Examination of Womens Friendships through an Analysis of...

Examination of Womens Friendships through an Analysis of Katherine Philips Friendships Mystery: To My Dearest Lucasia When readers reflect on the poetry of the seventeenth century, poets such as John Donne and the Metaphysicals, Jonson and the Cavaliers, and John Milton often come to mind. The poetry crosses over various boundaries of Neoplatonic, Ovidian, and Petrarchan forms, for example, often with many references to women filling the lines. Described as helpless creatures, seventeenth century women were often shut out from all possibilities of power, and they were generalized into four categories: virgins, women to be married, married, and widowed. In the state of marriage, women were forced to be the†¦show more content†¦In her essay, Rich expresses [t)hat the argument will go on whether an oppressive economic class system is responsible for the oppressive nature of male/female relations, or whether, in fact, patriarchythe domination of males-is the original model of oppression on which all others are based (35). Rich further develops this point by suggesting that 11[r]e-vision-the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction-is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival (35). When reading Philips in light of Richs essay, the reader realizes that Philips was writing for re-vision long before the concept was coined by the critic. According to Rich, Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the selfdestructiveness of male-dominated society (35). Apparent in Philips alterations of Donnes metaphors is this drive to self-knowledge. Although her poems do not outwardly attack Donne, for that would seem hypocritical, Philips clearly responds to the fact that there were all those poems about women, written by men . . . . These women were almost always beautiful, but threatened with the loss of beauty, the loss of