Satire
In literature, content creators use a lot of art to present their ideas in a specific way they desire. The ideas vary, thus necessitating more than one style to present their information to a targeted audience. Many themes can be depicted in the presentation, with many of them meant to address particular aspects of society. Among the themes commonly used is satire, which involves irony, humor, or exaggeration to give contrary opinions of a given idea that society is subjected to believe or follow. The theme is explained in the works of literature by Jonathan Swift “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” Jonathan Swift “A Modest Proposal” and Alexander Pope, “The Rape of the Lock.” Although much literature portrays these themes, the selected have ideas that can be compared and contrasted in the presentation of this subject.
Jonathan Swifts’ poem “The Lady’s Dressing Room” satirizes how society views women. The author depicts how they are unhappy with women’s time in their dressing room. With men having little knowledge of the room, they expect it to be so beautiful and presentable as women present themselves as angels because of their beauty after the makeup. To show how they don’t like the idea of women spending much time in the room, they exaggerate the long women take in the room. Strephon, the boyfriend of the lady owning the dressing room, says, “Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)” to sarcastically mock women, including her girlfriend, on how much they take in the dressing room.
Additionally, the society in Strephon was living considered women cleaner than men. Further, men were not expected to visit women’s dressing rooms despite spending much time dressing. When he visits her girlfriend’s dressing room, he realizes that women are dirty too, and the physical look women have always deceived men show when they are out of their dressing room. They are considered beautiful, even naming her girlfriend Celia, meaning heavenly beings. Her dressing room satirizes how society has always seen women be clean without understanding what makes them clean or beautiful. It also shows that even women are normal beings who should live like others without any expectations. This art depicts women’s attempts to match the ideal image while men have many expectations, thus being deceived by the looks after women walk out of their dressing rooms.
Jonathan Swifts further heads to use his poem to address the population growth and widening gap between the rich and the poor in his poem the modest proposal. This proposal sarcastically mocks how society has failed to address the social problem of poverty, where the poor are unable to provide for themselves in feed their children. In an attempt to rebuke society, he rebukes the society by advising the poor to sell their children to the rich for food; in return, they will get financial favors and reduced strain in raising families. Society has the option of advising better birth control measures, lowering the population growth and poverty level. Still, due to the greed of the rich and the illiteracy of the poor, they have not figured out the solution prompting the author to satirize the whole context.
Swift further exaggerates the situation by giving statistical support to his theory on the number of children who will be sold, their prices depending on their weight and age, and their eating patterns. Further, he offers the cooking recipe of their newly found meet and explains why the selling of children would be a great idea. He explains that the selling of children will stabilize the Irish country politically, economically, and socially and increase the love of children in a way yet to be known. The author doesn’t encourage the selling of the children but satirically uses humor, irony, and exaggeration to pass his message.
The poem “Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope depicts another form of satire. He uses humor and verbal contexts to depict satire and rivalry between two top families. Pope attempts to depict the small actions which can lead to a great feud between the families. The title rape of the lock is ambiguous, requiring the reader to read the poem to understand it better. A hair lock is considered a feature of a beautiful woman, although Belinda had an untouched beauty. However, the Baron is attracted to the hair locks over other features and goes through many attempts to steal the lock. Ironically, all those in the party are aware of the intended theft, even the guards, but they all make little effort to stop the theft. This small action leads to an intense rivalry between two prominent families involving supernatural powers.
This attempt can be translated to how society fight over a few unworthy things with conflicts that can be easily prevented or solved. Of the three pieces of literature studied, they all use satire to ridicule bad vices in society. They ball show that society can solve some of the harmful vices in them but chooses to avoid them. On the contrary, they choose to make ridiculous solutions that make the situation worse, with few benefiting while others suffer. The two arts, rape of the lock and “The Lady’s Dressing Room”, address the plight of women in the society, which can equal to the theme depicted in all poems, the plight of the marginalized in a community. Further, the two poems show the beauty of women that can be deceitful while they are dirty from inside, physical and spiritually, where they can seek revenge despite looking soft and beautiful.
