In traditional maritime poetry written by men, women are depicted in one of two ways: as the proper wife/mother figure waiting on land, or as a dangerous temptress of a sea threatening to lure sailors to their deaths. This dichotomy serves to otherize female sexuality and assert masculine dominance over the sea, which is portrayed as a masculine domain. While some modern feminist authors have challenged this patriarchal framework, it remains prevalent in the maritime poetry tradition exemplified by 18th century poet Philip Freneau, whose works often depict the sea as a sexualized and threatening woman to be avoided or escaped.

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The Role of the Metaphoric Woman in Maritime Poetry:
Temptress, Titan, Eve
Crash on crash of the sea,
straining to wreck men
-“Sea-Heroes” H.D.
Women are depicted as insatiable whores who tempt men into irrationality, immorality, and even
death. Their genitals terrify: a man might lose himself down that frightening hole.
-Patriarchal Poetry, Ruth Perry
Old now, I must still believe in triumphs: of feminist guts, criticism, theory, friendship, and
community.
-The Poetics of Gender, Carolyn G. Heilbrun
Historically, the sea has been a masculine domain. During the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries in particular, seafaring was exclusively a male dominated occupation with few
opportunities for women existing away from shore (Women in Maritime History). Outside of
cross-dressing and working under an assumed name, seafaring was almost entirely closed to
women. While the wife or daughter of a ship’s captain might serve as his navigator, she could
expect to be the only woman on board, and daughters specifically would only be allowed to take
part in sailor’s work until she reached her teens; approaching adulthood, she would be expected
to behave as a lady (Women in Maritime History). The message of these restrictions makes clear
the idea that women, even when operating under men’s jurisdiction, did not belong at sea. It is
unsurprising then that most maritime poetry has been written by men, usually after an extended
period of time spent aboard a ship. These poets make use of the sea as an assumed masculine
landscape. Western culture especially has promoted, through history and art, the perception of
the sea as a male space interacting in a dichotomy with the female land space.
In the tradition of maritime poetry, women are depicted in one of two ways: she is on
land as the waiting wife/mother/daughter figure or she is at sea as the temptress luring sailors
away from land. The land woman is a proper woman, domestic and nonthreatening. The sea

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woman is a prostitute, sexually tempting and threatening. The sea woman could be the ship –
false and painted with wantonly spread sails -- or she could be the sea itself – her sapphire waters
undeniably alluring even with the threat of death.
Although the sexual feminine does exist on land, she normally takes the shape of a flower
- delicate and unassuming. Flowers are additionally related to the domestic, appearing in
enclosed gardens as symbols of home life. Tethered to the ground, small and easily uprooted,
they pose little threat to the masculine. Conversely, the sexual sea metaphor is unpredictable and
untamable. To be away at sea is to abandon the safety of domestic life and risk one’s life to her
dark waters. She does not keep this power within the dichotomy, and that is because the sea as a
woman is a product of the masculine; she represents the masculine drive to domineer and the
masculine desire for ownership. When woman is the sea she is a sexual being and as a sexual
being she is rendered monstrous – she is othered.
As visualized in Figure 1, sea-as-seductress-as-woman is as calculating as she is sensual.
The paleness of her body evokes more than just the feminine beauty ideal. In places she is almost
as light as the sea spray. Her lips do not quite touch the sailor she embraces and are instead
curled into a subtle smile. She holds him, though not as tightly as he holds her. The curve of her
legs and the arch of her back, half-submerged, follow the swelling wave and ship’s rail. She is
unclothed and pressed against the other female sea metaphor in the painting: the ship. As a ship,
woman is less monstrous, but she is still a perversion of the domestic. Her body – with its
billowing white sails, gleaming masts, and well-tooled decks – is a mockery of true land
domesticity, aping the comforts of shore and the role of wives. In short, the ship woman is a
mistress. Neither the siren of the painting nor the ship are proper women, they are some other.

