Explication

Sex, love, politics, and religion in sixteenth-century literature: the richly loaded thematic potential of any or all of these issues illustrates the reason I have chosen to work with “To St Mary Magdalen”, a sonnet by Henry Constable.  Constable was born an Englishman in 1562; however, his dedicated Roman Catholic beliefs led him to relocate to France in his late youth due to the changes occurring within the Church at this time.  As Constable’s Roman Catholic beliefs furnish much of this sonnet’s overt thematic content, it will be helpful to address such convictions before delving into less explicit aspects of the sonnet.  However, before discussing the content of the sonnet, a brief analysis of its form will be useful.

            One cannot ignore Constable’s English citizenship when analyzing the sonnet’s Petrarchan form, a style created by the “father of humanism”, Italian Francesco Petrarch (http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/).  While the Petrarchan sonnet follows the rules of the Shakespearian sonnet with regards to length and to meter, rather than the standard three quatrains followed by a couplet, the Petrarchan sonnet is instead composed of an octave followed by a sestet.  Clearly, these forms do not differ to a significant degree.  Therefore, it is highly probably that Constable’s dismissal of the English sonnet in favor of the Petrarchan reflects his decisive rejection of the Church of England, and by consequence, England itself.  It is also worth noting that, as a general rule, love is typically the subject matter of any sonnet; the Petrarchan sonnet intensifies this theme by bringing love to the level of adoration.  Consequently, Constable’s choice of St Mary Magdalen as subject of the sonnet creates an interesting paradox.  As the speaker of the poem wrestles with conflicting desires of corporeal and spiritual pleasures, it is my belief that Constable uses Mary Magdalen as a fitting vehicle through which to engage in this negotiation.

            The speaker of the poem is an individual dealing with religious and moral dilemmas similar to those of Constable.  Throughout the sonnet, the unidentified speaker is addressing Mary Magdalen.[1]  While the thoughts of the speaker are taking place at the time of writing, Mary Magdalen’s actions are assumed to have taken place shortly before, and after, the death of Jesus Christ.  The poem begins with an account of Mary Magdalen’s supposed prostitution.  The speaker explains that Mary Magdalen paid thirty years of penance at La Sainte-Baume in return for the comfort of a man’s bed; “For few nights’ solace in delicious bed/ Where heat of lust did kindle flames of hell,/ Thou nak’d on naked rock in desert cell/ Lay thirty years…” (ll.1-4).[2]  Essentially, the speaker is alluding to the belief that Mary Magdalen prostituted herself before becoming a disciple of Christ.  The speaker reveals his fervent Roman Catholic beliefs in the second line by using images of fire and hell in order to demonstrate the sinful nature of such extramarital intercourse.  Lines three and four go on to make use of the barren nakedness of desert rock to describe Mary Magdalen’s thirty year long repentant prostration for her actions.[3]  In these lines, the use of the adjective “naked” serves to recall the figure of a woman stripped to her core with sadness and guilt.  After describing her earthly history, the speaker goes on to explain that because of her honest repentance, Mary Magdalen became a saint and was consequently guaranteed eternal happiness and pleasure.  In order to illustrate the magnitude of such eternal happiness, the speaker equates Mary Magdalen’s tears of grief to a sea of pleasure, effectively using the image of the sea’s unending vastness in order to qualify corporeal sorrow. 

            If the speaker uses the octave of the sonnet to describe Mary Magdalen’s earthly and heavenly history, the sestet is reserved for negotiating his own earthly and spiritual paths.  It is worthwhile to note that using the first eight lines to offer a description of the woman or object in question and using the last six to discuss the speaker’s relation to that subject is a standard practice for the Petrarchan sonnet.  In the last six lines of the poem, the speaker declares that he will use the example of Mary Magdalen’s lengthy penance in order to dissuade himself from engaging in similar “sinful” actions.  Using the words “trifling pleasures”, the speaker recalls the first line of the poem which explains that the duration of Mary Magdalen’s solace lasted no more than a few nights.  However, while the first half of the sestet appears to indicate a desire to strive for “purity” by using Mary Magdalen’s suffering as an example, the second half indicates a certain flippancy of the speaker.  Essentially, the speaker states that if he does happen to “shun” “virtue’s rough beginning” by engaging in sexual intercourse, he can simply flip the coin and use the eternal happiness obtained by Mary Magdalen as a model of repentance (l. 12).  In light of the passionate manner by which the speaker describes Mary Magdalen’s sins and suffering, this dismissive indecision certainly comes as a surprise.  For example, the speaker describes the “flames of hell” that the “heat of lust did kindle”, and goes on to offer a description of the thirty years Magdalen spent “nak’d on naked rock” shedding “tears of grief”.

While the levity of the speaker in the sestet is certainly worth noting, a second, perhaps more pertinent, issue lies in the speaker’s ability to “flip the coin” in the first place.  Essentially, the terminology of the sonnet’s closing lines strongly suggests the speaker’s adherence to the Roman Catholic belief in human agency and that heaven can be attained by repenting for one’s sins “Let thy eternal joys unto me show / What high rewards by little pain is won” (ll. 13-14).  In this final line of the sonnet, the speaker uses the words “won” and “reward” to discuss the matter of eternal happiness and these terms reveal a distinctly anti-Calvinistic approach to the hereafter.  Constable published this sonnet in 1594; almost sixty years after John Calvin introduced his idea of the elect and the damned, an approach to the afterlife clearly conflicting with the Roman Catholic belief that one can earn one’s way into heaven by repenting for one’s sins.  According to Roman Catholic beliefs, once an individual repents for his or her sins, that individual will be allowed to enter heaven, whereas according to Calvinism, those who were to be admitted into heaven were a select few, and human beings had very little agency through which to shape their destinies.  As The Oxford Reference to Theology explains Calvinist thought placed “emphasis on the arbitrary predestination of some to salvation and others to damnation” (www.oxfordreference.com).  Consequently, as the notion of the elect and the damned placed a direct threat on a fundamental tenet of Catholicism, the final two lines of the sonnet could be read as an assertion of Roman Catholic beliefs over Calvinist thought.  More explicitly, by proclaiming his ability to gain entrance into heaven regardless of whether or not he sins, the speaker reveals that he subscribes to the Roman Catholic theology which allows forgiveness of all sins through repentance.

For furthermore analysis of this poem please see my Explanatory Footnotes as well as my Essay comparing the lives of Constable and Magdalen.

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created by Heather C. Milligan