4 - Woman's Constancy

Question 1

intro

Answer 1

This poem reaches beyond the customary discourse of poetry, the Petrarchan paradigm, and finds metaphor in a foreign discourse, incorporating law for its own end. Superficially, the poem investigates women’s ability to be ‘inconstant’, approaching the issue from a number of viewpoints that frame sexual liberty as both legally and emotionally justifiable (and, in many ways preferable). Although it is clearly a love poem, it is also a product of, and commentary on the lawyerly play that Donne was familiar with. It deals with a common situation in secular love, mocking the fickleness of a love that is merely apparent, not real. The speaker paints a picture of women as deceivers; he has no faith in their ability to be honest and fully devout. However, by questioning where he stands in the relationship, Donne reveals his own instability, emphasised in the final lines when he doesn’t not reject the possibility that he too can be unfaithful.

Question 2

Now thou has loved me one whole day,
Tomorrow when you leav’st, what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were?

Answer 2

• Now = transient relationship, hurt reinforced by chronological markers
• One whole day = sarcastic? Post-coital frustration? Hyperbole suggests hurt.
• When thou leav’st = projection that she will leave, insecure
• What wilt thou say? = questions suggest motif of faith and doubt. Longs for resolution
• Antedate = will you come back to me?
• We are not just those persons which we were = dissolves all commitments. Applies lawyerly rhetoric to love, does not work due to the rawness of the emotion. JD lawyer

Question 3

Or, that oaths made in reverential fear

Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?

Answer 3

• Oaths = lawyerly lexicon
• Reverential fears = legalistic interpretation of coercion vs. RE reference to reverence. Made commitment under duress, coerced by God of love. Witty cascade of ideas.
• Love and his wrath = allusion to Cupid. Argument is the defense of duress; the harmful act, though committed, is excused because one was coerced into doing it.
• Wrath = OT judgement, paired with classical Cupid and legalistic love

Question 4

Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,
So lovers’ contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them unloose?

Answer 4

• Deaths true marriages untie = Wonders if she will try to argue that just as marriages are dissolved at death, so contracts between lovers are dissolved during sleep, which resembles death. Post-coital
• Contracts = legal
• Untie/unloose = softens the finality of love’s terminations by the use of metaphor. Erotic unloosing suggests post-coital, sensual undressing vs. freedom after waking up, untied from relationship
• Bind but till-sleep = sleep is a mimickery of death, waking up after sleep means relationship is dissolved. Renaissance idea of sleep as depth = jocular argument as JD suggests ‘til death do us part’ can be applied to a relationship after you’ve both had a kid.

Question 5

Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true?

Answer 5

• End = is justifying own end in the sense of the goal of change, and getting a new beloved
• Falsehood (…) falsehood = word play, parallel line structure. In order to be true to herself, she must be false to him. Love as a game

Question 6

Vain lunatic, against these ‘scapes I could
Dispute and conquer, if I would,
Which I abstain to do,
For by tomorrow, I may think so too.

Answer 6

• Vain lunatic = signals end of poignant questioning and complaint, turning point. Angry? Defensive? Sarcastic?
• I could/if I would = conditional, does not have energy to dispute
• Which I abstain to do = power of voice
• Tomorrow = compressed time
• I may think so too = if male, he does not remove the possibility of him rejecting her. Modal verb, threatening tone vs. underlying emotion and hurt, fear of uncertainty. Swift reversal.

Question 7

themes

Answer 7

• Love and Relationships
• Motif of Faith and Doubt
• Influence of Social Setting
• Conventionality
  Anxiety

Question 8

language general

Answer 8

• Hyperbole (Generates sense of hurt)
• Definite Verbs (vulnerability of poet persona)
• Compressed time (awareness of end and underlying vulnerability)
• Modal verb ‘may’ (generates fear, In a relationship nothing Is certain)
• Erotically charged words (e.g untie, unloose; Is the poem post-coital?!)
• Images of freedom (desire for no binding commitment= JD the libertine lawyer)
• Repetition and word play

Question 9

language, desire to pin down uncertainty

Answer 9

• Temporal Markers (‘one whole day’ ‘tomorrow’ awareness of the transience of love)
• Conditional ‘as If’ (uncertainty of love)

Question 10

rational language in tension with emotion

Answer 10

• Rational/legalistic language is in tension with emotion
  • Legalistic lexicon/lawyerly style ( language of law falls short of explaining reality of love, legal discourse cannot capture realms of experience, influence of social setting)
  • Religious Lexicon (suggests commitment made under divine duress, witty)
  • Language of rhetoric (e.g ‘or’ and ‘for’: advance rational argument, logical progression that sits In tension with the emotional subject matter)

Skills of rhetoric. H, topic is emotional. Tension between rational, legalistic mode and difficulty of reducing relationships down to the rational.

