Women in Poems by Wroth and Herrick
Brett Wainger

           My girlfriend recently informed me that all men are pigs. Apparently she feels this way because some members of my sex, her three older brothers, have led her to believe that we mostly value women for their external features and don’t pay much attention to their internal qualities. “Well, some things never change,” I told her. “Almost three hundred years ago,” I explained, “poets like Lady Mary Wroth were trying to inform men of the same problem. “And at the same time,” I added, “there were male poets such as Robert Herrick who mostly paid attention to women’s external physical qualities.” She focused on me out of the corner of her eye with a skeptical frown, so I explained in more detail. As best I can recall, my explanation went something like this…

Robert Herrick and Lady Mary Wroth treat women very differently in their poems. Herrick’s poems focus on the external qualities of women, and Wroth’s poems examine women’s internal world – their thoughts and feelings. In addition, Herrick finds the social codes that govern women’s behavior are natural and appropriate. By contrast, Wroth argues that these rules are not natural at all but are rather conventions that oppress women. Perhaps the most significant example of divergence of the two perspectives of women concerns love: Herrick’s suggest a women’s experience of love is pleasurable and grounded in external, physical attraction, but Wroth finds love to be a painful and a mostly internal, mental experience. In my analysis of their poems with attention to these three features – the poet’s external or internal treatment of women, the poet’s view of the social roles assigned to women, and the poet’s perspective of what love is for women – I will reveal that Herrick, while not bashing women as many seventeenth-century commentators did, does objectify women by viewing them purely for their external features. Furthermore, by presenting male speakers who direct women’s behaviors without considering their thoughts and feelings, Herrick contributes to the societal habit of oppressing women. Meanwhile, an examination of Wroth’s poems will show that she attempts to liberate women from suffering and oppression by challenging several sexist traditions: She turns the tables on male poets by objectifying men in her poems; she reverses many Petrarchan traditions, most importantly by asserting that women frequently suffer in love at the hands of cruel men, and not vice versa; she challenges the belief commonly held in the seventeenth century that men are intellectually and morally superior to women; and she calls attention to other social norms, such as the restriction of the women to inside the home, that oppress women.

When Herrick’s male narrators describe women, they focus on physical appearances. Herrick’s attention to women’s external features is evident in the titles of many of his poems, such as “Upon Julia’s Clothes,” “Her Legs,” and “Upon the Nipples of Julia’s Breast.” Herrick focuses on a woman’s appearance in “Delight in Disorder,” in which he describes his reaction to a lady’s clothes in order to demonstrate the aesthetic pleasure of imperfection. The poem begins, “A sweet disorder in the dress / Kindles in clothes a wontonness” (1-2). The specific ways in which imperfections “in the dress” create wantonness make up the body of the poem. The narrator says, for example, an “erring lace [. . .] Enthrals the crimson stomacher,” and “A careless shoestring [suggests to him] a wild civility” (5-6, 11-12). The narrator concludes that the disorder in the clothes makes them more evocative than perfectly ordered clothes. He says, “[The clothes] Do more bewitch me, than when art / Is too precise in every part” (13-14). The snappy, even rhythm of these final lines suggests the bore of regularity that is avoided through disorder.

Though the poem is intended to be a statement about aesthetics, the use of the word “art” in the final couplet points to the poem’s objectification of the female. The narrator does not consider any of her internal features, and her external features are only significant because of the insight they offer him. By contrast, Herrick’s poems about men praise their subjects’ characters and mental qualities. For example, Herrick praises Ben Jonson’s wit and wisdom in “An Ode for Him,” and in “To His Honoured and Most Ingenious Friend Master Charles Cotton,” he praises his friend’s wit, demeanor, and appreciation of poetry. The very fact the men he writes about are specifically named while the woman, if named, are given only ambiguous first names suggests that Herrick is describing men in depth while examining women superficially. In a second poem by Herrick, “Corinna’s Going a Maying,” the speaker not only ignores Corinna’s internal features, but he also prescribes a course of behavior for her based on conventional ideas about the roles of women.

