The Lady’s Dressing Room

Running head: ENGLISH ESSAY
ENGLISH ESSAY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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ENGLISH ESSAY
The essay is precisely going to analyze the poem namely, The Reason that induced
Dr. S to write a Poem Call’d the Lady’s Dressing Room. Abiding by the old custom of
communicating and conversing through the poem, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in the year
1734, has replied to the poem of Jonathan Swift entitled, The Lady’s Dressing Room
(Rawson). The name of Swift’s poem is suggestive of inviting satirical comments where this
poem in response is a representation of suppressed sexual desire and misunderstood gender
roles. Therefore, the essay intends to look forward to finding how Lady Mary’s poem is a
representation of suppressed frustration of the male world buried under the ego that has been
caused from the lap of sexual practice.
The poem revolves around the protagonist, namely “the Doctor,” who is precisely
Jonathan Swift himself. The poem has a blooming story of breaking the convention and
appreciating the odd in the vast corpus of the sexual world. The poem is about breaking the
sexual taboo commonly in practice in European society (Aske 510). The poem starts with the
incident where the doctor is put into a journey to meet a prostitute. Betty is a character in the
poem that is responsible for the doctor to provoke to meet with his epiphany. When the
doctor was done with the process, he went to pay her; however, he understood that he might
have gone through a series of impotence. He miserably utters how he has failed to
successfully reach the zenith of the intercourse, where Betty counters him that his failure can
be marked due to his old age.
The plot nevertheless is that simple because the doctor claims to have his money back
from Betty on the charge of not being satisfied. However, Betty is a rigid young woman who
vigorously depends on the money to live a moderate life. The money is important for her
existence; hence she is nowhere at a consideration while she explicitly utters that she would
not return the money. The doctor in return fumingly becomes vengeful and utters some
alarming sentence, expressing, “I’ll so describe your dressing room/ The very Irish shall not

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come.” With the clever use of the word “Irish,” Lady Mary cleverly reveals the identity of the
protagonist and the nationality of Jonathan Swift. The brilliant reply of Betty shows how
smart a woman can be in the moment where she has nothing to lose, “I’m glad you’ll write/
You’ll furnish paper when I shite.” The woman here is shown with a sense of utter self-pride
and confidence. She is a woman of honesty and self-reliance that has been adversely
portrayed in the novels and poems of European culture.
The poem, being articulated from the creative core of a woman, is naturally
advocating the male chauvinism that has been constantly prevalent in society. The misogyny
that has been a subtle undertone of Swift’s poem has been largely scrutinized by Lady Mary
in her poem. He has been continuously accused of being a sexist. Lady Mary has shown how
the intrusion of a man into a dressing room of an unknown woman has been considered to be
very normal and acceptable for ages. However, she has protested through her verse that the
woman has all the rights to protect her dignity and her honor. Swift’s poem has been
celebrated where the concerning poem of this essay deal with how the former should have
never been considered as a good piece of literature rather, it is heinous for a woman to submit
to the verse of Swift.
Swift does not refrain from reducing the intensity of womanhood to a certain insane
body of projection of male domination. He abases the woman as vile and unendurable
creatures because society has been dictating them to perceive so. The women during the time
of Swift’s success were portrayed as flawless creation of God who were some extended parts
of angelic bodies. However, to show women as normal as the rising of the sun in the east
every morning shows that they can also be flawed and not all women are perfect. He
vehemently accuses women of hiding their filth under the shield of virtue. There are women
who are just disgracing in the name of virtue but they portray them to be the most honest and

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truthful beings making a façade to hide the horrible nature of them. However, Lady Mary
could not accept it to be a great piece of satire.
Although the attack on the women is not that person, yet the response that Mary came
back with is, to some extent, personal and extreme. She finds out that repressed sexual desire
has resulted in attacking women like this. The man has been incapable and has accused the
women of not being able to satisfy him. It is him who is impotent of accepting the truth and
go placidly about it. Lady Mary has shown that Swift has been cynical about almost
everything that he has thought to have made satire upon. This critical severity cannot be so
true if it is not coming from the frustration that is being fueled from inside. Lady Mary has
successfully exposed the pessimistic and nihilistic attitude through which Swift has presented
darkness and flaws in everything around him.
The poem shows how the mal poet is probably unaware of the importance of having a
basic knowledge of gender roles in an individual’s life. In the world where patriarchy is at the
controlling end, sensible men like poets and artists should understand the worth of treating
the women equally and valuing their opinion justly. The way Swift has demeaned the women
is unpardonable even after millions of apology. The very thought is wrong at the root.
Therefore, sexual repression should be considered as a threatening issue in the human world
because if it is not cured within time, it can bring colossal damage to the lives of both men
and women.
The form that she has chosen is almost replica of the form that Swift has used in his
poem but the difference is that Swift has criticized women about their normal womanhood,
whereas the latter has implemented the form to criticize the inferior thought process of a poet
like Swift. Satire is one of the strongest genres that has helped her to express how this
misogynistic poem is the product of suppression of frustration (Precup 99). Men are taught to

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rule over society so they consider women to be a mere part of the society and not the partner.
Therefore, they treat women as objects without being ashamed of this hideous practice. When
the doctor says in an avenging tone that he would make every other man stop to come to her
parlor, it shows how brutal the men have become due to certain notions regarding sex paved
into the minds of men in society.
Therefore it can be concluded that the paper has exclusively shown how The Reason
that induced Dr. S to write a Poem Call’d the Lady’s Dressing Room has been an ideal
portrayal of criticizing the chauvinism proudly practiced and celebrated in the society. The
essay has concentrated on why Lady Mary was compelled to write on the response to a poem
like Swift’s. It is true that Lady Mary has attacked him on a personal level but it is not that
gruesome because it is correct and justified from the perspective of equality and humanity.
She has conveyed that sexual repression or frustration can be cured but accusing women of
their incompetence is never acceptable.

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ENGLISH ESSAY
References
Aske, Katherine. "‘Such gaudy tulips raised from dung’: Cosmetics, Disease and Morality in
Jonathan Swift's Dressing‐Room Poetry." Journal for Eighteenth
‐Century
Studies 40.4 (2017): 503-517.
Precup, Amelia. "Mapping Femininity as Self-reflection Strategy in Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu’s Travel Letters." Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and
Theory 3.1 (2017): 93-108.
Rawson, Claude. Order from Confusion Sprung: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature
from Swift to Cowper. Routledge, 2018.