Literary Analysis - to His Coy Mistress

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World Literature II: Shakespeare to Today Literary Analysis (Final) Andrew Marvell's poem 'To His Coy Mistress' Night-Piece,To Julia, Robert Herrick Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women The role of women in literature ranges over the years from being the muse, to being the recipient of affection, to taking a stand against sexist men. It is not very different from the roles of women in the world today. In the television show “Castle” we see a writer who follows and bases a character on a NYPD Detective, Kate Beckett. She is his muse, just as Andrew Marvell write to his muse in “To His Coy Mistress”. We see affection being doled out to Mary Jane from Peter Parker in any Spiderman comic or movie just as Robert Herrick does in his “Night-Piece, To Julia”. Women challenging the sexist roles set by men are everywhere from Hillary Rodham-Clinton to Oprah making Mary Wollstonecraft proud. Throughout literature and the world, both then and now, we see that women have played a significant role in the influence of writers and poets. “To His Coy Mistress” opens us up to the sexual and romantic charge that Marvell taps into which is a very human emotion. The “mistress” he is speaking about is a muse. We don’t know who she is, but we do know that he pulled out all the stops to try to get her. He promises to focus on his “coy mistress” and “each part” of her body until he got to the heart. He could be speaking of her actual heart and be using this as a metaphor for love, but he could also be focusing on “heart” being a metaphor for sex. In 1681, when this poem was first published, sex wasn’t an openly discussed topic as it is today. Like a typical man, he promises that she is special and worthy of first class love and even further promises to deliver it to her if she will just sleep with him. The ideas that Marvell brings to life in this poem are

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