Another example essay

[Caesara Gill]

• Examine the way Shakespeare presents the relationship between Romeo
and Rosaline in the early part of the play.In your response make
references to other parts of the play.
• Examine the way Donne presents his love for a woman he cannot have
in The Flea. In your response refer to other poems.
Examine the way male/female relationships are presented in both
pieces of literature you have studied.
The play 'Romeo and Juliet' centres around the love story of the two
young protagonists who fall deeply and completely in love with each
other. Shakespeare presents the male and female relationships in
various ways throughout the play, concentrating not only on the young
lovers but also their relationships with others. This essay will
concentrate on Romeo's initial love, his love for Rosaline, the
unobtainable and chaste woman who he can never have.
At the beginning of the play Romeo is infatuated with Rosaline and
this relationship consumes him, so much so that after the initial
brawl in the street, Romeo's mother exclaims, "O where is Romeo?"
which suggests to the audience that he must normally be at the centre
of the action. However, in this case Romeo is distraught by the fact
that his 'lover', Rosaline "hath Dian's wit", this mythical imagery
relates to the goddess of Diana, a symbol for virginity and chastity.
The lunar imagery continues throughout the play when Romeo meets
Juliet and exclaims that the moon is 'envious' of her and her beauty.
Similarly, Romeo’s gushing emotions towards Rosaline are apparent in
his exchange with Benvolio at the start of the play,
“O heavy lightness…Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick
health”
This emphasises his extreme confusion at this moment in the play, he
is deeply in love with Rosaline but the array of oxymorons Shakespeare
utilises in this part of Romeo’s speech indicate that he is completely
out of his depth with these emotions. Shakespeare creates a very
definite view that male and female relationships are fraught with
angst during this moment in the play and the subsequent romance that
blooms between Romeo and Juliet. He also exclaims that he loves a
woman ‘in sadness’ which indicates that Romeo is not enjoying the
feeling of being in love here. He is languishing in sadness at his
unobtainable prize. The fact that Rosaline will remain chaste also
poses greater problems for Romeo and the constant repetition of the
exclamatory ‘O’ in his reference to Rosaline further portrays his
extreme sadness at his impossible situation.
Moreover, the initial impression the audience glean from meeting Romeo
at the beginning of the play is that eh is a lover and hopeless
romantic who falls in love easily and does not listen to reason. This
is solidified when he encounters Juliet soon after his lengthy
exclamations about Rosaline and his frustration at being unable to
obtain her. It seems, in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ relationships `obsessive
loves that are dangerous or forbidden in some way or another.
The complex relationship between a man and a woman is also expressed
as forbidden in Donne’s poem ‘The Flea’, in which a young lover is
persuading his partner to lose her virginity as it is ‘little that
which though deny’st me’. The entire poem uses the imagery of
virginity being as small and as insignificant as the flea in which
their ‘two bloods mingled be’. The poet is offering the lover the flea
and asking her to observe it, to observe the fact that it contains
both their blood and to see how easy it would be for her to give in.
The use of sexual imagery is present throughout the poem in various
mentions of blood, swelling, innocence and sin.
Furthermore, the bodies of the two lovers must be joined, according to
Donne, because “This flea is you and I, and this, Our marriage bed,
and marriage temple is” the desperation of the narrator is obvious; he
desires to be with this woman and the metaphoric ‘marriage bed’ that
has been created within the body of the flea is his attempt to make
the woman see how easy it would be to join together and to forget all
that society thinks of them. Yet again, he is comparing them to the
flea and its insignificance.
In contrast to this, ‘The Sun Rising’, another poem by Donne
concentrates on the obsessive and wondrous nature of love. He utilises
personification to describe the sun as a ‘Busy, old fool’ comparing it
to an old man who is trying to disrupt the union between the two
lovers. Here, the lovers are free to do what they wish and they do not
want to be parted by the harsh rays of the sun.
‘The Flea’ ends with the narrator failing to persuade his mistress to
give him her virginity. The fact that she wants to remain a virgin is
seen as something to be celebrated Phillips’ poem ‘A Married State’ in
which she states that being a virgin is ‘happy as it’s innocent’. She
can see the benefits of remaining a virgin and employs positive
adjectives in order to emphasise the benefits of remaining chaste and
not giving in to a male.
On the whole, ‘The Flea’ and ‘A Married State’ paint a difficult
picture of male and female relationships and see them as something
that are negative and difficult to understand. Donne does not
understand why his woman wants to remain a virgin and similarly,
Phillips is persistent in her desire to remain one. Phillips’ poem is
a celebration of respect for women and the desire for women to break
free from their seventeenth century shackles which ties them down to
men.
The relationships between men and women during the play ‘Romeo and
Juliet’ and throughout the poems are presented in a myriad of ways.
The two lovers ‘both alike in dignity’ risk their lives and their
reputation in order to be together. This is a risk that Phillips, the
writer of the poem ‘A Married State’ does not think is worth it. She
proclaims that, ‘marriage afford but little ease’ and is something
that should be shunned rather than celebrated, as previously stated.
The idea of virginity is also a strong theme throughout the poem and
is something which the audience are immediately drawn to during the
tragic ‘romance’ between Romeo and Rosaline.
Furthermore, marriage is seen as negative in the play as Juliet
exclaims that marriage is an honour that ‘I dream not of’, emphasising
her desire to remain single. Even Juliet’s father is against her
marrying as she is a young girl and he believes Paris should woo her
before truing to marry her. However, Juliet’s perception completely
changes in Act II scene II of the play where she is the one who is
encouraging Romeo to make a decision about their romance,
“Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow,”
She is very passionate and irrational, in the same way as Romeo is and
her decision to rush the marriage proves to be a fatal one for the
young lovers. Shakespeare includes various warning signs that the
course of love does not run smooth, event he friar exclaims “those
stumble who run fast”, using the metaphor to warn a hot headed and
fickle Romeo to think before he acts. This feeling of foreboding
throughout the play is also created in ‘Porphyria’s lover’ by Browning
where the reader feels uneasy about the relationship between Porphyria
and her lover from his close and obsessive observations of her. The
signs of his mental state are there from the outset,
“She shut the cold out and the storm,”
The use of pathetic fallacy here, to indicate the unpredictable
weather echoes the narrator’s erratic personality. His actions are
changeable and impulsive.
Moreover, impulsivity is a theme running through the play. The
protagonists fall in love, marry and die all on impulse and in a haze
of confusing and rushed love. They do not think of their actions and
have to pay the ultimate price. The relationships between male and
females are difficult to define but the blurred lines between right
and wrong serve to make the situation seem all the more devastating
for the families involved. The happy moments the lovers have together
after their marriage are echoed in ‘The Sun Rising’ by Donne as he
states that love “knows, no clime, Nor hours, days, months,” which is
perhaps, the best way to conclude the representation of love in these
pieces of literature. It is irrational yet beautiful and treasured for
the moments that it lasts.

[Caesara Gill]