love poetry and Great Gatsby: revision of the comparative section. Flashcards
infidelity
THE SCRUTINY by Richard Lovelace: the speaker desires to seek pleasures elsewhere while still being faithful to his “love”. He wants to search the earth for other women but only return to her when he realises that she is the best.
ABSENT FROM THE by John Wilmott: The speaker explains that he feels compelled to stray from his wife and seek sexual encounters elsewhere. Despite this, he knows that being apart will weaken him. He knows that, after being unfaithful elsewhere, he will return to his wife.
NOM SUM by Ernest Dowson: The speaker remembers with passion the previous night when, while kissing another woman, he was besieged by thoughts of a former love – a woman named Cynara, whom he declares he has been faithful to in his own way. He describes the feeling of being physically close with the woman – whom we may infer is a prostitute – while preoccupied with yearnings for Cynara.
infidelity in the Great Gatsby
infidelity is one of the main themes in the Great Gatsby, as Daisy cheats on Tom with Gatsby while Tom cheats on Daisy with Mytele. there is no sense of true love just passion and desire.
TGG vs the scrutiny
comparison :Dominant females unlike Scrutiny: “walking through her husband as if her were a ghost”
similarities: “For treasure in un-plowed up ground”- “many men had already loved Daisy- it increased her value in his eyes.”
similarities :Oppressed women: “silver idols’” “breast swung loose like a flap”
TGG vs ABSENT FROM THEE
“Her throat full of grieving aching beauty”
“That voice held him most with its feverish warmth… That voice was a deathless song”
“He was consumed with wonder at her presence”
Femme fatale
compare with daisy voice “her voice was full of money”
TGG vs NOM SUM QUALIS
“Dawn of grey”- pathetic fallacy like Gatsby’s rain to sun in chapter 5. Also
Hot oppressive weather when Tom discovers the affair.
unattainable love/ barriers of love
THE GARDEN OF LOVE: The speaker “went to the Garden of Love”, a green where he used to play as a boy. Above the door reads an inscription: “Thou shalt not”. “Black-gowned” priests are on patrol, and withhold him from acting out his pleasures and desires.
AE FOND KISS: The speaker asks for one final kiss from his loved one before they part forever, a parting that is heart-breaking to the speaker. The speaker tells us that hope is leaving and despair is engulfing him. He describes the intense love he feels and the pain of his broken heart; this pain would have been lessened had they loved less intensely.
ABSENT FROM THE: The speaker explains that he feels compelled to stray from his wife and seek sexual encounters elsewhere. Despite this, he knows that being apart will weaken him. He knows that, after being unfaithful elsewhere, he will return to his wife.
TGG VS AE FOND KISS
Gatsby’s pain at losing his love - permanently separated
Unattainable dream: “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year receded before us.
Gatsby and the narrator both desperately don’t want to lose their lovers
TGG VS THE GARDEN OF LOVE
LOVE AS A MEMORY
In the garden of love: “garden”= biblical image of Eden = complete innocence
memory of human kind as we yearn to go back to an age of innocence before the fall as in the bible. This links to how Gatsby yearns to go back to Daisy in “Louisville” where “they can be married from her house as it was five years ago”.
Blake immortalises the garden in his poem while Gatsby immortalises the image of Daisy and his love and obsession with the green light
SOCIAL CLASS AND LOVE
WHOSO by sir Thomas Wyatt: is a poem about unrequited love, but it’s not exactly romantic. The speaker describes pursuing a woman (rumoured to be Anne Boleyn, with whom Wyatt had an affair in real life) and uses an extended metaphor to convey the dynamics of their relationship: it’s like hunting a deer he can’t catch.
RUINED MAID by Thomas Hardy A “fallen woman” is a woman who has sex before marriage. In Victorian society, this was depicted as leading to ruination. Having an illegitimate child would mean being shunned by society, and “fallen women” are often depicted as prostitutes. Hardy satirises this by presenting the wealth and sophistication of the so-called “fallen” woman, or “ruined maid”. men can enjoy pre-marital sex with little consequence, whereas women are permanently condemned for the same ‘transgression’.
