Elegy 19: On His Mistress Going to Bed and Amores

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             Both personas in Donne's "Elegy 19: On His Mistress Going to Bed" and Ovid's Amores exercise the power of self-display in their monologues. However, Donne does so at the expense of his mistress and for personal gain, whereas Ovid does so in response to his mistress and to show a sense of vulnerability to her and the audience. In Donne's "Elegy 19: On His Mistress Going to Bed", the speaker says, "O my America! My new-found-land/My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned/My mine of precious stones, my empery/How blest am I in this discovering thee!" (lines 27-30). The speaker, appearing to simply reveal to the audience his own happiness, does so at his mistress' expense. His comparison to of his mistress to a colonial expedition shows that he sees her as only physically territory he has conquered, furthering the singularity of the sexual experience. Donne concludes the poem in saying, "To teach thee I am naked first; why then/What need more covering than a man" (Elegy 19: On His Mistress Going to Bed, lines 60-62). This act of physical self-display from the speaker through nudity, though a symbol of vulnerability, is done with selfish intent to convince his mistress to join him so that he can sleep with her. Ovid, too, shows self-display of emotions in Amores 1.7, after the speaker, having had laid a violent hand on his mistress says, "Then for the first time I began to realize her hurt/The tears I made her shed were my own blood" (lines 83-84). Like the speaker in "Elegy 19", the speaker in Amores does give an emotional admission, but does so as a response to the emotions of his wounded mistress. Though Ovid's use of self-display is one proceeding an act of violence, it is nonetheless still done with more receptiveness to the emotions of the woman than that of "Elegy 19", as Donne's emotional submission is done for personal gain rather than a self-realization of sorts.