“Corinna’s Going a Maying” is a carpe diem poem. The speaker encourages Corinna to rise on May Day and rejoice in the springtime with the other youths. Additionally, he instructs her to participate in courting rituals as a means to achieving love and marriage before youth passes her by. While the speaker implies that he advises Corinna for her own benefit, in reality, the rules he outlines are oppressive because the speaker ignores Corinna’s internal features – her thoughts and feelings – when directing her course of action. Additionally, Herrick seems to promise Corinna that happiness will accompany love and marriage, but as Wroth points out, that happiness often doesn’t materialize.

Herrick argues that his directives for Corinna are in accordance with a code of natural, appropriate behavior for women. The poem begins, “Get up, get up for shame; the blooming morn / Upon her wings presents the god unshorn” (1-2). These lines serve three important functions. They issue a directive – “get up”, they suggest an appropriate sentiment for her failure to get up – “shame”, and they offer a basis for the legitimacy of the directive – God. The speaker continues, “Each flower has wept, and bowed toward the east, / Above an hour since; yet you not dressed” (7-8). Here the speaker suggests that by not getting up, she is breaking the natural laws that are observed by the flowers. Later in the poem, the speaker adds, “And Titan on the eastern hill / Retires himself, or else stands still / Till you come forth” (35-37). While the speaker’s suggestion that the sun waits on her to get up before it rises is flattering, it still suggests that she is out of sync with nature by remaining in bed. The speaker furthers his criticism of Corinna by adding,

‘tis sin,
Nay, profanation to keep in
Whenas a thousand virgins on this day
Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May. (11-14)

Here the speaker repeats that it is wrong for Corinna to remain in bed and adds the serious implication (though presented lightheartedly) that it is against God’s will for her to stay in bed.

In addition to implying that God wills Corinna to get out of bed, the above passage introduces Corinna and the reader to the speaker’s specific rules for women’s behavior. As will be seen, he not only directs Corinna to get up and rejoice in the May Day celebration, but, more significantly, he implies that women ought to remain virgins until married, participate in courting rituals, and most importantly, hurriedly pursue love and marriage, which he indicates are the ultimate goals of the female sex.

As noted in the quotation above, Corinna and the other females are expected to be virgins. That the speaker directs women to remain virgins until marriage is implied in his use of the terms “virgin” and “harmless folly,” the emphasis on the importance of marriage, and the order in which he presents activities such as flirting, marriage, and sex (13, 58). The speaker encourages Corinna to participate in the “harmless folly of the time” (58). “Harmless folly” seems to refer to playful mischievousness that does not result in serious offenses such as sexual transgressions. Herrick does seem to refer to sex in the poem, for example, when he says, “Many a jest told of the key’s betraying / This night, and locks picked,” but importantly, these developments occur after references to marriage (55-56). Thus the order of the poem’s topics implies the importance of virginity before marriage. The speaker begins his description of the activities of youths by showing them delighting in nature, but before he describes flirtatious and sexually suggestive behavior, the poet says that many youths have “plighted troth, / And chose their priest,” – that is, they have planned their marriages (49-50).

In addition to prescribing virginity until marriage, the speaker incites Corinna to participate in flirtatious activities. He does this by suggesting that the courting behaviors of young women and men are natural and pleasurable. For example, he says, “Many a green gown has been given; / Many a kiss, both odd and even” (51-52). According to Fowler, “green gown” refers to grass stains in women’s dresses (259). This suggests that the girls have been playing, or wrestling, with the boys. Also, since the color green points to nature, the description implies the naturalness of such flirtations. Additionally, “both odd and even” refer to successive kisses beginning with the first kiss and the second kiss and so on. Thus the speaker asserts the appropriateness of a progressive courtship beginning with playful fighting, moving on to a first kiss and a second kiss, and ultimately ending in love; for in the next lines, the speaker adds, “Many a glance too has been sent / From out the eye, love’s firmament” (52-53).

