Like amorous birds of prey’ statement is also a simile and effective one too. He does however make a romantic statement ‘Let us role all our strength and all our sweetness into one ball’, basically talking about his strength and her sweetness and how they should join together and become one. An excellent metaphor can be found in the first section, ‘My vegetable love should grow’, this is particularly effective because vegetables grow and have deep roots so he’s basically saying that his love for her will keep on growing and has truly deep meaning, this subtly persuades her. The poem is written as a monologue from the man to the girl.

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‘The Seduction’ is split up into sixteen sections with the first eight talking about the seduction itself and the last eight sections talk about the consequences of the seduction i.e. she gets pregnant. The poem is written in a third person perspective and so is told like a story. ‘With the fingers that stroked her neck and thighs and the kisses that tastes of nicotine’, there is nothing really enchanting about the boy that is trying to seduce the girl but ‘As he brought her more drinks, so she fell in love’, so she was falling in ‘love’ the more drunk she became. Another phrase that demonstrates how ‘un-charming’, he should appear to be is ‘He spat into the river, fumbled in a bag’, its quite clear that this method of seduction is sleazy and un-romantic. He mutters ‘Little slag’, obviously he doesn’t feel much if anything for her. ‘The Mersey, green as a septic wound’, is a sentence that helps create the sleazy, if you like ‘dirty’ atmosphere surrounding the situation. It is also a good simile. ‘And she ripped up all her My Guy and her Jackie photo-comics’ shows that she feels betrayed by the teenage fantasy, love stories that they contain, ‘Until they were just bright paper, like confetti, strewn’, this is ironic in a way because confetti is thrown at weddings which is clearly not going to happen here. The image of the ‘High white shoes’ portrays the ‘slag’ image and is a clever metaphor as she later ‘broke the heels’ on these shoes in anger of the night and the slutty image that they represent. ‘Stupid, stupid promises, only tacitly made’, shows that she is ashamed because she actually fell into the trap that will cost her the quality of her life as it is clear that the ‘father’ is no longer interested in her. Another thing that shows the shame is ‘Than to have the neighbours whisper that you always looked the type’, it helps to show the apparent awareness of how stupid she was but also that she isn’t fully to blame. Unlike ‘To His Coy Mistress’ his poem describes intricately the aftermath of the seduction of the girl itself.

They are written differently and so the two poems discussed are different in a variety of ways. For a start ‘To His Coy Mistress’ was written by a man (Andrew Marvell) in 1681 while ‘The Seduction’ was written in the 1980’2 by a woman (Eileen McAuley). As said before ‘The Seduction’ is written in a third person perspective and so is told like a story whereas ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is written as a monologue, like a message from the boy to the girl and we are not told whether or not he is successful in seducing the girl. The boy described in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ continuously uses the idea of ‘love’ to aid him in his attempt at seducing the girl, whereas love is never mentioned in ‘The Seduction’. A distinctive difference is in the method of seduction that the boys use, in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ words are the main method employed by the boy whereas in ‘The Seduction’ the boy uses actions to seduce the girl. Despite these differences the poems are also very similar. They are both about the seduction/attempted seduction of a girl by a boy. Both use the image of water also, in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ the River Ganges is used romantically and also the River Humber whereas the Mersey River is used in ‘The Seduction’ to create a sleazy setting as it is ‘green as a septic wound’.

Both poems are effective and they show two totally different methods of seduction. ‘The Seduction is effective because it shows a story as well as a poem. I prefer ‘To His Coy Mistress because it is an effective monologue and makes clever use of language and imagery. I like the metaphor ‘My vegetable love should grow’ and the simile ‘Like amorous birds of prey’ because I find it ironic that he makes himself look dangerous whilst trying to charm her. Although the inner message is lust it is still more enchanting and idyllic. Also it doesn’t tell us whether or not the boy is successful or not in seducing the girl, which is good because it keeps you thinking and interested in the poem.