Seduction in To His Coy Mistress - Essay Example

Seduction in “To His Coy Mistress” Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is a poem of sexual seduction. More a letter to a lover than a poem, the speaker of the poem attempts to convince his mistress to put away her shyness and succumb to his sexual advances. The speaker pursues this feat by developing a three-part persuasive argument to his mistress. In the argument, he tries to convince the mistress to accept his sexual requests by focusing on the three rhetorical strategies of ethos, pathos, and logos. The general structure of the argument is an analysis of the relationship between time and love as an effort to manipulate the emotions of the mistress and force her into a quick decision to engage in a sexual relationship with the speaker. In the first part of the argument, the speaker establishes his credibility by proving that he is unlike other suitors in that he will not cast aside his mistress merely because she grows older. The speaker constructs this appeal by granting himself an infinite amount of time and assuring his mistress that time cannot bound his devotion to her. He understands the female psyche and how females often dwell upon their physical appearance and the effect that time has upon it. So, to assure her that he is not concerned with the damage that time will wreak upon her beauty he removes time and details how he would spend ages admiring each part of her physical beauty. He states that he would praise her eyes and forehead “an hundred years” (Marvell 13). Additionally, he would devote “two hundred to adore each breast” and “thirty thousand to the rest” (15, 16). Additionally, he plans “an age at least to every part” (17). By removing time from his admiration of her beauty, he is, in effect, assuring her that her beauty will last forever and that he will be there to adore it unlike those men who cast aside a woman once she ages. In the first part of the argument, the speaker also sets himself apart from other suitors by assuring his mistress that his devotion to her is pure. He understands that his mistress will feel devalued if she immediately assents to his advances, so he addresses this concern by illustrating the length of time he will devote to waiting upon her. He assures her that his devotion to her is not entirely sexual by demonstrating the length of time that he will wait, whereas most men would move on quickly if they did not receive the sexual prize they seek. He will “love [her] ten years before the Flood, / And [she] should, if [she] please[s], refuse / Till the conversion of the Jews” (Marvell 8-10). So, should she not immediately give herself over to him, he will wait for an eternity, and in this eternity, he will merely admire each of her physical features for an age. The speaker’s analysis of the length of time he will wait upon his mistress and the length of time he will devote to praising her physical features appeals to the vanity of the mistress and helps allay her fears that he will view her as cheap should she immediately fall into bed with him. In the second part of the argument, the speaker, having established his credibility and purity as a suitor by detailing the length of time he would devote to his mistress if given an infinite amount, attempts to speed up time in order to create a sense of fear and tension in her. Having detailed how he would spend an unlimited amount of time adoring his mistress, he now pulls all of this out from under her. Though he states in the first part of the argument that her beauty will last forever, he now discards that notion as being overly romantic and even foolish. As the speaker argues, no man or woman can stand outside of time even if he or she should wish. The effect of this claim is that the mistress is now in fear that her beauty will fade and that all which her lover described in the first part of the argument will disappear, and he will no longer have anything to which to devote himself. The speaker reminds her that “Time’s winged chariot hurr[ies] near” and that in the “Deserts of vast eternity / Thy beauty shall no more be found” (Marvell 22, 24-5). So, though he has made himself reliable as a suitor by proving his purity, he makes his mistress self-conscious and aware that the object of his affection will not remain for all eternity as his devotion will. In effect, he will always love and adore her beauty, but time will destroy that beauty that he loves and his devotion will only exist as a memory. The speaker creates additional fear in his mistress’ heart by reminding her of death. Having discarded the notion that his mistress’ beauty can be removed from time and remain ever in the present, he reminds her that her life cannot escape the ravages of time. If she does not give herself to him, not only will she lose her beauty to time but she will also lose her life. His devotion to her will be meaningless if she no longer lives. As he admonishes her, “your quaint honor [will] turn to dust, / And into ashes all my lust” (Marvell 29-30). And, “The grave’s a fine and private place, / But none, I think, do there embrace” (31-2). At this point, the mistress is likely fearful that her suitor’s love will not last forever. He is a virtuous man who would devote his entire life to her beauty, but her beauty will die and her life will fade if she does not allow that devotion to become something greater. In the third and final part of his argument, the speaker combines the approaches he used in the first two parts of the argument in order to spur his mistress into action and into his bed. Having proven his adoration of her beauty in a world without time and destroyed this idealization as overly romantic, as time is inescapable, he deduces that the only logical result of the pressure of time is to engage in a sexual relationship. This deduction is the logical conclusion to the first two parts of his argument. If time did not exist, he would admire every piece of her physical body for ages and wait for her to come to him. However, time is inescapable, and the result of this inevitability is that the physical beauty that he so admires will suffer destruction at its hands. So, since he loves her beauty and her beauty and life are fleeting, she should give herself to him. As the speaker states, “while the youthful hue / Sits on thy skin like morning dew . . . let us sport us while we may” (Marvell 33-4, 73). Having reminded her of her death, he also alludes to his own, joining her and giving her surety that she will not suffer this fate alone. He also feels the pressure of time and that has led him to his conclusion. The two lovers must enjoy their love physically while they may. The beauty of this poem is the depth of the argument made by the speaker and its incorporation of the three classical rhetorical appeals. The speaker is remarkable in his understanding of psychology. He knows he must establish his own credibility, make his mistress doubt herself, and then exploit this vulnerability. Additionally, the three-part structure of the poem allows the argument he is making to develop to a logical conclusion just as a simple syllogism does. The art of Marvell shines in the poem because he does not explicitly develop a rhetorical argument as one would in an essay or paper. Instead, he uses the imagery and figurative language of poetry to emphasize his points and draw the logical connections between the different parts. Like the poem, the argument is best summed up by the image presented in the final lines: “Thus, though we cannot make our sun / Stand still, yet we will make him run” (Marvell 46-7). Work Cited Marvell, Andrew. "To His Coy Mistress." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online. Bartleby. Web. 12 Apr. 2012. . Read More