1. A Historical Look at Swift’s Representation of Women in the “Lady’s Dressing
Room”
By Oleg Nekrassovski
“The Lady’s Dressing Room” is the first of Jonathan Swift’s series of poems which
received the label ‘scatological.’ These poems have attracted a lot of attention from critics and
have been subject to a considerable amount of amateur psychoanalysis. Not surprisingly, these
poems were quite popular during Swift’s lifetime, even though a number of Swift’s
contemporaries judged them to be highly obscene (Sherman 2346). Regardless, “The Lady’s
Dressing Room” shows how the glorious self-image that a woman projects to the world, hides,
and is built on, ‘coarse realities.’ In the poem, Swift addresses the nature of these ‘coarse
realities’ in a humorous yet sufficiently disturbing manner, in order to expose the pretense and
false appearances inherent in the glorious public images of contemporary, middle and higher
class, women. In this way, Swift also attacks contemporary social and literary conventions that
praised such superficial qualities of contemporary women (Sherman 2346). The present paper
will use Nussbaum’s “Juvenal, Swift, and The Folly of Love” to make a historical overview of
such satires on women in the Western literary tradition. In particular, it will be shown that
Jonathan Swift’s representation of women in “The Lady’s Dressing Room” shows a strong
influence of two prominent Roman poets – Juvenal and Ovid, as well as the influence of
multiple British satirists of his time.
Nussbaum states that according to Dryden, all of his contemporary satirists used
Juvenal’s Sixth Satire as a source of ideas for similar satires about women that they wrote (542).
And the intimate revelation of a woman’s dressing room is a central scene that Dryden and his
contemporaries took from Juvenal. In the Sixth Satire, the Roman wife, attended by servants,
frantically prepares for a meeting with her secret lover (Nussbaum 542). And in that scene
Juvenal presents her dressing as self-worship, in which she arms herself for an adulterous
meeting with her lover (Nussbaum 542). Juvenal compares her creation of an elaborate
hairstyle with the erection of a military fortification, and points out that the procedure is “as
painstaking and deliberate as the protection of her honor” (Nussbaum 543). However, Juvenal
assures the reader that it is easy to ‘disarm’ such a self-inflated woman. To this end, he
recommends taking a look at her from the rear (Nussbaum 543).
Throughout the late 17th
and early 18th
centuries, multiple British writers viewed
Juvenal’s Sixth Satire as the “original for all subsequent dressing room scenes.” Indeed, the
dressing room scenes described in multiple works of British literature, of that period, followed
Juvenal in advising men to ‘penetrate’ women’s disguises in order to protect themselves from
the dangerous illusions they create (Nussbaum 543-544). And since women’s disguises are
created in their boudoirs, which thus function as sites of women’s preparation for ‘attacking

2. and destroying men,’ men can only dispel the dangerous illusions that women create by
‘penetrating’ their dressing rooms; which, it was recommended, should come down to a man
unexpectedly visiting his beloved in her dressing room, before she had time to prepare for
anyone’s visit (Nussbaum 544-545). While in Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” a man does
not visit his lover while she is unprepared for his visit, he does ‘penetrate’ her dressing room:
Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
The goddess from her chamber issues,
Arrayed in lace, brocade, and tissues:
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 (quoted in Sherman 2346)
However, the dressing room scenes that appeared in the various works of British
literature, of that period also showed women’s boudoirs to be very fascinating, as living
metaphors for a woman’s mystery. A woman standing in her dressing room, choosing how to
dress for the occasion, is exploring her sexual and psychic independence while creating a
separate self-glorified identity. Consequently, a man’s unexpected entrance into this forbidden
territory undermines a woman’s independence by destroying her vice (Nussbaum 544).
Another prominent Roman poet to have an influence on British satirists of the late 17th
and early 18th
centuries, especially on Jonathan Swift (by Swift’s own admission), was Ovid
(Nussbaum 545). In particular, in his Remedia Amoris, one of his recommendations to men, for
overcoming the madness of love, involves a man unexpectedly visiting his beloved in her
dressing room, before she had time to prepare for anyone’s visit; in order to catch her
‘unarmed’ and see all her faults and defects, which she habitually conceals by her adornments.
Moreover, according to Ovid, a man’s presence in the dressing room of his beloved will cause
him to smell the stench of her cosmetics, which will speed up her fall from his esteem
(Nussbaum 545-546).
When it comes to the more specific influence of various British satirists, of the late 17th
and early 18th
centuries, on Jonathan Swift, multiple analogues to his poems on women,
published during that period, have been uncovered by various scholars (Nussbaum 546). In
particular, Swift’s dressing room scenes have been anticipated by Thomas Killigrew's Parson's
Wedding (ca. 1639), Mary Evelyn's Mundus Muliebris (1690), Roger L'Estrange's translation of
Visions of Quevedo (1702), Joseph Thurston's The Toilette (1730), and especially Richard Ames's
Folly of Love (1691) (Nussbaum 546).
In "The Lady's Dressing Room” Swift almost explicitly criticises men for their tendency to
be surprised to discover and rediscover that women are mere mortals. Strephon’s surprise at

