06/14/2012 YASH PANCHAL Love and Seduction “My Last Duchess” by Browning and “To His Coy Mistress” by Marvell are examples of two men searching for the right words to express their emotions towards a woman. The speakers in both poems are talking about love and seduction. Even though they both are written in two different centuries, both pieces have remarkable similarities as well as some of the common expected differences. “To His Coy Mistress” values women and their love they give, while “My Last Duchess” totally humiliates the role of women in society. “My Last Duchess" and "To His Coy Mistress" shows the act of the men in these two poems.
He approaches Juliet and after reciting a few lines comparing her to a saint her proceeds to kiss her. His aching heart for Rosaline seems to have recovered as soon as he found a new target, and the innocent Juliet takes every word to heart. Juliet falls trap to his charm and attention within a single meeting while Romeo was driven to the party because of his love for another woman. When a new opportunity for him to get a girl to sleep with presents itself, he takes it and seduces the first beautiful girl he sees. Not only is the love displayed in “Romeo and Juliet” extremely unrealistic, the romanticism is completely full of Romeo’s ulterior motives to forget Rosaline.
Orsino depicts love as an “appetite” that he cannot feed. At another point of the play he names his desires for love “fell and cruel hounds”. In act 1, scene 5 Olivia says “Even so quickly may one catch the plague?” She’s using this metaphor to relate love to a disease saying if you have too much of it, it can make you sick. Love throws the characters and the play out of order, however that order is quickly put back into place when Shakespeare creates a Deus Ex Machina by making the character Sebastian turn up and fix everything. This reflects the times in Elizabethan society when they had divine order and a strict hierarchy.
In the poem “Medusa” gender conflict through control is also illustrated when she says: “a suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy”. This depicts that she feels ownership over her husband and wants him to “be terrified” if he does not obey her commands. However, in “Les Grands Seigneurs” the narrator conveys that after she was “wedded, bedded … a toy, a plaything … wife” she is nostalgic for the first three stanzas to how men were towards her before she was married as she is now powerless. We can depict that there was less gender conflict before she was married. Moreover, in “Medusa” powerlessness is also portrayed when she rhetorically questions herself “Wasn’t I beautiful?
Cousin Kate by Christina Rossetti The Poem ‘Cousin Kate’ by Christina Rossetti, tells the story of a young woman from the Victorian period who has fallen for a wealthy lord and had is child out of wedlock. The young woman then watches as the lord marries her Cousin Kate. The poem tells us that women of this time have many expectations in life, but are governed by men who give them no real freedom. I feel in this poem Rossetti is saying that women can only truly be happy if they break away from social expectations. Rossetti shows us she resents men and the power they have over women and also the weakness and few liberties that women have in this period.
Shakespeare uses language, structure and dramatic devices to convey and create the effect of strong emotions through his ambitious characters, which is similarly portrayed in laboratory with the narrator’s strong and bitter emotions towards her husband’s infidelity. These characters can also be compared to the narrator of Porphyria’s lover whose intense emotions of love become too overwhelming for him to handle. Both Shakespeare and Browning show Elizabethan society as patriarchal, where men were considered to be the leaders and women subservient. Women were regarded as the weaker sex not just in terms of physical strength, but also emotionally. Women were also depicted as kind and caring as well as being the perfect mother and housewife, on the other hand men were portrayed as brave, strong and loyal.
How love is presented in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and a selection of poetry by Philip Larkin Many people consider Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ a stereotypical romantic love story. In some ways, it does meet these expectations. The archetypal lovers are brought up in ‘fair Verona’ by grand families ‘alike in dignity’. Because of the families' on-going conflict, the two 'star-crossed lovers' find themselves hurtling towards an ill-fated end. 'Violent passions lead to violent ends', therefore the romance becomes a tragedy.
She feels as though she has ownership of him simply because he chose to give his love to her in the beginning of their relationship. At one point she begins to tell him exactly how she wants him to look for her, having no concern of what he wanted for himself. Once her anger takes over there is really nothing that can stop her. Jealousy can be a very dangerous thing and when beauty is involved people seem to feel entitled. In some cases people are used in relationships.
Joe * Joe shows Janie that he loves her in many different ways. * Joe takes Janie from Logan and she runs away and lives with Joe. * Joe loves Janie but uses her in a way for status/reputation for himself because of how beautiful she was to the men. * Joe was very impulsive toward Janie and wanted to control everything she did he was selfish and wanted Janie all to himself and he only let Janie have limited freedom. * Janie has love for Joe but not so much after the year’s progress because of domestic abuse Joe does toward Janie to better himself and his status/reputation.
Henry and Roy who both tells a story of their idealistic past, can be grouped together as the ones, who believes in the existence of idealistic love which tends to be fanciful like their own childhood memories. Roy claims that his love is equivalent to “Mozart’s love” which characterises the romance with happy endings. Henry’s depiction of his mother’s devotion has the sense of artificiality, and it’s almost like as if he forces the story upon himself to avoid other alternatives. However unlike Roy Henry understands the contradicting reality in regards to commitment and fidelity “everyone blames women but I forgive them, if they change their love a thousand times a day.. but I think it’s the necessity of women’s heart” Henry is aware and accepts the flaw in the concept of absolute faithfulness. Ruth, who suffers from her inability to distinguish reality from illusion, was a victim of a horrible relationship.