The Lady’s Dressing Room MEME
This meme represents Strephon’s lack of knowledge toward women. In Jonathon Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room”, Strephon goes into Celia’s dressing room and finds out how filthy and stinky her chamber is. He finds her dirty smock, combs filled with dirt, jars filled with spit, and cosmetics from dog intestines that get filthy while women are try to attempt this ideal image and meet men’s expectations. With all these materials needed it is no wonder why Celia takes five hours to get ready in her dressing room. Strephon goes on about his snooping when he discovers Celia’s chamber pot, the “Pandora box” and is faced with the reality that Celia is not as seen as a “goddess” anymore but as a disgusting human like himself as he shouts “ Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia Shits!” Strephon can no longer look at women the same, as he sees through their wigs and painted faces. Crazy that women poop!
I liked how your meme works in a similar satyrical fashion to the text in the sense that through the use of wit and cheekiness, a critique on society’s shallow values and expectations towards women are shown. It’s important to note that an ironic emptiness is embedded in the world Swift is mocking. The model of poetic inspiration is attacked by Swift through his assertion of philosophical materialism, which further shows a sense of a void in this piece (Baudot, 662). Laura Baudot states, “The void makes possible a deconstruction of materialism from within a materialist paradigm – exposing the ironies of materialism’s dependence on a nonmaterial space containing nothing – and offers an occasion for writers to think self-reflexively about creating worlds built of words” (Baudot, 662).Baudot, Laura. “What Not to Avoid in Swift’s ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room.’” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 49, no. 3, 2009, pp. 637–666., http://www.jstor.org/stable/40467316.
I found this meme to be so fitting and very funny! I enjoyed all of the satire that we read and thought that Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room” was particularly great. The absurd reaction that Strephon had to the realities of Celia’s life is so ridiculous, yet you have to laugh at the fact that so many people are still taboo about women and their humanity.