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. It was very customary, following the conventions set up by the Italian lyric poet Petrarch —74 , to write sonnets praising the beauty of the woman you were in love with.
This kind of sonnet would form a list of her beautiful features of face and figure, variously praising her eyes, lips, cheeks, teeth, breasts, etc. Of course, the custom was to say how beautiful and marvellous each feature was. Shakespeare turns all these conventions upside down. The sonnet, then, presents us with a series of inversions. Her cheeks are not as beautiful in colouring as damask roses 5—6.
Her breath is not particularly sweet-smelling 7—8 ; her voice is normal and not musical 8—9 ; her walk normal too, not like that of a supernatural goddess. Nonetheless, the poet admires her beauty, suggesting that she is really beautiful, but adamant that he is not going to be drawn into a game of falsely praising that beauty. Sonnet is a kind of inverted love poem. It implies that the woman is very beautiful indeed, but suggests that it is important for this poet to view the woman he loves realistically.
The poet wants to view his mistress realistically, and praise her beauty in real terms. Whereas conventional love sonnets by other poets make their women into goddesses, in Sonnet the poet is merely amused by his own attempt to deify his dark mistress.
The poet must be very secure in his love for his mistress — and hers for him — for him to be as disparaging as he is, even in jest — a security he did not enjoy with the young man. Although the turn "And yet" in the concluding couplet signals the negation of all the disparaging comments the poet has made about the Dark Lady, the sonnet's last two lines arguably do not erase the horrendous comparisons in the three quatrains.
Summary Sonnet I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.
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