In Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Wild Nights-Wild Nights!” the author’s rebellious attitude, form, and nautical theme illustrates the sexual engagement between two old lovers. Dickinson’s rebellious attitude is displayed throughout the poem, signifying that she vicariously lived through her poems. The form of the poem is chaotic and messy. The inconsistency of the rhyme scheme of the poem illustrates the speaker’s back and forth feelings of frustration and excitement for pursuing her lover. The author only ends a phrase with an exclamation point, emphasizing the speaker’s excitement for engaging in a sexual encounter with her lover once again.
The speaker is trying to persuade his lover to have actual intercourse with his him, but as she refuses, he says that they had already performed intercourse- in the flea. In ‘To His Coy Mistress’ metaphysical imagery is also used, but in a different way: the speaker is attempting to woo his love by explaining how, if they had more time, they could do everything she wants to do, and the speaker could love his lover forever. This idea of love, however, is not presented in ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time’, ‘A Woman to her Lover’ and ‘First Love’, as they present love to be less intercourse-based, and more on marriage and care. ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time’ is portraying a message to young women in general, telling them that they should get married quickly, as time will pass quickly, and by the time they would get old, it would be too late. ‘A Woman to her Lover’ is portraying that women should be treated as equals to men, and loved in an equal fashion.
The mother-woman role is another form of men control, because it dictates how women should idolize their children, worship their husbands, and honor their isolated but inferior positions. Kate Chopin bravely exposed an attitude of feminism to an unprepared society in her novel The Awakening. Her brilliant work of fiction was not recognized at the time because feminism had not yet become popular. Chopin defied societal assumptions of her time period and wrote the novel, The Awakening, using attitudes of characters in regard to gender, changed in the main character, imagery and Edna’s suicide to illustrate her feminist position. Society during Chopin’s time period believed women to be a weak, dependent gender whose position lay nothing above mothering and housework.
We can see a few themes in Christina Walsh's poem "A Woman to her Lover" that are similar to themes in Romeo and Juliet. To begin with, we can liken the first stanza of Welsh's poem to the themes surrounding Paris's desires to marry Juliet. In this stanza, the woman proclaims to her lover that she refuses to be treated as one who should be subservient to a man, as one who should "bend to [a man's] will," like a "bondslave," or even as one who should be conquered by a man. This stanza captures a truism that often men have seen women as only child-bearers and household servants, which are things that the stanza is protesting against. We are not told a great deal about Paris, but we can speculate that, while he genuinely cares for Juliet as we can see from his profound grief, he might have treated her in this same way had he married her.
Daniel Tran Instructor: Kelly Murray ENG 102-03 Oct 16th, 2013 Critical Essay #1: Short Fiction Thesis Essay Both “The Storm” by Kate Chopin and “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck discuss about the love, sex, marriage and the relationship between wife and husband. The author of the Storm conveys to the readers that marriage is traditional but normal sexual practice could be accepting. In “The Chrysanthemums”, Steinbeck displays women lacks of ability and power as men in that period of time. Throughout the readings, I recognize similarities between “the Storm” and “the Chrysanthemums” in themes of desire for change, the important of sexual fulfillment, and inequality of gender. In “The Storm”, Chopin expresses her opinion and idea to speak for marriage women’s sexual desire in the late1800’s.
There is a debate of whether dramatist’s intended to present women as marginalised tools, as Shakespeare’s plays were written long before feminism existed. In the 1940s life for women was vastly improving; whilst men were out at war someone had to step up to their plates. However the consecutive cycle of women were portrayed as weaklings is highlighted by Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman where the few female characters are submersed to men. This is diverged from how both of Shakespeare’s plays, Othello and The Taming of the Shrew, undermine women due to the element of how society was run. Women were expected to be obedient and it’s certain that both playwrights present this in their plays.
Although, she’s passionate about reading and writing, her poems reflect Narcissus’ selfish mentality. Narcissus falling “in love with his own reflection” proves his self- absorbedness. In the story “The Face in the Pool” he rejects Echo’s love by saying he’d “rather die” than let her love him. His egotistical manner emotionally hurt Echo, and lost himself an opportunity to love someone who would also love him back. He did not benefit himself or anyone.
Feminism Analysis When women attempt to gain sexual equality the patriarchy forces them to revert to a stereotypical gender role. In “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning, the author depicts a man’s lack of interest he shows towards a woman who is exerting power and control, mostly in the sexual sense. This poem seems to be showing how men feel about the reversal role of dominance and superiority. In the beginning anticipation is created as the lover is waiting for his mistress while there is a storm outside. This is interesting because instead of the woman waiting for the man to return home, it is the man who is waiting for her to come to him.
This emphasises that even though she does not have the title ‘Mrs.’, she may feel that she has left behind her unmarried identity, and this is all she stands for. The poem starts with a powerful oxymoron ‘beloved sweetheart bastard’. The combination of love and hate is a key theme in the poem, the emotion of the jilted woman a confusing mixture of her passion for her fiancée, and her anger of what he has done. There’s also a juxtaposition of formal language of the period in the ‘beloved sweetheart’ and the more modern use of ‘bastard’. It sounds initially as though this is a direct address to the man, but it soon becomes clear that this is a classic dramatic monologue, the speaker explaining herself to the listening reader.
Also we have to take into account that during this period, life was beginning to fall apart and reforms were highly sought after by the populace. After the Black Death, The Crusades and the Hundred Years War, people were soon realizing that their time was short and they needed to live out their short lives in ways that would bring them happiness. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is a lyrical poem that shows an example of the use of the ‘carpe diem’ theme in poetry. Through this poem, which was written by Andrew Marvell, the author shows traits of carpe diem by trying to woo a woman into having a sexual relationship with him without waiting and wasting the time of dating. He realizes that her coyness is wasting the time they have in this life.