This strong word intensifies the statement that nobody comes close to her and establishes a relationship with her. This last quatrain is the first time the speaker says something positive about his mistress. In this times women were not seen as individuals with own talents, so every woman had to have a wonderful voice to sing with. It was one of the basic things women were taught while they were living at home.
Only working women, like servants or farmer's wives, were not supposed to be able to sing perfectly. So the mistress in the poem is seen as a low standard woman, not having a good education. The last comparison is made with a goddess, which is probably the highest thing a woman can be compared with. He hyperbolizes the ideals of beauty. A graceful goddess is the most perfect being the speaker can think of.
The comparisons made from the coral to the goddess are rising up. On one hand the speaker starts in nature with the coral under the sea and ends with a hovering goddess high over the ground.
And on the other hand the value is increasing: from an almost useless coral to a priceless goddess. But the mistress does not even reach the lowest level. This shows that she actually is not worthy to be loved, but the final couplet is a complete turnaround:. The speaker announces that he loves her, independent from the ideals of beauty men had.
His love is higher than anything he was comparing her with previously. This last line is an attack on men who think a woman is only an object to look on, not a person to look into. The value of a woman is dependent on the thing you compare her with. Either because of her pretty visual nature, which he just needs to compare with different precious things, or because of her wonderful inner values, which you cannot see immediately but have to find out.
William Shakespeare wrote this poem although it was unusual for a man to see a woman as a multidimensional character. Women were supposed to delight men with a lovely face and body. But to fall in love with a woman because she was smart or intellectual was totally untypical. You cannot say for sure that the author is at the same time the speaker of this sonnet, but probably William Shakespeare advanced the view he lets his speaker have. Parents Home Homeschool College Resources.
Study Guide. By William Shakespeare. Previous Next. Speaker This speaker sounds like the guy at the back of your class who is always cracking jokes. Sonnet mocks the typical Petrarchan metaphors by presenting a speaker who seems to take them at face value, and somewhat bemusedly, decides to tell the truth.
In the couplet, then, the speaker shows his full intent, which is to insist that love does not need these conceits in order to be real; and women do not need to look like flowers or the sun in order to be beautiful. The rhetorical structure of Sonnet is important to its effect. In the first quatrain, the speaker spends one line on each comparison between his mistress and something else the sun, coral, snow, and wires—the one positive thing in the whole poem some part of his mistress is like.
This creates the effect of an expanding and developing argument, and neatly prevents the poem—which does, after all, rely on a single kind of joke for its first twelve lines—from becoming stagnant.
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