A Married State by Katherine Philips appears in the Songs of Ourselves, Volume 1 (Cambridge University Press), studied for IGCSE and International GCSE Literature (Cambridge International 0475). Your school confirms the anthology selection, and the board's current syllabus lists it for your exam year.
What the poem is about
The speaker begins by declaring that married life offers little comfort, even for those with the best of husbands, because even the best are hard to please. Wives, she suggests, reveal this in their anxious faces, though they hide their troubles. She then contrasts the unmarried state, which she describes as happy and innocent, free from the demands of a husband.
The poem ends by confirming the advantage of staying single. It is a compact argument, advancing step by step, and its confident tone gives a woman's view of marriage a rare voice.
Themes and ideas
Marriage as burden
The poem presents married life as constraining and wearing. It questions the idea that marriage is a woman's natural goal.
Freedom and the single life
Being unmarried is associated with content and innocence. The speaker values independence over social convention.
Women's lives and hidden unhappiness
Wives are said to conceal their troubles. The poem draws attention to private suffering.
Gender and power
Husbands are figures to be pleased. The poem hints at the imbalance of authority within marriage.
Form, structure and sound
The poem is written in heroic couplets, tidy rhymed pairs that give an air of neat argument and certainty. The balanced structure presents two states, married and single, in contrast.
Short, direct statements make the tone confident and almost proverbial. The regularity of the form can be read as ironic, since the poem's content challenges convention while its shape is controlled.
How to write about it
Treat the poem as an argument and trace its steps: claim, evidence, contrast, conclusion. Explain how the couplet form supports a sense of certainty.
Public-domain quotation is allowed, so use short phrases to anchor points about tone. Set the female speaker's viewpoint in context, but keep most of your answer on language and structure.
A useful comparison for an anthology question is Song: Love Armed, because the two poems share enough ground to compare. Our guide to comparing two poems shows how.
A teacher can read A Married State by Katherine Philips with your child and practise a timed answer in a one-hour trial.
An exam-style question to practise
How does Philips present the idea of marriage in 'A Married State'?
Plan your answer in five minutes before you write. Choose three points from the themes and form notes above. Then check your plan against the mark scheme section below.
More question angles
- Explore the ways Philips uses structure and form in the poem.
- How does Philips present the contrast between married and single life?
How this maps to the mark scheme
Examiners mark poetry answers against assessment objectives. These are the skills the paper rewards. For Cambridge International 0475, the objectives are summarised on our qualification page.
- AO1: Show detailed knowledge of the content of literary texts in the three main forms (drama, poetry and prose), supported by reference to the text.
- AO2: Understand the meanings of literary texts and their contexts, and explore texts beyond surface meanings to show deeper awareness of ideas and attitudes.
- AO3: Recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure and form to create and shape meanings and effects.
- AO4: Communicate a sensitive and informed personal response to literary texts.
- The four assessment objectives carry equal weight, about 25% each.
For A Married State, build your reading around “Marriage as burden” and “Freedom and the single life”, and support each point with a short quotation. Then explain how the form, structure and sound in the section above create that meaning.
Where a question asks you to link poems, compare A Married State with Song: Love Armed. Keep any context about Katherine Philips brief and tied to the words on the page.
Read the poem alongside these notes. This page is our own analysis and original teaching material. Where we quote this public-domain poem, it is a short, attributed phrase.
Where to go next
Practise the method on an unseen poem with our guide to reading an unseen poem, then see a worked answer in our comparing poems model response. Browse more anthology poems or read about Literature in English tuition.
When you have written an answer on A Married State, a paid one-hour trial lesson lets the teacher who would continue mark it with you.