In John Donne's "Elegy 19: On His Mistress Going to Bed", Donne reveals to the audience the experience of undressing his mistress before they unite in sexual ecstasy. However, as he is describing his experience, the audience is given no insight on the mistress' character or her life. Donne does, however, bluntly address her body as he takes the clothes off of her, but does so with a sense of command and entitlement in his diction. The audience never gets a sense if the mistress is enjoying the experience, and his use of metaphysical conceit reveals that women are no more than an object of a man's sexual desire to Donne. In Ovid's collection of poems Amores, he also writes of his erotic adventures with his mistress, among other women. Though like Donne, Ovid speaks of the projection of his fantasy's upon women, including physical aggression and sexual advances, he also reacts and elaborates the reaction that women have to his advancements. Ovid also uses metaphors in the Amores, but in contrast to Donne, does so to show admiration or to portray women as equal players in the battlefield of his love life. Though both authors write of their experience with women in their works, their uses of diction, imagery, and metaphors reveal Donne's experience with his mistress to be one that is singular and entitled in contrast to Ovid's, which portrays to the reader a greater sense of inclusiveness and emotion toward the women he writes of. .
In Donne's "Elegy 19: On His Mistress Going to Bed", Donne's persona commands the woman to undress; "Off with that girdle" (line 5), "Unlace yourself" (line 9), "Off with that happy busk" (line 11), "Off with that wiry coronet and show The hairy diadem which on you doth grow;" (lines 15-16, 1283), "Now off with those shoes" (line 17). In doing so, Donne recreates the woman to her face.
