Gender Roles and Power in 17th-Century Erotic Poetry
This paper examines how gender roles, social class, and cultural norms are portrayed in two late seventeenth-century poems: John Wilmot's "The Imperfect Enjoyment" and Aphra Behn's "The Disappointment." Through close reading of both texts, the paper explores how male sexual impotence functions as a metaphor for power and social status, how class distinctions shape the portrayal of desire, and how language choices reveal underlying attitudes toward women. The paper further argues that while Wilmot's poem reinforces traditional gender hierarchies, Behn's work challenges them by depicting an assertive female figure—an early literary expression of resistance to the subordination of women in seventeenth-century English society.
- Introduction: Poems of Frustration and Desire: Introduces both poems and central thesis
- Class and Social Structure: Class distinctions in Wilmot and Behn
- Gender Roles in the Two Poems: Power, impotence, and gender dynamics analyzed
- Profanity, Language, and Culture: How language choice reveals cultural norms
- Conclusion: Power, Gender, and Society: Synthesis of gender and class arguments
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its argument in specific textual evidence, quoting directly from both poems with line citations to support claims about gender and power dynamics.
- It employs a comparative structure effectively, consistently juxtaposing Wilmot and Behn to highlight contrasts in perspective, language, and treatment of female agency.
- The thesis — that both poems reveal societal class and power structures between men and women — is stated clearly at the outset and revisited throughout each section.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative literary analysis, using two primary texts to illuminate a shared theme from opposing viewpoints. By reading Behn's assertive female character against Wilmot's passive one, the author shows how the same subject (male sexual failure) can encode radically different ideological positions. This technique allows the writer to argue that literature both reflects and potentially subverts social norms.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an introduction that frames the thesis and identifies both poems. It then moves through three analytical sections: class and social structure, gender roles, and the role of language and profanity in establishing cultural context. A concluding section synthesizes the findings and restates the thesis. Each body section addresses both poems in turn, maintaining the comparative framework throughout.
Introduction: Poems of Frustration and Desire
Sex has long been a subject for poets, yet it is not always depicted as perfect or fulfilling. Sometimes it leads to great frustration and disappointment, as two classic poems of the late seventeenth century make clear. "The Imperfect Enjoyment" by John Wilmot explores the poet's devotion to his beloved by contrasting her with the women of his past, whom he regards with contempt. "The Disappointment" by Aphra Behn explores sexual impotence and the disappointment it brings to both parties. Together, these poems examine the nuances of desire and the frustration that results when passion falls short of expectation. This essay analyzes how social class, gender, and culture are distinguished within each poem and the effect those forces have on the narrator. It supports the thesis that both poems offer a revealing portrayal of societal class and power structures between men and women of the period.
Class and Social Structure
The elements of class and social structure are most evident in Wilmot's "The Imperfect Enjoyment." The speaker praises his current love by implicitly contrasting her with inferior women he has known before. In line 50, he suggests that his past lovers were so beneath his present love that they are not worth naming at all. All of those other women are lumped into the "common" category.
His mention of the oyster lady refers to a woman whose trade is to cut and sell oysters in the street — a figure associated with the smell of fish and the lowest rungs of urban labor. Other women mentioned include a cinder-seller and a beggar, equally lowly occupations. These women are collectively dismissed as common whores, indicating that the poet regards them as entirely unworthy of serious attention. Although Wilmot never directly states the social class of his beloved, the contrast implies that she belongs to a higher rank. A further clue lies in the fact that Wilmot himself was the Earl of Rochester: his current love is presented as worthy of his elevated station.
The narrator in "The Imperfect Enjoyment" does not even know the names of the women he has previously slept with, suggesting that those encounters were purely physical rather than intimate. By contrast, he names his current love, Corinna, and his reaction to her very touch reveals a depth of emotion entirely absent from his earlier encounters. Corinna is treated as singular and memorable — she will not pass into the anonymous annals of his forgotten lovers.
Wilmot uses comparison and contrast throughout to demonstrate the difference in his feelings. With women of the past, his focus was entirely on his own pleasure; he had no care for them. With Corinna, the dynamic shifts: he wishes above all to please her. His impotence, therefore, is all the more devastating precisely because it occurs at the moment when he most desires to give rather than take.
The two central figures in "The Imperfect Enjoyment" are both of the upper class. By contrast, when we turn to Aphra Behn's "The Disappointment," we find that impotence crosses class barriers entirely. The two actors in Behn's poem are a shepherd and a shepherdess — figures from the lowest social strata. This choice democratizes the theme: sexual failure and its attendant shame are not confined to the aristocracy.
Conclusion: Power, Gender, and Society
When one examines the work of these two authors, key elements of the society in which they lived emerge with clarity. Among the most significant are the effects of class and gender on personal relationships and the use of erotic poetry as a lens for examining power. By attending to the role that sex plays in each poem, one can gain insight into how power structures operated, particularly with respect to the subordination of women. In Wilmot's poem, the speaker admits to numerous past lovers who served only to satisfy his physical needs — women for whom he felt no emotional connection. Behn treats her male character in a remarkably similar way: once it becomes apparent that he cannot please the shepherdess, she loses interest and abandons him without sentiment.
A study of the works of Behn and Wilmot supports the thesis that both poems illuminate gender roles and class structure in late seventeenth-century society. Together they provide an intimate sense of both the traditional roles assigned to men and women and of the changes that would eventually transform those roles. Wilmot's poem presents a conventional picture of male and female expectations, while Behn's poem enacts a deliberate reversal. The subjugation of women is visible in both texts — in Wilmot's case through his treatment of women as objects, and in Behn's case through her evident desire to escape the very rules that constrained women in her culture by breaking them.
Works Cited
Behn, Aphra. The Disappointment. Retrieved April 26, 2010, from
Wilmot, John. The Imperfect Enjoyment. Retrieved April 26, 2010, from
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