The Lover Gender Roles
Gender Roles in The Lover: A Ballad
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was one of the first female authors to write so boldly to the general public regarding her perception of women loving and marrying. Women understood exactly what men desired and expected of them, but did not appreciate game playing or the notion that society only approved men having casual encounters. With her short poem, The Lover: A Ballad, Montagu dictates how women should live and enjoy their youthful years in the same manner as men.
Montagu’s first revealing stand is she is not a prude like men so often think, “I am not as cold as a Virgin in lead, Nor is Sunday’s sermon so strong in my head.” She expresses she is not pure like the Virgin Mary that one sees in a stained glass window at church. Furthermore, she may not feel guilty for having sex before marriage as the Sunday sermon discourages. When Montagu states, “But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy Long years of repentance for moments of joy,” she is expressing how women would simply like to have …show more content…
Montagu directly says women will not fall for this cheap trickery at love, and that this showing only makes finding a genuine man that much more difficult. The ideal man who possesses “Good sense and good nature so equally joined” is nearly impossible to find since these men overestimate their own intellect while underestimating women’s. As Montagu is beginning to explain her ideal lover, the reader sees how women are intelligent and capable of making their own decisions. They are not naïve individuals like society may believe; women simply did not act as openly as men about their
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was one of the first female authors to write so boldly to the general public regarding her perception of women loving and marrying. Women understood exactly what men desired and expected of them, but did not appreciate game playing or the notion that society only approved men having casual encounters. With her short poem, The Lover: A Ballad, Montagu dictates how women should live and enjoy their youthful years in the same manner as men.
Montagu’s first revealing stand is she is not a prude like men so often think, “I am not as cold as a Virgin in lead, Nor is Sunday’s sermon so strong in my head.” She expresses she is not pure like the Virgin Mary that one sees in a stained glass window at church. Furthermore, she may not feel guilty for having sex before marriage as the Sunday sermon discourages. When Montagu states, “But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy Long years of repentance for moments of joy,” she is expressing how women would simply like to have …show more content…
Montagu directly says women will not fall for this cheap trickery at love, and that this showing only makes finding a genuine man that much more difficult. The ideal man who possesses “Good sense and good nature so equally joined” is nearly impossible to find since these men overestimate their own intellect while underestimating women’s. As Montagu is beginning to explain her ideal lover, the reader sees how women are intelligent and capable of making their own decisions. They are not naïve individuals like society may believe; women simply did not act as openly as men about their