John Donne’s is notoriously known in the literary world, as a man whose works were misogynistic and sexual in regard to women. He has been debated and criticized on various issues, since his poems pose problematic issues in the world, that today’s progressive world that is slowly making way for women as equals, criticize and condemn. “The Flea” and “Air and Angels” are some of his many works, published after his death that raises feminist problems that were prevalent in the 16the and 17 th century. Air and Angels is one poem that though beautifully written, has underlying sexual connotations, abuse of the female body and treatment of the woman as the “other”.The poem is description of the speaker trying to woo a woman that he loves, even though he has never spoken to her, but is assuredly in love. Donne uses the symbolic angel to represent the spirit of the woman which is “shapeless” and has no form. The speaker wants to use the shapeless form as a kind of blank page that he can fill it up with whatever he desires. In other words, Donne is leaving the reader/listener to his imagination to picture the formless woman.This takes away the full right of the woman’s body, who gets no say in what is being done to her or how she is being viewed. In fact, in the entire poem, the speaker enforces his love upon her, asking love, the child of the soul, to take up the body of the woman as its corporeal body. The woman does not utter a single sound in the poem, submissive to the will of the speaker, even when is overburdens her with his love, she does not complain or cry. The speaker is abusing the body of the woman, imagining it to be what he wants it to look like, enforcing love upon her without her consent, and making do whatever he wants with the woman’s body. He seems to love the body rather than the person, because he has never talked to her, and he is instead projecting all his fantasies and desires on to her. The female body in this poem is confined and ignored, yet remains slightly and distinctly visible.
- / 1