The Study of Female Position in John Donne's ''Songs and Sonnets''
This paper analyzes the position of female figure in John Donne's 'Songs and Sonnets'.
The major concept of Donne's 'Songs & Sonnets' is love in male-female relationship. Considering the fact that a female often stands at one side of such human love and traditionally as the beloved, one can trace Donne's treatment of the female figure in relation to her beloved entity in the love issue. Thus female position in Donne's mentioned masterpiece can be studied to a great extent through analyzing his view of the concept of love itself.
At the time when Donne produced his 'Songs & Sonnets', the Petrarchan tradition had already ruled over the love poetry and literature for centuries. Donne probably thought that this tradition should end somehow since his sonnets harshly changed the concepts concerning love and women. His attitude towards the female figure can be best valued when compared to the strong Petrarchan tradition. As argued by Grennen, the traditional attitude toward women growing out of the suspicious and neurotic visions of some medieval moralists, and traceable to the traumatic racial experience of the Garden of Eden, saw deceit, instability and inconstancy as woman's essential characteristics (Grennen, 27).
The poems of 'Songs & Sonnets' have gone through different categorizations the most outstanding of which is that of Grierson. According to Redpath, Grierson classified the sonnets according to the predominating attitudes expressed and so divided them into 1) those with the negative predominating attitude and 2) those with the positive predominating attitude. The first grouping Redpath continues includes the poems in which Donne expressed kind of hostility towards love and women however the second grouping involves sonnets with an optimistic and satisfying outlook upon love and women (23).
However, an overall study of the sonnets besides a general knowledge of his other works can support the classification of the poems into the broad categories of serious and unserious. His unserious and amusing sonnets which will be studied in more detail include the values of romantic love. In these poems, Donne criticizes love and woman without disclosing his real aim and the nature of his love. He just tries to find faults with love and women and lets the Petrarchan notions of love enter his work. However, in the serious sonnets, he deals with the realities and the true relation of the lovers. There, not only he does not touch the trifling world of the Petrarchan lovers but considers it as ludicrous and vain.
His serious poems are novel and ingenious and if be read in depth and with no mental presumptions, can provide a comprehensive knowledge of his philosophy and the nature of his love. Such poems concern the union of male and female and how to preserve this union.
The outstanding distinction which can be made between Donne's view of female -in his serious sonnets- and those preceding him is that his female figure is observed in the course of loving instead of solely being loved. That is why instead of taking a physical account of the beloved female, the reader is provided by the two lovers' thoughts and feelings during heir meetings.
The female beloveds of the common romantic poems, as well as their male lovers, had been passive creatures only granted with the right of being chosen and beloved rather than that of choosing and loving. The previous courtly tradition of love just spoke of the one-sided affection and the cruel indifferent beloved besides the poor lover bearing those pains of love however Donne has achieved his beloved and no more talks of the beauties and cruelties of the female beloved.
Compared to the former sonneteers composing poems of romantic and Petrarchan love, Donne's view of the female is completely ingenious. Petrarchan lovers, always dreaming to unite with the beloved, sang of her physical and facial beauties however Donne composes 'Songs & Sonnets' after union with the beloved. The value of the female beloved is often recognized through the character of the male lover. In Petrarchan love, the lover is basically a passive one paused by his infatuation however the lover in Donne is active, energetic and excited.
Donne's female figure is the first to love and enjoy a mutual love. She is even given more credit by Donne's high opinion of human love. He considers such a love between a male and a female ideal and perfect in itself and requires no manifestation of God in the female beloved to make her perfect and precious. This points to the fact that contrary to many earlier poets such as Dante who considered their beloved the embodiment of God and therefore valuable, Donne regards the corporal and real existence of his female beloved self-sufficient and precious enough in his serious poems.
In comparison to his love and consequently his female beloved, Donne regards all other things as absurd in his 'The Sun Rising' and says:
'She is all States and all princes I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.' (Oxford, 93)
As mentioned before, the entire poetry of 'Songs & Sonnets' does not represent the real beliefs, feelings, values and aspiration of Donne and he does not have the same extent of seriousness in all of the poems. According to himself, some of the sonnets are just witty contradictions and vapors about love. Therefore, any research concerning his ideas should take into consideration the extent of seriousness. Before going to the serious ones in an attempt to view the female position, it would be worthy to have a brief overview of the unserious poems as well.
Donne's unserious sonnets include criticisms of sonneteers, faultfinding with women and despising those lovers slave to their beloveds. In these sonnets, woman is portrayed as an insignificant creature whose claim of chastity and purity is nothing but a mere tactic to deceive men and man should not yield to such tricks.
For instance, In 'The Indifferent', Donne attacks the constancy in love and defends inconstancy:
'I can love her, and her, and you, and you;
I can love any, so she be not true.' (Oxford, 93)
Such poems have just been means of mirth and amusing for him and he never actually believed in the idea.
