Thursday, January 29, 2009

"Woman's Constancy" or lack thereof?

In Woman's Constancy, John Donne uses the tone/mood of doubt and cynicism and rhetorical questions to question is the validity or everlasting love with the significant other. Although the speaker is not easily clarified, regardless of whether it is a woman or man, the speaker questions how long their love will last and whether they will always be true to eachother with their rhetorical questions and doubtful tone. "Tomorrow when thou leav'st, what wilt thou say?" this line displays the fact that the speaker may feel very cynical about love and is already concluding that their significant other will leave them because they are saying tomorrow when you leave me without including a maybe. In Woman's Constancy, the meaning of the title plays a key role in the poem because it may suggest the "woman's loyalty" to the man. This creates a double meaning because it may be that the woman is writing about her loyalty to the man and whether he will ever leave her, OR the man writing to the woman in a somewhat mocking way because of the title, saying how the woman may end up cheating on him. Because of the doubt all through this poem, it leads to the inference that maybe the speaker is cynical about love and always thinks about how it will end like when Donne says, "Or, as true deaths, true marriages untie." This suggests how the speaker is very stubborn about the fact that like death which is inevitable, marriages will also inevitably break, setting a doubtful and cynical tone for the poem. Another cynical aspect to love in this poem is when it states, "Or, that oaths made in reverential fear" stating maybe that love or marriage is just a fake and that we only make oaths to our significant others because it's the custom religious way of getting married. Overall, Donnes use of tone and rhetorical questions helps show his feelings about love and the significant other and also shows the pessimistic and cynical side of love and its "so-called" everlastingness.

2 comments:

kosekesh said...

i'm thinkin that the idea that the speaker might b a woman is really cool, but i think that the idea of the speaker questioning if their significant other is gonna leave em 2morrow is kinda strange. i like the idea that s/he goes back an 4th though. it seems like they might b arguin w/themselves. idk, i think it's a worth while question for the time and i think the diction makes the poem, if he had chosen othr wrds, the thin just wouldn't read the same way n i think it would lose all meanin.

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