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Figure 1
A classical beauty seduces a sailor,
her body illuminated, following the
curve of the water as she rises (or is
pulled) out of the water.
Gustav Wertheimer’s “The Kiss of
the Siren,” 1882, oil on canvas, 85” x
112”
Although women are obviously present at sea, when described in the dichotomy they
cease to exist except for in their connection to land. This is the result of male authorship. The
feminine sea metaphor is not allowed an identity outside of her relationship to the masculine –
she is derivative. In the Western world there is an assumed male authorship; as God authored the
world in His image, man authors art in his image (Gilbert 368). Male authorship is intrinsic to
patriarchal poetry, which maritime poetry is a subset of. Patriarchal poetry privileges the
masculine – representing the cultural struggle between the genders, but always allowing the
masculine to prevail (Miller 1). Female sexuality outside of the domestic, flower form poses a
threat to the masculine, and so it cannot exist on both sides of the dichotomy. For woman to be
present in both spaces would tip the scales in her favor. In a matriarchal system of poetry the
feminine would prevail, and in an androgynous system the genders would meet equally in an
embrace (Miller 1).

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The Maritime Tradition
Traditional maritime poetry does not end in an androgynous embrace. As it is a subset of
patriarchal poetry, the masculine must overcome the feminine. Within maritime poetry, either the
good sailor manages to escape the clutches of the sea or he retains his moral superiority as he
sacrifices his safety. Those that do not escape the seductive sea are tasked with becoming
cautionary tales; they warn off young sailors from the sea and urge them to return to land.
Philip Freneau is one of the exemplary maritime poets. Many of his poems that are
focused on the sea depict the male/sea-female/land dichotomy, including the sexualized sea
woman. “The only kind of femaleness Freneau ever associates with the sea is that of the
prostitute or bold and amoral coquette” (Vitzthum 67). In “The Argonaut,” Freneau’s male
narrator encounters the titular Argonaut “mending old sails.” The old man thinks back upon his
youth and recounts his own seduction by the sea:
"I did not wish to leave those shades, not I,
"Where Amoranda turns her spinning-wheel;
"Charmed with the shallow stream, that murmured by,
"I felt as blest as any swain could feel,
"Who, seeking nothing that the world admires,
"On one poor valley fixed his whole desires.
"With masts so trim, and sails as white as snow,
"The painted barque deceived me from the land,
"Pleased, on her sea-beat decks I wished to go,
"Mingling my labours with her hardy band;
"To reef the sail, to guide the foaming prow
"As far as winds can waft, or oceans flow.

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Here Freneau presents a proper land woman: Amoranda. The lost sailor’s love is even
engaging in a traditional domestic chore at her spinning-wheel. Even as the lost sailor did not
wish to leave his proper woman, he could not help but be tempted by the barque; he was
“deceived” from land and Amoranda. Noteworthy also is that the ship, the feminine body, is
painted – representative of prostitutes and a method of deceiving the morally good sailor. The
prostitute presents to men a false image of herself and so does Freneau’s barque. The proper
woman on land has no use of such paints. The lost sailor’s punishment for succumbing to the
prostitute is his exile from his proper woman.
To examine another of Freneau’s maritime poems:
When morning rose, the skies were clear
The gentle breezes warm and fair,
Convey'd us o'er the wat'ry road;
A ship o'ertook us on the way,
Her thousand sails were spread abroad,
And flutter'd in the face of day.
At length, through many a climate pass'd,
Caesaria's hills we saw at last,
And reach'd the land of lovely dames;
My charming Caelia there I found,
'Tis she my warmest friendship claims,
The fairest maid that treads the ground
In “The Sea Voyage,” Freneau writes another male narrator, this one on a return journey
from the sea. On his way back to Caelia, the proper land woman, the narrator views a ship with
her sails “spread abroad” that “flutter’d in the face of day.” Once more Freneau depicts a ship as

