Analysis of Edmund Waller's Poem "On a Girdle"
At first glance, Edmund Waller’s poem “On a Girdle” seems to suggest nothing more than praise of one woman’s fair beauty and the speaker’s love for her. After diving deeper into the text, however, it becomes apparent that the speaker does a much better job of praising himself than the woman. His love is more a lust for control and possession than a true declaration of sentiment. Waller uses extreme imagery and exaggeration to seemingly praise this woman. More importantly, however, he subtlety belittles her through tropes and diction. Waller evokes this image of her girdle to express his own desire to restrict this beautiful woman.
It cannot be denied that Waller professes love for this woman. He praises her tremendously. He refers to her girdle as “my heaven’s extremest sphere”. Through this statement he is claiming that for him her girdle was the most expansive point of his universe. This is undoubtedly an extreme statement. He also declares, “My joy, my grief, my hope, my love / Did all within this circle move!” Waller is profoundly affected by this woman. She instills in him joy, grief, hope and love, all emotions someone enamored with a woman might experience. He loves her so much that if he can have her then, “Take all the rest the sun goes round!”. In essence Waller is saying he loves this woman more than anything else on earth. Unarguably, Waller holds this woman in extremely high regard. He has placed her on a pedestal. The more interesting idea to consider, however, is why he places her upon this pedestal.
This woman is placed upon the pedestal because of her physical beauty. She is described as having a “slender waist”, a “na...
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... is an object which can be given and then the word “me” suggests the speaker’s desire for ownership of this object. By using diction that suggests possession and control Waller reveals his true intent for this woman that the loves.
This entire poem conjures up an image, that of a man with his arms encircling a woman as her girdle once did. After reflecting upon this image it can be seen as a very controlling one. The man has his arms around the woman but she has no part of the embrace. She is trapped. She is merely the object he has his arms around. She may be beautiful, he may love her, but she plays no role in the relationship. She simply remains in his embrace much like the deer in its pen she was compared to earlier. This is what Waller desires from this woman. He never asks for her love in return. He longs only for possession of her body.
Richmond, Merle A. Bit the Vassal Soar: Interpretive Essays on the Life and Poetry of Phillis Wheatley and George Moses Horton. Washington, D.C.: Howard UP, 1974.
In romantic words, the poet expresses how much she does think of love. She state it clear that she will not trade love for peace in times of anguish.
The lady seems to be poor “suffering along in her broke shows” tells us that she has nothing and is worthless. Emotive language has been used to visually describe how she looks. “with a sack of bones on her back and a song in her brain” this expresses that she in a free, happy minded lady and doesn’t really take note of what she doesn’t have. " to feed the outlaws prowling about the Domain” This tell us that she most likely does this act of kindness very often, not having much at all and simple giving the outlaws something to feed on. “proudly they step up to meet her” Giving this visual effect makes us understand the power this lady has for these feral cats and to also see how much this lady means to this cats. “with love and power” - juxtaposition, again shows us the emotive language between the two this also means that she has a sense of power which she doesn’t have with the outer world. This perception of the lady is very different as to what how we see her. She is to be seen as a person who you wouldn’t want so associate with. Throughout the poem she has been moved from a princess to a queen with the development of metaphors. But to the cats she is the queen and this really depicts the distinctively visual. Douglas Stewart is seeing her as this queen who is celebrated and appreciated by the cats but this is not how she feels with society. With this connection between the cats, it gives us a deeper understanding of how to perceptions of each individual sees the world. Every individual has their own sense of views of the
...thern Literary Journal. Published by: University of North Carolina Press. Vol. 4, No. 2 (spring, 1972), pp. 128-132.
The poetry of Phillis Wheatley is crafted in such a manner that she is able to create a specific aim for each poem, and achieve that aim by manipulating her position as the speaker. As a slave, she was cautious to cross any lines with her proclamations, but was able to get her point across by humbling her own position. In religious or elegiac matters, however, she seemed to consider herself to be an authority. Two of her poems, the panegyric “To MAECENAS” and the elegy “On the Death of a young Lady of Five Years of Age,” display Wheatley’s general consistency in form, but also her intelligence, versatility, and ability to adapt her position in order to achieve her goals.
This darkly satiric poem is about cultural imperialism. Dawe uses an extended metaphor: the mother is America and the child represents a younger, developing nation, which is slowly being imbued with American value systems. The figure of a mother becomes synonymous with the United States. Even this most basic of human relationships has been perverted by the consumer culture. The poem begins with the seemingly positive statement of fact 'She loves him ...’. The punctuation however creates a feeling of unease, that all is not as it seems, that there is a subtext that qualifies this apparently natural emotional attachment. From the outset it is established that the child has no real choice, that he must accept the 'beneficence of that motherhood', that the nature of relationships will always be one where the more powerful figure exerts control over the less developed, weaker being. The verb 'beamed' suggests powerful sunlight, the emotional power of the dominant person: the mother. The stanza concludes with a rhetorical question, as if undeniably the child must accept the mother's gift of love. Dawe then moves on to examine the nature of that form of maternal love. The second stanza deals with the way that the mother comforts the child, 'Shoosh ... shoosh ... whenever a vague passing spasm of loss troubles him'. The alliterative description of her 'fat friendly features' suggests comfort and warmth. In this world pain is repressed, real emotion pacified, in order to maintain the illusion that the world is perfect. One must not question the wisdom of the omnipotent mother figure. The phrase 'She loves him...' is repeated. This action of loving is seen as protecting, insulating the child. In much the same way our consumer cultur...
