Katherine Philips

Katherine Philips founded The Society of Friendship, wrote some hundred and sixteen poems, completed five verse translations, and translated two plays by Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) from the French. The Society of Friendship (1651-1661) was a semi-literary correspondence circle composed primarily of women, though men were also involved. The membership, however, is somewhat in question, as its members took pseudonyms from Classical literature. Katherine Philips died of smallpox June 22, 1664, in London. She was thirty-three years old. Her death was mourned in verse by the metaphysical poet Abraham Cowley. The first authorized collection of her verse was not published until 1667. A century and a half later, the Romantic poet John Keats admired her work in a letter to a friend.

After reading the title of her poem, "To One Persuading A Lady To Marriage", it was clear to me what the poem was going to be about. Katherine Philips might expand her ideas on the proper way to propose to a lady, as the poet lived around the 17th century. Katherine used figurative language to reach her audience and to transmit her main point, which happens to also be the title of the poem. Katherine Philips used a rhetorical question in her first stanza of the poem. She says, "She should dispose herself to be a petty household god?" In regular English, Katherine Philips is asking if women should devote their time to just being a housewife. With this question, she does not expect an answer from the reader. She wants the reader to take a moment and think about the question asked. This helps to send her message out to her audience. When saying this in her poem, she expresses that women are not in this world just to cook, clean, and take care of the house. They can also be intelligent human beings. With this, she also proves that she is a strong feminist writer. Overall, I thought that the poem was good and that it contained viral information that every man should take in consideration. She defends women by saying that they are not just housewives, but part of society. In the second stanza, Katherine Philips goes step by step in what men should do. She starts off by saying " first" and continues to the other points. The list that she gives is easy to flow and easy to understand.