In 'The Confined Love', he notes that a woman should not love just one man but more than that:
'Good is not good,
Unless a thousand it possess,
But doth waste with greediness.' (Oxford, 111)
'Love's Usury' develops the same concept and has an indecent exaggeration:
'This bargain's good ; if when I'm old, I be
inflamed by thee,
If thine own honour, or my shame and pain,
Thou covet most, at that age thou shalt gain.
Do thy will then ; then subject and degree
And fruit of love, Love, I submit to thee.
Spare me till then; I'll bear it, though she be
One that love me.' (Oxford, 94)
It is seen that exaggeration in form of mocking the ideals and ethics is a witty characteristic of Donne.
'Lovers' Infiniteness' considers the beloved's love as imperfect and guesses that the beloved has saved her love for others:
'If then thy gift of love were partial,
That some to me, some should to others fall,
Dear, I shall never have thee all.' (Oxford, 97)
And he continues that even if the beloved be faithful, she does not have as much capacity as the lover to love.
In 'Woman's Constancy', the beloved will leave him and become unfaithful. Since the nature of things is always changing, today's lovers will not be the same tomorrow. Woman who has found her life on the basis of inconstancy can only follow her nature by infidelity:
'Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true ?' (Oxford, 91)
'Love's Alchemy' speaks of sonneteers who consider love the marriage of true minds (such as Shakespeare) however it compares the lovers' desire for eternal happiness to the elixir of the alchemists which is nothing more than a disappointing dream since women, like mummies, are void of wisdom and spirit:
'And as no chemic yet th' elixir got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot,
If by the way to him befall
Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,
So, lovers dream a rich and long delight,
But get a winter-seeming summer's night.' (Oxford, 113)
Criticizing women is also well apparent in 'The Will' where Donne reproaches love for obsessing him with a beloved who is indifferent to him and his love. Thus with his death, there will no more be the love and the beloved's beauties. So he makes his will and commands to give each thing of him to he who has lots of that:
'Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,
Great Love, some legacies ; I here bequeath
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see ;
If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee ;
My tongue to Fame ; to ambassadors mine ears ;
To women, or the sea, my tears ;
Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore
By making me serve her who had twenty more,
That I should give to none, but such as had too much before.' (Oxford, 124)
In 'Twickenham Garden', he calls women pretentious. He is sorry for women's insincere and faithless nature and believes that their real thoughts and feeling can not be understood from their eyes and tears:
'Hither with crystal phials, lovers, come,
And take my tears, which are love's wine,
And try your mistress' tears at home,
For all are false, that taste not just like mine.
Alas ! hearts do not in eyes shine,
Nor can you more judge women's thoughts by tears,
Than by her shadow what she wears.' (Oxford, 105)
Criticizing women goes to the highest degree in 'Song (Go catch a falling star)' where Donne recounts impossibilities just to say at the end that in case these impossibilities one day become possible then you will find a woman who is both fair and faithful since beauty is the obstacle to fidelity:
'If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.' (Oxford, 90)
'The Flea' is the best instance of Donne's wit and humor where he composes 27 lines about a trivial insect to convince his beloved. The flea has bitten him and the beloved and the beloved has killed the flea. Donne uses the event and plays with the romantic love features to make his beloved yield to him.
The sonnets 'The Blossom', 'The Damp', 'Love's Deity', 'Love's Diet', 'Love's Exchange', 'the Funeral' and 'The relic' all contribute to the same ideas depicted in the above unserious sonnets.
John Donne's unserious sonnets are not representatives of his true beliefs regarding the issue of love. In his real world of love, nothing can enter but love and it's only through his serious poetry that one can get to his true definition of love. His belief that the beloved and he are microcosms greater than the macrocosm is not an exaggeration. His serious poems are prefaces to the elegy for the death of his wife. The death which destroys his world since there will be no world without his wife anymore. That's the reality of the female position in his world. An overview of his serious poems will prepare the ground to get at his true attitude towards love and woman.
In 'The Legacy', Donne calls missing the beloved death and the reader feels that the lover's existence depends on hers:
'WHEN last I died, and, dear, I die
As often as from thee I go,
Though it be but an hour ago
?And lovers' hours be full eternity?
I can remember yet, that I
Something did say, and something did bestow ;
Though I be dead, which sent me, I might be
Mine own executor, and legacy' (Oxford, 99)
In 'The Computation', lover says that the passage of time can not be counted with hours since in happiness, hours are minutes and in absence, days are weeks. World is only perfect when they are with each other:
'FOR my first twenty years, since yesterday,
I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away ;
For forty more I fed on favours past,
And forty on hopes that thou wouldst they might last' (Oxford, 134 )
In 'The Anniversary' which is the celebration of their first meeting, everything is going towards destruction except their love that is eternal and will not be touched by yesterday or tomorrow:
'All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay ;
This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday ;
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.' (Oxford, 102)
In 'The Sun Rising', the lover asks the sun not to intervene in their life since their world is not even impressed by its rays. He calls the beloved all states and himself all princes. The whole world is summarized in his female beloved for him:
'She's all states, and all princes I;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.' (Oxford, 92)
In Donne's opinion, the requirement for love's survival is its mutuality and the one-sided love is just the physical love in which the lover is only obsessed with his own self. As posed by Gardner, in 'Break of day', Donne actually lets the female character speak mutually (39):
' Must business thee from hence remove?