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a harlot. Although this one is not painted, the ship’s wantonly spread sails could be the spread
sheets, skirts, arms, or legs of a coquette. The male narrator perseveres and “at length” finds his
charming Caelia. Caelia the land woman is so proper that she is entirely chaste. She is the
“fairest maid” and the narrator speaks of her in terms of the “friendship” she claims from him.
That she is a fair maid implies virginity or at least purity. She lacks the corrupting force of
spread sails. Caelia, who treads the ground waiting to be found, is entirely without agency,
unable to stray beyond the hills Freneau has placed her in.
Although the narrator of “The Sea Voyage” returns from sea and rejects the last sea
woman to tempt him, this is not necessary for the masculine to prevail over the feminine in
maritime poetry. As “The Argonaut,” demonstrates, so long as the male narrator retains the
moral high ground, detailing the sinfulness of the sea and acting in solidarity with the men who
might fall victim to her, he still wins.
Challenging Patriarchal Poetry
Much of the discourse surrounding patriarchal poetry emerged from modernist reactions
to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Female authors struggled to reconcile Eve, mother of
humankind, with the shallow and vain derivative of Adam that Milton wrote of. In Paradise
Lost, Eve and sin are one and the same – their natural weakness, their inherent fallibility, causes
the downfall of man. Paradise Lost is a story of male authorship and the catastrophic results that
arise when one challenges male authorship. Regarding Paradise Lost, Sandra Gilbert states, “The
story that Milton tells to women is of course the story of woman’s secondness, her otherness, and
how that otherness leads inexorably to her demonic anger, her sin, her fall, and her exclusion
from that garden of the gods which is also, for her, the garden of poetry” (370). Maritime poetry
is also a story of otherness. It paints a picture of women (or a facet of women) as changeable,

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tempestuous, and fundamentally threatening to men. Through this othering, women – as both
reader and author – are forced to look upon themselves not only as secondary to men, but also as
objects that men have created and defined.
Paradise Lost is not only connected to maritime poetry through its relationship to
patriarchy. There is an important female sea relationship present in the epic poem. When Eve
first awakens after her creation she is alone in a glade. Her first act is to look at her reflection in a
still pool of water. She finds her own image pleasing, though she does not realize she is looking
at herself, and this vanity is her first sin. God calls for Eve to leave her pool of water and look
upon Adam – he who she is made of. Eve does not find Adam as pleasing as her own wat’ry
reflection and she attempts to return to the water, but is called back. She will later learn to
appreciate how beauty is excelled by manly grace, but her first instinct, her first action as her
own person (not of someone, but as someone) is to enjoy herself through water.
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved
Pure as the expanse of Heaven; I thither went
With unexperienced thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seemed another sky.
-Paradise Lost, Book IV
The pool itself is described as “another sky” and it is “pure as the expanse of Heaven.”
Not only is Eve’s reflection false, but the lake itself is a false reflection of another of God’s
works. God as author is quick to reprimand Eve, drawing her away. Woman does not exist
without man, and it is to him (not herself) that she owes her allegiance. As Eve describes it:

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“What could I do,/But follow straight, invisibly thus led?” She is compelled to obey her creator.
Milton’s Eve is thrice authored by men: Milton himself, the male God, and Adam. The result is
that Eve is not allowed any ownership over herself. She is “of Adam” and so she must admire
him and bear his multitudes.
Charlotte Brontë, in her novel Shirley, reimagined Eve as her own titanical being on par
with Milton’s Adam:
“… from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus… The first
woman’s breast that heaved with life on this world yielded the daring which could contend with
Omnipotence: the strength which could bear a thousand years of bondage, - the vitality which
could feed that vulture death through uncounted ages, - the unexhausted life and uncorrupted
excellence, sisters to immortality, which… could conceive and bring forth a Messiah. I saw – I
now see – a woman-Titan…”
(Gilbert 371)
Like Bronte reimagined Milton’s Eve into a titan existing separately from, and working
in tandem with, Adam so too can readers reimagine male authored female metaphors in maritime
poetry. The feminine sea does not need to be a by-blow of masculine sexual desire. She can exist
as her own entity, powerful, dangerous, and creative. No longer the result of masculine desire,
the victimhood of the sea woman’s lured sailors is rendered moot. The morality of her actions or
lack thereof, is no longer dependent on male virtue or manly grace. Her image is her own. She
alone gives birth to multitudes: sirens, mermaids, and monsters. These beings interact with
masculine sailors, but are not reflections of them or their desires. Re-reading these poems outside
of the traditional male gaze, the sea becomes the ultimate female author.
A New Maritime Tradition
Challenging patriarchal poetry can be a contradictory experience. For Gertrude Stein,
even as she intruded upon a male space with her femaleness, she still could not conceive of

