Hidden Messages of the Dressing Room Satires on Jonathan Swift and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Some of Chaucer’s male character’s stories portray women who are virtuous and pure. For example, in the man of law’s tale the woman in his story is constantly humble and loyal. Her faith never wavers. He describes a woman named Constance as being beautiful, good,

Swift's message to the English government in "A Modest Proposal" deals with the disgusting state of the English-Irish common people. Swift, as the narrator expresses pity for the poor and oppressed, while maintaining his social status far above them. The poor and oppressed that he refers to are Catholics, peasants, and the poor homeless men, women, and children of the kingdom. This is what Swift is trying to make the English government, in particular the Parliament aware of; the great socioeconomic distance between the increasing number of peasants and the aristocracy, and the effects thereof. Swift conveys his message in a brilliant essay, in which he uses

Swift’s satirization concerns aspects applicable to all women, while Montagu vehemently describes Swift’s own moral character. Although Swift’s poem describes the dressing room of one particular woman, Celia, it is meant as a general mockery of female image in society and how they portray themselves. This becomes clear in lines 121-126 when he says “His foul imagination links Each dame he sees with all her stinks, And, if unsavory odors fly, Conceives a lady standing by. All women his description fits, And both ideas jump like wits,” (Swift) The disgusting things discovered by Strephon in Celia’s dressing room are now applicable to all women, as his imagination connects that experience to the beautified women he sees in his daily life, and what their dressing room must also look like. He also assumes a women is nearby when he smells something awful, again connected to the gross

Swift on the other hand is trying to expose the private world of a lady’s dressing room, something new to society at the time, and he does this through satirically comparing the public and private versions of women. Tita Chico argues in Privacy and Speculation in Eighteenth-Century Britain that there were “[…] exclusive privileges associated with the privacy of the gentleman’s closet” (p.42) which were now seen as being threatened by women’s dressing rooms. There was a feeling of fear about what women might get up to in private and Swift exposes a satirised reality in his poem which “[…] links women’s privacy with illegitimacy through grotesque images of the female body” (p. 41). Throughout Eighteenth-Century literature, the use of a dressing room represented women as “[…] theatrical and excessive” (Chico, T. Designing Women: The Dressing Room in

Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room” is an archetype exploring the duality of the separation of public and private and the role each played within the society and culture of the time. The poem describes the character of Strephon exploring a lady’s dressing room and exhibits how literature has the ability to take private matters into the public sphere, in this case, ones that are applied directly to the female sex. The question is, whether or not Swift intended to target women in his satire for entertainment, or if he was displaying misogynistic beliefs. According to Swift, women are purely artificial, they appear to be creatures of beauty, but underneath, exhibit vile habits and act opposite of what they appear to be in society. By portraying a man going through a woman’s dressing room, Swift is able to paint a repulsive picture of the fairer sex. The poem concludes with Strephon finding Celia’s bathroom, “And bless his ravisht Sight to see/Such Order from Confusion Sprung/Such gaudy Tulips rais’d from Dung” (141-143). Although this poem has been interpreted as one that explores the often awkward happenings of private relations between men and women, this satire can also be seen as an unfairly focused, misogynistic viewpoint on the female sex. Another example of Swift’s derogatory themed poetry is “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed”. Both are examples of scatology poems, or verses meant to gross the reader out. Another similarity between these two poems would be

Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: of taxing our absentees at 5s. a pound: of using neither clothes, nor household furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: of learning to love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of Topinamboo: of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city

Firstly, Swift tries to tell the men to stop having false expectations, for women to be a goddess. Just accept everyone for who they are. He does it in a way by describing that female bodies are also like male bodies. For example, “That Hope at last remain’d behind: so Strephon lifting up the lid” [85]. He prefers the toilet as Pandora’s box, having some hope that Celia may be a goddess. In Pandora’s box there was hope there, here there isn’t any left after Strephon finds shit in the box.

Jonathon Swift steps into risky territory as he addresses misogyny in the invasive, satirical way he does in his (year) controversial poem The Lady’s Dressing Room. Perhaps not surprisingly, Lady Montagu takes advantage of her literary pull and writes a satirical response, clearly offended by the misogynist message she assumed the poem to have. While Swift’s poem gives a significant amount of evidence to justify Montagu’s retort, there is perhaps a deeper amount of evidence that suggests she missed Swift’s point. Each poem has a satiric closure at its end, but Swift’s choice of words lean towards a position of commentary on misogyny rather than a position supporting it. In contrast, the last line of Montagu’s poem pins Swift down as a staunch

Jonathan Swift does not only satirize early 18th century politics but also human kind in general. In Gulliver’s first voyage we learn six rebellions were raised, “wherein one Emperor lost his life, and another his crown” (page 41) in reaction to a law established to break an egg on the smaller side after the majesties son had cut himself while breaking the egg on the larger side. Since then Lilliput is at war with the neighbor island Blefuscu, which is widely inhabited by „Big-Endians“. This controversy can be seen as a satire on the controversy of religion (Protestants and Catholics) or overall political conflicts and by representing it as a question on which side to open an egg Swift ridicules the argument in relation to wars being fought over it.

