To what extent does Donne present the lovers as equal in “To His Mistress Going To Bed”?
According to the Platonic formulation, beauty is ranked in several stages where we begin by being attracted to a single beautiful person, then beautiful minds, on to beautiful ideas, and finally, to beauty itself. In the poem, it appears that the narrator is stuck on the first rung. He is simply blinded by his mistress’ beauty; unable to describe anything other than her appearance and subsequently treats her as an object as opposed to an intelligent being. Unlike much of Donne’s other poetry which tends to prefer pure and platonic love as opposed to lust, making this poem unusual amongst his other works. This may seem to establish the narrator as subjectively superior and thus the lovers unequal. However on closer analysis this may be found not to be the case as the poem points to the mistress having an unassuming power over the narrator.
The woman’s role is established even before the poem begins as Donne describes her as “His Mistress”. The use of the possessive “His” implies ownership and foreshadows the domination that the narrator will lord over her throughout the poem. The term “mistress”, because it is not clearly defined who the woman is in relation to Donne, forces readers to make assumptions about the connotations behind the word and how it reflects upon the unknown woman. To a contemporary audience the word would most likely be interpreted as her having a sexual role in the play and as she is not his wife she is simply there for the narrator’s entertainment. This ambiguity about her identity leads to her being reduced to a stereotype with a set role to play rather than an individual that the narrator must interact with. One could even argue that it dehumanises her and allows the narrator to act this way with little to no remorse or empathy. This lack of identity is