Women’s liberties and the way women have been viewed in the domestic and public sphere were issues contested in eighteenth century Britain as they are today. “The rights of the individual versus the community… the conflicting powers of institutions, and states and corporations were hotly debated” (Defining). Literary works, potentially, have a significant impact on people’s attitudes toward the maltreatment of, domestic place of, and liberties of women. Literature such as Jonathon Swift’s The Lady’s Dressing Room, denigrating women, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s, The Reasons that Induced Dr. Swift to Write a Poem called the Lady’s Dressing Room, vindicating women, and Eliza Haywood’s, Fantomina, masquerading of women, brought awareness of the wit, blamelessness, and power that women hold both in the literary and real world. Although women were either sexualized, such as the women of the orient, or criticized for promiscuity, such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Haywood’s Fantomina, women’s base desires were no different than those of their counterparts, men. One also needs to note that Swift may not actually been pillorying women, but instead endeavoring to imply that society need to re-evaluate the social norm considering women.
