Monday, October 29, 2012

Women, Not Objects

                                                                                                                      http://burst.to/1RC

            In comparing the poems “To His Coy Mistress,” written by Andrew Marvell, and “My Last Duchess,” written by Robert Browning, it becomes clear to the reader that the speakers of both poems hold attitudes of superiority to their women lovers. While the first speaker entreats his would-be lover with careful persuasion, and the second speaker entreats his audience with careful justification, both of these gentlemen expose that they feel deserving of mastery over their women merely because they are men. This is exposed in the attitudes that are portrayed through the use of figurative language, imagery, and tone.
            From the opening lines of “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker uses his words carefully to seduce his lady. He explains that if he had forever to wait, she could keep her “coyness” and remain shy and careful (line 2). In working to entice her, the speaker expresses many niceties to gain her favor. He uses extreme hyperbole throughout the poem: he’d “Love her yen years before the Flood” and “Till the conversion of the Jews” (lines 8 and 10), if there were time enough for that. Using the word “vegetable” (line 11), he produces a pun. He could lose his vitality or masculinity if he had to wait any longer to have sex with her. With further exaggeration, he spills over compliments of adoration: “An hundred years should go to praise thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; two hundred to adore each breast, but thirty thousand to the rest” (lines 13-16). For the speaker, the argument for “deserts of vast eternity” (line 24) lacks the passion of the here and now. He questions why she would prefer a drought over the riches that he has to offer her. His attitude is condescending towards this woman as he tries to persuade her to give up her youthful “lust” before it is eaten up and her desire vanishes to “ashes” and her “quaint honour turns to dust” (lines 29-30). He presupposes that her desire must be as great as his. This speaker has confidence, but his confidence is born in his attitude that men are indeed superior to women.
            In contrast, the speaker in “My Last Duchess” does not have the confidence to persuade his lady, nor does he have the desire “to stoop” (line 43) in any way to gain her favor through explanations or enticements. The first speaker was willing to woo his woman; the latter speaker felt his woman should feel wooed and privileged just because he had chosen her and given her a “gift of a nine-hundred-years old name” (line 33). He exposes to the reader that he is superior to his duchess by birthright and gender. The speaker further shows that he feels his wife gave far too much attention to everybody and everything else. “She liked whate’er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere” (Lines 23-24). He seems to think that her best smiles and her best praise were only to be bestowed on him, since he was the one so deserving of her love and her favor. He could not distinguish her gratitude to others and her delight with the world around her from her love for him. “Sir, ‘twas all one! My favour at her breast, the dropping of the daylight in the West…all and each would draw from her alike the approving speech” (Lines 25-26 and 29-30). He thought that she should act just so, and be happy just so much, and save the self of her that he wanted, just for him. Unlike the speaker in “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker in “My Last Duchess” is plagued by feelings of jealousy and doubt; and he, therefore, must exert his masculinity by proving that he has power over her. Because he was unable to hold her to the moments where he saw her as perfect, he tried to capture that moment in her portrait. He did not want to have a living, breathing, thinking, rapturous woman in the way the first speaker did; he preferred to have a dutiful wife that fit his view of what she should be. After her death, he has control of her. “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall” (line 1), he says. “And there she stands” (line 4). Now he can enjoy the passionate, beautiful glance that was caught in the portrait and keep it only for himself, and expose it only when he wishes and to whom he wishes. “The curtain I have drawn for you” (line 10). So, while we cannot really see the portrait the speaker is telling us about, we see her quite clearly through the speaker’s attitude towards her. In life, he appears to be truly disgusted because she is genuine and not mere art. In death, he has reduced her to a piece of artwork meant just for him. But his thirst for control brings him to desire a new duchess. In looking for a new wife, he again wants her to be tamed as "Neptune...taming a sea-horse" and “cast in bronze” (lines 54-56).
            Both poets use their speakers to express the feelings held by men of that era. They felt that a woman’s main purpose was to bring delight to her lover. Everything else should be secondary to that. While the speaker in “To His Coy Mistress” uses strong flattery and persuasion to woo his love, the reader is unable to ascertain his true desires from this lustful moment. Would he indeed love her from all eternity to all eternity if she were to give herself to him? Or once he had accomplished his quest, would he then abandon her for another lustful and more immediate attraction? It appears more clearly that the speaker in “My Last Duchess” would again grow tired of his new duchess in the same way that he did his old and cast her off onto another wall to be looked upon only when he desired to do so. The first speaker reveals to the reader both his desires for mastery over his woman and the list of reasons why he is entitled to this mastery. The latter speaker reveals that he will have control of his duchesses both past and future because he is entitled to ownership of their movements and behavior in every way. Both speakers present a thorough justification for their premise that their women should be constantly and quickly at their disposal, and they reveal these attitude through powerful figurative language, imagery, and tone.

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