Name: Charikleia Kotsoni

Student Number: 14004

Instructor: Jonathan Gross

Course: Lit.7-315 “Thomas Jefferson and the pursuit of happiness”

Semester: Spring 2014

Date: April 29/2014

“ The Test of Conjugal Love ” by Royall Tyler analysis

In “The Test of Conjugal Love”, Royall Tyler describes a sentimental scene of death. A man, Strephon, lies in his dying bed while his wife and family experience his last moments very emotionally. Especially his wife’s grief leads her to suggest her self-sacrifice, as proof to her endless love and devotion to her husband. She seems to refuse to live a life away from her beloved husband, because that would be a life full of sadness and mourning. However, in the end Tyler gives an unexpected plot twist to his poem. With the help of his sarcastic wit, he reveals the true colors of the wife’s love to her husband and the truthfulness of her statements about her supposed “sacrifice”. Tyler very discreetly gives a hint for this twist from the very beginning of the poem, where he quotes Horatio: “Deprendi miserum est” - it is wretched to be detected, capturing the moment when the wife’s fear of death gives away her fake mourning act, which she so artfully adopted, up to that point.

The poem starts with a very vivid description of Strephon’s state in his last moments, in the first two stanzas. He has a very high temperature, he is sweating very heavily, he has problem breathing, he is in great pain, his veins are swollen, his body is becoming cold and the shining from his eyes slowly fades away, as life slowly leaves his body. He experiences a slow and painful death. Although , in the first stanza he shows some weak signs of

struggle (“While the wind in his throat shook the rattle of death,/ The hot blood rag’d through the swoln vein), in the second stanza it seems like he is completely given up and awaits his dark fate (“Pronounc’d that poor Strephon must die”). In the third stanza, the attention moves to the people mourning Strephon. His neighbors and all his beloved ones are gathered around him, weeping for their upcoming loss. Strephon’s two children, who are probably quite young (they are mentioned as boy and girl), are portrayed to sit each at each side of him, moaning as they realize that they are going to lose their father forever. Nevertheless, nothing can be compared with the excessive and admirable mourning of Strephon’s wife, as it is described in the next three stanzas. She cries and screams to a great extent and even tears up her hair, a description of a woman on the verge of madness. That is the moment that she first pronounces her will to die along with her husband. She even summons Death and demands of him to spare her husband’s life and takes her instead (“O spare my dear husband, oh spare,/ Throw thy ice dart at me, let my husband be sav’d”). She finds no point in living without her husband by her side, she calls this kind of life, a loathed one. Then, she once again, pronounces her will to sacrifice herself : Death should take her, instead of her husband, or if her husband has to die, she wants to end her living as well, and follow him to the grave. Then, suddenly, in the next stanza (seventh), as if her prayers were heard, Death makes his appearance. He is preceded by a creepy change in the setting : cold wind comes into the mansion and even shakes the floor (“The wind whistl’d high the old mansion about,/ And rock’d like a cradle the floor”), to renounce the coming of Death, who, as a proper gentleman, knocks at the door with his knuckle of bone. He does not wait for an answer, of course, and in the next stanza we see him breaking into Strephon’s mansion with force, entering the room with ease, making creepy noises and walking heavily. He then, demands to know at whom belongs the voice that so rudely called him. In that instant, Strephon’s wife trembling with fear, loses her mourning mask and without a second thought, condemns her husband to death, by trading his life for hers. She so easily changes from the fearless woman who couldn’t even consider her

existence after the loss of her husband to a frightened selfish woman who only wants to save herself, no matter what the cost is. Therefore, she was a very good actress, pretending to love her husband so deeply that she could actually die for him.

Royall Tyler was an 18th century American playwright, known as a quick-witted joker, a reputation he earned at Harvard University, from where he graduated in 1776. It is admirable how he can even joke about a matter, as gloomy as death. In college he also developed the reputation of a profligate man, because he was wasting all his inheritance for the causes of living fancy and pursuing women. In 1794, though, he married Mary Palmer and had eleven children with her, many of them had prominent careers. He was a Federalist and therefore a political enemy of Jefferson, but that did not influence Jefferson’s admiration to his work and appreciation of his wit. Tyler’s most famous play is his comedy “The Contrast”, written in 1787, which brought to him recognition and fame.

Jefferson was drawn to this poem probably because of this interesting depiction of death, which managed to catch his attention. Many times he imagined his own death and although he could be a little bit more sentimental at such a matter, (he was himself very much afraid of diseases and decay), he liked Tyler’s cynical and realistic view about human nature. Tyler, in a sarcastic way, shows that the real nature of a person comes to the surface when he is most vulnerable, dread and afraid. He also demonstrates the hypocrisy that lies in people displaying their feelings for others to see. Jefferson was also quite interested into the matters of marriage and decay, especially how women were treated after marriage. This is profound in other poems he clipped; “A Matrimonial Thought” by Matthew Bramble, Esq. and “The Owl and The Parrot” by Peter Pindar. That is why he always advised his daughters, in his letters, to be careful of the man they would choose to marry. Nevertheless, in “The Test of Conjugal Love” Jefferson enjoys the insight into a woman’s real feelings about her husband, after many years of marriage. The subject in which is especially shed light on is that of what is seems to be and what it really is, along with the notion

of displaying what you feel for others to see and judge you by that - superficiality of emotions.