A Married State

This poem by Katherine Philips is actually the reason I chose to do my Wiki and Library assignments on her.  I remembered reading and enjoying it in either my first or second year.

Like I’ve said in other posts, one of my favourite parts of reading all these works by women is getting the insight into their minds at various points in history and I feel like this poem is a good example of that.

The most interesting part to me is the fact that this poem was written when she was very young, around 15, and how jaded she already is to the concept of marriage.  I feel like this shows off the position women were in in society at the time.  So young, and she would prefer to live alone because of the burden that marriage and motherhood bring.  And not only is she saying that she does not want to face this fate, she is also trying to convince someone else away from marriage.