Blog 3- Rebecca Southern

In Sonnet XXIII, Spenser demonstrates how, despite living in a strongly male-dominated society, a woman could exercise control over a man. Spenser flips the roles of Penelope and Odysseus in Homer’s The Odyssey by making himself the weaver. He is weaving a web of their love but with one look she can destroy all that he has spun (lines 7-8). In contrast, Penelope, the woman of the relationship, is weaving the web in the epic. Penelope takes apart her own web in the epic, but in this sonnet the woman undoes the web that the man made. Spenser shows how easy it is for a woman to undo all the hard work he “spun.” Spenser also describes how whenever he is close to finishing, he “must begin and never bring to end.” In the same way, Penelope never brought her weaving to an end, but she did so by choice. In both scenarios however, the woman controlled the “weaving.” The last lines are a metaphor for how his relationship is like a spiderweb. It is fragile and easily broken. He made it his life to love his lover just like a spider’s life is to weave and unweave his web. Spenser’s sonnet was written in the 16th century when males were dominant in society, but in the poem women are shown to control the man.