The speaker, then, implies that courtship is to lead to love and marriage. Marriage, he suggests, is the natural end women should pursue. He says, “some have wept, and wooed, and plighted troth, / And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth” (49-50). In these lines, “plighted troth” and chose their priest” both refer to marriage. Furthermore, “ere we can cast off sloth” suggests that a woman cannot rest until she is married without being considered lazy and sinful. In turn, this implies that marriage is a sort of ultimate fulfillment without which a women is lacking. Furthermore, the use of “we” emphasizes that the pursuit of marriage is demanded not only of the other “thousand virgins,” but specifically of Corinna and perhaps of the speaker. We learn little about the speaker. He may be a young man, in which case the “we” would apply to both of them, and he would be making an advance towards Corinna, but I suspect that the speaker is an older person, a mentor, maybe even a Priest as Herrick was. In this case, “we” attributes great authoritative power to the speaker. He does not refer at all to the possibility of his own slothfulness. Instead, he points to his divine-like ability to “cast off” Corinna’s “sloth.” Indeed, this reading of “ere we can cast of sloth” attributes to the speaker God-like power (50). This is very threatening because it suggests not only Corinna’s need to cast off sloth, but also that she is being judged by the God-like speaker, and unless she gets out of the bed and starts meeting young men, he will find her guilty.

A different, much milder, examination of the same couplet reveals that, for Herrick, love and marriage naturally accompany one another. He writes, “And some have wept, and wooed, and plighted troth, / And chose their priest, ere we can cast of sloth” (49-50). In the passage, “wept” and “wooed” are emotions and courtship behavior that suggest love. Then, “chose their priest” clearly refers to marriage. In between the two is “plight troth,” which refers to both. According to the OED, “plighted” means “Bound by pledge; engaged,” which implies marriage. But additionally, the OED says “plighted” means “Pledged, given in pledge or assurance; solemnly promised.” Given the context of weeping and wooing, “plighted troth” suggests not only marriage but also lovers pledging true love.

In addition to suggesting that love accompanies, marriage Herrick suggests that love is a natural and pleasurable phenomenon. In “Corinna’s Going a Maying,” the speaker associates love with pleasurable youthful courting behaviors such as kissing and casting glances. Love is also given an entirely positive description in Herrick’s poem “The Argument of His Book.” The poem begins,

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers:
Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers.
I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.
I write of youth, of love, and have access
By these to sing of cleanly-wantonness. (1-6)

In this passage, love is surrounded by pleasantries such as the celebration on marriage, youthful vitality, and physical attraction. Furthermore, the poet suggests the naturalness of love by creating a smooth progression from the purely natural objects – “brooks [and] blossoms” – to natural changes of the seasons – “June and July-flowers” – to human celebrations of the seasons – May Day ad harvest celebrations – to other celebrations not based on the season’s but regarded as natural developments in people’s lives – wakes and weddings – and ultimately to “love”, which is associated with marriage.

By connecting love with youthfulness and physical attraction, the poem above also implies that love is experienced through external mediums. Unlike Wroth who treats love as internal feelings and contemplation, Herrick regards love as a largely physical phenomenon. He says in “Corinna’s Going a Maying,” “Many a glance too has been sent / From out the eye, love’s firmament” (53-4). Since firmament according to the OED means “The place where God dwells,” the line suggests that love resides in the eyes. Accordingly, love is either apparent in the look in a lover’s eyes, or a person falls in love by looking at someone’s external appearance. In both cases, love is characterized by physical appearance not internal thoughts and feelings.

Significantly, the speaker never considers Corinna’s internal thoughts or feelings. Herrick’s speaker is only concerned with her external behavior – her conformity to a set of norms. This perspective is reinforced by the line “Rise; and put on your foliage, and be seen” (15). According to the speaker, the role of the female is not to see for herself but to be seen. Hence she is not something that observes but something observed, an object. Given his unconcern for Corinna’s thoughts, and feelings, it is easy to see how his ability to control and direct her could be oppressive. It could be, for example, that Corinna does not want to rise because she is as depressed on account of unrequited love as are the speakers in several of Wroth’s poems. Were this the case, Corinna would have good reason not to spring out of bed, rejoice in nature, and flirt. But as the speaker never ponders Corinna’s thoughts and feelings, he wouldn’t understand why she wasn’t up “sooner than the lark,” (14). As a result, if the speaker had the power to force the lovesick Corinna to get up and conform to his prescribed role, it is very clear that Corinna would suffer at the hands of the oppressive speaker.

