Sexual and Selfish Love Interests - Essay Example

15 November Sexual and Selfish Love Interests Love can be painted using different poems. Indeed, poems are often made to depict their speakers' love for the women they are wooing or their lovers. This essay compares and contrasts Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress and Robert Browning's My Last Duchess. These poems share the same theme of love, although “love” is illustrated in different ways because of the divergences in the speakers' goals. Both poems depict passionate forms of love, although My Last Duchess revolves around selfish love, while To His Coy Mistress expresses sexual love; The poems are both effective in expressing their themes, where Browning handles the theme of love with irony, allusion, and symbolism to expose the intentions and personality of the Duke of Ferrara, while Marvell pursues the same theme using different imagery, allusion, and symbolism. These two poems are about the speakers' ardent love and their intentions to express that love, but the different perspectives of the speakers impact their expression of their love. To His Coy Mistress has an enthusiastic lover as the speaker. His eagerness can be further explored in the rhetorical techniques that he uses to persuade his lover to agree with the consummation of their love. For instance, he uses logos to express the urgency of his lust: “Time's winged chariot hurrying near” (Marvell 22). The emphasis on the “wings” and “chariot” sends the image of “now.” Act now, he urges the mistress, and let us make love before time comes to take us. The speaker also uses pathos by stressing his intense emotions for his mistress. He says that “coyness” is “no crime” (Marvell 2), but to wait for too long will lead to both their suffering. He stresses that coyness has its supreme disadvantage of not being able to enjoy the ecstasy of acting “like am'rous birds of prey” (Marvell 38). The word “amorous” specifically indicates carnal love and the so this speaker's sole intention is to entice his mistress to surrender her body to him. The main driving force of the poem is, hence, lust. The speaker of the poem My Last Duchess also shows passionate love. At first, it seems that it is about the Duchess, whom a painting has immortalized. In reality, the Duke refers to his love for himself. He has a superiority complex that can be inferred from how he describes his name: “My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name” (Browning 33). He believes that he is a “gift” to womanhood and that as a gift, he should be the main priority of his Duchess. His main intention in this poem is to express what he expects from his new Duchess, which reflects his own intentions as an authoritarian lover. As a lover he expects that the Duchess smiles to him only and not to anyone else. He hated how his past Duchess easily smiled to everyone else: “A heart – how shall I say? – too soon made glad” (Browning 22). This man detests “sharing” even his wife's smile. It demonstrates how obsessive and selfish he is with his loved ones, not because he loves them so much, but because he loves himself too greatly. Marvell and Browning are both effective in expressing their themes, though Browning handles the theme of love with irony. Browning's poem seems to be about the lovely Duchess, for the curtain reveals her beauty, which is a “wonder” (3). The Duke opens this curtain to a representative of the Count. He wants to marry the Count's niece. The Duke praises Fra Pandolf for capturing the “depth and passion” of his Duchess' beauty through his painting (8). Browning portrays soon, however, that the poem is more about the Duke than the Duchess. In particular, the poem exposes the Duke's selfish love, when he criticizes his wife's sharing of her smile with all she sees: “...Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,/Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without/Much the same smile?” (Browing 43-45). For the Duke, this smile should be reserved to him and him alone. It is ironic that as the Duke describes his former wife's beauty, he also complains about her weaknesses. As a result, the poem becomes a cunning device for the Duke to express to his audience that he wants specifications to what an ideal Duchess should be. There is verbal irony, for instance, when the Duke says: “...She thanked men, – good! but thanked/Somehow – I know not how...” (Browning 31-32). He commends the Duchess for being kind, but also demeans her by questioning how she thanks other men. In two lines then, he compliments and demonizes her. The second line is enough to undermine the Duchess' integrity by insinuating that she gives “other” forms of favors to men. This is one of the examples of the Duchess' traits that the Duke abhors. He wants a new Duchess who is more submissive to him and not kind to other men. It is one of the many requirements he demands from a new Duchess. Browning also effectively uses allusion and symbolism to expose the intentions and personality of the Duke of Ferrara, which are different from the ones that Marvell employs.The Duke sees himself superior to others through mentioning that his name is a “gift” and that he cannot “stoop” (Browning 34) to the level of the Duchess. The Duke alludes of how he took care of his Duchess' incessant kindness to other men: “...This grew; I gave commands/Then all smiles stopped together” (Browning 45-46). He indicates that he killed her, so the “smiles stopped” finally. In saying this, he asserts to the representative that he can easily arrange for his Duchess to be killed, if she does not follow his orders and requirements to the dot. Browning also uses different symbolisms from Marvell. The curtain is a symbol for control. If the Duke cannot control the Duchess before, he now completely controls her as a painting: “...since none puts by/The curtain I have drawn for you, but I” (Browning 9-10). Furthermore, the poem uses the sculpture of Neptune as another symbol of control. The Duke demands that the new Duchess should be more pliable to his will, or else she will also suffer the same fate as the former Duchess: “Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,/Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!” (Browning 55-56). The Duke emphasizes the “taming” of the new Duchess and the “casting” as a process of taming. If this taming cannot be done, it will be easy for the Duke to turn the new Duchess to another painting of his. Marvell pursues the same theme of love, but uses different imagery, allusion, and symbolism. Marvell uses traditional imagery to complain about his mistress' coyness, to compliment the mistress and to emphasize his sincerity, before expressing his lust. The speaker starts with the image of the geographical distance between the Ganges in India and the Humber in England (Marvell lines 5,6) to express the coldness of his lover. This gulf also asserts that coyness only gives distance to them, which is unnecessary to lovers. The speaker flatters his mistress' beauty: “An hundred years should go to praise/Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze” (Marvell 13-14). The images are the eyes and the forehead that are so lovely that a hundred years will be needed to properly “praise” them. Afterwards, he compliments her other body parts, which sexualizes the tone of the poem: “Two hundred to adore each breast,/But thirty thousand to the rest;/An age at least to every part” (Marvell 15-17). Two hundred years are given to each breast, which underscores the “lust” of the lover. In addition, the speaker praises the lady's “heart” (Marvell 18). The heart symbolizes “her inner beauty” so that he shows the lady that his love is more than about her physical beauty. The speaker continues to romanticize his love for her: “For, lady, you deserve this state;/ Nor would I love at lower rate” (Marvell 19-20). The speaker promises forever, when he knows that nothing is forever. The poem also uses allusion to emphasize the urgency of erasing coyness as a symbol of love. The allusions to the tide of the Humber, Noah’s flood, and the “conversion of the Jews” are references to the end of the world. The world can end anytime and they should not let the world end without enjoying each other. Marvell also employs diverse symbols to convince the mistress of the importance of consummated love. The vegetable can be viewed as a symbol of truthfulness and lust. The speaker’s “vegetable love” is natural and the speaker says that his love will grow slowly in time, as it “clings” to the mistress. The natural essence of the vegetable insists on the natural love for the mistress, which contrasts with the symbol of the curtain for My Last Duchess. The clinging part of the vegetable is sexually suggestive, because of it pertains to a physical embrace. Finding rubies instead of other gems is also quite an interesting symbol. Rubies have been said to reduce sexual urges. It is possible that the speaker is saying that the mistress is using rubies to lessen her own sexual tendencies, which saddens the speaker. These rubies are not that significant when time and distance can easily separate the lovers. The speaker also uses the cemetery as a symbol of death: “The grave's a fine and private place,/But none I think do there embrace” (Marvell 31-32). He frightens the mistress with the symbolism for death, so that she can consider enjoying life to the fullest, including lust. Marvell and Browning use different symbolisms and allusions, though Browning employ irony to depict the same theme of ardent love, while Marvell utilizes different images to express his lust. Marvell focuses on alluding to urgency and death to remove his lover's coyness. While Browning also alludes to death, this is done for the goal of demanding a more submissive Duchess. Marvell uses the symbols of vegetable and cemetery to express his sincerity and the significance of lust, while Browning uses the curtain and the sculpture of Neptune to emphasize the Duke's requirements for his new Duchess. Browning adds irony to expose the Duke's egoism and authoritarianism, while Marvell underlines images of love and lust. Together, these poems entail the intensity of love, which can be colored by different intentions of the speakers. Works Cited Browning, Robert. My Last Duchess. Marvell, Andrew. To His Coy Mistress. Read More