"The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers": Marvell's portrait of tender conscience

Papers on Language and Literature, Summer 2003 by Samuels, Peggy

[. . .] poore tame creatures! They have a faire tongue but this is a foule falsehood: do you act nothing in the Assembly? Nothing in the Parliament? Nothing in the Armie? Nothing in London? Nothing in the Presse? Nothing in Norwich? [. . .] Machiavell never acted so much: yet they are tame creatures, if they might bee beleeved; and desire to bee let alone. Cut a mans throat and then fling away the knife [. . .]. (An Hue and Cry 15)

An Hue and Cry ends this tirade by a sneer of incredulity: "you are meerly passive" (16).

As can be seen from the argument between Vox Populi and An Hue and Cry, however "sweet," "tender," or "passive" the self-understanding of the Independents, the separation of the pure from the purer could not be understood by all parties as merely a peaceful withdrawal. The separation was felt to be an active divisiveness because it was a proactive attempt to change or reform the church and state. The sense of this activeness increased particularly in the summer of 1647, as the sectarians and Levellers tried to influence the Army and there was a threat that the Army, having captured the King (June 4, 1647) would be able to control the Parliament. The "tender" Independents had a vision of the future that conflicted sharply with both Presbyterians and Royalists; yet, they insisted on understanding themselves as harmless, inactive, merely asking to be left alone.

Marvell's portrait of the reformers-both Independents and Presbyterians-establishes that their image of themselves is a crucial part of who they are. So, we see the nymph, first, as she sees herself: the beautiful, innocent, lover of simplicity who wishes to transform the world around her into a beautiful counterpart to her own vision. Certainly the nymph who orders this garden is beautiful; she has a "fair aspect" if we read "aspect" as the "the look which one wears" or "the side or surface which fronts or is turned toward any given direction" (OED III.10; II.6). If by "aspect" we see her "mental looking, sight" or "a look, a glance" (OED I.1b and I.2), we understand that it is her "way of looking" that involves a taming and a molding of other creatures. The word "aspect" thus becomes closely linked to the "prospect" in the poem's title, a word that is also defined as a way of looking, with the additional connotation of a "mental looking forward . . . or regard to something future" (OED II.8), a "mental vision, especially of something future or expected" (OED II.7). As James Turner has argued, "prospective and perspective" are words "almost invariably associated with the wide-ranging political survey" (42-3). Turner finds that "the word 'prospective,' in fact, could be used interchangeably for future options, distant views, telescopes, optical tricks, and painted landscapes" (5). Because a prospect involved a political model, a long-distance vision of the political future, "landscape came to be synonymous on the one hand with 'a definitive model,' on the other with 'a pernicious delusion'" (42). It is in this sense that Marvell's picture of a girl in a prospect of flowers should be understood. Marvell paints a portrait of a girl whose vision of the future involves only flowers, a golden age or paradisiacal future. This "Diana of Independency" contemplates an imagined future, the prospect opening out as in a walk through a garden to the next view, only glimpsed from here. Marvell's portrait is at one remove from her vision and so shows it to be a "pernicious delusion." In this way the poem itself is an optical trick: it shows the girl's dreamlike world and through irony, widens the frame to see beyond what the girl sees, giving an even wider "prospect." This prospect, unfurled in the following four stanzas, revises the nymph's own prospect of a beautiful future.