While Herrick focuses only on the appearances of females and his own reactions to them, Wroth investigates the concealed internal lives of women. In doing so, Wroth privileges contemplation over action and women over men. This is especially evident in Wroth’s “Sonnet XXIII.” The poem begins,

When every one to pleasing pastime hies
Some hunt, some hawk, some play, while some delight
In sweet discourse, and music shows joy’s might
Yet I my thoughts do far above these prize. (1-4)

The poems’ opening stanza presents a hierarchy of activities. At the bottom are purely physical activities such as hunting and playing. Then there are partially mental activities such as performing and listening to music and conversing. Superior to these is contemplation. While Herrick praises men such as Ben Jonson for their mental capacities and women such as Julia for their physical features, Wroth reverses this trend. The poem suggests females’ superiority to males because men perform the inferior tasks of hunting and playing while the female speaker participates in the superior act of contemplation. In addition, Wroth turns the table on male poets who objectified women. She objectifies men by describing them only in terms of their external behaviors such as hunting and playing. Meanwhile, the poem humanizes and intellectualizes the female speaker by focusing on her feelings and thoughts.
Wroth not only describes the internal features of women, she also uses these to argue that women are oppressed by men. In “Corinna’s Going a Maying,” Herrick directs Corinna to follow a course of behavior that he feels is fully natural and pleasant. But in Wroth’s “Sonnet XXII,” she shows that such traditional rules of female conduct restrict women and cause them to suffer. Furthermore, Worth argues that women’s suffering remains hidden from outside observers. The poem begins:

Like to the Indians, scorched with the sun,
The sun which they do as their god adore,
So am I used by love: for evermore
I worship him: less favours have I won. (1-4)

In the poem, Wroth compares two groups oppressed by aristocratic men: Indians and women. The use of “sun” as the oppressor, suggests son and thus a masculine oppressive force. The poem implies “love” is the woman’s oppressor. But by taking the poem in context of the book from which the poems come, The Countess of Montgomerie’s Urania, we find that “love” is oppressive on account of unfaithful, absent, male lovers. So when the speaker says she worships “him,” “him” could refer either to love personified or to the speaker’s absent lover. If the latter interpretation is taken, “less favours have I won” clearly suggests the inequity of their relationship: she “worships” him and he has abandoned her.
The poem continues,

Better are those who thus to blackness run,
And so can only whiteness’ want deplore,
Than I who pale and white am with grief’s store,
Nor can have hope, but to see hopes undone. (5-8)

In these lines, “pale” and “white” have several connotations. They contrast with the blackening effect of the sun on the Indians, and thus imply that the speaker spends much of her time indoors. “White” and “pale” also suggest purity. Together, these connotations assert that the pure woman is one who remains inside. Seventeenth-century society did dictate that women should spend much of their time at home. A woman who did not remain at home could be branded as adulterous or a prostitute. The poet Lord Lyttleton proclaimed, “’Her fairest virtues fly from public sight, / Domestic worth, that shuns too strong a light’” (Gilbert 74). Wroth’s speaker continues, “I who pale and white am with grief’s store” (7). Here she links the social roles implicated by “pale” and “white” to her grief and suffering. The implications are that if purity were not so important she could enter into other relationships and thereby reduce her grief, and if she were not bound to her home, she would be free to pursue various activities that could distract her from her suffering. However, bound at home and suffering on account of an absent and cruel lover, the speaker cannot “have hope, but to see hopes undone” (8). In this line, the first “hope” seems to mean “to look for or anticipate,” and the second hope refers to the speaker’s wishes and desires (OED). Thus she can only anticipate the subversion of her desires. Her situation is reduced to completely hopeless on account of social rules and her absent lover.