3. discovering his beloved’s excrements in her dressing room reveals her humanity to him in a
parody of the idealization of women (Nussbaum 550):
Thus finishing his grand survey,
The swain disgusted slunk away,
Repeating in his amorous fits,
“Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!” (quoted in Sherman 2349)
Hence, the poem insists that without their carefully arranged exteriors, women, instead
of appearing to be goddesses or nymphs, are disturbingly common. And in order to stay sane,
men need to be able to recognize that fact (Nussbaum 550).
Thus, "The Lady's Dressing Room” reminds us that the lady’s boudoir is not only a place
for dressing and undressing, but also a place where women perform their excretory functions.
And a similar scene, where a man’s passion for his lover subsided after he saw the evidence of
her excretory functions, also appears in Ovid’s Remedia Amoris (Nussbaum 550). Hence, in "The
Lady's Dressing Room,” Swift draws on classical precedent of presenting ‘shocking’ scenes from
the lady’s boudoir. This dispels the dressing room’s mystique of being a place of artistry where
women create a separate self-glorified identity for presenting to the world (Nussbaum 551).
Hence, the satire reassures men that women’s dressing rooms contain nothing that they might
want to see. However, should they see it, they’ll have to accept it; because this experience will
forever alter their perception of the female sex (Nussbaum 551). The poem sends this message
by showing what happens to a man who sees the dressing room of his beloved, whose
perception of women severely changes as a result, but it’s something he can’t accept:
But Vengeance, goddess never sleeping
Soon punished Strephon for his peeping.
His foul imagination links
Each dame he sees with all her stinks:
And, if unsavory odours fly,
Conceives a lady standing by:
All women his description fits,
And both ideas jump like wits
By vicious fancy coupled fast,
And still appearing in contrast. (quoted in Sherman 2349)
Hence, like Ovid before him, Swift wrote “The Lady’s Dressing Room” in order to help
men overcome the passion and madness of love. Consequently, in this poem, Swift aimed to
undermine the delusions, to which both sexes are prone, and which lead to the foolishness and
madness of love (Nussbaum 551). While men pursue a phantom ideal, women attempt to fulfill
that ideal with their dressing room rituals. Hence, women not only create myths for
themselves, as they do in their dressing rooms, they are also subject to the myths created for

4. them by men. So, it is not surprising that in the end, all this mythic construction leads to the
irrational, lustful pursuit of unattainable ideals (Nussbaum 551).
Thus, we have seen that, according to Nussbaum, the satires on women written by the
British satirists, of the late 17th
and early 18th
centuries, heavily borrowed from Juvenal’s Sixth
Satire. And while there is no clear evidence indicating a direct influence of Juvenal on Swift, a
considerable amount of indirect influence clearly took place; since the intimate revelation of a
woman’s dressing room (as is done in Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room”) is a central scene
that British satirists of the time took from Juvenal. Moreover, like Juvenal and multiple British
satirists of his generation, in “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” Swift describes a man who
‘penetrates’ the dressing room, and, by extension, the disguises of his lover; and this leads to
the traumatic shattering of his illusions about her. Also, aside from his own admission of being
directly influenced by Ovid, in “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” Swift presents a ‘shocking’ scene
about female excretion and its repulsive effect on the woman’s male lover, which is highly
reminiscent of a scene in Ovid’s Remedia Amoris. Moreover, like Ovid and his Remedia Amoris,
Swift wrote “The Lady’s Dressing Room” in order to help men overcome the passion and
madness of love. Finally, the likely direct influence of various British satirists, of the late 17th
and early 18th
centuries, on Jonathan Swift, has been demonstrated by the discovery of various
analogues to his poems on women that have been published during that period.
Works Cited
Sherman, Stuart. The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. 4th
ed. New York: Longman, 2010.
Print.
Nussbaum, Felicity. “Juvenal, Swift, and The Folly of Love.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 9.4
(1976): 540-552. Print.