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To His Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell

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The portrayal of feminism in Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."

Summary:

"To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell does not directly portray feminism. The poem is a carpe diem piece that emphasizes the urgency of love and physical intimacy, reflecting the male speaker's perspective rather than addressing feminist themes. The speaker attempts to persuade his mistress to overcome her coyness and seize the moment, focusing more on male desire and urgency.

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Discuss the portrayal of feminism in Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."

In this age of deconstructivism, it is trendy to attack works for such things as feminism.  If Marvell's speaker were simply trying to seduce the maiden in order to satisfy his prurient desires, it seems dubious that he  would word his prelude to the seduction as he does. And the allusion to her "quaint honor" is not mocking, but flattering as the speaker notes that it would be charming were it not that they have so little time. The theme of this poem seems more to be expediency than lust.

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I don't think the poem was written from a feminist standpoint either. However, a feminist would argue that it is a woman's right and responsibility to control her own sexuality. I think that would include not being seduced by a poem! In all seriousness, it would entail not being tricked by the man's attempts to...

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seduce her and rather allow herself to be seduced when she wanted to be.
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I tend to agree with the first poster, that this is simply a love poem by a man who desires to be with the woman he loves. Actually, the fact that she has been "coy" up until now suggests that she is the one manipulating him for whatever reason. A feminist, however, might see that the most important thing in this poem is not the woman; instead, it is all about the man and what he wants. His pleas for love might be seen as agression or excessive pressure. That is not what most people think of as an equal relationship.

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I read once of a teacher who taught in a girls school and she set her kids the assignment of writing a poem in response to this male-dominated poem. The results were excellent, exposing the reality behind the male speaker's pleas for his mistress to love him. I guess you need to talk about perspective and then dissect the actual argument that the male speaker uses. He is very convincing, but at the heart of it lies his own impatience and his inability to wait.

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A feminist reading could also address that tone that the male speaker is using in the poem.  He starts in an "over-the-top" flattering manner, but turns it around in the second part to a gross and kind of scary/awful scenario of a worm "taking" the young lady's virginity.  He was already seducing her with words, now he is seducing her with fear.  Added to this he uses a word like "quaint" to describe her virginity.  Quaint implies cute and rather unimportant.  A woman's honor and her virginity are not trifles to her.  Women are always judged more harshly on their sexual morality, and he is teasing her or downplaying that reality in a tone that could be considered demeaning.

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Some will take this poem and point out that the man is attempting to convince the woman that she is worth several "forevers" of worship for each valued part of her anatomy as well as her heart and her head. However, the man cheapens this worthy admiration by attempting to use this flattery as a catalyst to the physical attention he is craving.  In other words, he doesn't have time to pour flattery upon her as she deserves because Time is flying and they're both getting closer to death.  He does not value the importance of feeling close without literally connecting.

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I don't see how you can construe this poem as a statement by a feminist.  However, I do see how you could analyze it from a feminist point of view.

One sort of feminist would argue that this poem does in fact (the previous post notwithstanding) see women as merely sex objects.  The speaker sees love as unimportant, you might argue, and pursues only sex.  This can be seen as a typically male way of relating to women.

Other feminists might see in this evidence of the power that women have over men.  The poem might be seen as evidence that women have the ability to take men's lust and their objectification of women and turn it into power.  Thus, women take their oppression and use it in clever ways to control the men who objectify them (because women can control men by granting or witholding sex).

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In "To His Coy Mistress," the poem's narrator is trying to persuade his girlfriend to have sex with him. He does this by using the carpe diem or "seize the day" theme, saying to her that they don't have all the time in the world, for at any time they could die. If he had world enough and time, the narrator says, he would spend 200 years praising each of his beloved's breasts and 30,000 years lavishing praise on the rest of her body. He would take her to India, at that time an immensely long journey from England, and once there, would lounge with her by the Ganges River and find her rubies. However, he says, there just isn't time for all this.

A feminist lens would focus on what is at stake for an unmarried woman in that time and place. She would have no access to reliable birth control, because there was none, and, in that culture, would be shamed and dishonored were she to become pregnant without being married. Having a baby without being married could also leave the woman unable to marry someone else, as she would be considered damaged goods. A feminist reading would question why the narrator is so blind to the possible consequences of sex on his beloved. Is it selfish of him to put his own desire for sex above the problems it could create for her? Why doesn't he see or acknowledge this reality? What might the beloved say back to him, were she to be given a voice? Why isn't she given a voice in the poem to respond?

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What does the poem "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell say about feminism?

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" is a classic poem with, at its heart, a relatively straightforward message: "take advantage of your youth (i.e., have a romantic relationship while you're still young) because life is short and soon we'll all be dead." The poem obviously makes this point in a more artistic, subtle way, but that is the general theme. While the poem might not seem terribly feminist by today's standards, in Marvell's day its message would have been shocking, as he's essentially advocating that women ignore conventional obsessions about female virginity and take control over their own sexual lives.

Throughout the poem, it's clear that Marvell does not care for the preservation of virginity (and, by extension, the preservation of female "virtue"). For instance, toward the end of the poem Marvell points out that, once his mistress is dead, "then worms shall try/ That long-preserved virginity,/ And your quaint honor turn to dust" (27-9). In a nutshell, Marvell is saying that the idea of virginity, along with its accompanying "honor," is actually not worth much at all, as it has no clout or social capital in the grave. As such, Marvell's message would have been feminist for its day, as he rebelled against and criticized traditional social structures that emphasized female virginity. 

That's not to say, however, that the poem should necessarily be viewed as radically feminist. For instance, it seems that Marvell is saying that women must live and love while they are young, as life won't be worth living once they've passed the first bloom of youth. This idea is fairly misogynist, as it puts forth the notion that women are only beautiful, or even useful, when they're young. Moreover, Marvell's incessant preoccupation with virginity and sexuality suggests that, in his view, women exist to fulfill a man's sexual desires. Even if a woman grows old and less attractive by conventional (often misogynist male) perspectives, shouldn't she have the agency to be able to live a fulfilling life outside of sexuality? This question is central to the poem, and asking it illustrates the shortcomings of Marvell's thinking. As such, though Marvell's poem would probably have been considered feminist in his day, it should not be considered feminist now. 

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