External links
- Text of “The Lady’s Dressing Room” on Wikisource
- Text of “The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem call'd the Lady's Dressing Room”
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"The Lady's Dressing Room" is a poem written by Jonathan Swift first published in 1732. In the poem, Strephon sneaks into his sweetheart Celia's dressing room while she is away only to become disillusioned at how filthy and smelly it is. Swift uses this poem to satirize both women's vain attempts to match an ideal image and men's expectation that the illusion be real. For the grotesque treatment of bodily functions in this poem and in other works, Swift has been posthumously diagnosed as suffering from neurosis [1] [2] and the poem is considered an exemplar of Swift's "excremental vision". [3]
The poem was written by Jonathan Swift, who was most famous for his book Gulliver's Travels . This author was a satirist to the core. He mocked, vexed, and made comical political commentary. Thomas Sheridan called him "a man whose original genius and uncommon talents have raised him, in the general estimation, above all other writers of the age". [4]
This poem chronicles the misadventure of Strephon as he explores the vacant dressing room of the woman he loves. Beginning with an ideal image of his sweetheart, he looks through the contents of her room, but encounters only objects that repulse him. He finds sweaty smocks, dirt-filled combs, greasy facecloths, grimy towels, snot-encrusted handkerchiefs, jars of spit, cosmetics derived from distilled puppies, [5] pimple medication, stockings smelling of dirty toes and a mucky, rancid clothes chest. Beholding such squalor, culminating in the discovery of her chamber pot, he is slapped with the reality that Celia (the name "Celia" means "heavenly") is not a "goddess", but as disgustingly human as he is, as shown in line 118: "Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!"
Ever after his discovery of Celia's nauseating dressing room he can never look at women the same way again. In every woman he sees through the powdered wigs and painted faces to the grime beneath.
Swift ends the poem by suggesting that if young men only ignore the stench and accept the painted illusion, they can enjoy the "charms of womanhood".
This poem is full of satire, starting in the first line: "Five hours (and who can do it less in?) / By haughty Celia spent in dressing;"
He starts out from the beginning commenting on the length of time it takes women to prepare themselves. He goes on into greater detail about the repulsive things he sees and finds:
"As from within Pandora's box, / When Epimetheus oped the locks, / A sudden universal crew / Of humane evils upward flew, / He still was comforted to find / That hope at last remained behind. // So Strephon, lifting up the lid / To view what in the chest was hid, / The vapours flew from out the vent. / But Strephon cautious never meant / The bottom of the pan to grope, / And foul his hands in search of hope." // This is a satirical comment on a woman's box of belongings and beauty supplies. It symbolized evil and human flaws. We picture Strephon going through the box, as we watch laughing at him for not being able to find anything good inside.
This poem is sometimes seen as an attack on women. In response to this poem, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote "The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem call'd the Lady's Dressing Room". She argues that Swift wrote "The Lady's Dressing Room" after experiencing sexual disappointment with a prostitute. This poem has also been seen as a critique of the lengths to which women go in order to meet the ideal image of the female body and men's expectation that the illusion be real. In addition, Swift bitterly satirizes and derides in disgusting detail the human body and its functions, which he viewed as repulsive.
Swift's time was a period in which pretense and superficiality were the norm.[ citation needed ] He was often referred to as misanthropic, and this work, "The Lady's Dressing Room", led him to be "accused of misogyny". [6] Swift's offensive, and improper content, as well as the harsh manner in which he presented it, led him to have a less than favorable reputation amongst his compatriots, especially women. [7]
The poem was received like any satire: some loved it and some hated it. For example, the poem provoked a negative response from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, featured in her poem “The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem called The Lady’s Dressing Room.” In this poem, she voices what many thought was the reason for his writing the poem: sexual frustration. Her poem is about his searching out a prostitute and not being able to perform sexually. He blames it on her, she on him, and she refuses to give the money he requests back. In Montagu's opinion, and subsequently her poetic response, Swift decides to get back at the prostitute by writing the poem.
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Gulliver's Travels, or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best-known full-length work and a classic of English literature. Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it".
