"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

The irony of a portrait of a sweet creature who disciplines others, subdued in the first stanza, begins a crescendo as the poem proceeds into stanza 2. Now, the "tender conscience" begins to come out from under her cloak. The oppressively "taming" undersong of the pastoral idyll blossoms and inflates to become more visible and more threatening. The language of love and purity combines with a triumphant rise to power:

Who can foretell for what high cause

This Darling of the Gods was born!

Yet this is she whose chaster laws

The wanton Love shall one day fear,

And, under her command severe,

See his bow broke and ensigns torn.

Happy, who can

Appease this virtuous enemy of man! (9-16)

Marvell captures the whole spirit of a Presbyterian reformer, as well as the Independents and sectarians as they, too, sought to legislate a new order. These are men who conceive of themselves as working for a "high cause" and who, especially after the parliamentary military victories, conceive of themselves as the ones who are God's beloved, "the Darling[s]" of God. The word "darling" calls attention to the self-conception of both the Presbyterians and of sectarians like the author of the pamphlet Vox Populi-their understanding of themselves as innocent and loved by God. The Presbyterian, John Vicars, likens the Presbyterians to the little children protected by Jesus, "innocent and peacable Little-ones of the Presbyterian party, his undoubted beloved ones" (Picture of Independency 15). The Presbyterian "Mr. B" is referred to in a letter collected by Thomas Edwards in his Gangraena as "a precious sweet man" (83). It is the self-love that becomes most prominent in Marvell's description and that he places under a skeptical gaze. By placing the phrase "high cause" inside the question, "Who can foretell for what high cause," the speaker casts doubt on the future-telling "prospect" in the title and stresses the open-ended nature of the political-military process of 1646-47. The difficulty of creating a political and a religious settlement made uncertainty more palpable: the parties who had won did not know exactly (and certainly did not agree on) what they had fought for. In the poem, their self-love is thus placed, syntactically, inside a larger sense of an uncertain future ("Who can foretell . . . ").

The speaker's skepticism is not noticed by the nymph who, in service to her "high cause," places others in fear with her "chaster laws" (11). The "Yet" that opens the third line intensifies the irony; for, even from the position of uncertainty, laws are invented and imposed with a severity that makes others "fear." Here is a young virgin who does not only say "no" to a lover but who is attempting to rout "Love" from the kingdom. Marvell characterizes the laws as "severe." He had also associated reforming and severity with the Presbyterians in his poem to Lovelace: "The barbed censurers begin to look / Like the grim consistory on thy book; / And on each line cast a reforming eye, Severer then the yong presbytery" (21-24). The term "Love" is appropriate not only because it captures the way that whole arenas of activity are organized by the reformers under the sexualized label of wantonness but also because in the coded language of opposition to the regime, the royalists conceived of themselves as lovers. The royalists imagined their field of activity-whether with women or in battle on behalf of the King-as the practice of love (Potter 101-2; Corns 4; Cousins 102). Cavaliers were stereotyped as full of lust but felt themselves to be loyal lovers. Again, we have to be attentive to the contemporary topical resonance of a Petrarchan topos, as the conventional chaste beloved who triumphs over the wanton lover now occurs in a context that has additional claimants to the images of "chaste" and "lover."