Feminist Response to "To my coy Mistress"

Feminist Response to “To his Coy Mistress”

In the beginning of the poem the speaker explains to the woman about his desire for their love, and how they will travel the world and enjoy its exotic riches. It seemed as if the speaker was really drunk in love with his mistress “Had we but world enough and time/Love you ten years before the Flood.” This demonstrates the power of love a man and woman can bring together, when they respect and admire each other equally.
Marvell wrote this poem in a way, where the speaker praises his mistress throughout the poem emphasising their beauty. The speaker does this in a way by elaborating the beauty and significance on each of his mistress’ sexual body parts, for example “Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze/two hundred to adore each breast/but thirty thousand to the rest.” However as the poem continues, the speaker seems to see his mistress more as a sex object. Marvell uses the convention of unsatisfied desire to turn the tradition of courtly love to lust, judging from the second stanza it is clear that the speaker of the poem is really after lust instead of love. It seems as if the speaker sees love as unimportant, instead he is only interested in having a sexual relationship with her. Such evidence can be found in the poem as the speaker says “and your quaint honour turn to dust/ and into ashes all my lust.” This can represent the stereotypical mind of men relating to women and the true color of men towards their impression on women.
Also in the second stanza, the speaker becomes desperate for sex and is willing to use any reason to get what he wants, the things the speaker say become disgusting and brings fear upon his mistress. The speaker explains to his mistress that life is short but death is forever, as to a reason of where he can get what he wants since the both of them will die someday anyway. He then warns her and places her in a scenario where she is in a coffin, where worms will try to take her virginity if she doesn’t have sex with him before they die. The speaker then further explains that if she refuses to have sex with him, in the end it will become unbeneficial to them both “My echoing song; then worms shall try/that long preserv’d virginity.” The speaker seems anxious about having to mate with his mistress, he cannot contain himself and he is using everything that he’s got to get what he desires. This can show how weak men can be and how desperate they can become due to the lack sexual contact with women, and yet they still choose to disrespect women and treat them as sexual objects.
If a person is coy, he or she is pretending to be shy and quiet. The word mistress is a feminine form of the word “master” and the worse contains elements of being in charge. Judging from the title “To his Coy Mistress”, it would only mean that the speaker’s mistress is actually someone who is important that is pretending to be shy. Judging from the rest of the poem this title could only mean that the speaker’s mistress is toying with him, and that he is trying to break out of her game and get down to point with what he wants. Regardless of what the title suggests, there is a complicated relationship and complicated communications between our speaker and his mistress. This can actually show the power that women have over men, because of women’s ability to take men’s lust and their objective and turn it into power since men are desperate for the female body. In the end men seems to become desperate when it comes down to women as they turn weak and helpless. Due to this weakness, women can take advantage of this and control men by granting or withholding sex.