Saturday, January 30, 2010
Eve's Choice
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Montagu, Swift, and Beauty
Swift Does Not Approve.
Satan as the Epic Hero
Swift as Satirist in "The Lady's Dressing Room"
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The Lady's Room
Such Order from Confusion sprung,
Such gaudy Tulips rais'd from Dung.
These lines and the preceding text talk about how the expectations of pristine perfection placed upon women are both unrealistic and unfair. Despite this, he urges men to take pride in the fact that those things which they do idolize for their beauty come from a foul process, making their beauty that much more remarkable and worthy to applaud.
Violence and Beauty
Beauty and Ugliness in the 18th Century
It is almost as if Montagu's poem serves the opposite purpose of Swift's. While playing with the same dualities of beauty and ugliness, Montague describes a woman who is covered by a disease that has taken her beauty away rather than something beautiful hiding ugliness. I also think it's interesting that what's covering up her beauty is something natural, but in the other poems it is the un-natural that covers up the ugliness.
A Beautiful (?) Young Nymph...
"The Lady's Room"
"The various Combs for various Uses, [20]
Fill'd up with Dirt so closely fixt,
No Brush could force a way betwixt.
A Paste of Composition rare,
Sweat, Dandriff, Powder, Lead and Hair;
A Forehead Cloth with Oyl upon't [25]
To smooth the Wrinkles on her Front;
Here Allum Flower to stop the Steams,
Exhal'd from sour unsavoury Streams."
Swift uses the materiality of this culture to alienate women from men, in this case Strephon from Celia like were kids in kindergarten going through the cootie stage. Although this poem is very sexist at times, it highlights the social climateof the culture at the time: Men were not supposed to understand the long and extreme procedures women were subject to in order to aesthetically please society. It is almost like Celia is not supposed to be human; someone who does not experience the same bodily functions men do. She is an artifact that should never age or change in condition. Like in Pope's Cantos, Swift is fascinated by the emphasis of materiality abnd the pervesion of the mind and a kind of beauty. Strephon has to invade Celia's private space to learn that women were a construction of things that enhanced their beauty. In fact, women, at the time, were objectified to satisfy social standards about appearances. Unfortunately, Celia, like many women, is reveered as merely an object.
The Witching Hour and Transformation (?)
It is this process of decomposition on a living body that make Swift's language all the more grotesque. Hinting at an unholy assemblage throughout the poem with words like "operator," "Plaister," and "poison'd," Swift concludes the poem with the image of a woman literally recollecting bits of her body, attempting to reassemble them. The only space for beauty in the poem is in the ironic terms in which Swift couches Corinna, transporting her into the tales of romance and gentleness as suggested by the title, Corinna's place as a "muse" in "her Bow'r." While these terms cement the irony and perverse humor Swift sees in Corinna's situation, there also seems to be a hint of melancholy, derived from the distance between her reality in the body and Swift's imagining of what might be.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Structure of The Rape of the Lock
Monday, January 25, 2010
Humor in the Rape of the Lock
Swift's satires provide a stronger impression of the popular fascination with an absurd distortion of feminine beauty in this time period. "Lady's Dressing Room" especially helped clarify this condition by satirizing the incredible facade that a woman must construct each day. This extreme emphasis on appearance accentuates Pope's comedy. In many ways, "The Rape of the Lock" resembles "The Small-Pox" in expressing the inflated value of the woman's appearance. I think that these authors attempt to show that the social norms have disgraced both the essence of a woman's exterior beauty and her true value as a human person.
Body of Bird and Woman
I believe that Anne Kingsmill Finch’s poem substitutes the body of a bird for that of a woman. The bird is trapped inside although at first it is unaware: it admires the scene on the arras and then proudly decides to leave the “imitated Fowl” behind to explore the greater world. The ceiling, however, “strikes her to the ground.” I think the parallel can be made between this trapped bird and women because during this time women were restricted by the regulations of society and could not fly freely. It is interesting that Finch chooses a bird as the metaphor: birds are delicate like women and birds are easily trapped in a confined space, yet if there is a “kind hand” (God? Male benefactor?) they are unstoppably free—they can fly and explore the heights of the world.
After our class discussion, I agree that poetry is the answer to the question, as Liz suggested in her comment to my post. Expression through the written word is a powerful tool, especially for a woman who did not have many tools at her disposal during this time. I would like to connect Finch’s poetry to that of Montagu—they are both female poets and both use the image of a “glass” in their works. In Finch it is the “transparent Panes” which “stop” the bird from freedom and in Montagu it is the “faithless glass” which Flavia rebukes because it shows her a “frightful spectre”. Both of these glasses provide barriers to the woman’s freedom: the bird is locked in by the window and the woman is locked in by her disappointing reflection in the mirror. I believe that both of the poets use the glass in ironic ways—the window is clear, like an invisible wall that, as we discussed in class, is a metaphor for self-reflection; the “faithless glass” is a jibe at women who find all of their value and esteem in their appearance. Both women will need to surmount the glass obstacles in order to be truly free, and Finch and Montagu attempt to surmount them through their freedom of expression in poetry.