A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

Adrienne Rich’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” directly engages with the literary canon to forefront both the importance and the struggles of female authorship. Through its relationship with John Donne’s 1633 poem of the same name (See: Background), Rich’s poem presents the history of English literature as a history of female erasure. Rich converses with Donne’s poem by taking the perspective of Donne’s female addressee who, in the original poem, is forced to stay home while her husband travels. This female perspective allows Rich’s “Valediction” to explore the patriarchal structure of the Western literary canon and undo it from within.

Donne’s poetry employs extended metaphors called metaphysical conceits. These conceits are the defining quality of Metaphysical poets like Donne. In Donne’s “Valediction,” his speaker uses the two legs of a cartographers “compass” (Line 26) to represent the relationship between a traveling husband and a domestic wife. Donne’s speaker calls their wife’s soul “the fixed foot” (Line 27) of the compass which “makes no show / [t]o move” (Line 28) as the speaker wanders the world around them. Rich’s speaker begins her poem with the same “swirling” (Line 1) motion, which positions her speaker in the same position as Donne’s addressee.