Sonnet 130: My Mistress Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun

In both the love poem “She Walks in Beauty” by Lord Byron and the love song “Just the Way You Are” by Khari Cain, Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, Bruno Mars, and Khalil Walton poetic devices are used to describe love for a woman. While Cain, Lawrence, Levine. Mars,and Walton in“Just the Way You Are” use hyperbole and repetition to express love in their song, Lord Byron in“She Walks in Beauty” more effectively uses simile and juxtaposition express love in his poem. The song “Just the Way You Are” is about a man telling a woman how beautiful she is and how much he loves her for who she is, although she does not believe him.

The appropriation of this aspect of the story into Clueless, reinforces the idea that holding one’s notions of beauty in high regard and enforcing these on another can lead to vanity and corruption of both people’s characters. Cher and Dionne decide to give new girl Tai a makeover because they deem her unnaturally red and wild hair, oversized flannel shirt and lack of makeup, unattractive. This decision is followed by a montage of Tai’s makeover, and upbeat, non-diagetic refrain “I’m gonna be a supermodel.” When post-makeover Tai is revealed she is styled similarly to Cher and Dionne and the backing singers sing, “it’s so beautiful.” The correlation between the lyrics and visuals suggests that the way Tai looked before the makeover was not ‘beautiful‘ and the beauty ideal the Cher has enforced upon her is ‘beautiful’. This message is further explored through Tai’s newfound attractiveness leading to her becoming vain and arrogant. This change in Tai’s character culminates with the infamous insult “why am I even listening to you to begin with? You’re a virgin who can’t drive.” After her makeover, even through Tai is now seen as conventionally beautiful, her personality is not. Tai’s character development emphasises the drastic effects vanity and superficiality can have on a person. It reinforces the idea that beauty is not as important as a person’s character, which is one of the main messages of Clueless and

She takes in every word he says and joylessly laughs and smiles over every remark. The author uses gustatory imagery when saying she “drinks” in his words with “eager lips” as if she can taste every word. Red is the color of passion and lust, which is exactly the color she “paints her mouth”. The reader not only gets an image of a couple all dressed up with nowhere to go, but the author’s metaphor compares her to an actual painting. Like art the value of the woman has been based off objective beauty and not substance. Both her and her lover know their parts. He, like an actor to an audience “rehearse his loves to her” She in turn, pretends to be amused. She has fooled him into thinking that her take on life is light hearted, joyful, and not at all morbid. She knows that simulating happiness is much more appealing. She wishes that she could articulate her “staring eyes of nights,” but her and this man are not close enough for that. The man shares imagery of “fresh adventures” while she must conceal her inner thoughts. She envy’s his ability to travel alone. She longs to share these experiences rather than hear about them second hand. Possibly to stimulate arousal, he tells tales of other lovers along his travels. Her fake reaction of approval pleases him. She mustn’t say how it hurts to be compared to them. She meets the standard of a good girl- always

It not only threatens, but also breaks through. Betrayed by love once in her life, she nevertheless seeks it in the effort to fill the lonely void; thus, her promiscuity. But to adhere to her tradition and her sense of herself as a lady, she cannot face this sensual part of herself. She associates it with the animalism of Stanley's lovemaking and terms it “brutal desire”. She feels guilt and a sense of sin when she does surrender to it, and yet she does, out of intense loneliness. By viewing sensuality as brutal desire she is able to disassociate it from what she feels is her true self, but only at the price of an intense inner conflict. Since she cannot integrate these conflicting elements of desire and gentility, she tries to reject the one, desire, and live solely by the other. Desperately seeking a haven she looks increasingly to fantasy. Taking refuge in tinsel, fine clothes, and rhinestones, and the illusion that a beau is available whenever she wants him, she seeks tenderness and beauty in a world of her own making.

