Authenticity Of Love

Authenticity of Love

What is love? The age-old question arises once more. In truth, a universal definition has not been agreed upon, but generally one can define love as “an indication of adoration” or an “an ineffable feeling of intense attraction shared in interpersonal and sexual relationships.” Love can be directed towards kin, a lover, oneself, nature, or humanity- but regardless that love in an emotional sense is eternal. Some fall into love, and some claim they fall out. Love should be endless, lasting, and pure, but half of the time that love ends up being a sham. There is solid record of this false love- love that is meant to look pure- in the famous writings The Lottery and To His Coy Mistress.

In the case of To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvall, a not-so-gentle gentleman is trying to woo a “coy” young lady with claims of love. This poem is strewn with hyperbole to the point that it becomes exactly the opposite of love. When there is such over exaggerated praise, it starts to lose the real meaning of the message. If you take a look at lines 13-18, you can see the obvious amplification:

“An hundred years should go to praise

Thine Eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.”

How can it be remotely possible to spend thirty thousand years on observing a woman’s body? It seems to me as if he is just telling her what she wants to hear as long as he gets what he wants- which is to get into bed with her. The fallacy is even more apparent once line 20 ends because the mood switches immediately from “loving” to a grotesque, dark tone. The speaker goes on about how if she doesn’t lose her “long preserv’d virginity” to him, then the only way she will lose it is in her grave to the worms crawling inside her. How can that be a portrayal of love? The mere thought of that is absolutely grim. What it really does is negate all of the sweet, exaggerated things he mentioned in the first third of the poem. He also repeats the overall theme of the poem again-Carpe Diem. “Time’s winged chariot hurrying near,” so she’d better seize this moment or else her “quaint honor [will] turn to dust.” This, to me, is crucial. If you love someone, you shouldn’t think of rushing to make such drastic decisions because you should want to be with them forever anyways. Especially in his case, if he wanted to be with her as long as he claimed he would, there shouldn’t have been anything to worry about; yet he felt the need to mention the fact that “time’s running out” more than once in an attempt to woo her. It’s obvious that in the last third of the poem he reveals his true intentions-sex.

The way the speaker articulates how he wants to have sex with her is just violent. If a man truly respects a woman and loves her, why would her woo her using an analogy to raptors and cannon balls? To me it seems like he wants to sexually be in command of her. He’s well aware of her virgin status, hence the title “Coy” mistress instead of plain mistress, yet his idea of her first experience with sex is rough sex. When he says he wants to “roll [their] sweetness, up into one ball…through the iron gates of life;” The speaker’s basically saying he wants to brutally tear through her hymen while they make love like “birds of prey.” Throughout this entire poem, there is not one mention of what’s to come in their future, further suggesting that his only intention with her is to have sex and get on with his life. Repeating the idea that they need to “seize the day,” manipulates and traps this poor girl into his dark plans of seduction. If one loves someone, he/she should look at the other’s benefits as well, and it’s clear that the speaker truly couldn’t possibly love his “coy mistress.”

Instead of the “love” one has for their significant other as in To His Coy Mistress, in the case of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson we look at the love one has for their kin. In this story, a town holds an annual “lottery” where the townsfolk’s love for