In the poem, the dance can be seen as symbolic of the act of sex. Jane views the sexual passion of youth with longing. Jane’s relation with the youthful girl in the poem is expressed in the first stanza when Jane finds herself unable to intervene when the girls “chosen youth” moves to “strangle her” (Yeats 2, 4). This feeling is intensified in the second stanza when she leaves the boy “to his fate” (11). This depiction of sexual violence is comparative to the act which occurs in Leda and the Swan, however, instead of condemning sexual violence as a horrific show of masculinity, Yeats draws attention to the feelings of pleasure attached to the intensity of hatred “they had all that had their hate,” conveying the extremes of love and hate, sadism and masochism. “Love is like the lion’s tooth” is repeated at the end of each of the three stanzas to indicate that sexual passion is not the comfort as suggested in Duffy’s Anne Hathaway, but is instead torture (7, 14, 21). Yeats’ represents violence both against the female character “he wound her coal-black hair / As though to strangle her” and against the male character “drew a knife to strike him dead” in order to communicate the idea that sex is a reciprocal act, there is equal agony for each of the partners (2-3, 10). Repetition of “die” and inversion the word order between lines fifteen and sixteen in the final stanza of the poem, suggests that the persona’s fear of death and her inability to confront this fear, instead expressing her longing for the time when she engaged in the ‘dance’ (15-16). Yeats’ use of language guides the reader to the conclusion that there is mutual antipathy between the sexes, inextricably linked with the fundamental concept of sexual
In the poem, the dance can be seen as symbolic of the act of sex. Jane views the sexual passion of youth with longing. Jane’s relation with the youthful girl in the poem is expressed in the first stanza when Jane finds herself unable to intervene when the girls “chosen youth” moves to “strangle her” (Yeats 2, 4). This feeling is intensified in the second stanza when she leaves the boy “to his fate” (11). This depiction of sexual violence is comparative to the act which occurs in Leda and the Swan, however, instead of condemning sexual violence as a horrific show of masculinity, Yeats draws attention to the feelings of pleasure attached to the intensity of hatred “they had all that had their hate,” conveying the extremes of love and hate, sadism and masochism. “Love is like the lion’s tooth” is repeated at the end of each of the three stanzas to indicate that sexual passion is not the comfort as suggested in Duffy’s Anne Hathaway, but is instead torture (7, 14, 21). Yeats’ represents violence both against the female character “he wound her coal-black hair / As though to strangle her” and against the male character “drew a knife to strike him dead” in order to communicate the idea that sex is a reciprocal act, there is equal agony for each of the partners (2-3, 10). Repetition of “die” and inversion the word order between lines fifteen and sixteen in the final stanza of the poem, suggests that the persona’s fear of death and her inability to confront this fear, instead expressing her longing for the time when she engaged in the ‘dance’ (15-16). Yeats’ use of language guides the reader to the conclusion that there is mutual antipathy between the sexes, inextricably linked with the fundamental concept of sexual