Published Paper Details:

Among the canonical works of metaphysical poetry, Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress has largely been read through the lens of its rhetorical brilliance and carpe diem urgency -- yet its dynamics of desire, silence, and emotional coercion remain critically underexplored. The seventeenth century witnessed the rise of metaphysical poetry, a literary movement characterized by intellectual wit, conceits, philosophical reflection, and emotional intensity, and it is within this cultural and literary context that Marvell's poem must be re-examined. This paper argues that To His Coy Mistress employs the language of romance to disguise and legitimize masculine authority and emotional coercion. Drawing on Kate Millett's theorization of patriarchal power in literature, Simone de Beauvoir's concept of woman as "the Other", and Laura Muvley's notion of the male gaze, this study demonstrates that the speaker systematically deploys fear, urgency, and seductive rhetoric as instruments of control over female sexuality consent, functions as a site of suppression within the poem's persuasive structure. This feminist analysis ultimately reveals that To His Coy Mistress reflects not only the literary culture of seventeenth-century England, but also the broader patriarchal attitudes toward women, desire, and bodily autonomy that defined the period. By re-reading this celebrated poem through a feminist lens, this paper challenges conventional admiration of its wit and invites a more critically engaged understanding of its gender politics.