Vanity In Burns's 'To A Louse'

In his poem “To a Louse”, Burns reveals the extent of damage that vanity inflicts socially and personally on women (Burns 1). An exaggerated feeling on personal appearance that comes with excessive pride can damage a woman’s social perspective. A poor personal perception can bring about a wrong presentation to the public. The aspect of considering personal beauty over other important aspects in life can be dangerous to the extent of damaging social image. It is this aspect in women that has fueled tyranny in important events and subjected women to inferiority and isolation. It is an unfortunate situation when the women uses vanity to achieve selfish ambitions throughout their lives.
As Wollstonecraft argues, "women are in fact degraded by
It tends to draw woman’s attention on personal attraction and in turn ignores the purpose of marriage and the roles that a woman should play in a family. According to Wollstonecraft's writing, such behavior in women jeopardized the efforts of making healthy families, where the woman understands her role as a wife or a mother. It is not proper for the woman to use their beauty to gain affection of their men. Vanity leads to lack of responsibility that a woman should have towards the family and the community in general. Though Wollstonecraft treaties support woman’s efforts to fight discrimination from men, the aspect of discrimination finds its strength in the manner through which women present themselves. Some women think that by honoring the roles of a family and making themselves presentable is the ultimate goal in life. Such portrayals allude to great irresponsibility since there are many roles even in leadership that women can play in
He insinuates that vanity brings blunder and foolish notion that complicates life. Vanity displays falseness of a person’s manner and ignores the reality of life. Sometimes women value themselves better by the virtue of decent dressing and expensive looks. But Burns (1993) argues that, “if only some powers would give us the gift to see ourselves as others see us, it would free us from many a blunder, and foolish notion". Self-importance or vanity is more of an ingrained protection that women obtain, to cover themselves against situations such as pain and rejection; and as such they become the instrument for hurting and definite rejection. When women discover that people have a different opinion from what they think of themselves they turn to hatred. Therefore, vanity has a negative implication on a woman’s personal representation and it may lead to rejection by the