The 16th Century produced two well-known poets, Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. During the 16th Century, the Renaissance began and perhaps drove their opinions about love to how they wrote and how they portrayed their messages. They were good friends and together produced the usage of the English sonnet. Wyatt and Surrey both wrote about love but their messages were slightly different. Although I enjoyed reading Wyatt’s pieces, the one poem that stuck out to me was Surrey’s “O happy dames, that may embrace.”
Surrey is known as a conventional love poet. Through his poem “O happy dames, that may embrace,” he imagines himself as a woman waiting for her husband to return from war. He wrote this poem through the voice of a woman. In the line “…furthering his hope, that is his sail, toward me, the sweet port of his avail,” it shows that it is indeed a women waiting for her man to come home to his final destination of being with her. There are some slight similarities between this poem’s message and what we find today. Loved ones today are waiting for the return of their husbands and wives from war. People pray today as they did back then as well as feel the pain of their absence.
“Whose absent flame did make me burn” (line 20) reminds me of the cliché quote today, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” They may not create the same interpretation to all readers, but there is something about this line in “O happy dames, that may embrace” that paints a distinct image in my head. This line and quote remind me that although your loved ones may neither be right with you nor coming home anytime soon they are still a part of you and everyday you miss them incredibly. This paints the image of today’s society when our troops are coming home from war and the expressions on their family’s face says a thousand words. Absence may be hard but if you get through it, the end result could be very rewarding.
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey’s last line of this poem states: “Now he comes! Will he come? Alas, no no!” Over the course of this poem, Surrey tells the story with the reader believing all things may come to a happy ending. It is in this last line that he breaks the news that this speaker’s man is not coming home. Now we know that all love stories don’t have a happy ending and they don’t always end the way we want.
I think it is really interesting that Surrey attempted to write "O Happy Dames, that may embrace" through the eyes of a woman waiting for her husband to return from war. In some places, I definitely think that he did a good job of using a female voice in his writing. However, as a whole, I found that I could not help getting hints of a "male" voice in the poem. I am actually taking another english course on female writers of the 19th century who attempted to "write like men" in order to get published. In many cases, no matter how hard the author tries, their true voice slips through, revealing their gender. I find that this holds true for Surrey as well - while the storyline of his poem takes on a very feminine stance when it comes to waiting for her loved one, his sometimes sparse, direct lines suggest that it is a male writing instead of a female.
ReplyDeleteI thought I might share a link that my other professor emailed to us. It is a googlebook that explains the difficulty that authors face when trying to write in the voice of the opposite gender:
http://books.google.com/books?id=qykBJvG0iJQC&pg=PA338&lpg=PA338&dq=how+to+write+like+a+woman/man&source=bl&ots=oR21I4ocbM&sig=dVi4RdnUFObzMUh-sVpyvJw7p7E&hl=en&ei=jypkTaOaJYSdlgfsk43VCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFgQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
I agree with the statement about hearing a male voice through this poem. When I first read is all the way through, I found myself realizing the same thing. In my opinion, what gave it away for me was the fact that the poem revolved only around the man and how much the speaker missed him. I understand that it is a poem about love so the speaker is bound to talk about the person they love. However, I feel that if the voice of a woman were to be truly accomplished, there would be more of an emotional attachment to what the couple had together. It talks about the man’s eyes, his destination, how sad she is that he is gone. I feel that if a woman actually wrote it there would be more about their relationship and what she misses about them being together. This is my personal opinion obviously, what do you guys think?
ReplyDeleteI read that Surrey wrote to the King to ask if his wife could join him, he was refused this privilege. This is why he wrote this poem to assure her of his “true” love for her. During this period, proclaimed love was frowned upon. So I believe Surrey writing this poem in a women’s voice was truly a romantic thing to do as it contained very deep feeling for her that a majority of his other love poems he wrote were merely just for writing about love.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was reading this poem, I also noticed the lack of the happy ending. In fact, as I read all the poems for this week’s assignment, I noticed a change in the tone of the writing. We first started off reading “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament” in which love is spoken as a good thing even though it was taken away. As time progressed, however, writers began to think of love as something that isn’t so great, especially once it is taken away. Did you notice any change in tone about love from the beginning our time period of readings and the end?
ReplyDeleteJessica, the crazy thing about love is that unfortunately that isn't always a happy ending, like we have seen in this poem and others that we read for this week. Honestly, Disney movies and fairy tales are the only stories that always end happily, but that is not reality. After reading your rumination I found it interesting that you compared line 20 of the poem to the quote, "absence makes the heart grow fonder." I can also see a similarity. Do you think that this is where the famous quote we know today could have originated from? Both quotes send the same or a very similar message that when someone is away or missing, the other person is waiting and wanting his/her lover more than ever.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the ending was necessarily unhappy, at least not anymore unhappy than the entirety of the poem. I think she was just explaining how she feels each day thinking to herself "Now he comes! Will he come?" and up until that point, the answer had been "Alas, no, no!" This is not to say that the next day it isn't very possible that he would walk through her front door.
ReplyDeletehey jessica,
ReplyDeletethanks so much! now i can post! and what i was going to say yesterday was...
I have to agree that when I was reading this poem I had the feeling that it was a male speaker, but the constant mentioning of a "he" figure, especially in the last few lines of the poem helped to clarify who the speaker was for me, although it was a bit late. I'm not so sure how successful this poem really is. As a reader aren't we supposed to have some kind of emotion be invoked from us? Thanks Jamie, for the background information of the poem, it really helped to clarify and stress what I am trying to say. If this poem was meant as a love poem for his wife, wouldn't more passion shine through the stanzas? Overall, I believe that this poem is a weak attempt for Surrey to write a love poem. I don't think that it really showed the despair of the speaker or even vaguely conveyed at how much Surrey loved his wife. No offense to Surrey, but I just didn't buy this poem.