As love poets, Donne and Yeats have things in common: both,breaking from the conventional views of woman and love, search for thereconciliation and harmony between man and woman, as well as body andsoul. They seem to be well aware it is not realistic to see the femaleimage as “a complete beauty and perfect morality,” as is usually supportedand reinforced by society and its literary conventions. The social demandfor chaste, heavenly woman and its literary representation rob woman ofher true, humane beauty and of her true virtue as well; on the otherhand, they confine man to a role of chivalric, submissive, but hopelesssuitor.
Donne and Yeats believe that the distorted image of woman and herrelationship with man hinder true love or communion between them. Thetwo poets try to understand both sexes on the same condition, that is, thecondition of human being. And this idea is magnificently realized not onlyin Donne’s The Songs and Sonnets but also in Yeats’s “Crazy Jane poems”and in some of his pieces in A Woman Young and Old.
As for the matter of body and soul, both poets criticize the binary wayof thinking in which human body is nothing but a mean, vulgar exteriorwhile soul is a holy, ideal interior where we should reside for good. Donneand Yeats are wise enough to know that body and soul areinterdependent, and that it is, therefore, impossible to exclude or disregardeither of them. They agree that the two elements are indispensable fortrue relationship between man and woman.
To embody this perspective effectively, Donne and Yeats introducesome characteristic personae in their poetry: an unfaithful woman who betrays and dosen’t feel guilty, one who boldly follows her feelings anddesire, and one who relishes the pleasure of body and values it as highas, or even higher than, her soul. Through these unconventional femalepersonae, Donne and Yeats are able to disclose the futility of moral,spiritual values that do not have true understanding of human nature.They subvert the false conception that soul is superior to body, and painta new and true picture of human being: an inevitable dynamism, balanceand harmony between body and soul.