William Shakespeare`s ‘Sonnet 130’ is an unusual sonnet since it contravenes the concept of female beauty and, instead, provides alternative perspectives concerning beauty and love. Written probably keeping his lover or mistress in mind, Shakespeare compares her physical features and mannerisms with the unlikeliest of natural objects. It stands apart from other sonnets because it breaks the poetry conventions that were in practice at that time. During Elizabethan Era, all poets, including Shakespeare himself, positively portrayed female beauty and elevated it through enticing language and various literary devices. However, in Sonnet 130, the poet questionably depicts his lover`s physical beauty and downplays her attributes. Nevertheless, when viewed deeply, such a depiction of female beauty is a realistic and honest view. Furthermore, Shakespeare through this sonnet connotes that love between two people can be expressed and interpreted in unconventional ways. For him, love is a deeper and more significant feeling, so it should not bloom, develop, and be practiced purely based on body beauty. Due to this unorthodox approach, Shakespeare uses subdued language that is filled with satire, hyperbole, imagery, and metaphor. In that direction, Sonnet 130 is a unique poem that breaks various conventions and enters new ground concerning language choices or literary devices, thus providing deeper meanings.
Sonnet 130 is distinctive from the several other sonnets written by Shakespeare and the sonnets that were categorized as Petrarchan sonnets. As Spacey (2021) indicates, Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets in total, with sonnets 127-154 addressed to the mysterious ‘Dark Lady', a possible real-life lover of the poet. Hasan and Abdulkareem (2020) add to this perspective by stating that in most of those poems, there will be three principal characters. The first character is the poet himself, whose thoughts and feelings and demonstrated through the narrator. This may be the direct representation of Shakespeare, himself, or a more mediated figure, namely the persona of the poet (Callaghan, 2007). The second character sometimes refers to a fair young man. It can be assumed that he is a single male addressee and not a different young man. The third character, primarily featured in the sonnets 127 to 154, is understood to be a single woman who might be a lover or mistress of the poet. Consequently, 'Sonnet 130' has to belong to that subset of poems, which explores the relationship between him and his lover, particularly their deep love, delights, playfulness, conflicts, and anguishes, among others. Spacey (2021) further states that those 28 sonnets imply that Shakespeare or the narrator was deeply in love with the woman despite her being an undependable, cruel, and deceitful person. Sonnet 130 is starkly different from those other sonnets because the poet does not praise his lover's physical beauty. Conversely, she connects her physical features with improbable natural things. Furthermore, it is not only different from other Shakespearean sonnets but also dissimilar from Petrarchan sonnets. Also called an Italian sonnet, the Petrarchan sonnet is known to elevate or even exaggerate the physical features of women. Since Sonnet 130 in a way satirizes and demeans a woman`s physical attributes, it was in contrast to Petrarchan sonnets as well. Hasan and Abdulkareem (2020) explain this contrast by stating that Sonnet 130 takes women out of the Petrarchan shadows of unrealistic comparisons and the ideal image that they created for them, which were all ideal identifications nearly not even realistic (p.17). Shakespeare, therefore, represented the exact opposite of Petrarchan principles of female beauty
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Speaking of satirizing, Sonnet 130 uses the language device of satire to make fun of the conventional romantic poems of that time and to break the literary conventions. As aforementioned, poems written during the Elizabethan Era always portrayed women appreciably. They even depicted them as godly figures without any anomalies. Brown (2020) indicates this by stating that most sonnets, including others written by Shakespeare, praised women and practically deified them. Due to the dubious racial attitudes of those times, women who had white-colored skin and long hair were considered as beautiful. Conversely, a non-white woman with short hair will not be considered beautiful despite having sharp and attractive physical features. Furthermore, since patriarchy was highly prevalent during those times, women`s physical features were only focused and their mental capabilities are ignored. As men wanted to subjugate them and keep them as obedient housewives, caring mothers, and dependable homemakers, they did not give importance to women`s mental facets nor facilitated their development. By focusing only on their physical attributes and stressing their perfection, they kept them suppressed. Consequently, poets of the Elizabethan Era depicted women`s physical features using racial and patriarchal lenses as well as stereotypical beauty standards. In that direction, as indicated, in the poems of those times, the ideal woman was white, slender, blonde-haired, red-lipped, bright-eyed, and silky smooth. However, Shakespeare in Sonnet 130 overrides and shatters all these conventions by satirizing the physical features of his lover. Sonnet 130 can be taken as a sonnet that satirizes the conventional sonnets at that time where the poets praised the beauty of the woman by idealizing her as a goddess.
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