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The Lady 's Dressing Room By Jonathan Swift

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Part 1: The Lady’s Dressing Room

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.

This poem shows the gender …show more content…

However, most people lack some of the lenses about the actual story. Over the years the story has been distorted by society to enforce stereotypes. Everyone knows that Pandora opens a box and unleashes all the evils of the world, proving women are tempted easily and only do bad for society if given power. In the actual Greek myth, Pandora is given the box as a curse on her family. Pandora’s brother in law, decides to go against the will of The Olympian Gods, thus bringing upon this punishment to Pandora. The story has been shaped to pin the entirety of the blame on women to enforce the stereotype. Jonathan Swift shows how society loses certain lenses and shape their stories to undermine women.

Jonathan Swift liberates men from the idea that all women are goddesses, he does this to make it evident that women are humans and should not be held in such high regard. In the last stanza it is evident that men should see the reality behind the beauty of women. This can be seen through the reference to Aphrodite, it says

I pity wretched Stephon blind, to all the charms of Female kind; Should I the Queen of Love refuse, because she rose from stinking Ooze?

The first two lines show how The Queen of Love places a curse on men, so that they see all women are disgusting. This curse was falsely put on Strephon as hr adheres to societal norms, men generally thought that women and the word “disgusting” are antonyms. From the

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