Sonnet 30 Analysis

Misleading Love Although love can be kind and beautiful, it can cause some people to become blind and follow their hearts rather than think with their mind. “Sonnet 30” by Edmund Spenser dramatizes the conflict of a man’s burning desire to be with a woman who has no interest in him. Edmund Spenser uses the metaphorical comparisons of dramatically opposites, fire and ice. The man is fire, who is obsessed for this ice cold hearted woman, which returns nothing. The poem explains why this man can’t get this woman to love him back. The author uses stylistic devices, theme, and tone to emphasize how he cannot get the woman he deeply loves. The conflict is best represented by the lines, “How comes it then that this her cold so great is not dissolv’d through my so hot desire, But harder grows the more I her entreat?” (Lines 2-4). Spenser explains that the more the man shows affection and love to the woman, the more the woman loses interest for the man. This Sonnet is full of metaphors, mainly relating and comparing the opposite feeling of the heart the two shows for each other with burning fire for Spencer, and freezing ice for the woman. As the sonnet depicts her heart growing “colder” for him, as his desires grew “hotter” for her. In the second quatrain, the speaker describes how the man metaphorically asks why his fire-burning love for her is not melting her heart. He cannot understand why his great affection towards such a woman isn’t attracting her. The man is confused by the fact that the more he shows his great love and affection towards the woman, the more she loses interest for him and shows the exact opposite feelings toward him.
The third quatrain, the narrator compares the law of physics to fire and ice. The narrator asks, “Ice which is congealed with senseless cold, Should kindle fire by wonderful device? “ Why isn’t this love working out when it should be? The word “miraculous” in line nine was used to describe the unfortunate realities if their love