Analysis Of The Lady's Dressing Room By Swift

By way of contrast, the poet Lady Mary tries to refute Swift’s view of women by generalizing men as overambitious in their rhetoric. In her poetic response to Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” she explains that Swift only wrote it because of his embarrassing inability to perform in bed. She writes, “And Men the Talents still mistaking, / The stutterer fancies he is speaking” (39-40). The word “Talents” here refers to the sexual potency of men, as well as their written verse. In saying this, Lady Mary generalizes men as believing they are more capable than they truly are and places Swift within this collective. Just as Swift made sweeping generalizations about women, Lady Mary uses the same method to argue against him. She continues with her …show more content…
In Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, he also advances an understanding of gender and of women’s place in eighteenth-century English society, but does so in a manner that is curious about the ramifications of beauty and the diminished power women had at the time in the process of flirtation and romance. While the poem begins with a description of Belinda and her morning beauty ritual – her preparing for the social game she is to have with the Baron and others – the sense of confidence she feels in being a young woman who is admired for her beauty eventually evaporates. Indeed, not only is her process of applying makeup in the first canto described in religious terms, but it is also likened to military preparations: “Now awful Beauty puts on all its Arms,” as if to suggest that beauty is a sort of weapon that Belinda may deploy at will. As a result, Belinda heads toward Hampton Court with a clear sense of confidence – “And Betty’s praised for Labours not her own …/ But every Eye was fixed on her alone. / On her white Breast a sparkling Cross she wore, / Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore” – that entails her ability to have agency while interacting with men like the Baron who are likely to be interested in her sexually. But once Belinda begins to engage with the Baron, however, it becomes clear that she has overestimated her ability as a woman to maintain control over the situation: In playing a game of …show more content…
This representation within British literature is showing the shift in British culture towards individualism by taking into account the dissatisfaction of the ruling aristocracy. Male writers, such as Pope and Swift, addressed gendered traditions and inequality to critique male society. Female writers like Haywood and Lady Mary exposed the male depravity to criticize the treatment of women in society. Neither gender of writers ultimately challenged traditional gender roles, but rather exposed and manipulated these roles and their associated expectations in order to comment on society as a