Slave, servant or comrade?
...to stand up for themselves, a quite controversial statement at that day and age. It is quite clear that this poem is written with irony, using metaphors to illustrate what marriage is like, “For when that fatal knot is tied” (Chudleigh, ll. 3) comparing marriage to a noose, and perhaps the origin of the expression ‘to tie the knot’. Lady Chudleigh’s opinion on the subject of female intelligence is also quite clearly explained, “But what her haughty lord thinks fit, who with the power has all the wit” (Chudleigh, ll. 19-20), a kick in the groin of the society dominated and ruled by men, not allowing women to be openly intelligent, and certainly not to express their opinions. She has also noticed the change in man, from a “fawning flatterer” (Chudleigh, ll. 22) while courting, to become “Fierce as an eastern prince” (Chudleigh, ll. 9) once married. The poem criticizes the contemporary laws, following the Church blindly, and making the husband the owner of his wife. The line “And man by law supreme has made” (Chudleigh, ll. 6) points to this fact, an example of this is the ‘rule of thumb’, by law permitting the husband to beat his wife as long as the stick he used to beat her with was no thicker than a thumb. There were hardly any laws protecting the woman from her husband, and divorce was not an option as it is today. The line “Which nothing, nothing can divide” (Chudleigh, ll. 4) illustrates this, meaning only death was a way out of an unhappy marriage. In the last sentence of the poem, “Value yourselves, and men despise: You must be proud if...