- Why don't you speak for yourself, John?
"The Courtship of Miles Standish" is a Narrative Poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1858.
It's 1621 in Plymouth Colony. Captain Miles Standish and John Alden are best buddies, but they both have the hots for Priscilla Mullins. One day, Standish sends Alden to make his romantic overtures for him because that strategy always works. Out of friendship, Alden reluctantly does so, but Priscilla is naturally pretty unimpressed that Standish didn't speak to her himself. In fact, it turns out that she's into Alden. Oh dear, what a crazy Love Triangle this is!
In the poem, as in Real Life, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins eventually end up together. One of their descendants was Longfellow himself, who claimed this poem was relating an authentic piece of oral family history. Historians are a bit skeptical about that.
"The Courtship of Miles Standish" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Cannot Talk to Women: This is Standish's problem:I can march up to a fortress and summon the place to surrender,
But march up to a woman with such a proposal, I dare not.
I'm not afraid of bullets, nor shot from the mouth of a cannon,
But of a thundering "No!" point-blank from the mouth of a woman,
That I confess I'm afraid of, nor am I ashamed to confess it! - Death of the Hypotenuse: Subverted. Alden is finally willing to marry Priscilla when he believes that Standish is dead. It later turns out that Standish is still alive, but everyone is okay with the John/Priscilla ship by then anyway.
- Disney Death: Standish is thought to have died in a battle with the Indians, but he later turns up alive.
- Girl Next Door: Priscilla's appeal lies in the fact that she is, "modest and simple and sweet."
- Hands-On Approach: When Priscilla gets Alden to help her with her spinning wheel:Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on his hands she adjusted,
He sitting awkwardly there, with his arms extended before him,
She standing graceful, erect, and winding the thread from his fingers,
Sometimes chiding a little his clumsy manner of holding,
Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled expertly
Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares—for how could she help it?—
Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in his body. - Love Informant: Standish sends Alden to deliver his marriage proposal to Priscilla.
- Love Triangle: Standish and Alden both like Priscilla. She likes Alden, but he worries that getting with her would betray his friendship with Standish.
- New England Puritan: Everyone in the story who isn't a Native American. Technically, the Plymouth settlers were Separatists rather than Puritans, not that that stops the text from frequently using the term "Puritan" to describe them.
- Playing Cyrano: Standish judges himself to be "a blunt old Captain, a man not of words but of actions," so he sends the more lettered Alden to woo Priscilla for him. Finding this situation very awkward, Alden ironically ends up blurting out Standish's intentions quite bluntly.