Question 11

tension between male/female voice

Answer 11

• Uncertainty in relationship/legalistic uncertainty
• Law = male job, women = illiterate, but JD could be adopting persona of woman
• If male, it is a hymn of hate. Title becomes ironic, comment on women’s infidelity
• If speaker is female, the poem is about the men at court: amorous males who cannot commit. Suggests writing as construct - Modernism

Question 12

title

Answer 12

Ambiguous irony: Is the title ironic, as JD goes on to show how women can get it on as many times as they fancy (why abstain when you can legally go again?). Our treatment of the title hinges on our interpretation of the poet voice: if it is female, the poem is about amorous men who cannot commit, and the title is literal as the poem eulogises female Constancy. However, If the voice is male, it’s just another hymn of hatred of women’s inconstancy, and the title is Ironic. If male, it is a hymn of hate. Title becomes ironic, comment on women’s infidelity. Suggests writing as construct - Modernism

Question 13

structure, rhyme

Answer 13

o Some rhyme (desire to couple)
o Half rhyme (loss of control as rhyme scheme entirely disintegrates in middle of poem vs. complications with love, hurt)
o Rhyme at end = sense of resolution, questions disappear
o Concluding couplets (attempt to rationalise)

Question 14

structure, general

Answer 14

• Lyric poem of 17 lines, rejects sonnet form = traditional love poem
• Dramatic monologue (no set structure and varying line length reflects uncertainty of love, contrast p.p’s longing for certainty)
• Tone= sarcastic, satirical, paradoxical and poignant (JD is a very confused young man)
• Proliferation of question marks (desire for resolution)
• Parallel syntactical placement and repetition (of ‘falsehood’, emphasise doubt)
Short/long lines = uncertainty in relationship

Question 15

quotes - ‘Now thou hast loved me one whole day, tomorrow when thou leav’st, what wilt thou say?’

Answer 15

• Hyperbole generates a sense of hurt, reinforced by the definite adverb ‘when’, which underlines the inevitability of the woman leaving, and thus the p.p’s insecurity

Question 16

quotes - ‘Wilt thou then antedate some new made vow’

Answer 16

• Legal term ‘antedate’ Illustrates the Influence of social setting on Donne’s work. He acknowledges emotions even though they undermine legal and social commitments.

Question 17

quotes - ‘Vain Lunatic, against these ‘scapes I could dispute, and conquer, If I would, which I abstain to do, for by tomorrow I may think so too’

Answer 17

End of poignant questions marked by angry outburst of p.p ‘vain lunatic’. He offers a satirical defense of own actions, threatening that he has the ability to change his mind and find a different lover too. The uncertainty of love and relationships is highlighted by the modal verb ‘may’, which also serves to show the underlying emotional hurt of the p.p.

Question 18

context JD

Answer 18

• Legalistic language reflects the impact of social setting on Donne’s work, as this was written in the 1590s when he was a law student at Lincoln’s Inn. Voice is thus youthful and playful, with a satiric edge provided by the freedom of being a student.
o Different glance of libertine stud in Court
o Students at Inns enjoyed a degree of irreverent freedom. This freedom allowed for a satiric edge in literary expression, as in the masques the Inns traditionally performed and evident, too, in Donne’s poems.
• Moots = hypothetical argument that lawyers had to respond to. Reflects nature of law as a game, and poem is almost like a moot.

•	Stylistically typical of JD
o	Dramatic 
o	Dramatic monologye
o	Deals with love
o	Full of questions, longs for certainty
o	Witty
o	Ironic
Tone is sarcastic, satirical, paradoxical

Question 19

context general

Answer 19

• Faithless male, as men in relationships often got with lots of ladies= libertine male
• Renaissance idea of sleep as depth = jocular argument as JD suggests ‘til death do us part’ can be applied to a relationship after you’ve both had a kid.
• Explores secular love and Renaissance theme of mutability, reaches beyond discourse of Petrarchan paradigm
• Law as a male occupation
• Marotti: ‘Inns-of-Court amorist is a stock figure in the literature of late Elizabethan England’
• Drama = dominant form of literature
• Interest in psychological states e.g. Hamlet

Question 20

evaluative sentences - instability

Answer 20

The speaker paints a picture of women as deceivers; he has no faith in their ability to be honest and fully devout. However, by questioning where he stands in the relationship, Donne reveals his own instability, emphasised in the final lines when he doesn’t not reject the possibility that he too can be unfaithful.

Question 21

evaluative sentences - legalistic language

Answer 21

The speaker employs legalistic language in order to assert the inconstancy of women. Whilst these skills of rhetoric reflect JD’s social setting, it is clear that due to the emotional nature of the poem, the legalistic mode does not work. Indeed, this results in a tension between rational, legalistic mode and the difficulty of reducing relationships down to the rational.

Question 22

evaluative sentences - beyond customary discourse

Answer 22

This poem reaches beyond the customary discourse of poetry, the Petrarchan paradigm, and finds metaphor in a foreign discourse, incorporating law for its own end and borrowing and transforming another specialized discourse.

Question 23

evaluative sentences - voice and gender

Answer 23

If the voice is male, the poem is misogynistic – a hymn of hate about women’s inconstancy as a sex. Thus, the title becomes ironic. IF the speaker is female, then this a poem about amorous men who cannot commit. In recreating the lawyer’s voice, in lapsing into his rhetoric, the lady does something very lawyerly herself – she anticipates her opponent’s arguments. She tests five argument. Naturally, each proves inadequate; legal distinctions fail to explain or excuse a lover’s change of heart. The flux and flow of life, of experienced reality and human feeling, run too deep for the limiting categories of a rational system such as law. If we decide on a female speaker, this still puts the lawyerly rhetoric, in the male voice. This unresolvable ambiguity is consistent with the poem’s theme of insecurity and flux. In the poem, the language of law and reason fall short of explaining the reality of love.

Question 24

evaluative - typical

Answer 24

The poem deals with a common situation in secular love. It mocks the fickleness of a kind of love that is merely apparent. Because it deals with the common R theme of mutability, the poem is entirely typical of its era.

Question 25

compare to - rejects sonnet form

Answer 25

apparition

Question 26

compare to - love, relationships, doubt

Answer 26

to a lady

a song

Question 27

compare to - rhetoric

Answer 27

flea