This quote shows his naive and innocent nature due to the fact he did not know what type of place he was at. His innocence is shown by this situation due to the fact he did not realize this setting is a brothel and that the lady is a mistress. The trait of innocence can lead to the distrust of women, which is another trait of a Romantic hero. The young man of this tale shows distrust of women through his actions of talking to the mistress in this tale. The example for this is, “‘Now, truly, I am in luck,” replied Robin, cunningly, ‘and so indeed is my kinsman, the Major, in having so pretty a housekeeper. But I prithee trouble him to step to the door; I will deliver him a message from his friends in the country, and then go back to my lodgings at the inn’”(6). This quote suggest how he treats the women due to his distrust of her. Romantic heroes often have a distrust of women, because women represent civilization and the domestic sphere. Romantic heroes often distrust women because women represent civilization, and this represents cities versus the country. The distrust of women can lead to the distrust of urban settings. Romantic heroes

In the poem, The Lady’s Dressing Room, the author Jonathan Swift ridicules both genders for adhering to a false sense of gender ideals set by society. He does this by looking at the poem through a male perspective, this is particularly useful as it illustrates how men want to view women but neglect that their own activities are equally as stereotypical. The societal ideals society places on women is that they are clean and they all look and act in a similar manner to a goddess. Strephon realizes this stereotype is not completely true as he rummages through Celia’s belongings. Jonathan Swift liberates men from societal norms as they see women as humans, and not goddesses.

Historically, women have been victimised and oppressed, by men and more subtly by societal constructs such as marriage. For ‘a man attaches himself to woman - not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself’ , and this concept of a one-sided, selfish relationship is apparent in literary pieces. Within the setting of ‘My Last Duchess’, the Renaissance period, men held all-encompassing and direct control over their daughters and wives. The common practice in this era, of arranged marriage for dowry, consolidated the concept of women as a resource for they represented money and political power towards his family. Robert Browning uses this extreme perception of the Duke to commentate on male pride that was still prevalent in his own Victorian era. In the depression period of ‘Of Mice and Men’, women were demonised and sexualised. They became housewives whilst society decomposed around them, becoming increasingly unstable and violent. John Steinbeck presents Curley’s wife unsympathetically, and yet upon her death he relents that she was a product of her miserable era. In the age of ‘The Ruined Maid’, set during the urbanisation of Victorian Britain, women who turned to prostitution ‘ruined’ their social standings, but could live with a guarantee of economic stability. Yet, the poet Thomas Hardy satirizes his society’s view of prostitutes as ‘ruined’, rather suggesting that they lived among the freest and most refined of lives during his period. Furthermore, set most recently, the poem

In studying Jonathan Swift's poetry, I have been instantly drawn to his series of Stella's Birthday poems, one of which was written every year from 1719 until the death of their subject, and in this essay I will be examining how Swift has represented women and femininity in these poems, and several more of his works. My aim will be to ascertain this by examining his works in detail, and looking at what motivated Swift to represent women in the way he did, through looking both at the culture and literature at the time, and his own life and influences.

After beginning many of his poems by establishing the heavenly nature of women, Swift presents a progression that removes ethereal qualities and exposes the true human form of women. In “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” the reveal of Caelia’s dressing room dismantles her image as a goddess. Caelia’s dressing room functions as the source of her divinity — it is here that “The goddess from her chamber issues.” (“The Lady’s Dressing Room” 3) When Strephon enters this space, he hopes to see the arena that holds the goddess and, in a way, take in the beauty that shines through the nymph. Instead, the room reveals the tools and methods Caelia uses to disguise her humanity. Strephon is repulsed to find disgusting items such as “Combs for various uses,/ Filled up with dirt” and “Sweat, dandruff, powder, lead and hair.” (“The Lady’s Dressing Room” 19-20, 24) Swift’s catalogue of the dressing room continues to elicit disgust in the reader culminating in a humorous revelation that utterly horrifies Strephon. In the recesses of the dressing room, Strephon discovers a chamber pot, which betrays Caelia’s bodily functions. His realization that “Caelia, Caelia, Caelia, shits” (“The Lady’s Dressing Room” 118) forces him to confront the reality that she is actually human and — perhaps worst of all — that she has the same needs as men. Here, Swift is destabilizing notions of benevolent sexism that contribute to the unfair standards thrust upon 18th century women.

Jonathan Swift's story, Gulliver's Travels, is a very clever story. It recounts the fictitious journey of a fictitious man named Lemuel Gulliver, and his travels to the fantasy lands of Lilliput, Brobdinag, Laputa, and Houyhnhmn land. When one first reads his accounts in each of these lands, one may believe that they are reading humorous accounts of fairy-tale-like lands that are intended to amuse children. When one reads this story in the light of it being a satire, the stories are still humorous, but one realizes that Swift was making a public statement about the affairs of England and of the human race as a whole.