Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

In the passage, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu utilizes rhetorical and stylistic devices to express her views about the role of knowledge in women's lives. By clearly appealing to the specific audience of her daughter and effectively manipulating diction and tone, Montagu's insistence of the necessity of knowledge for a woman to survive in the world of men is clearly conveyed. Montagu defines her purpose and caters to the specific audience of her daughter throughout the entire passage. The need for knowledge to see through "poor plagiar[ies]" of admirers in order to remain a respectable lady is demonstrated to her daughter in this informational letter. Her inclusion of a childhood anecdote personalizes the letter and emphasizes her point. Montagu's…

The accounts from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu were of her travels through the Ottoman Empire with her husband. She wrote to a variety of people during this time, and took pride in her letters; taking the time to review and edit each other and make sure that she was effectively recounting her interactions. For she felt that her documentations would be read throughout history. Lady Mary’s accounts speak of her encounters with the ottoman women and their contrast between the women back in Britain…

Writing on women has been an ancient tradition but the early eighteenth century provided an outlet that furthered the writing to an extreme. Jonathan Swift and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu create the perfect argument for this situation. In this multiple analytical essay, I will analyze and discuss the early eighteenth century satire on women in Debating Women: Arguments in Verse and the arguments from two different perspectives—specifically the work of Jonathan Swift in The Lady’s Dressing Room and…

Edward Wortley Montagu was dispatched as ambassador to Istanbul. Accompanying him on the journey was his wife Mary, who would eventually become one of the most influential women in 18th century Europe. Montagu is a divisive figure due to her commentary on such polarizing subjects as early feminist theory and her role as a potential boundary-crosser; she aspired to be both a part of and apart from the cultures she experienced. The collected personal correspondence of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu…

Induced Dr. S[wift] to Write a Poem Called the Lady’s Dressing Room”. This work is a reply to Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room”, which describes his experience in a Lady’s dressing room. It goes on to describe a woman as some horrid animal, and this experience ruins women for Swift completely. The writing of this poem is in such a negative slander and shows the ugliness of women in Swift’s eyes. He even states “such gaudy tulips raised from Dung” (line 145), explaining that he cannot…

In Lady Mary Wroth’s “In this Strange Labyrinth,” the speaker, on a denotative level, addresses her concerns about where to turn in a maze, but on a connotative level the speaker is conflicted with decisions in his life. The speaker struggles, but follows her heart in the end. Similarly, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is the most intellectual among her sisters and she enjoys walking, even alone, both of which oppose the standards for a woman in Georgian society. Elizabeth…

Lady Mary Wroth was an exceptional poet of the sixteenth century who wrote passionately about relationships between women and men. Wroth was unlike women of her time, because she had a formal education whereas many other women did not have this opportunity. This advantageous educational opportunity allowed Wroth to develop her literary skills beyond many poets of her time. Due to Wroth’s writing about relationships that seemed to resemble real-life relationships, some people of her time heavily…

In Shakespeare 's sonnet "Sonnet CXXX," the blazon is constructed in a very peculiar way. Mary Wroth, in sonnet 42 "Pamphilia to Amphilanthus," interprets the blazon within herself rather than her love. Both uses of the blazon depict a time in which love is of the essence. However, in both sonnets, the person in which they are describing is forever unknown. Shakespeare attacks the blazon of his sonnet and creates an anti-blazon, while both sonnets are still in singular perspectives. In…

John Donne and Lady Mary Wroth are two popular and controversial poets from the early seventeenth century. Donne often wrote sensuous and spiritual poetry, while Wroth had written Petrarchan (in nature) sonnets concerning love from a woman’s (practically unheard of for that time) perspective. In both Donne’s “A Valediction: forbidding Mourning” and Wroth’s “Sonnet 22” (in the sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus) the issue of separation between lovers is explored by means of nature,…

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu demonstrates female agency by defending Mrs. Yonge’s reputation after separation from Mr. Yonge by writing the poem “Epistle from Mrs. [Y]onge to Her Husband”. Montagu writes this poem from Mrs. Yonge’s point of view as a means of persuading the public to take both Montagu’s and Mrs. Yonge’s side. Montagu’s appeal to reason is an example of female agency – she takes a quality that is primarily associated with men, and uses “reason” to change the public’s opinion of Mrs.…