Deer Hunting Symbolism

The Use of Deer-hunting As Way of Speaking About Women The uses of deer-hunting in Wyatt’s «Whoso list to hunt», Spenser’s Amoretti 67, and Dickinson’s «My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun» have different meanings and interpretations due to authors’ different perception of the world and the environment that all three of them lived in and developed their written art. All three narrators allude to the idea where the use of deer-hunting symbolizes a chase for women’s love, women’s power or powerlessness. Particularly, Wyatt’s and Spenser’s poems symbolize women’s power and control over men, while Dickinson’s poem has a meaning to express women’s powerlessness in front of the men. In the poem, written by Sir Thomas Wyatt, it is unclear if the speaker discusses a real hunt chasing due to the symbolic nature of a hind. However, the narrator states that for those who wish to hunt, he knows where to find a particular hind, a female deer. In the begging of the poem, the author himself attempts to forsake the chase but, in line two, Wyatt states that this hind is beyond his reach. Indeed, the narrator acknowledges the uselessness of the pursuit and is no longer interested in chasing it. However, he is eventually forced to actually abandon the chase, as the deer is too fast and all that pursuer can catch is the wind that rises after a hind passes.(«Whoso list to hunt», 6) Sir Thomas Wyatt proclaims that as his hunt was useless, the same fate will overtake those who want to do the same,