Importantly, the circumstances of Sonnet XXII” are precisely the opposite of the circumstances in Petrarchan love poems. In Petrarchan poems, the man suffers terribly on account of the cruel, unfeeling women whom he helplessly loves. By writing many poems in which the opposite is true, Wroth argues that more often than not, the man is the inconsiderate member of the relationship and the woman is the one who suffers.

Hopelessness and despair are common themes of Wroth’s poems. Frequently, this despair is the result of love. As noted earlier, much of The Countess of Montgomerie’s Urania focuses on women who suffer at the hands of cruel, absent lovers. Thus while Herrick describes love as a pleasurable and mostly physical phenomenon, for Wroth, it is internal and painful. Furthermore, while much seventeenth-century poetry regards women as fickle, inconstant lovers, Wroth’s women are models of devotion. “Sonnet XXII” continues,

Besides, their sacrifice received ‘s in sight
Of their chose saint, mine hid as worthless rite.
Grant me to see where I my offerings give;
Then let me wear the mark of Cupid’s might
In heart, as they in skin of Phoebus’ light;
Not ceasing offerings to love while I live. (9-14)

Clearly, the end of the poem is rich in religious, especially Christian, images. “Rite,” for example, reminds the reader of the sacraments and other religious ceremonies, and “offerings” points to Church offerings. Several of the Christian references suggest suffering and devotion. The speaker’s “sacrifice,” for example implies Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his only son and Christ’s self-sacrifice. Also, the “mark of Cupid[],” while most obviously referring to an arrow through the heat, also suggests the wounds of Christ. Perhaps the speaker claims that her devotion to love causes her to bear a wound in the heart just as some of the most devoted Christians were said to have developed Christ’s wounds on their bodies. Significantly, her wounds are in the heart, not in the skin. This suggests that the speaker’s experience of love, her suffering, is not visible to the outside world but is internal. Indeed, love could not be a physical phenomenon for Wroth’s speaker as it is for Herrick’s because in Wroth’s poem love endures despite physical separation. The internal, hidden nature, of the speaker’s love is pointed out when she says, “[my sacrifice] hid as worthless rite” (10). Furthermore, Wroth attacks the common description of women as unfaithful. Unlike the fickle women in many seventeenth-century poems such as the one described in Donne’s “Song: Go, and catch a falling star” Wroth’s speaker is a model of constancy: Early in the poem, she says “for evermore / I worship him,” and she concludes the poem, “Not ceasing offering to love while I live” (3-4; 14).

Herrick and Wroth offer very different perspectives of women. Herrick views women from a primarily external perspective while Wroth pays attention to women’s thoughts and feelings. Herrick implies that women ought to conform to certain roles that naturally befit them, and Wroth attacks and challenges these roles. Also, Herrick views love as a pleasurable and mostly physical experience while Wroth portrays love as a primarily internal phenomenon and a source of suffering for women. Herrick’s poems, because they imply that women ought to conform to specific roles, contribute to society’s oppression of women. By contrast, Wroth’s poems attempt to liberate women by objectifying men in her poems, critiquing Petrarchan conventions, challenging the belief that men are intellectually and morally superior to women, and showing how social norms contribute to the oppression of women…

I don’t know if that is exactly the account I gave my girlfriend, but I’m quite sure that this is how my explanation ended. I told her this: “Regardless of how one interprets poems by Wroth and Herrick, the important thing to remember is that just as it was three hundred years ago, many men today only value women for their external features, like to keep women pent up in homes, and ultimately make the women who love them lonely and unhappy. Then, occasionally,” I said, “you come across a man who genuinely pays attention to a woman’s thoughts and feelings, encourages her to pursue her ambitions, and is equally devoted to having a happy, loving relationship. When you find one like that,” I said as I grinned and ran my hand through her hair, “you’ve got to make sure to hold on to him, because he’s a heck of a catch!”

She looked me in the eye and said she’d be sure to do that if she ever found one. Then she said in the mean time I’d do.

Works Cited

Fowler, Alatair, ed. The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse. Oxford; Oxford U P, 1992.

Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar, ed. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The traditions in English. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966.