Short essay on A married state

[Caesara Gill]

Katherine Philips’ “A Married State” is a call for all who read it
(ladies in particular) to remain single – the poem was written to a
lady friend of hers. Katherine uses rhyme and iambic pentameter to
make both her message and her poem feel simple.

The message being: “never marry, you won’t regret it.” Rhyming
couplets make her poem sound catchy and iambic pentameter gives the
poem a nursery rhyme feel. According to the poem, Philips believes
that married women have it worse off than single women do. Married
women have to worry about pleasing their husbands. They have to feed
the crying children and work themselves ragged to maintain house and
home. Single woman never have to suffer the “pangs of
childbirth”(Philips, 7) or listen to “children’s cries for to offend
their ears”(Philips, 8).

The poet wrote this poem before she married James Philips in 1648 at
age 17. At this time in her life, she felt that married life wasn’t
all that people said it was. No doubt, she had watched her mother go
through two marriages and found that love was not to be sought after
if you wanted to live a happy life.

“It is an old saying and you know it well: / She who dies a virgin
will lead apes in hell”(Mercer, 1). Leading apes was viewed as a
punishment in her day. I imagine that it could be compared to being
grounded for a full month in today’s world. In her ending line,
Philips blatantly states that, “there’s no such thing as leading apes
in hell”(Philips, 16) showing that she didn’t believe that virgins
would be punished for abstinence.

Actually, Philips seems to be making the opposite argument. If
anything, married women are punished for being married. Philips states
that married woman have to please their husbands, attend to their
children’s every demands, and worry about “worldly crosses”(Philips,
7-10). In lines 7-9, Philips interrupts her rhyming couplet pattern to
rhyme,

“No blustering husbands to create your fears; No pangs of childbirth
to extort your tears; No children’s cries for to offend your
ears”(Philips, 7-9).

This serves to emphasize that single women never suffer the
punishments that she has described in the above lines. In summary, the
poem was written to stop single women from ever making the mistake of
marriage.

READ THIS AND SEE HOW YOU COULD BRIEFLY MENTION IT AND LINK IT TO THE
ESSAY.

[Leima Esmati]

miss Gill 

could you please do something on the sunrising as-well?

that would be really helpful pls

leima

[Caesara Gill]

Am working on it. Will be up tomorrow or Monday at the latest. Remember you can still mention the other 2 poems in the second section so still worth reading the flea and a married state.

Happy weekend! 

Sent from my iPhone