Sex based on anything but love...

The literary works “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed”, “To His Coy Mistress”, and “The Gilded Six-Bits” have an underlying theme that pertains to rash decision making or decisions that were not completely thought out. Specifically, they deal with decisions to have extra-marital sex that are not always guided by the mind. However, they deal with these decisions in different ways. Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” introduces a man who wishes to beat time and enjoy youth by having sex with his beautiful mistress immediately, while he still can. Millay’s “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed” describes one woman’s purely physical relationship with a man. Hurston’s “The Gilded Six-Bits” describes how one woman allows herself to be captivated by wealth for a time. Thus, while each of these works has a similarity in that they involve decision making that became irrationally twisted at some point, they all come to this point differently. Each of these works describes a different reason for the character to pass poor judgment.
“I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed” involves a woman who has chosen to have sex based purely on physical lust. She states that she is imperfect and is undone by the “notions of (her) kind” (Millay, 2). The imperfection is her lust for a “person fair” (Millay, 4). Her lust is on a purely physical scale and completely takes over her mind; she blames her actions on “the poor treason of my stout blood against my staggering brain” (Millay, 11). Thus, she was overcome by passion, which forced her to make a decision that her brain would not have made had it been in control. Her decision was not well thought out because she was overcome by “the fume of life designed/to clarify the pulse and cloud the mind” (Millay, 6-7).
“To His Coy Mistress” is a poem that describes a different reason to have sex that would not be accepted by society. The speaker wishes to persuade his mistress to have sex not because he lusts for her- he does not say this explicitly. Rather, he wishes to escape “time’s wingéd chariot hurrying near” (Marvell, 22). The speaker is scared that life will pass them by before they get a chance to enjoy themselves; he is scared that worms will be the only living things able to “try/that long preserved virginity” (Marvell, 28). His poem is a call to seize the day- to take advantage of what you have today, rather than put it off until tomorrow.
“The Gilded Six-Bits”, in contrast, describes a third reason that having sex could break with society’s norms in a stereotypically unacceptable form. Despite the fact that Missie May “loves (Joe) so hard” (Hurston, 370), she allows herself to be temporarily blinded by the flash of gold. This leads her to make a poor, irrational decision to have sex with another man, putting her relationship with the love of her life on the line. “He said he was gointer give me dat gold money and he jes’ kept on after me” (Hurston, 370), she rationalizes while knowing all the while that it was a stupid decision that was brought about by how impressed she was by the gold, not by her attraction, physically or spiritually, to the man. Now she must fight for her true love because she chose to listen to something other than her rationality.
These works all relay stories about extramarital sex that would not be acceptable to conventional society. They explain some of the myriad reasons behind such affairs, and they show that there are, in fact, several ways in which someone could be tricked by their senses, their greed, or their suitor into having sexual relations that they would otherwise not have.