This is the text for a project I did for Literature class. I did my project on how women are portrayed and seen in various pieces of literature and in different time periods. I also drew a picture for each entry. I might add those pictures to this post later. Or I might not.
The Rape Of the Lock
The entire purpose of Pope's poem is to mock Belinda's overreaction at having a piece of her hair cut off by an admiring Baron, so she's automatically made to look a bit ridiculous and over dramatic.
The character of Belinda is very daring. She challenges two men to a card game, and wins. When she is wrong, i.e. her hair is cut off, she makes a huge fuss and gets everybody in uproar at the offence. This shows that she is not the kind of person to back down.
Belinda is very vain. The best example of this is because she makes such a big deal about her lost hair. She has also spent all day working on her appearance for this social event, as have all the other fine ladies.
Despite protesting once he cuts off her hair, Belinda is flirtatious with the Byron. It is for this reason that he wants to cut off a piece of her hair; they've been flirting and he wants a token of her. The fact that she's made many men pine for her is also mentioned in the poem.
Despite her frivolity, Pope paints her as being supported by many protective spirits and muses, all of whom also get up in arms when her hair is cut. This shows some admiration for her determination and character.
The Lady of Shalott
The poem is about a Lady who is trapped on a lonely island on a river. She can't leave, because she is cursed to never participate in real life or else die. She must sit in her tower, weaving, and can only watch the outside world through the reflection of a mirror. She's clearly not happy, but she is resigned to her fate until a certain Sir Lancelot rides by.
When Sir Lancelot of Camelot rides by and the Lady of Shalott sees him, she wakes from her stupor, gets in a boat that she inscribes with her name, and rides down the river. By the time she reaches Camelot, she is dead. The King, Queen, Lancelot and all the people mourn the waste of such a pretty soul.
Even though it doesn't work out for her, the Lady's act of leaving her solitary, meaningless existence is admirable. She isn't satisfied with her situation, so she finally gets up and leaves towards the real world she's been watching for so long. Even though she knows she will die, she decides that fate is worth it if it occurs in an effort to get above her worthless existence.
It's a bit unfortunate that what motivated her had to be seeing a gallant man on a horse, but the sentiment is admirable all the same. In fact, it shows that she is actively going after something, even if it is only a sort of vision.
To The Ladies
This poem is overall very resentful towards the institution of marriage. In fact, Lady Mary Chudleigh compares wives to servants, saying the only difference is that a wife has a title and is not paid for her labours and obedience. Marriage is described as "the fatal knot", which implies that once married, a wife is practically dead and does not live a real life of her own.
She says that a husband rules his wife completely, and she must obey and submit to his commands.
This shows wives in the early 18th century as suppressed, mistreated creatures. This is probably accurate, as marriage was a very unequal contract then and women were seen as objects to be acquired or to manage rather than actual people. Lady Mary Chudleigh writing this poem, however, puts her in stark contrast to the existence she has described in her poem.
It's rather unfortunate that at the end of the poem she dedicates a few lines to saying things along the lines of "all men are horrible, you must protect yourself and shun them", as that has been an attitude that feminists have been criticized and ridiculed for a lot over time.
My Last Duchess
As we only get an account of the Duchess from her resentful widower, we can't really paint a realistic picture of her character, but it is an excellent medium for seeing how women would have been viewed in the Italian Renaissance. The poem was written around 1842, centuries after the time it is set in, and Robert Browning was fascinated by the psychology of the age of rebirth. The character of the Duke is seen as a bit of a psychotic man, as well as very possessive, jealous and forbidding.
If one puts the Duke's bias aside, the late Duchess seems like a lovely girl, very happy and pleasant. She might have blushed at practically everything, but she also seems to have been unassuming and courteous. Considering the situation from her perspective, the Duke probably had absolutely no reason to be jealous of anyone, which goes to show that he's rather extreme, especially seeing as he probably had his wife killed.
The Duchess certainly seems to be more an object the Duke purchased than a person he married. If you consider the historical characters the poem is inspired by, this certainly rings true. The Duchess was a Medici when the later all-powerful family was still establishing its wealth and prominence. She would have been married of to the Duke when she was 14 for money, connections and influence. The fact that the match was advantageous for her and her family would have caused an even more significant power imbalance in her marriage.
The reason the Duke was unhappy with her was that she seemed too happy all the time. This seems like a strange grievance to have, but the problem is actually that the Duke resents the thought of anyone complimenting his wife and he is also displeased that she seems just as pleased by insignificant gifts as she was by being married to him. Her smile is pretty much the same for anyone and anything, and she smiles at everything.
The creepiest part of the poem is that he's telling this story to somebody with whom he's negotiating his second marriage with. This shows that he really didn't care about what he did to his first wife. Also, the fact that the man he's talking to is still going along with the negotiations goes to show how insignificant women were at the time.
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson wrote almost 1800 peoms in her lifetime, as well as carrying out a vast amount of correspondence with various acquaintances. Despite this, she had barely a dozen published while she was alive. Nearly all of her work and personality came to life only after she had died.
"Because I could not stop for Death" is one of her most famous poems, and is one of many examples of her fixation on death and immortality. She never married and lived an introverted and increasingly reclusive life in her parents' house until her own death in 1886 at the age of 55. In the later part of her life, she became known as an eccentric in her hometown of Amherst. She took to never leaving her house and eventually insisting on talking to visitors through a door. In fact, even people she was in regular correspondence with didn't see her for years. When people did see her, she was always wearing white.
In terms of her writing, she did not fit into her time at all. Her punctuation, rhyme patterns, and capitalization was unconventional, and in fact all her poems were edited heavily before publication for a long time, in order to suit the taste of the time.