9. Thomas 9
creative genius outside of the masculine (Miller 4). While she attempted to represent her creative
voice as genderless, her poetry still follows the masculine tradition. The narrator of her poems
often acts the male gentleman towards the female objects of desire (Miller 6). Even with this
contradiction, Stein is still credited as being one of the poets to help end the ancient silence of
female authorship and she has served as inspiration for the female poets that followed her.
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson challenges male authorship not only by being female, but also by
reversing the gender dichotomy. In her poem “I Started Early — Took my Dog —”, Dickinson
presents readers with a feminine sailor being seduced by a masculine sea. The narrator visits the
sea and finds that “The Mermaids in the Basement/Came out to look at me –.” Here the
mermaids, the feminine sea, are acting as voyeurs to the sexual encounter she has with the
masculine sea.
But no Man moved Me – till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe –
And past my Apron – and my Belt
And past my Boddice – too –
And made as He would eat me up –
As wholly as a Dew
Opon a Dandelion’s Sleeve –
The narrator attempts to distance herself from the nature of the sexual act by describing
her body as the sea touches her in terms of her clothing. The sea, she stresses, is a “Man” and
“He” acts as though he would eat her up (not unlike the feminine sea metaphors that threaten to
devour hapless sailors). The narrator does manage to escape his clutches by fleeing the beach and

10. Thomas 10
into town. As she escapes the sea’s hold she pictures what could come from their encounter:
“Then My Shoes/Would overflow with Pearl –.” These lines clearly detail the culmination of the
sexual act, but as the narrator uses “Then,” readers can assume that the naïve sailor escaped with
her virtue still intact.
Dickinson portrays the feminine sea in the mermaids, the masculine sea as a seductress,
the androgynous sea in the frigates, and the feminine sailor within one work. Interestingly, both
the mermaids and the masculine sea are described as looking at the narrator – the mermaids do
so first and the masculine sea does so last, but the frigates do not (to the readers’ knowledge)
have eyes. The frigates are only described as having hands. In “I Started Early — Took my Dog
—”, the feminine triumphs over the masculine. Like Freneau’s narrator in “The Sea Voyage,”
Dickinson’s sailor resists the temptation of the sea and its promises of sexual release and thusly
retains the moral high ground. The mermaids watching from the basement, the vestiges of the old
maritime tradition are present to see it happen.
Hilda Doolittle or H. D.
H. D. engages with the conventions of maritime poetry much like Stein engages with the
conventions of heterosexist poetry, but inherent in H. D.’s sea poems is a criticism about the
feminine metaphor. Unlike the works of Dickinson, the sea is still primarily female for H. D. and
her narrators are frequently an ambiguous collective. Although there are some hints to the gender
of H. D.’s narrators, H. D. more closely accomplishes the genderlessness that Stein attempted.
H. D.’s “The Helmsman” depicts a collective “we” that have forgotten the allure of the
sea. They have “worshipped inland,” being “cut off from the wind/and the salt track of the
marsh.” Yet in the last stanza, the collective remembers what they have previously forgotten: “O
be swift – we have always known you wanted us.” H. D. presents a group that delights in what

11. Thomas 11
land has to offer – a group that delights in the pain and the beauty of it, but inevitably longs for
and returns to sea. The collective narrator may be helmsmen, shepherds, shepherdesses, or even
woodland nymphs. Some of the collective’s actions, such as “we caught flower and new
bramble-fruit in our hair,” suggest a teasing femininity. Considering H. D.’s influence from the
Greek poetic tradition, these could be nymphs that are being seduced by a masculine sea
metaphor: the helmsman. Conversely, taking into account H. D.’s Greek influence, the collective
could be young shepherds tending to their flocks, blurring the lines of heterosexist poetry, and
still being seduced by a masculine sea metaphor. The genders of H. D.’s narrators are ambiguous
enough to break away from the traditional dichotomy.
More critical of this dichotomy are H. D.’s sea flower poems. These poems depict a dual
natured feminine metaphor that struggles to exist in such a tenuous and unstable environment:
the place between land and sea. In “Sea Iris,” the description of the titular flower is bracketed by
two different types of weed, one land and one sea: moss-weed and salt weed respectively. This
suggests that the identity of the sea iris is somewhere between these two descriptors.
Additionally, the sea iris is a weed, challenging the notion of desirable, domestic flowers. The
petal that is “like a shell/is broken,” suggesting that the dual nature metaphor is a fundamentally
broken one. The root of the sea-iris is tangled in sand, threatened by the presence of the murex-
fishers. At any moment the sea iris could be uprooted.
H. D.’s use of roman numerals suggest draft marks – marks on a ship’s hull used to
determine the ship’s relationship to the sea and whether or not the waters are safe to navigate.
Here the poem takes the shape of the female body. Like Wertheimer’s “Kiss of the Siren,” the
feminine sea is shaped like both a ship and a woman. Wertheimer’s siren’s arched back mirrors
the curve of the prow and the swell of the wave that lifts her towards the sailor she threatens to

