John Donne’s treatment towards women

John Donne is one of the famous poets of the seventeenth century. He has been highly acclaimed for his metaphysical poems and is regarded a major metaphysical poet for his writing style. In his poems, he has beautifully shown the love relationship between man and woman from both sensuous and realistic perspectives, and to do so, he sometimes criticizes women and sometimes praises them. His mixed attitude towards female figure has made him apart from both the Petrarchan and the Platonic school of thoughts. Here, in this writing, you will find how he treated women in his literary works. 

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In the poem “Go and Catch a Falling Star”, John Donne has showed his cynical attitude towards women. Women’s faithlessness is the main theme of this poem. According to him, finding a fair and chaste woman is an impossible task. Beautiful women will have several lovers, and for that reason, it is not possible for them to be loyal to any of them. A woman is constant only when she is ugly, and there is no one to love her. He also said that if anyone can find such a fair and honest lady, the poet would like to visit her as if on a pilgrimage to some holy place.

In the poem “Twickenham Garden”, we can see the similar kind of attitude towards women. He said that all women are false. They cannot remain loyal to a single lover. The interesting thing is that in the same poem we can find his different view when he talks about his beloved. He said that only his beloved is true because she is faithful to a single lover. He greatly admires her for this particular quality, which is, undoubtedly, a rare virtue in womanhood.

In the poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, we can also find his different view about women when he spoke highly of his wife, Anne More. This poem discloses the poet’s eternal faith in life. Conjugal love at its best is more rewarding and meaningful than weeping in unfulfilled love. As it shows the fulfillment of a happy married life that is why, it is called one of the best love poems written by John Donne.

The above stated poems reveal Donne’s satirical-cynical attitude towards womankind. He comes out of the influence of the Petrarchan tradition of woman-worship. He himself is the victim of woman’s inconstancy. That is why, he considers a constant woman as a rarity.

We can find John Donne’s anti-Petrarchan thought about women. He did not hesitate portraying the negative side of women. In these poems, readers can find women as ordinary human being with full of flaws or errors. It means that he has depicted women in an opposite way of what the followers of the Petrarchan tradition have shown women in their poems. It should be known to all that followers of the Petrarchan tradition treated women as virtuous or goddess or deities. Their main concern was to portray the beauty and positive sides of women.