Eng. 251Q
February 4, 2003
“Love”
Many writers, when asked about love, describe it as a feeling, an emotion,
perhaps an act of affection, a once in a life time experience, or just an idea, or
maybe all of the above. When Lady Mary Wroth (in “Song: Love What Art
Thou?”) and Andrew Marvell (in “The Definition of Love”) commented on love,
both described it with one common word: “vain.” Although both authors have a
different view on love, they are equally denied their right to the one thing that we,
as people, long to acquire throughout our lives. These different views however,
are not to be attributed to the fact that Wroth and Marvell are of different sex, but
to the wisdom life experiences have taught them.
Wroth starts her poem simply by asking a question: “Love What Art
Thou?” almost as though this love to which she speaks is a person and can
answer her question itself. She not only asks this question once but in every
stanza, as though to reiterate the idea that she does not know what “love” is, to
be exact. The simple, but effective, rhyme scheme (a,a,b,b,a) used allows the
poem to flow, much like a thought would do, to which she refers love as being in
the first line.
Marvell, on the other hand, refers to “love” as belonging to him, not as a
thought at all, but as a possession with his first two words: “My Love.” The
rhyme scheme used here (a,b,a,b) connects every other line of each stanza, but
yet, still keeps them apart, much like he and his lover are done by fate in this
poem. He comments that fate drives wedges between he and his lover and
always keeps them apart, in lines eleven and twelve.
Page 2
Wroth feels about love much like the way her poem is written. In the first
stanza, love is described as being a fantasy started by a trivial “idle smile,” much
like a first glance; a simple act that “catches” a person’s attention. Wroth feels
that only fools get caught in love’s net over something as vain as a smile. She
goes on in the second stanza to compare love to day and weather. Many times,
love starts as being “light…fair [and] fresh” but as time, much like day, changes,
it can become cold and dark. Yet, Wroth does not give up the fact that the joy of
being in love is still there throughout time. As she points out how love changes
over time, so does her writing. In the third stanza, she points out how quickly a
flower can go from being in full bloom, beautiful, and sweet smelling, to dead in
only an hour. This transition is symbolically in the middle of this poem, much like
there is equal benefit and cost in a relationship. The poem has two stanzas at
the beginning mentioning love as a fantasy, trivial, foolish, light, and fresh, and
just as many stanzas at the end mentioning love as unstable, faulty, childish,
heartless, and cursed, having only one stanza in the middle to show just how
little of a change in comparison there is. Wroth is clearly drawing on past
experiences in having a love that she, at first, thought was magical and ended up
being only a curse or a burden by writing “But thy law I once obeyed, Therefore
say no more at first” (line 25).
Marvell starts his story as describing love as being the offspring of despair
and impossibility. This automatically leads the reader to think of love as having a
negative connotation by his point of view. He describes love as to which hope
cannot compare in that it can only “flap its wing” when as love can fly and has the
Page 3
aspect of being heavenly, and divine. Marvell says, commenting on his lover,
“Where my extended soul is fixed” meaning that he views his lover as his soul
mate. One would automatically think that these two lovers would be together, but
as fate would have it, they are not allowed to be together. He gives fate the
power of feeling jealous of the love between the two people and will always keep
them apart. “Their union would her ruin be And her tyrannic power despose” tells
that the female in this story is of higher class, or power, than the man. Thus the
“wedges” that drive the lovers apart can also be social differences, in which these
boundaries can not be crossed. These two lovers are described as being on
opposite poles of the world from each other but yet, are so in love that the world
revolves around them, in the fifth stanza. Marvell goes on to say that it would
their union would have as much a likely effect of the heavens falling and
“cramping” the world flat so that the two opposite poles would be as one. He
compares this likelihood of happens to parallel lines. If it were not for the lovers
being so much like parallel lines, eventually they would meet, but yet it is
impossible for parallel lines to ever be together. Marvell summarizes his feelings
in the last stanza in that the love that connects them will never be allowed to
happen by fate, and he is to be eternally with her only in his mind.
Wroth never gives indication that simply because she is a woman does
she feel the way she does about the experiences in her life. She simply gives
the reasoning as she was a fool to be caught by love. In the same respect,
Marvell does not blame his feelings on him being a man but only accepts the fact
Page 4
that this is the hand fate has dealt him. By this reasoning, I do not think that
either of the authors’ views are to be attributed to the difference in sex.