What is Donne's view on love and woman ?

The answer to this question could all depend on which of
his many poems you wanted to believe reveal his attitude. He is well known for his love
poems, and in those he is very much in praise of women and several of the poems talk
about equality in a good relationship, but he also has several poems that have do not
take love very seriously. Here are some thoughts you could gather from a few of his more
famous poems:

1. "Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning"

This poem was reportedly written by Donne to his
wife just before he had to leave on a business trip and leave her behind due to her
pregnancy. This poem is a poignant love poem that establishes the surpremancy of their
love in comparison to what he calls "dull sublunary lovers" who only love because they
have phsyical contact with one another. He clearly loves his wife and compares their
love to gold that "endures not yet a breach, but an expansion." He later compares their
relationship to the two legs of a compass. He explains that she is the fixed foot that
is always connected, and he is the foot that "runs" but keeps him firm and guides his
return home at the end of his journey. From this poem, you could surmise that he has
high regard for women, or at least his wife.

2. "The
Good-Morrow"

Here again, the speaker has high praise for
the lover. He starts the poem discussing how any love they had before each other was
merely childish and in preparation for the relationship they have now. He establishes an
equality in the relationship when he states that the two of them are "two better
hemispheres / Without sharp North, without declining West." They are two halves, but not
really divisible.

3. "The Sun
Rising"

Here the speaker is in bed with his love and is
telling the sun to go away and not disturb them. He loves being with his love, but
eventually realizes that the two of them are their own world, in a way, and therefore
"She is all states, and all princes I, / Nothing else is. . . the world's contracted
thus." So when the sun does its job of warming the world, "that's done in warming us."
This poem expresses high regard for the love and their
relationship.

On the other side of the coin are the poems
that express a more negative view of love and women. For
example:

1. "The Flea"

The
speaker is trying to convince a young woman to have a sexual relationship with him, and
his argument rests on the fact that a flea as bitten both of them, their blood is mixed
in the flea, and therefore it is almost as if they are married (are one) in the flea.
What makes this a negative poem is the fact that the woman doesn't have feelings for the
man. In fact "parents grudge, and you" meaning that she isn't going to be persuaded and
doesn't want to be persuaded by the absurdity of this argument. He persists through the
end of the whole poem.

2. "The
Indifferent"

The theme of this poem is infidelity. The
speaker is clearly stating that he has no intention of being faithful and he even calls
fidelity a vice. As part of his argument in favor of this attitude he alludes to Venus,
who, as he tells it, did some research and found that constancy is dangerous and that
anyone who is constant and faithful in love is destined and punished to be with someone
who is not faithful and true. This doesn't represent a very traditional attitude about
love and the importance of fidelity.