To His Coy Mistress Metaphors

Of Roses, Cupids, and Predatory Birds: Metaphors Choice in “To His Coy Mistress” Juliet expressed her affection in roses. Hippomenes utilized apples to win Atalanta’s hand. Others have utilized cupids, swans, and maple leaves to symbolize love. And from the seventeenth century writer Andrew Marvell, perhaps we should add to that list floods, the Jews, and wriggling worms - how romantic. Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” despite its saccharine tone, employs some unconventional metaphors to convince his lover to abandon her modest behavior and “seize the day” in more salacious activities. Marvell’s chosen metaphors and diction, in contrast to its romantic overlays, displays a peculiar hostility, a latent aggression that adds new depth to the poem’s classical interpretations.

Even within Marvell’s first stanza, which, as a declaration

For instance, Marvell’s use of violent imagery could be considered an attempt to signpost the poem as not one of carpe diem lust, but of romantic power dynamics. The use of domination/submission metaphors, even in the early romantic stanzas, would therefore be an allusion to sex itself and its complex relationship between two partners. The entire act of propositioning a woman, as the narrator does, can be considered an exercise in power (both in the woman withholding pleasure and the man asking a woman to renounce her virginity). Through this analyzation, Marvell’s use of metaphor is therefore a method of accentuating the dynamics of power within his request (both the asking and actualization of it). Perhaps, this insinuation is even a parody on traditional forms of seduction, eliciting how flattery is still, at its heart, a grotesque battle for control. Asking for sex isn’t a completely romantic venture, and, just like Marvell’s metaphors, it’s an action that insinuates violence, aggression, and