Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Letter To Her Daughter

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Throughout history women have not been viewed as equal in society to men, but to Lady Montagu they are just as important. Lady Mary is writing a letter to her daughter about her granddaughter’s education. To her, education is the most important thing a woman can have. During her letter she uses tone shifts, self flattery and first person pronouns to convey her point. Being a grandmother and mother, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is very concerned with their futures. She uses a demanding tone rather than a suggestive one to tell her daughter what her granddaughter should do. Later in the letter she uses a tone of resentment. During her time, women had to content themselves with something else and convince themselves that it was better for them. “…may be preferable to what men have…and won’t share”, she says, that hints at the fact the women have limited options and their opinions don’t matter that much. Education is very important to her because she believes that women can learn just like men.
She once recalls and incident where her friend’s lover was tricking her and Lady Montagu comments that, “it would have escaped anyone else of less universal reading than myself…” Women learning and knowledge is still considered unacceptable, but Lady Mary Montagu knows that she needs it to avoid trickery and manipulation. She shows how she takes advantage of her learning and provides an example of how it can help her granddaughter and she uses an anecdote to support her claim. She also expresses that the knowledge of the world is more important than the knowledge of words, by that she shows her daughter that her granddaughter will need to be book smart as well as street