“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”

I'm more concerned with what this highly-idealized vision of a sex-crazed mind about a meeting with his lady says about the text's disposition toward women. (I'm starting to see that in my writing, I'm often approaching these texts with the same sorts of questions and methods, but it's really helping me to develop a keen eye to assumptions and sensibilities that place women on the margins of texts). It's clear that the author needs no help from his lady to imagine a blissfully sexual fantasy about their meeting, which suggests that the fantastical qualities about their encounter have little to do with her preferences or needs. As much as he loves her, and idealizes her, and worships her being, it is clear that he thinks of her as a prize or an object to be obtained and used for his own euphoric experience, rather than a human being with thoughts and feels and capabilities. The majority of his descriptions of his lady deal with his interacting with or gazing upon her body or features, which suggests that whatever else there is to her is either, in his mind, non-existent or if little practical value. 

I found a funny blog post about this called, "The Passionate Freudian to his Love" that inspires this post somewhat. It's clear that the post was written by an undergraduate who was, like me, probably blogging for an assignment. But the post brought up some interest points about sexual frustration in the poem, and I'm going to take them and extend them to where Marlowe has written the feminine into his poem. This other blog doesn't actually say much beyond summarizing some of what Freud talked about--sexual drives, lack, etc--and saying that Freud would have some interesting things to say about Marlowe's poem. Frankly, I think that's more or less a cop-out--which is what leads me to think it's an assignment for this student to be posting on their blog--and it begs the question of whether we can simply call anything Freudian or say Freud would have interesting things to say about anything if it has something to do with sex or sexual desire. I guess Freud probably would've had plenty to say about it, but it doesn't really say anything about the text or the author or anything really. But I digress.


Writing this post is leading me in another direction--that is, to think about idealisms and what they indicate about the way we think about the people around us. It seems to me that anytime we idealize about something, some state, some time, some person, it's because we hoped or wished it was better, that there is something it is missing according to our judgment. And if we are to take imaginative liberties in this creation of a world of ideals that better suits are needs or expectations, there is clearly a self-preserving or self-centered motive involved. So, in the case of Marlowe's poem, as much as he couches his poem in concepts relating to love and affection and tenderness toward this woman, I have to wonder what it means that he is experiencing all of these feelings about a woman and scene that does not and will not ever exist. I suppose there's nothing particularly evil about selfishness--it is natural--nor is it terribly wrong for a person to dream and imagine, but it seems that the danger manifests itself when one expects ideals and visions to actually exist, when one forgets about the constructedness of visions and wishes, and the influence our lacking and selfish drives have in shaping them. that is certainly not love, at least in my estimation. I don't know. I need to think about this some more.