The Lady's Dressing Room and A Modest Proposal Essay

Irony is a beautiful technique exercised to convey a message or call a certain group of people to action. This rhetorical skill is artfully used by Jonathan Swift in his pamphlet “A Modest Proposal.” The main argument for this mordantly ironic essay is to capture the attention of a disconnected and indifferent audience. Swift makes his point by stringing together a dreadfully twisted set of morally untenable positions in order to cast blame and aspersions on his intended audience. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” employs despicably vivid satire to call for change in a world of abuse and misfortune.

In Jonathan Swift’s satire, “A Modest Proposal”, Swift writes about the starving people of Ireland in the early 1700’s. He makes a wild and absurd proposal to help remedy the problems of overpopulation and poverty. Swift wants to make a political statement by using the “children” as satire to grasp the attention of the audience - the English people, the Irish politicians and the rich – and make them aware of the political, moral, and social problems. In “A Modest Proposal”, Swift’s arguments are presented effectively by using pathos (emotional appeal), ethos (ethics and values), and logos (logic reasoning and facts).

The sarcastic views of Swift’s understanding of the poverty of Ireland leads him to make a proposal for a solution to poverty, where he ignores the concern of human morale by displaying the lacking efforts of England to help. Swift uses methods that work to get or help better understand a situation, for example being sarcastic in a situation where a person wants something out of the situation by satire. The undeniable effect of satire catches the attention of England to further display the poverty of Ireland which is displayed throughout Swift’s Modest Proposal with exaggeration, incongruity and reversal.

Jonathan Swift uses humor in his essay ‘A Modest Proposal’ in the form of satire. His writing style specialized in gaining entertainment and humor from the issue that is being criticized. Jonathan Swift was a satirist who is famous for his ‘Modest Proposal’, in which he proposed a shocking but humorous remedy to satirize the false modesty of British pamphlets and the government during eighteenth century.

To start off, the readers can easily detect the contrast of imagery throughout the two separate passages. In the men’s meal, she states: “Meanwhile the wine

I found The Lady’s Dressing Room by Jonathan Swift very interesting to read and learn about. In my opinion this long poem has a twisted meaning of women. From my first understanding of the story, I thought this was a man looking in on a woman’s routine. I believe the speaker wants to know the truth that lies within the beauty of women, what is underneath the pretty standards they only show the public. The speaker being Stephon, watching and trying to understand Celia. He is on a quest to expose the imperfections of women to other men. Throughout this textual analyst most perspectives will be coming from Stephon views because he is the one and only snooping throughout a woman’s personal space. Stephon quickly finds out that what goes on in a lady’s dressing room is for women to know and see. A dressing room for a lady is like a sanctuary get away. It is the only space where a woman can be alone, show all her flaws, and not be worried about getting judged by outsiders. Before Stephon sees the inside of the dressing room he defines women as “goddess”. Now after he seen the truth of women he can hardly bare to look at them when he walks past a lady on the street. While reading this poem I learned that women can be gross and dirty but go to the extreme to cover their flaws. During this analysis I will uncover the weird and twisted context of The Lady’s Dressing Room.

During the 1700’s poor beggars, predominantly Catholic's crowded the streets of Ireland. Being too poor to support themselves, they would implore to survive. “A Modest Proposal” by Dr. Jonathan Swift is a notable piece of satire created in attempts to solve the poverty and overpopulation problems in Ireland. Swift bespeaks methods to prevent the poor beggars from burdening the population. Instead of bypassing the “useless pests”, Swift uses rhetorical devices of irony and hyperbole to present outrageous ways the poor could benefit wealthier classes.

Jonathan Swift, the writer of the satirical essay A Modest Proposal, grew up and lived in Ireland during times of famine and economic struggles (Conditions). Growing up with a single mother and no father, Swift knew what hard times and struggles were like (Jonathan Swift: Biography). His essay proposes an easy solution to the economic problems going on in Ireland for both the wealthy ruling classes and the poorer classes, although his intentions and the meaning behind his words are not what would be originally thought when initially reading the essay. Through his word choices and the description of specific events of his time, Swift uses satire to grab his audience’s attention and get his own personal ideas and opinions out about all the

In ‘A Modest Proposal’ the author, Jonathan Swift utilizes techniques such as satire, sarcasm, and irony to create a bigger picture to the reader. Within the poem, Swift not only presents a humorous approach to social and economic issues but does so in a well-constructed and carefully composed manner. A closer reading of the text reveals a deeper critical analysis of the social perceptions of the poor at the time. Through Swifts’ use of irony, he creates a proposal that is so extremely absurd that some may believe the piece to be genuine. By taking an issue and providing a corrupt and merciless solution, the writer uses a unique approach to catch the attention of the people of Ireland and presents them a proposal they cannot ignore. Through the use of irony, Swift creates a poem that not only criticizes social perceptions of the poor but also remarks upon the issue without directly addressing the reader.

Irony is a beautiful technique exercised to convey a message or call a certain group of people to action. This rhetorical skill is artfully used by Jonathan Swift in his pamphlet “A Modest Proposal.” The main argument for this bitingly ironic essay is to capture the attention of a disconnected and indifferent audience. Swift makes his point by stringing together a dreadfully twisted set of morally untenable positions in order to cast blame and aspersions on his intended audience. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” employs despicably vivid satire to call for change in a world of abuse and misfortune.

The last two were examples of Swift trying to teach the men, thirdly, he is more importantly trying to show, how much women go through to fit the ideal of beauty. He criticizes women in a way that instead of the question, why do women do this, it is rather why do we expect, that they have to do it. For example, when strephon is going through Celia’s stuff, he says “with Puppy Water, Beauty’s Help Distill’d from Tripsy when she dy’d.” [30]. Swift explains how they purchase disgusting products like puppy piss and then use them just to look good. Why do they believe they have

“A Lady’s Dressing Room” was written by Swift to open up a world that he considered full of pride and vanity: a woman’s beauty. He achieves this with use of crude, scatological humor, Juvenalian satire, and farce.

With puppy water, beauty’s help, distilled from Tripsy’s darling whelp” (29-33). This statement depicts that women will go to the extent of applying urine from an animal to hide their imperfections. From a man's point of view, this is nauseating and absurd to find such a repugnant fluid masking the face of every beautiful woman. As Strephon’s curiosity leads him forward, his fear of the unknown prepares him for another sight, “Hard by a filthy basin stands, fouled with the scouring of her hands; the basin takes whatever comes, the scrapings of her teeth and gums. A nasty compound of all hues, for here she spits and here she spews” (37-41). The image of Celia’s white teeth after seeing the compound created by them is tarnished. Strephon cannot believe that such white teeth were actually the colour of the paste he found. Thus adding to his point that women are not what they seem or of the same value. Next, he goes to see her chamber pot and is shocked with the contents he saw, “When frightened Strephon cast his eye on’t, it showed a visage of a giant. A glass that can to sight disclose the smallest worm in Celia’s nose. And faithfully directed her nail to squeeze it out from head to tail; for catch it nicely by the head, it must come out alive or dead” (61-68). Such a sight led Strephon to see all the blemishes that once covered beautiful Celia’s face. Men would not have thought of Celia the same way if all those ‘worms’ that covered her were still

Even though many of Swift’s readers see a harsh attack on women as one of his major poetic themes, both his poetry and prose strongly satirize the ill nature

The task of satirist is to criticise the vices and follies of their contemporary society. However, the purpose of satire is to be universal. In this case, we are going to focus our attention on the works of two major poets of the 18th century which can be subscribed within Augustan literature: Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room”.