1 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 uttershow 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
2 ENGLISH ESSAY 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. Thepoem,beingarticulatedfromthecreativecoreofawoman,isnaturally 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
3 ENGLISH ESSAY 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 offrustration (Precup 99). Men are taught to
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4 ENGLISH ESSAY rule over society so they consider women to be a mere part of the society and not the partner. Therefore, they treat women as objectswithout 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 howThe Reason that induced Dr. S to write a Poem Call’d the Lady’s Dressing Roomhas 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.
5 ENGLISH ESSAY References Aske, Katherine. "‘Such gaudy tulips raised from dung’: Cosmetics, Disease and Morality in JonathanSwift'sDressing‐RoomPoetry."JournalforEighteenth ‐Century Studies40.4 (2017): 503-517. Precup, Amelia. "Mapping Femininity as Self-reflection Strategy in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’sTravelLetters."MetacriticJournalforComparativeStudiesand Theory3.1 (2017): 93-108. Rawson, Claude.Order from Confusion Sprung: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature from Swift to Cowper. Routledge, 2018.