The Lady's Dressing Room Essay

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Thanks to the literature written by women as well as men, women have gone through phenomenal changes in how they were seen, represented, and depicted in modern-day society. Women have undergone the same transformations as they were represented in literature. Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady's Dressing Room” followed the story of Strephon as he entered the dressing room of his lover Celia with high hopes of being romanced by the fancy clothes and the lovely smelling perfumes. However, as he entered, his high hopes were shot down when he saw oily smocks, a dirty smell, and the infamous chamber pot. It is in this moment where he realized that Celia is not a goddess held to high standards. She was, he realized human after all and was about as disgusting …show more content…

Swift to Write a Poem Called 'The Lady's Dressing Room.’” In the poem, she attacked Swift’s and satirized the events that he outlined for his readers. Montague held that the only reason Swift wrote the poem was because of his sexual frustration, his impotence, and his lack of romance from women. In order for readers to fully understand their social and their literary present, they must be able to understand their past. It is through the literature of past authors - specifically Montagu and Swift - that readers learn of the harsh realities and ridicule that women faced as a minority group during the time period in which their two poems were written. Women today - though not as much as in earlier history - were required to defend themselves against men and sometimes even other women. By taking away 17th and 18th Century British Literature from the college curriculum, students were forced to give themselves to a gap in knowledge and literary understanding and are thus unable to understand literary tradition and criticism …show more content…

"What Not to Avoid in Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room”." SEL Studies in
English Literature 1500-1900. 49.3 (2009): 637-666. Web. 3 Apr. 2014. <http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.umuc.edu/journals/studies_in_english_literature/v049/49.3.baudot.pdf>.
Grundy, Isobel (2004). "Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley". Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/19029.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. "The Reasons that Induced Dr S to write a Poem called The
Lady’s Dressing Room." University of Pennsylvania. University of Pennsylvania. Web. 20 Apr 2014. <http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/montagu>.
Onarheim, Karen. "He says, she says : gender renegotiations in the satirical exchanges of Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu with James Hammond and Jonathan Swift." Digitale utgivelser ved UiO. (2010): 1-100. Print.
<https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/25246/Hexsaysxshexsaysxduo.pdf?sequence 2>.
Swift, Jonathan. "The Lady’s Dressing Room Jonathan Swift 1732." Rutgers University. Rutgers
University. Web. 20 Apr 2014.
<https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/dressing.html>.
Weise, Wendy S. "Women’s Studies, Vol. 35, No. 8, August 2006: pp. 1–40 Women’s

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