Deception
It is common for humans to use lies and deception to divert attention or avert a possible consequence. In other cases, deceptions and lies are used for personal gains, with these vices depicted in most societies. Although these evils are in societies presently, they have existed for a long with much historical literature formulated to depict how people have been over the period. The similar arts showing these acts include “The Country Wife” by William Wycherley, “The Lady’s Dressing Room” by Jonathan Swift, and “Fantomina” by Eliza Haywood.
The act “The Country Wife” by William Wycherley depict a series of deceit, with women being used to portray the deceiving elements and form of sexuality. Harry Horner is a deceitful man who is cunning and wants to make sexual advances to exploit unsuspecting people. Horner maliciously spreads the rumors of his barrenness to avert the suspicion when he is with another man’s wife. He intends to make sexual approaches to women without their husbands noticing. Sadly, he manages to deceive Sir Jasper Fidget, who allows him to be Lady Fidget’s chaperone because he believes Horner is sterile and cannot make sexual advances t his wife.
Secondly, moral decay, especially sexuality, is depicted when Sir Jasper Fidget leaves Lady Fidget with Horner. At first, the lad is against the husband leaving, but his stand changes when Horner explains that he is not impotent, as explained before. The change of mood shows that Lady Fidget is masquerading to like his husband but is ready to engage in infidelity. Further, Jack Pinchwife depicts his insecurity of wanting his wife to avoid the company of men who might end up having sexual affairs with her. Margery, the wife, is unhappy with her husband’s behavior and explains it to her in-law Alithea who gets sexual advances from Frank Harcourt despite being engaged to her boring husband, Sparkish. In act two, Margery is forced to dress like a young man so that he cannot get sexual advances when he remains behind for the party.
The literature “Fantomina” by Eliza Haywood depicts another series of deceptions throughout its plot. First, the Lady realizes how prostitutes earn men’s attention which he uses to attract his male, who she has always admired. However, Fantomina hides her identity since she does not want to be recognized by others. Then, when she manages to have a decent conversation with the man identified as Beauplaisir, he lies that he is engaged and makes a new arrangement to meet the man in the expensive inn the following day. For her, it was an attempt to make the man sees her as an established woman, but the man, out of lies, believed that the woman was a high-end prostitute. The woman repeatedly changes her identity to deceive the man until the truth is discovered, and she is served with consequences.
The scene is also depicted in the poem “The Lady’s Dressing Room” by Jonathan Swift. In this art, Strephon sneaks into her girlfriend’s dressing room which she is not allowed to by society. This act is the first act of deception, and she continues to explore the dressing room. He realizes how dirty the room is during his tour despite women spending long hours doing makeup. From his observation, he concludes that women are the dirtiest people despite the world considering them clean and beautiful. Their beauty is due to makeup, thus deceiving men to like and consider them clean as they expect them to be smart even in their private areas. The pretense is depicted in both Strephon, who pretends not to be visiting a woman’s dressing room, and women who spend much time creating an illusion of their image, which men will believe and consider them clean.
For the last three arts, women have been used as tools of deception, especially with their beauty. They all use women’s attractive looks to depict their theme of deception, which women used as the main deceivers. However, in some arts, such as “The Country Wife” by William Wycherley, men also use deceptive measures to gain sexual favors over women. While the other two arts, “The Lady’s Dressing Room” by Jonathan Swift and “Fantomina” by Eliza Haywood, women use their looks to deceive men who fall for their traps. All arts use imagery to depict a particular phenomenon or describe a person, especially their appearances and dress.
To sum up, literature has been part of the historical means of passing a message in a complicated or straightforward manner depending on the author’s intentions. All the messages were meant to depict various activities in the society with satire using irony, sarcasm, and exaggerations to pass messages that could not be passed directly. On the other hand, deception depicts how society can easily be led to lies that will affect them later. All the arts depicted that there are evils in societies that need to be corrected for a society to prosper.