Swift 'the Ladies Dressing Room'

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Jonathan Swift’s The Lady’s Dressing Room gives the reader an interesting perspective from which to examine the extreme effort women partake in to make themselves ‘beautiful’. The poem is able to achieve this by not focusing the lady herself; but instead what she leaves behind. From the beginning we understand the lengthy process that Celia has been through in preparation, ‘Five hours (and who can do it less in?) By haughty Celia spent in dressing.’ Although the line in obviously mocking the many hours spent in vanity, it suggests this vanity is not confined to Celia alone and that many women take this long. Once again we see the infatuation of this period with personal external aesthetics; the fact that it takes Celia five hours to become the Celia that people will recognise is reflective of the severity associated with appearances and the necessity for that level of beauty to be upheld. We view the dressing room through the eyes of Strephon, the lover of Celia, as he stumbles upon her empty chamber and decides to inspect the room because of an inherent curiosity; Strephon, who found the room was void, And Betty otherwise employed, Stole in, and took a strict survey Of all the litter as it lay. Swift’s decision to let the audience uncover Celia and her dressing room in this manner means that every element of who Celia is, at least in terms of her appearance is available for analysis. It opens the private area of a woman's life completely because there is nothing she can hide for it is in the dressing room that evidence of the truth exists; And first a dirty smock appeared, Beneath the armpits well besmeared. Strephon, the rogue, displayed it wide, And turned it round on every side. Strephon is examining the object meticulously at every angle and so, in turn, are we. Yet Swift is not merely critiquing female vanity as the poem also serves as a social
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