This article is a summary of the major literary events and publications of 1734.
Edmund Curll was an English bookseller and publisher. His name has become synonymous, through the attacks on him by Alexander Pope, with unscrupulous publication and publicity. Curll rose from poverty to wealth through his publishing, and he did this by approaching book printing in a mercenary and unscrupulous manner. By cashing in on scandals, publishing pornography, offering up patent medicine, using all publicity as good publicity, he managed a small empire of printing houses. He would publish high and low quality writing alike, so long as it sold. He was born in the West Country, and his late and incomplete recollections say that his father was a tradesman. He was an apprentice to a London bookseller in 1698 when he began his career.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English aristocrat, medical pioneer, writer, and poet. Born in 1689, Lady Mary spent her early life in England. In 1712, Lady Mary married Edward Wortley Montagu, who later served as the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. Lady Mary joined her husband on the Ottoman excursion, where she was to spend the next two years of her life. During her time there, Lady Mary wrote extensively on her experience as a woman in Ottoman Constantinople. After her return to England, Lady Mary devoted her attention to the upbringing of her family before dying of cancer in 1762.
Edward Wortley Montagu was an English author and traveller.
Colonel James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, 1st Baron Wharncliffe, PC was a British soldier and politician. A grandson of Prime Minister John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, he held office under Sir Robert Peel as Lord Privy Seal between 1834 and 1835 and as Lord President of the Council between 1841 and 1845.
The Kit-Cat Club was an early 18th-century English club in London with strong political and literary associations. Members of the club were committed Whigs. They met at the Trumpet tavern in London and at Water Oakley in the Berkshire countryside.
Robert Gould was a significant voice in Restoration poetry in England.
Mary Leapor (1722–1746) was an English poet, born in Marston St. Lawrence, Northamptonshire, the only child of Anne Sharman and Philip Leapor (1693–1771), a gardener. She, out of the many labouring-class writers of the period, was noticeably well received.
Mary, Lady Chudleigh was an English poet who belonged to an intellectual circle that included Mary Astell, Elizabeth Thomas, Judith Drake, Elizabeth Elstob, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and John Norris. In her later years she published a volume of poetry and two volumes of essays, all dealing with feminist themes. Two of her books were published in four editions during the last ten years of her life. Her poetry on the subject of human relationships and reactions has appeared in several anthologies. Her feminist essays are still in print.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Sarah Pridden, commonly known as Sally Salisbury, was a celebrated prostitute in early 18th-century London. She was the lover of many notable members of society, and socialised with many others.
Celia is a given name for females of Latin origin, as well as a nickname for Cecilia, Cecelia, Celeste, or Celestina. The name is often derived from the Roman family name Caelius, thought to originate in the Latin caelum ("heaven"). Celia was popular in British pastoral literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, possibly stemming from the ruler of the House of Holiness in Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene or from a character in William Shakespeare's play As You Like It.
Henrietta Louisa Fermor, Countess of Pomfret, was an English letter writer.
Antonio Schinella Conti (1677–1749), also known by his religious title as Abate Conti, was an Italian writer, translator, mathematician, philosopher and physicist. He was born in Padua on 22 January 1677 and died there on 6 April 1749.
Lord William Hamilton was a member of Parliament for Lanarkshire.
"The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem Call'd the Lady's Dressing Room" is a poem by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu published in 1734. The poem is a satire and was written in response to a poem by Jonathan Swift titled "The Lady's Dressing Room". The poem is part of a poetic duel between the two poets, in which Montagu attacks Swift's character and suggests that he wrote "The Lady's Dressing Room" as a result of his sexual frustration and impotence. Both poems have been seen as satires of gender roles and stereotypes of the time, although Swift's poem has received greater praise and recognition.
The Turkish Embassy Letters are a letter collection of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's reflections on her travels through the Ottoman Empire between 1716 and 1718. She collected and revised them throughout her life, circulating the manuscripts among friends, and they were first published in 1763 after her death.
Frances Thynne, Lady Worsley was an English noblewoman connected to several poets of the Augustan era.