Women!

The presentation we had on women was very interesting to research. All of the authors we talked about were connected in some way: Mary Leapor was an ardent admirer of Pope and Swift; Swift and Pope were very good friends; Lady Montagu hated Swift, etc. Even more interesting were the debates/responses that they wrote back and forth to each other. My favorite example of this was Lady Mary Montagu's response to Johnathan Swift's poem "The Reasons that Induced Dr. Swift to Write a Poem Called "The Lady's Dressing Room." Even the title of her response is hilarious, because we really don't exactly know why he wrote it, and Montagu's explanation sounds plausible. Swift's poem was very detailed in the disgusting nature of women, saying that their make-up and powdered wigs were a mere facade to hide their atrocities. Mantagu's response suggests that Swift only wrote the poem due to his sexual dysfunction with a prostitute.His anger at not getting his money back is why he writes a scathing poem about her dressing room. This leaves the reader amused, with a picture of Swift as an inept and foolish man.