To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell and The Rights of Woman, by Anna Letitia Barbauld

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Throughout the poems “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell and “The Rights of Woman” by Anna Letitia Barbauld, violence is used in contrasting ways. Marvell uses violence to manipulate his mistress into a powerless position, while Barbauld uses it to incite rebellion against just such a power structure.Though violence is not the primary thematic concern within the majority of both works, it plays an essential role in developing the storyline and helps to convey the messages of the authors. Within Marvell’s piece, the speaker describes a timeless love that is not reciprocated. Barbauld, as one might assume from the title, challenges the role of women in an ambitious, powerful manner. Throughout both pieces, violence becomes evident when the speakers use various types of diction while emphasizing the juxtaposition of similar sounding words.
Violence and love are often the result of intense passion, and this is no exception within Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”. The speaker is clearly infatuated with a woman, the subject of the poem, and he believes that these feelings should be reciprocated. This is made clear when the speaker states,
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near (19-22).
In this, the speaker means to convey his dedication to this woman. He fears, however, that her tendency to be coy will not allow them to be together before the “wingèd chariot”(22) carries him up into the afterlife. Though the speaker believes his affection to be undying, stating that, “nor would I love at lower rate”, he fears that time will not allow them to be together, unless she eliminates this part of her personality. This point is emphasized fur...

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... based on gender are unimportant because mutual love renders all differences equal. Marvell, through his poem, To His Coy Mistress, approaches violence in a slightly different manner. The speaker uses the threat of violence as a last resort to convince his coy mistress to lay with him. Though both poems use violence, they start and end at opposite ends of the spectrum. Barbauld begins with violence and ends with love, Marvell travels down the same path, but in the opposite direction.

Works Cited
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. "The Rights of Woman." The Norton Anthology Of English Literature. The Major Authors Ninth ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. 1444. Print.
Marvell, Andrew. "To His Coy Mistress." The Norton Anthology Of English Literature. The Major Authors Ninth ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. 751. Print.

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