Introduction
Although the modern perception of poetry frequently holds that the only ‘real’ poetry consists of words and emotions that come straight from the heart in a burst of feeling, the poetry of Shakespeare and his contemporaries actually followed a relatively strict formula in writing their poetry known generally as the Petrarchan convention. Within the typical formula, an idealistic feminine figure was presented as both the cause and the balm for all of the male lover’s sorrows.
This forces him to endure any numbers of agonies and extremes of emotion even while she serves as a moral dynamic to impel him to new spiritual heights. In the Petrachan tradition, the woman as pathway to heaven necessitated a chaste or religious love rather than a physical one. However, poets such as William Shakespeare and John Donne found it more profitable, and more lifelike, to challenge these assumptions within their poetry.
Shakespeare (1564-1616) introduced a shift in focus from the traditional angelic woman, usually blond and ‘bright as the sun’, as she is replaced with a Dark Lady whose characteristics remain far from the chaste princess of virtue of other poets By introducing not only the physical concepts of male.female relationships into his poetry, but also including the concept of violence within the poem, Donne (1572-1631) takes part in the massive change that was sweeping the nation and began breaking down this idealized viewpoint of woman as godlike figure that exists for the sole purpose of belonging to men.
As can be seen in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and Donne’s “To His Mistress,” both poets were challenging the prevailing Petrarchan ideals of a chaste and untouchable feminine by bringing the discussion back into the world of the physical.
Main body
The tone taken by Shakespeare in writing about his Dark Lady takes on an almost nihilistic flair. In Sonnet 130, for example, he describes her attributes in direct opposition to the false comparisons offered by other poets. He says, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;. Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;. If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;. If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head” (1-4).
In describing her in such terms, Shakespeare takes all the romance out of the poem, refusing to see in his woman the same sort of heavenly divinity found in the poetry of his contemporaries regarding their young women. By his description of her, the wiry black hair and the dun skin tone, Shakespeare presents the possibility that his Dark Lady was perhaps as opposite her white sisters in reality as she is in poetry by having in some part recent African descent.
While lovers were often described, even by Shakespeare, as having the sweet breath of flowers, the Dark Lady here is denied such attributes as “in some perfumes is there more delight. Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks” (7-8). While there may only be some perfumes that smell better than her breathe, the lasting conception of the Dark Lady’s breath is that it ‘reeks’. In every possible way is the woman of the poem brought down to base, human levels, never permitted the transcendent love or expression so often provided other subjects of the Elizabethan sonnets.
However, in the final couplet, Shakespeare asserts that his love for this woman is “as rare. As any she belied with false compare” (13-14). In making this statement, he seems to put all other poets to shame in their love because their love is based upon idealistic foundations rather than reality. While the poem begins in such a way as to suggest that Shakespeare’s Dark Lady is nothing more than a base physical being, the sentiments of the poem seem to reach to a much deeper level because of their dependence upon truth rather than idealism.
The woman’s body had traditionally been subject to the whims and desires of the men around her while the men had traditionally held the power and discipline of the outside world. These structures were shifting and emerge as themes within Donne’s explorations of sex. Rather than ignoring the physical element of sex, Donne makes it the center issue in the elegy “To His Mistress.” In the action of this poem, Donne must request permission from his mistress in order to enjoy her body as he would like: “License my roving hands, and let them go” (25) which is consistent with the hands-off approach to female worship that was popular at the time.
However, the encounter between these two people is presented as if it were a contest between the male and the female in which he is not able to conquer without her consent, symbolized by her lying down of her armor which has taken the form of the dress, girdle and busk. The body of the mistress is revealed in exciting, enticing stages, illustrating the idea that she is no longer the mysterious, silent object in the background emerging simply for the pleasure of man, but is instead a corporeal being that has a sense of pleasure and fun all its own.
In this instance, the power of the scene is given to the woman who can choose to accept or reject him and remains elusive from his understanding. It is she who wears the armor, “Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,. That the eyes of busy fools may be stopped there” (8) just as it is she who controls the household. It is the woman who determines when it is time to head toward the bedchamber as she signals with a chime, indicating that she has set the time, not him.
As he progresses through Elegy XIX, Donne explicitly describes the disrobing of his mistress as she goes from being fully dressed to being fully naked in bed with him, yet finishes with a continued questioning regarding what is the true nature of a woman. Although he has reached in all the physical places and knows her “as liberally as to a midwife” (44), he has seen her soul and examined what it has to offer, yet he remains clueless as to what she is as she is still more covered than he.
Conclusion
Within each of these poems, the poets explore the concepts of the physical and erotic relationships between female and male as they have been traditionally understood and as they are emerging within this time frame. As the society shifts from being completely male-dominated based upon strength and physical power to one that provides some room for female independence and based upon mental rather than physical prowess, the standard gender definitions of the past were no longer quite so secure.
This is particularly true as the woman emerges as stronger and the man emerges as weaker than had been traditionally believed and the ramifications of these relationships are examined. In these poems, the man takes on more effeminate roles in terms of having to ask permission of the lady for his activities and more realistic roles as he looks at the actual being in front of him rather than an idealistic conception of what he believes he wants.
At the same time, the woman takes on more of the role of the man in her greater ability to control her own activities, her determination of what she is going to do, her ability to remain hidden from man despite her nakedness as well as her ability to remain exactly what she is before him. Thus, while woman as a concept is explored in more realistic and physical terms, both exciting and enticing readers, she is also still seen as in Shakespeare as a means of transcendence and as in Donne as a mystery beyond the understanding of men.
Works Cited
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. E. K. Chambers, (Ed.). London: Lawrence & Bullen. Vol I, 1896.
Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Harrison, G.B. (Ed.). New York: Harcourt, 1952.