The Selfishness of Love in "The Scrutiny" Georgia Kinder 11th Grade

Lovelace is clearly representing in the poem ‘The Scrutiny’, that the speaker is convincing women to sleep with him, when he has no intentions of being in a relationship with them. Selfishness is really conveyed as he’s speaking throughout the poem, which reveals he didn’t allow the woman to have any opinion on the matter, and he declares the time they spent together ‘tedious’, as if it was a chore. With Lovelace being a metaphysical poet, he attempts to analyse the questions in life, and in this poem it appears he’s investigating the issue of personal image, and what kind of things can affect it. A sexual encounter can either bring good or bad to your reputation, with it being mainly good for a man as he’s sleeping around a lot, and it being mainly bad for a woman as she should keep her virginity locked up until after marriage. This is represented through his cocky and overconfident dramatic monologue, and the woman’s silence throughout the poem, almost as if she’s irrelevant now her virginity has been taken away before marriage. Lovelace uses the speaker’s personality, the places of men and women in the 17th century, how sex can tarnish your reputation, and how having sex before marriage can tarnish a woman’s reputation, to...