Compare the Ways the Poets Show How Relationships Can Affect People in ‘Les Grand Seigneurs’ and Medusa

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Compare the ways the poets show how relationships can affect people in ‘Les Grand Seigneurs’ and one other poem from character and voice (Medusa) In both poems the narrators have been changed for the worst by men, specifically their partner. This is clear from the poet’s use of metaphors in Les Grand Seigneurs making the speakers life seem admirable and happy before she got married, first she describes men as ‘rocking horses’ and ‘hurdy gurdy monkey men’ making her relationships with them seem light hearted and playful. Whereas after getting marred things change ‘overnight’ and she becomes ‘a bit of fluff’ and isn’t as desired or honoured as she once was. Similarly in Medusa as the narrator’s relationship becomes more serious she can feel herself changing and becomes paranoid and doubting of her partner and his loyalty to her. The poet uses sibilance between her ‘filthy snakes’ as hair and the hissing and spitting of her thoughts to exaggerate the link between the Greek goddess (associated with snakes) and the speaker. During the narrator of Les grand Seigneurs’ early relationships she believed she was higher than men and ruled over them and describes herself as ‘their queen’. Although she once enjoyed this, it may have led her to believe it would always be that way, so when she married it emphasised the contrast between married and single life and her role in them. Her belief of the permanence of the role of men in her life is shown through the poet’s use of metaphorical descriptions such as ‘castellated towers’ and ‘sailing ships’ which are both stable and solid. In contrast to the previously confident authoritive figure in Les Grand Seigneurs the narrator of Medusa describes herself as fragrant and young suggesting naivety and vulnerability towards men at the end of the poem regarding her earlier life. However in the rest of the poem she makes herself out to
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