Ananlysis Of Andrew Marvell Coy Mistress

426 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Love in shakespeares sonnets

Andrew Marvell attempts to win his “Coy Mistress” over and ultimately convince her into unleashing her passion and turning over her virginity. He is playing on a women’s vulnerability of love and admiration, fear of the loss of beauty and youthfulness and ultimately he clinches his argument by appealing to passion and lust. He is displaying a sense of urgency, to further his persuasion and has placed limitations on the availability of time in order to increase pressure.

In Marvell’s first stanza, he appeals to his mistress by painting a vivid picture of love and courting that would take place if time where available. There are no limitations in his first attempt at persuasion “vaster than empires and more slow”. The imagery used of adoring of her eyes and breasts, the passing of their “long loves day” and her “deserving” of this love are purely to convincingly permit her to see him as a gentleman, sincere in his affection.

The author then turns into his second argument or tactic of urging that is less “genteel”(Evans) and “more graphic”(Evans), as he seems to become increasingly desperate. In the second stanza he is using fear, almost threatening her, as he portrays what would happen if they allowed time to run out. He warns “her beauty shall no more be found” and alludes to her dying a virgin. Certain necessity arises as he begins to relate death, ashes and worms to his loss of lust and time.

As Marvell enters the third stanza he draws upon passion “at every pore with instant fires”. His “philosophical proposal”(Evans) that as lovers they can turn the tables of time and “thorough the iron gates of life”. He is drawing upon his earlier limitations of time and fear to convince her to be rebellious and give in “tear (their) pleasures with rough strife”, while youthfulness is still present.

Andrew Marvell’s arguments are related and are commonly based on lack of time. He shows her he is capable of love and then presents her with dark images of what would be if youthfulness eluded them, as he ends his final attempt of influence alluring to ravenous passion.

Show More
Related

  • Comparing Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress and Herrick’s To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

    1148 Words  | 3 Pages

    Comparing Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress and Robert Herrick’s To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

    Read More

  • Stratagem In Eliza Haywood's 'Fantomina'

    1642 Words  | 4 Pages

    For instance, as she takes the task of tending to the two male guests, she notes that “she was in no apprehensions of any amorous violence, but where she wish'd to find it.” To put it simply, she is recognizing the unusual amount of power she has in this situation. No man can force her into a romantic encounter unless she wants to be. The woman decides what man she has sex with, even though the heroine pretends like Beauplaisir is making this decision. As an illustration, when she visits his room and waits on him, Haywood writes, “His wild desires burst out in all his words and actions: . . . [H]eld to his burning bosom her half-yielding, half-reluctant body, nor suffered her to get loose, till he had ravaged all, and glutted each rapacious sense with the sweet beauties of the pretty Celia.” That is, by using the phrases ‘burst out’ and ‘half-yielding, half-reluctant’, Beauplaisir appears to be the one who chose to have sex with her. But once again, this is just an example of her bending his wishes to match hers. He thinks he’s romancing some new girl, when he’s actually with the girl who he had just abandoned- he is given the sense of choice to please his desires, but really, she made the choice for him. Hence, the woman gets the final say in the matter, forcing her lover to stay constant so she can be

    Read More

  • Comparing Marvell's The Passionate Shepherd To His Love

    318 Words  | 1 Pages

    Although Christopher Marlowe wrote his poem, " The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" in accordance with the Pastoral tradition, Andrew Marvell's " To His Coy Mistress", written with the intended theme of "carpe-diem" seems similar enough to Marlowe's poem to have been written by the same author even though the poems are separated by almost a century. Both poems are written in iambic tetrameter and are addressed to an unnamed lover. The tone of both poems are joy and romantic love, however Marvell expands his theme in his last stanza by bidding his lover to unite with him and use their strength to "tear our pleasures with rough strife, Thorough the iron gates of life."(Marvell, 128, lines 43-44)

    Read More

  • To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell and The Rights of Woman, by Anna Letitia Barbauld

    1193 Words  | 3 Pages

    Violence and love are often the result of intense passion, and this is no exception within Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”. The speaker is clearly infatuated with a woman, the subject of the poem, and he believes that these feelings should be reciprocated. This is made clear when the speaker states,

    Read More

  • Roles Of Women In The Odyssey Essay

    2820 Words  | 6 Pages

    who, "...made such love to her as women in their frailty are confused by, even

    Read More

  • All for Show – The Post-Petrarchan Poetry of Wyatt, Sidney, and Spenser

    2216 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...ing Astrophil and Stella to implode under its own contradictions Sidney ensures that its only lasting consequence is the affect it has on the beloved. In the same way Spenser tries to forge a tangible bond between himself and the beloved by rendering them both physically present in the words of Amoretti, Sidney tries to promote his signifiers to signifieds in an effort to exchange “semiological [intimacy] for sexual desire” (Stephens 93). The difference is that Spenser offers the beloved a shared space while Sidney seeks exclusive control of the courtship. Much like Wyatt tries to have the last word in Whoso List to Hunt, Sidney and Spenser write their sonnets in anticipation of the beloved’s response. As their efforts to adapt her subjectivity show, all three poets recognize the beloved as powerful, but is this the power of a reader or a social and sexual equal?