Ferguson, Margaret W., Salter, Mary J., and Stallworthy, Jon. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. fifth ed. N.p.: W.W. Norton, 2005. 2120-2121. 2 Print.
...d up in the woman’s clothing and jewelry, to put the woman’s beauty on the pedestal.
In spite of the fact that she composes the verse, clearly, the lyric is a great deal more convoluted than it at first appears. It offers many intriguing bits of knowledge into the part of the female artist, her brain science, and the verifiable setting of the work. Bradstreet composed the lyric in measured rhyming. The lyric communicates Bradstreet 's emotions about her brother by marriage distribution of some of her sonnets in 1650, which she didn 't know about until the volume was discharged. Utilizing the allegory of parenthood, she depicts the book as her youngster. Like a defensive mother, she noticed that the volume was "sick formed" and grabbed far from her before it was prepared for freedom. The "companions" who took it were "less astute than genuine," implying that while their activities were imprudent, these individuals absolutely did not have malignant goals. Since the work has been distributed without giving the artist time to redress any blunders, it is out on the planet while it is back in her grasp. At initially, she depicts the recently bound volume as "maddening in my sight," not able to overlook the blemishes she wished she had the chance to address. She wishes she could show her work in its best form yet that is presently inconceivable - she portrays washing its face yet at the same time observing soil and stamps. Be that as it may, the artist can 't resist the
Harper throughout the entire poem bombards the readers’ senses and does more than tugs upon the heart strings; she plays an entire orchestra to ensnare the humanity of the reader; surely only Lucifer, himself would be immune to the plea that resounds from one stanza to the next. Slavery is horrible and cruel, find within your heart of hearts the humanity and love of your fellow man to release the oppressed and permit all to dwell in a land of the free. Mrs. Harper saw her dream come to fruition with the emancipation of the slaves and the fourteenth amendment within her lifetime.
Browning’s use of thirty six stanzas, each about roughly seven lines, instills breaks into the poem. These breaks combined with the tone of the poem exude how the narrator feels about the turn of events in her life. “About our souls in care and cark/ Our blackness shuts like prison-bars…”calls the bleak view that she has on the life of a slave (E. Browning 1131). In the beginning, with the discovery of a new, budding love, her voice is hopeful. “I sang his name instead of a song, / Over and over I sang his name, / … I sang it low, that the slave-girls near / Might never guess, from aught they could hear …” reflects her quiet but joyful outlook of life (E. Browning 1133). Afterward, when he is taken and killed, the narrator loses her chance for true love; while grieving, her...
This piece of the monologue contribute to the fact that men are in charge of a woman’s life, and the man works hard everyday to provide for the wife, while she is at home safe. Katherine is basically saying a wife owns her husband everything and the husbands repay their wives by protecting them. Katherine then goes on to compare a husband and his wife to a king and his people:
Overall, the imagery that Plath creates is framed by her diction and is used to convey her emotions toward all relationships and probably even her own marriage to Ted Hughes, who had rude, disorderly habits. Even the structure of the poem is strict in appearance as each stanza ends with a period and consists of exactly six lines. In addition, the persona of the poem is very detached and realistic, so much that it is hard to distinguish between her and Plath, herself. However, Plath insinuates that the woman actually wants love deep down, but finds the complexity and unpredictability of love to be frightening. As a result, she settles for solitude as a defense against her underlying fear.
Stanzas one and two of the poem are full of imagery. The first stanza sets the scene for the poem “in a kingdom by the sea” (Poe 609) which makes you feel as if the story is going to have a “romantic” (Overview) feel to it. Then Annabel Lee comes into the story with “no other thought than to love and be loved by me” (Poe 609); This sentence is full of imagery in the sense that it makes you feel the immense capacity of love Annabel Lee had for the speaker if that was her only thought. In the second stanza the imagery takes a turn that shifts from loving and inviting to pain; The love between Annabel and the speaker was so strong that
At the start, the first stanza of the poem is full of flattery. This is the appeal to pathos. The speaker is using the mistress's emotions and vanity to gain her attention. By complimenting her on her beauty and the kind of love she deserves, he's getting her attention. In this first stanza, the speaker claims to agree with the mistress - he says he knows waiting for love provides the best relationships. It feels quasi-Rogerian, as the man is giving credit to the woman's claim, he's trying to see her point of view, he's seemingly compliant. He appears to know what she wants and how she should be loved. This is the appeal to ethos. The speaker seems to understand how relationships work, how much time they can take, and the effort that should be put forth. The woman, if only reading stanza one, would think her and the speaker are in total agreement.