Explore the ways in which Dickinson and Larkin express their views of marriage.

Both poets show their firm negative view on their opinions of love and marriage, though they both represent it in alternative ways. Phillip Larkin with his omniscient perspective on the lives of others and the belief that marriage is a façade for both parties involved, compared to Emily Dickinson’s believing that marriage is a force which restricts a woman. Larkin explores marriage with negative connotations in ‘An Arundel Tomb’ and ‘Self’s the Man’. In ‘An Arundel Tomb’ he portray the assumptions that people make of the Earl and Countess’s marriage and the reality of the lack of love within it. He does the same in ‘Self’s the Man’ with the apparent pressures put on men to support a women and reveal his sexist view of women though the explicit showing of woman mindlessly taking advantage of men. Similar to Larkin, Emily Dickinson expresses her negative opinion on marriage in ‘Because I Could Not Stop for Death’ and ‘She Rose to His Requirement’, expressing a woman’s loss of identity once married and the liabilities it causes. In ‘Because I Could Not Stop for Death’ (712) she inexplicitly create a link between death and marriage through the thought of a woman’s previous lifestyle dying to make marriage the first and only priority. In ‘She Rose to His Requirement’ (732) Dickinson create a contrast with the connotations of marriage, on the outside, it seems like something to pride oneself in but truly, it is a form of oppression for women.

In Larkin’s ‘An Arundel Tomb’ he suggests that the Countess and Earl’s marriage have just become the modern perception of the marriage being a symbol of platonic love and it does it reflect the people during their time alive.

Though the poem is seemingly sweet, Larkin ends it on a dark note by contrasting with the thought that this one