O ! that's the worst disease of love,
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.' (oxford, 102)
In 'The Good-Morrow', the high definition Donne offers for their love points to the high definition he has for the female beloved. Insignificant loves require insignificant females while significant loves require significant females:
'My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west ?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.' (Oxford, 89)
The first stanza of the sonnet describes the two lovers' physical pleasures which are accompanied by the images of country pleasures and Seven Sleepers' den. Now, they consider all those pleasures as fancies compared to their present true love. The next stanza depicts their awakening and open eyes. They have attained genuine love and need not be afraid of the unfaithfulness bothering romantic lovers any more.
Contrary to the earlier love poets, Donne considers his beloved and himself equal to each other. He sees each one of themselves as an independent world exactly equal to each other. He feels no slightest difference between themselves and grants as much right to the female as granted to himself. He believes that the female is a hemisphere like himself who has the same right and ability of loving. They are happy to have found a love which includes the body but is basically spiritual. As argued by Grierson, the justification of natural love as fullness of joy and life is the deepest thought in Donne's love poems, far deeper and sincerer than the platonic conceptions of the affinity and identity of souls with which he plays in some of the verses (Kermode,39).
In this way, Donne breaks the ancient picture of female as a passive creature who can only be the object of gaze for men and offers a novel portrait of the female who is equally in love and participates in the action. The idea of equality of the sexes can be well traced in 'The Undertaking' where Donne says:
'And forget the He and She?' (Oxford, 91)
The interesting thing is that although the Petrarchan poets adored their unattainable beloveds, they never considered the possibility of relationship rooted in equality and this could destroy the whole frame in which they wrote.
'The Canonization' is based on the religion of love. It considers the lover and the beloved as equal saints which will serve as symbols of love for the world. In the first two stanzas, Donne criticizes those who assess his poetry according to the tradition of courtly love. His questions emphasize the foolishness of the Petrarchan love and beloved and defend his own love and beloved:
'And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage ;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage ;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes ;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize?
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love." ' (Oxford, 94)
In 'A Valediction: The Forbidding Mourning', Donne believes that in a spiritual love, physical absence is not of great importance. He knows the basis of this union to be found on the beloved and without her patience, the union is quite impossible; therefore, he sets the leading role in the path of union to be borne by the beloved:
'Dull sublunary lovers' love
?Whose soul is sense?cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assur?d of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.' (Oxford, 120)
In 'The Ecstasy', Donne brings the male and the female out of their bodies and sees each of them as both lover and beloved. This is the unique view of Donne to see the male and the female absolutely equal to each other in the love affair. This is Donne's most philosophical poem in which he describes the thoughts of the two lovers in ecstasy and while out of their bodies. In 'The Ecstasy', the lovers come to realize the truth of their love and being back to their lives, they appreciate their union on earth:
'This ecstasy doth unperplex
(We said) and tell us what we love ;
We see by this, it was not sex ;
We see, we saw not, what did move :
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things they know not what,
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again,
And makes both one, each this, and that.' (Oxford, 121)
This is the highest form of love necessitating the highest lover and the highest beloved. Donne's female figure is a dominant and effective female who bestows meaning to the life of the male. This female beloved is not only the object of sensual pleasure but the influential lover who makes herself both the subject and object of a physical-spiritual love. Donne's female, in contrast to the female of the courtly love and romantic poets, is not less than male but closely equal to him.
Donne's choice of lexicon also points to his high opinion of the female in 'Songs & Sonnets'. He regularly uses the pronouns 'we ' and 'us' instead of 'I' and 'thou' and even those stanzas starting with 'me' and 'thou' result in ideas bearing 'we' and 'us'.
Donne's high opinion of love points to his high opinion of the beloved and basically the female. In his serious poetry, love is not a ground for life and ordinary activities but is life itself. It is obvious that having developed such an idea of the love and the lover, Donne places his female higher than the earlier ones. He is as much dependent upon this love as a drowned to the cliff. This love is his refuge in the storm and his light in the dark.
References
Carey, John. ed. The oxford Authors: John Donne. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Gardner, Helen. ed. John Donne: A Collection of Critical Essays. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962.
Grennen, Joseph, E. ed. The Poetry of John Donne & Metaphysical Poets. New York: Monarch Press, 1965.
Kermode, Frank. ed. Discussions of John Donne. Boston: D. C. Heath & Company, 1962.
Redpath, Theodore, ed. The Songs and Sonnets of John Donne. Cambridge: University Printing House, 1976.