In the first two quatrains, Shakespeare is judgmental towards his mistress and how she does not compare with other beautiful worldly things. For example, the first line of the sonnet begins, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (line 1). The speaker uses this comparison to say that the eyes of his mistress are not bright and they do not give off a

For example, the speaker states, “I have seen roses damasked, red and white, / But no such roses see I in her cheeks” (5-6). Comparing a woman's cheeks to roses is a phrase that has been used over many centuries. Although, the point the speaker is trying to make is that no woman can live up to such an impractical comparison. In addition, in the third quatrain, the speaker says, “I grant I never saw a goddess go, / My mistress when she walks treads the ground” (11-12).

Sonnet 130 is a parody of the conventional love sonnet, made popular by Petrarch and, made popular in England by Sidney’s use of the Petrarchan form in his epic poem Astrophel and Stella. When comparing the stanzas of A & S to Sonnet 130, the reader can clearly see that the sonnet does not use grandiose metaphors or allusions to build his beloved into a divine figure. Despite it being an obvious parody, it will be compared to the chosen lines from the Tempest. In Shakespeare’s day, metaphors that allude to putting the beloved on a pedestal of beauty had already become a cliché, but they were an accepted technique for writing love poetry nonetheless. The way these poems would describe the poet’s lover was high idealized, making comparisons

Both poems, " My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" and "How Do I Love Thee?", each express their love in two different ways. In "My mistress` eyes are nothing like the sun", is a Shakespearean sonnet that gives ridiculous comparisons of his mistress that he loves so much. "How Do I Love Thee?", is another sonnet about love. The poet talks about her hopes of the love she has for her husband will last forever even after death.   Though "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" uses more figure of speech to describe his love,", Shakespeare give off a parody like love poem.

Her lips the spitting image of his desires Her body so elegant Yet alienated like the Myers He doesn’t want to lose her But somehow mistakenly seems to bruise her Her young heart crippled With pain now a tumor

The author of this sonnet uses the traditional English sonnet form, containing fourteen lines, written in iambic pentameter, and has an ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme. The sonnet’s form is part of the parody because usually love sonnets writers use traditional sonnet forms, an example for this is Francesco Petrarch that is well known for his love sonnets written in Italian sonnet form. Shakespeare makes the contradiction between a traditional sonnet form and a non-traditional content of the sonnet. The content of this sonnet, a decretory description of the speaker’s lover, is very opposite to a traditional love poem’s content. In the first three quatrains of “Sonnet 130”, the speaker compares his mistress with various thing and tells us how she doesn’t measures up to them. In the last couplet the speaker changes

For example, in lines 1-4 Shakespeare compares his mistress to physical aspects found in nature. Generally, when nature is used in poetry it is used to portray the image of beauty; however, in this case it is to do the complete opposite. Throughout Sonnet 130 the most common type of figurative language that Shakespeare uses are metaphors. He uses theses to help the reader truly perceive an image of how unappealing his mistress looks are. “Coral is far more red than her lips’ red” (Line 2), this line in particular applies that her lips are not perfect at all.

The narrator appears to be almost insulting his lover, stating in the beginning that “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (l. 1) among other remarks. After the use of many transposed similes, the narrator has a change of heart in line fourteen, stating “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare”. According to Dominic Grace, who wrote the scholarly article “Literary Contexts in Poetry: William Shakespeare's "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun", states that this means “he thinks his beloved is as unique as any other woman who has been lied about by other poets through the use of false comparators” (par.

Sonnet 130 is about a mistress who does not have much beauty. Shakespeare compares her to things that are supposed to be beautiful. This comparison tells the reader that her eyes are “nothing like the sun” (l. 1). He also says that her lips are not as coral; compared to white show,

It is not hard to see that Spenser in Sonnet 64 is deeply in love with his beloved and greatly admires her physical appearance. At first glance, one might think that Shakespeare in Sonnet 130 does not seem to think his beloved beautiful since he lists off all the things that are not beautiful about her. However, the beloved is admired by them both, simply in different ways. Spenser idealizes his beloved by comparing her to beautiful and natural things and by using smell to describe her beauty. Shakespeare, on the other hand, does not idealize his beloved; instead, he is honest about her, which may appear as a negative description, but is actually also describing how much he admires her.