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drag under. Not only do H. D.’s draft marks follow the curve of the hull (the curves of a
woman), but her sea-iris is “painted blue,/painted like a fresh prow.” Paints again are
representative of the seductive feminine – harlots
and other deceptive beauties.
The sea iris is seductive, but she is broken
and even commodified by her connections to
rivets of gold and fortune. There are hints of
labor surrounding her, actions that she cannot
partake in – painting, staining, and fishing –
alongside the prospective riches – her roots
trawling for gold. She is caught up in the action
that surrounds her, but is incapable of producing
action on her own. Like in “The Helmsman,” a
collective narrator is present again; the sea iris is
“wind/in our nostrils.” In this instance the
collective narrator may be the proper land women of maritime poetry observing the combined
metaphor that they so often been pitted against. The collective narrator could also be masculine
sailors or feminine sailors. In this case, H. D. is not inclined to give hints.
H.D.’s “Sea Lily” depicts a similarly damaged image of a female metaphor caught
between two landscapes. The sea lily is a “reed/slashed and torn” that is “shattered/in the wind.”
This wind has “flecked” away the lily’s land characteristics – her myrtle-bark – and dashed away
the lily’s sea characteristics – her scales. The sand that the lily relies upon to keep her rooted also
“cuts [her] petal.” The lily is a flower in Western culture that represents purity, innocence, and
Figure 2: Georgia O'Keeffe's "Black Iris III,"
1926

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virginity. Caught between land and sea this symbol of purity is violated. Her relationship to the
sea is a violent one, and the land she relies on is unstable. In “Sea Iris,” the iris herself was like
the wind, but in “Sea Lily” the wind threatens the lily’s land aspect. Here the wind slashes at her
bark and hisses at her. The wind specifically hisses to “To cover [the lily] with froth.” This
image of froth is reminiscent of Dickinson’ “overflow with pearl” and it is difficult to reimagine
either as anything other than sexual. There is malevolence in these sexual acts. The non-
consensual near coupling can be extended to maritime poetry as a whole. Just as the feminine
characters in these poems are unwilling to engage the masculine they are also unwilling to be
reduced down to sexual metaphor.
Conclusion
The maritime poetic tradition is one that presents readers with a false dichotomy: a purely
masculine sea opposed to a purely feminine land. This dichotomy serves to render women as
both secondary and other. This othering both conflates female sexuality with threats to
masculinity and reduces female sexuality to a byproduct of male sexuality. These actions are the
result of maritime poetry’s place within patriarchal poetry and its dependence on male
authorship. To challenge the male author and render the masculine landscape of maritime poetry
more female is to re-imagine traditionally patriarchal works and rework the masculine landscape
with female authors. These authors are able to reverse and subvert the standard gender roles of
the genre, defining women outside of their relationship to the typically glorified masculine. In
building a new tradition, temptresses are transformed into titans and the heterosexist dichotomy
of male/sea-female/land is made obsolete.

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Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily. Poems: Three Series, Complete. N. p.: Project Gutenberg, 2004. Online.
Doolittle, Hilda. Sea Garden. N.p.: Project Gutenberg, 2009. Online.
Gilbert, Sandra M. "Patriarchal Poetry and Women Readers: Reflections on Milton's Bogey."
PMLA 93.3 (1978): 368-82. Online.
Miller, Nancy K., ed. The Poetics of Gender. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Print.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. N.p.: Project Gutenberg, 1992. Online.
Vitzthum, Richard C. Land and sea : the lyric poetry of Philip Freneau. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1978. Print.
"Women in Maritime History ." National Park Service. N.p., 1992. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.
<http://www.nps.gov/safr/historyculture/maritimewomenhistory.htm>.