Comparative analysis of Shakespeare s Sonnet 144 and Denise Levertov s The Woman
Although Shakespeare and Levertov lived in different centuries and wrote in very different historical, social and cultural contexts, these two poems share the same theme: the love to two different entities. ... But, while in Shakespeare’s sonnet the poetic speaker has fallen in love with two different beings (a good man and a wicked woman, represented as an angel and a devil respectively), Levertov’s poem is more innovative, since in this case the two identities coexist inside only one woman, representing the different aspects of femininity. Formally, it possible to say that Shakespeare’s is more traditional, in the sense that it is a sonnet and therefore, it follows a predetermined structure and it has a clearly defined rhythmic and rhyming pattern. On the contrary, The Woman is composed in free verses, with no rhythm or rhyme, and its distribution in groups of two, three or four lines, is not related to any predetermined pattern. The main theme of Shakespeare’s sonnet is the love that the poetic speaker feels for a good man and an evil woman, and the pain he feels because he suspects the female has won the heart of the male and they have a sexual relationship. ... Traditionalists believed that woman corrupted pure love. ... Christian theology identify woman with the devil, and any union with a woman was corrupting, and the ideal life would be one of chastity and abstention from sex. So, Shakespeare can establish the differences between the spiritual connection and perfect love he feels for the man, and the physical love that woman offers and that corrupts men. Being a sonnet, its form and content is quite conventional. This is an instance of the typical English sonnet about love and eroticism, that follows this pattern of rhyme: abab cdcd efef gg. ... In line two is established the comparison between the lovers and the two spirits (the angel and the devil) that is maintained throughout the sonnet. ... In this case, the good spirit is a just, honest, gentle man, and the “worser spirit” is the woman. It is noticeable the use of a double comparative for emphatic purposes. ... In the second quatrain, the poetic speaker tells the reader that the two guardians spirits that used to protect or tempt him do not do it anymore, because one is tempting the better one to sin: the woman is trying to woo his lover, to win the heart of the man, to turn him into a wicked being like her, using her seductiveness and having sex with him.