The Lady's Dressing Room Essay

Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room” and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s reply both examine the idea of the grotesque. Each poem explores the disconnect between what is perhaps natural and what is perceived as either beautiful or wise. This idea is characterized most extremely and obscenely by excrement itself. Swift makes his point by exposing the grotesque “reality” of the lady, Celia, while Montagu in turn creates her own “reality” through “The Reasons That Induced Dr. Swift to Write a Poem Called the Lady’s Dressing Room”, which does just that, in providing an explanation that calls into question the validity of Swift’s cruel and disgusting take on his lady. Swift’s Strephon is appalled by Celia’s natural tendencies whereas Montagu’s
“In vain the workman showed his wit/With rings and hinges counterfeit/ To make it seem in this disguise/A cabinet to vulgar eyes” ( 75-78). The chest appears beautiful from the outside but it is all a disguise of what truly lies within. Not only that, but the beautiful exterior is seductive, it beckons Strephon to open it like Pandora’s box. Swift argues throughout “The Lady’s Dressing Room” that the filth and grime of Celia never leaves her, that her beautiful façade is only that, a trick used to deceive the outward world. But both the speaker and Strephon are aware of this grotesque reality and yet one is able to overcome it while the other remains plagued by the images of profane things. By degrading women to the point of “unsavory odors” (123), Swift brings them off any beauty-lauding pedestal and far below himself and other men. He isn’t simply humanizing Celia, he is dehumanizing her, bringing her down to the point where any attention she and other such disgusting specimen receive from a man should be seen as a
She is quick to discredit Swift as much as he discredited Celia. She begins with the image of Dr. Swift in his “clean starched band” all adorned with a diamond ring that “artful shows its various rays” (1-4). His appearance suggests his prudish character. He is clean and pressed and carefully put together on his way to meat “His dearest Betty ___” (6). The blanks used in this first stanza suggest the recurrence and universality of this action. The exact woman and exact street don’t matter, it is as if they are every woman or any street. The doctor “tried all his gallantry and wit” (10) in order to woo “this dull hard-hearted creature” (14) to no avail. Finally her maid, Jenny, tells him of the amount he should pay to see the lady. The fact that his so called wit is not enough to sway the lady suggest outright he is not as clever as he thinks. The words “hard-hearted creature” seem almost mocking, as if those are the words Swift or any outward eye would use to define the woman were said eyes not under the veil of infatuation. It is as though Montagu is feigning sympathy. She sees how the woman is not worthy of Swift’s keen intellect and yet alas he cannot help himself and is made a fool for love. The monetary exchange makes the action that follows a transaction rather than an act of wooing. The Swift of the poem is paying to be with Betty not making her fall in love with him as he would hope. Once the