A Married State

by Katherine Philips

Context

• society where women were expected to marry and bear children.

• uses this poem to expose the emotional and physical burdens that marriage imposes on women.

• advice for young women, warning that marriage is trap that restricts female freedom.

Themes (topic sentences)

• marriage as strain/unhappiness

• married vs virgin

• urges women to reject social pressures push to marriage

'A married state affords but little ease'

• blunt declarative = challenges societal expectations

• 'state' = condition OR institute -→ marriage mirrors patriarchal power

'The best of husbands are so hard to please'

• superlative ‘best’ = irony, impossible to satisfy

• problem = system, not individuals

• irony to highlight emotional labour of wives

‘wives’ careful faces’

• 'Careful' = 'full of care' (constant anxiety married women endure)

  • evokes a sense of danger > need to hide worries or dissatisfactions to avoid potential violence. Duality = emotional labour and fear embedded in marriage.

'careful' to 'dissemble their misfortunes well'.

Dental alliteration emphasises, lying introduced. However, ironic because society condemns dishonesty, yet it is marriage itself that forces women to lie about their suffering.

Structure of poem

• calm, reasoned tone, rather than emotional outburst,

• regularity of the iambic pentameter and ABAB rhyme scheme

  • = women suppressing feelings, and uses controlled voice to expose the very system that demands such control.

'A virgin state is crowned with much content'**

• wife vs ‘virgin state’

• ‘crowned’ = regal status, link to QE I, “Virgin Queen”

  • imagery presents virginity as dignified and powerful, not lacking. This challenges patriarchal narratives that define women through marriage.

'no blustering husbands […] no pangs of childbirth […] no children's cries'

anaphora of ‘no’ = benefits of not marrying; marriage as torture

'pangs of childbirth to extort your tears'

childbirth is expected  – but creates agony (“pangs”) which “extort” (lit. obtain by force) tears. Tears are painful.

Reframes childbirth not as natural joy but as violent extraction of pain.

'be advised by me'**

The direct address and the authoritative tone mimics patriarchal instruction manuals, but Philips subverts this voice by using it to promote independence rather than obedience.

'Turn, turn apostate to love's levity'

• repetition of 'turn, turn' disturbs regular iambic pentameter, conveys urgency

• 'apostate' = someone who 'abandoned religion,' (shocking in 17c).

  • urging their addressee to give up a ‘religious’ faith in love, but instead to see its ‘levity’, or shallowness.

“no such thing as leading apes in hell”

• ancient, misogynistic proverb

• dismantles one of the key fear‑based tools used to coerce women into marriage. The confident tone empowers the reader to reject such myths.