A word is one of the most powerful means for a person to express his or her attitude, to share information, or to show admiration. A poem is a powerful combination of words that is devoted to numerous themes, which are so important in this life, and poetry about women serve as an excellent example of the evaluation of female place and roles in this world, their duties, and their significance.
This essay aims at performing “The Secretary Chant,” “To His Coy Mistress,” and “My Last Duchess” feminist analysis. “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning, “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell, and “The Secretary Chant” by Merge Piercy are the three poems that depict the same topic in absolutely different ways. Browning considers women as objects, which call for admiration but still are not worth enough to mention their names, Marvell regards women as a male sexual desire, and Piercy mulls over women as machines, which are ready to perform any function.
“My Last Duchess” Feminist Analysis
A dramatic monologue “My Last Duchess,” presented by Robert Browning, opens to the reader a world, where men are eager to take leading positions only, and women have nothing to do but obey them and listen to their orders and words. In “My Last Duchess,” the theme of woman discrimination are depicted clearly. From the poem’s summary it is clear how Browning tries to represent how admiration, jealousy, and self-esteem are united in one man and make him happy and disappointed, weak and strong, courageous, and cowardly at the same time.
In “My Last Duchess” poem, the author depicts women as objects, which may not have names and may serve as the means to demonstrate some precious goods or services. “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall/Looking as if she were alive.
I call/That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands/ Worked busily a day, and there she stands” (Meyer 721). This piece of the poem proves that a man does not care about his loss, his wife’s death, and his grief. From the psychological point of view, his attitude depicts him as an indifferent to women’s suffering person. The point is that he gets a chance to demonstrate one more object that he owns now and tell about its price and value. This can be the aspect worth studying while analyzing feminism in “My Last Duchess.”
However, this very object has many disadvantages, which do not suit the Duke: “she liked whate’ er/ She looked on, and her looks went everywhere” (Meyer 722). Such absent-mindedness of the woman and the desire to be friendly with many people cannot be comprehended by the Duke. He thinks such behavior is offensive to his position and his power, this is why this woman is in the past, and the other one is waiting for him downstairs to enlarge Duke’s collection of expensive things.
“To His Сoy Mistress” Feminist Analysis
“To His Coy Mistress” is the attempt of Andrew Marvell to depict the role and the place of a woman in accordance with male standpoints and principles. The author does not present feminism in “To His Coy Mistress,” but the poem can be analyzed from a feminist approach. Though received many criticism from various critics, Marvell’s work is worth of studying its main arguments and themes. This poem is a kind of warning to all women against cajolery that is used by men to bed women. Andrew Marvell underlines women’s shyness and modesty that make all women so desirable by men.
In “To His Coy Mistress,” women are portrayed as playfully hesitant and pure human beings, who are waiting for males’ call to “sport us while we may” (Meyer 637). Marvell cries that people do not have much time to enjoy this life to its full extent, and women’s care about their virginities should not prevent both sexes against suffering from lack of love and satisfaction.
“Had we but world enough, and time/ This coyness, lady, were no crime/We would sit down, and think which way/ To walk, and pass our long love’s day” (Meyer 636). The male character does not provide a woman with time to think everything over, the only reasonable point he presents is that she has to have sex with him before she dies. He does not say anything about his possible grief about her death; the only thing that bothers him is the desire to have sex with this woman.
In my opinion, the poems by Marvell and Browning have many things in common, because both of them are about men’s attitude toward women. And this attitude is somewhat similar, because the Duke wants to have a woman to add to his collection of things, and the lover from “To His Coy Mistress” is eager to satisfy his desire and use a woman for this.
“The Secretary Chant” Analysis of Feminism Theme
The last poem, where the role of women is correctly described, is The Secretary Chant by Margie Piercy that was published in 1970s. This metaphoric poem describes the woman’s body as the parts of office equipment. A woman spends so much time among all those equipment and secretary things that she merges with them and loses her own identity. The modern world makes any person strong and self-possessed to cope with all challenges.
However, women are the softer sex, and men forget about this truth and try to use women’s skills as well as their own. One more work of art does not depict a woman as the thing alive that deserves respect and recognition just because it is near. Her head is a “badly organized file,” her breasts are “wells of mimeograph ink,” her hips are “a desk,” and her navel is “a reject button” (Meyer 570). This poem is a woman’s cry, caused by unfair dehumanization of women in business.
The point is that the author starts the description of this creature from the body parts, which have to identify her as a woman. The character still believes that she was created to be beautiful and be reproductive, and now, the only thing she can do is “to be delivered/ of a baby/ Xerox machine” (Meyer 570).
In this case, the author depicts a woman as a working machine that cannot just stop doing all this stuff and start fighting against such unfair treatment at work. Sexual discrimination is an essential topic at working places, and Margie Piercy presents one of the most sever comparisons that can be used to women.
Conclusion
The paper analyzed gender roles in “My Last Duchess”, “To His Coy Mistress,” and “The Secretary Chant.” Each of the above-mentioned authors represents a kind of fight that happens between a woman and this world. In My Last Duchess, the woman is struggling for respect in her own family; in “To His Coy Mistress,” the woman wants to defend her right to be a virgin, and in The Secretary Chant, the woman has to struggle to prove her equality in the working place.
The role of a woman in this world is excellent, indeed, and the point that only women have the reproduction function should cause respect from the male side. Nowadays, women are so unfair compared to the objects of men’s passion and desire, and the authors try to underline these problems in their poems.
Maybe, a fresh look on the old problems helps to realize injustice the vast majority of women face with and to create a world where rich Dukes would take lessons to be able to paint their wives, lovers would appreciate women’s desire to be a virgin, and businessmen would distinguish women and machines, and make the former happier even at working places.
Works Cited
Meyer, Michael. The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. Boston, MA: Bedford, 2008. Print.