Professor Stephanie Dowdle Maenhardt

Rodriguez 1

Alexa Rodriguez

Professor Stephanie Dowdle Maenhardt

English 2600

July 30, 2014

“Feminist and Gender Analysis of ‘From His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell’ by A.D. Hope”

“From His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell” is a poem responding to the original poem “To My Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell. The response, however, is not one could call happy or pleased based on the intentions of the original poem. A.D. Hope put into the poem a critical tone at some points in the poem and even some, dare I say, sarcasm. The poem has no set number of stanzas and so they vary.

When first reading the poem my immediate thoughts were that is was written by a woman who had probably read the original poem by Marvell and had decided to respond in order to show him in a way the mistakes he had made in his poem by not choosing the right words to persuade, “First, for the language you employ: A term I deprecate is ‘coy’”, or simply to try and ridicule the original poem (Hope online). The vocabulary used in “From His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell” is focused on telling the man how his previous words did not win the woman’s heart “All that indeed your poem lacked Was logic, modesty, and tact” (Hope online). I think this would be the vocabulary used by a woman to address a man that she does not want anything to do with. The poem also has lyrical vocabulary because, I feel, it could be used as a song or when reading the poem it feels as if the reader is singing.

As the poem goes on the author brings back some of the words from the original poem in order to make his point about the poorly chosen words and what images they bring to a woman “Shall I be moved to love you, pray, By hints that I must soon decay?” (Hope online). I believe this particular phrase is ironic because the man is expecting the woman to fall in love with him or want to be with him by telling her that she will soon be old. The rhyming scheme of this poem is consistent because every two lines end with a rhyme “No less inept, my rhyming friend,

Snared by the means, you miss your end” (Hope online).It also has a nice flowing rhythm that the readers can easily follow. There are no abrupt endings to the lines or the stanzas and so it makes for smooth transitions to each new line.

Hope has quite a few questions in this poem not because he is unsure of the answer, but instead because Hope is asking these questions with a critical or sarcastic tone, “You think to have persuaded me?” (Hope online). The author knows or is pretty sure that most woman with the original words in Marvell’s poem would not stick around with him and so A.D. uses the questions as another way of belittling the original rhyme. This again brings us to the tone of the poem. As I mentioned before the poem seems critical and somewhat sarcastic. The author seems to be scorning the original poem and at the same time making fun of it or of the author just because he chose to write it the way he did. This line of the poem “Sir, was this any way to woo?”, was directly addressed to the author of “To His Coy Mistress” (Hope online). From the beginning of the poem and from the title we can tell that A.D. is addressing Andrew Marvell. After the title, however, the author does not mention Marvell again until the line stated about clearly has the word “Sir” in it. The poem is not addressed to all men who might think that is the correct way to woo a woman but specifically to Mr. Marvell.

As I stated at the beginning of the essay to me this poem was clearly written by a woman because of the vocabulary used and the tone. To my surprise A.D. Hope is a man who chose to respond to the original poem “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell. Some clues that lead me to believe that the author was indeed a woman were some of the lines in the poem such as “Nor will such ploys, when all is said, Serve to stampede us into bed” (Hope online). I know by using the word ‘us’ does not necessarily mean he is speaking of himself, but before looking him up I did think he was a she. A.D. did achieve to make the poem sound as if a woman really had written it. He made me believe I was reading words from a woman who had not liked Marvell’s poem.

I have to admit that another reason I thought it was a female author was the fact that the author’s name is only initials. I know that back in the day women had to do things like that in order to get published and just by the context of the writing we could know or suspect that it was a woman author but no one ever really knew because they only had initials as the author’s name. Hope’s poem shows a very different side of a man because he is sensible and instead of writing a poem to follow up with Marvell he decided to write a poem from a woman’s point of view. It is said that woman are more sensible but A.D. really rose up to the occasion and proved us wrong, at least in my opinion.

In conclusion I enjoyed reading this poem and I think I liked it even more when I found out a man had written it. Perhaps the original poem had some faults because of the era it was written in and that might explain why the author chose to write it that way. “From His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell” flows very nicely and I also really liked that because it is easy to follow along. I think without even reading the original poem one can find out what is going on in the response except for some minor details. Overall this might be one of my favorite poems.

References

Hope, A.D.. "From His Coy Mistress." . N.p., n.d. Web. 30 July 2014. >.