RE: “Gender Roles in She Stoops to Conquer”

Amy,
I can’t wait to discuss Swift’s poem ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’ with you. I think I read it slightly differently in terms of female subjectivity. You mention and undoubted chauvinism, but I wonder how you see Strephon being portrayed in the poem? Celia is certainly being microscopically analyzed, but does Strephon fare any better? I suppose I see him being made much more the dolt and the villain than Celia. What do you think — am I off base here?

RE: “Gender Roles in She Stoops to Conquer”

“Amy, Im curious to see what you would think regarding Neville and Hastings and Ms. Hardcastle? who would you consider in control of this situation? Because in my point of view I feel like Ms. Hardcastle is because she is the one who controls the jewels and Mr Hardcastle in the end is the now who actually gives away the fact that Tony actually is older than they think he is in Neville’s defense.. 

RE: “Culinary Dissonance at Mr Hardcastle’s House”

Hi Vicki – I enjoyed reading your insights about social hierarchy being identifiable in the “bill of fare” scene, especially your comment about the English’s mistrust of the French because I wonder if the suspicion can be correlated to gender.

RE: “Connecting the Dots”

Hi Chris – I like how you connect the past to the present via comedy and food, and I think that’s why I thought “The Lady’s Dressing Room” was not only amusing but also shocking. In most of my other English classes, I’ve almost only read canonical literature, and although Jonathan Swift is an academically accepted author, I think “appropriateness” i.e. politically correct, clean, modest, etc. is another stipulation of most of our assigned readings. With that in mind, even though I thought his poem was chauvinistically sexist (yes, that bad!), it was also hilarious and quite refreshing since it’s so vulgarly different from standard academic literature.