    Read More

  • What Is The Mood Of The Poem By Billy Collins

    675 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author describes her suitors’ requests for her love as “importune” which means to beg. This produces a visualization of men desperate and begging relentlessly for the lady’s love. The word “importune” heightens the sense of how attracted people were for the

    Read More

  • Comparing Tone in To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time and To His Coy Mistress

    540 Words  | 2 Pages

    Comparing Tone in To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time and To His Coy Mistress

    Read More

  • My Last Duchess Explication

    637 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem begins as the Duke draws the attention of his fellow conversationalist, who is, we discover, a messenger representing the Count’s family whose daughter’s hand the duke seeks in marriage, to the image of his deceased bride on the wall. The Duke lionizes the work of the artist, Fra Pandolf, who exhausted a day’s worth of effort on the portrait to make it so lifelike. He invites the messenger to take a seat, and proceeds to discuss how all who have ever lain eyes upon that picturesque expression on the deceased’s painted face have inquired as to the reason behind the lively expression. He then reminisces about his late wife, remembering that it wasn’t solely his company which brought color to her cheeks. He ponders the possibility that the painter complimenting her brought forth such a response, as she believed that such attentions were all just formalities and politeness. He continues, scorning the nature of the duchess; she found something to praise in whatever she saw. He finds it disdainful that things so simple and unworthy as the sunset or a small offering of fruit some officer could make her as happy as his gift to her, his hand in matrimony and an ancient name. He says that no one could really fault the duchess for her flighty nature, but even if he had the power of speech required to make his expectations from her clear, it was beneath him to do so. He hints at the fact that the duchess seemed to smile at everyone in the same way that s...

    Read More

  • My Mistress Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun By William Shakespeare

    474 Words  | 1 Pages

    The poem “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing like the Sun” by William Shakespeare is about the love towards an imperfect woman. He explains that although his mistress is imperfect, he finds his love special and rare. To clear things up mistress in this poem holds a completely different meaning than that of the modern-day term we are used to. The word mistress now refers to a woman having a sexual relationship outside of marriage, especially with a married man however, in Shakespeare's time, it meant a woman who rules others or has control. The reader can focus on some important aspects of this poem such as imagery, and tone to better understand the poem.

    Read More

  • Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress

    634 Words  | 2 Pages

    Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress To His Coy Mistress: This Seventeenth Century poem by Andrew Marvell

    Read More

  • Marvel to His Mistress: Carpe Diem!

    725 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Andrew Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress," he's arguing for affection. The object of the speaker's desire wants to wait and take the relationship slow, while the speaker pushes for instant gratification. This persuasive poem makes the point that time waits for no one and it's foolish for two lovers to postpone a physical relationship.

    Read More

  • The Seize the Moment Theme of To His Coy Mistress

    801 Words  | 2 Pages

    Andrew Marvell tries in this carpe diem poem, "To His Coy Mistress," to use time and symbols to convince her to seize the day. He uses the river, the worm and many direct references to time to express the urgency of the situation. He then says that his love is vegetable and that this coy mistress is the only one that can sustain this living love.  Then he threatens death, gets aggressive, and shows her that her youth is fleeting, and that if she does not change, she will be miserable.

    Read More

  • Male and Female Relations in Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse

    2883 Words  | 6 Pages

    To The Lighthouse exemplifies the condition of women when Woolf was writing and to some extent yet today. It offers a solution to remedy the condition of both men and women. To say the novel is a cry for a change in attitude towards women is not quite correct. It shows the plight of both men and women and how patriarchy is detrimental to both genders. Mrs. Ramsey. Both suffer from the unequal division of gender power in Woolf's society. Lily is also very much a product of society, yet she has new ideas for the role of women and produces one answer to the problems of gender power. Besides providing these examples of patriarchy, To The Lighthouse examines the tenacity of human relationships in general, producing a novel with twists, turns, problems, and perhaps a solution. Mrs. Ramsey is the perfect, patriarchal woman. She scarcely has an identity of her own. Her life is geared towards men:

    Read More

  • Narrative Techniques In Woolf's To The Lighthouse

    1978 Words  | 4 Pages

    “To the Lighthouse” is open to more thаn one interpretаtion. It is different from other modernist novels in the wаy Virginiа Woolf experiments with the new devices such аs streаm of consciousness technique, the pаssаge of time аnd how women аre forced by society to аllow men to tаke emotionаl strength from them. Her nаrrаtive technique is unique in thаt it contаins the devices no other writer employs. She presents consciousness by using а number of devices in one аnd the sаme flow of consciousness such аs multiple point of view, use of free аssociаtion, use of time montаge, shift of chаrаcters, interior monologue without wаrning аnd the overuse of personаl pronouns. (Dick, Susаn,

    Read More

More about Ananlysis Of Andrew Marvell Coy Mistress

Open Document