Hardy uses comedy to convey this message, and to highlight the sexual double-standards of Victorian society.
AT AN IN by Thomas hardy The poem narrates the experience of the speaker and the addressee going to an inn.They are not lovers, but the speaker wishes they were, and onlookers at the inn assume that they are.The speaker reflects on why, despite desiring to be together, they are not. He considers how they are separated by distance and having different partners.
TGG VS WHOSO
Femme fatale/siren like Daisy and La Belle. Bad effect on man- “Gatsby was pale and there were signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes”. Both sir Wyatt and Gatsby desire unattainable women whom belong to someone else. “he wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she would go to Tom and say “i never loved you” Gatsby chases Daisy even though she’s tied down to Tom like the woman who is in the ownership of Caesar
TGG VS RUINED MAID
Created a new identity like Gatsby+ Myrtle they die trying to feign their social status.
Refined accent links to Myrtle’s change in tone in the apartment.
This is how women afford things- “beautiful little fool”- both M+D stick with T despite injuries because he pays their way.
myrtle and the ruined maid elevate their position in society through their bodies and they both have to rely on their sexuality and men to survive.
TGG AT AN IN
hardy’s poem is a morbid and cruel attack on Victorian society and the values that they hold. this is similar to the view of Fitzgerald held against society of 1820s America and the death of the American dream when the eyes of Dr Eckleburg that watch the immorality of humanity
lust/sex/seduction
THE FLEA by john donne: The speaker’s loved one has refused him sex. He asks her to look at a flea in the room with them. This flea, he reasons, shows her how insignificant her refusal is. After all, he argues, their bodily fluids have mixed together anyway in the flea.He begs her not to kill the flea; he says, for him, it has become a holy place, because their blood has mingled in it.She kills it anyway. He then used this to continue to persuade her to have sex with him: if she were to sleep with him (“yield to me”), she would lose no more honour than she lost when she killed the flea.
TO HIS COY MISTRESS by Andrew Maxwell: The poem is spoken by a male lover to his female beloved as an attempt to convince her to sleep with him. The speaker argues that the Lady’s shyness and hesitancy would be acceptable if the two had “world enough, and time.” But because they are finite human beings, he thinks they should take advantage of their sensual embodiment while it lasts. He tells the lady that her beauty, as well as her “long-preserved virginity,” will only become food for worms unless she gives herself to him while she lives. Rather than preserve any lofty ideals of chastity and virtue, the speaker affirms, the lovers ought to “roll all our strength, and all / Our sweetness, up into one ball.” He is alluding to their physical bodies coming together in the act of lovemaking.
TGG VS TO HIS COY MISTRESS
“world enough of time” the male speaker believes time isn’t a barrier to his desire for her which is similar to Gatsby’s attitude to getting Daisy, Gatsby, “can’t repeat the past? why of course you can!” and the speaker of the poem use time to their advantage. “Coy” means fake, or shyness, implying that this woman may be portraying one trait or the other.
This also suggests that she tells the speaker she doesn’t want sex, but secretly does.
“Mistress” is another word for master so implies that this woman is the one in charge. It is also what a woman is called who is having an affair with a married man. Myrtle is Tom’s mistress but Daisy, as far as the novel shows, has always known what is going on.
Myrtle also fits the description of “Coy” as her materialism means that she is fake in the way she presents herself.
TGG VS THE FLEA
“yea more than married” The addition of the religious terminology is to make the women that the speaker is addressing feel obliged to sleep with him.
The speaker wants to tell the woman that because their blood is mixed, they’re basically married.
THE GREAT GATSBY. This can link to how Gatsby considers Daisy, wanting the thoughts of marriage (loving each other and nobody else), yet still having those 5 year gap where they didn’t see each other
