Swifts Bashful Muse: A Critique of A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed - Book Report/Review Example

Swift's Bashful Muse: A Critique of 'A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed' 'A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed' by Jonathan Swift brings together the major social and aesthetic concerns that were typical of the Augustan period and the poet's characteristic misanthropy shaped by a life of political disillusionment, social isolation and exile. Although written in a period after the reign of Charles II, and well into the time of Queen Anne, the poem is expressively Augustan in spirit. Swift the disillusioned misanthropist revisits the aesthetic and social concerns of an earlier generation of poets like Pope and Dryden to expose and unravel the hypocrisies of his age. The stripping down of the Drury Lane prostitute to the bare essentials becomes a trope for a virtual stripping of the social double standards. A satiric representation of the age was one of the common literary practices of the Augustan age. The Restoration of Charles II in the British throne ushered in an age of simultaneous hope and skepticism. The hope was imminent in the writings of all the major literary figures of the time, released from the oppression on literary and aesthetic practices that continued for more than a decade under the Puritan rule with Oliver Cromwell at the helm. The artistic outburst that characterized the Restoration at the same time brought about a certain degree of elitism in English society. The focus of all literary, social and aesthetic endeavors was shifted from the wide ranging Humanism of the previous era towards a strict following of 'manners' as defined by a narrower circle of gentry that was centered around the court. (Blamires, Page: 160) Manners: A Question of Appearance and Reality 'Manner' and the way it was defined by a close circle of affluent elite became a central concern in the philosophical and social discourses of the Augustan age. The central concern in dealing with 'manners' as one of the major philosophical and moral questions of the Augustan age, is related to the question of appearance and reality. It was imperative that in an age with the light of royal favor shining bright on the people who were either directly or passively associated with the court, there would be a rush of people who would vouch for the being a part of the nobility and the royalty in Europe. At the same time, the major English and Irish philosophers like Burke, Hutchinson and Locke were raising up the question of nurture along with nature for the attainment of humanity at its fullest. The question of 'manners' - a clear marker of nurture and education - thus started to take a very eminent position in the discourse of Augustan England. Thus class, education and money became entangled as a determining set of factors in defining the status of an individual in defining his social position, expressed through 'manners'. (Baugh, Page: 824) All plays and poems of the Augustan period, in one way or another, approach the question of appearance and reality. The dichotomy between the two became one of the most significant tropes for literature in the post-Restoration period. It is no surprise that in a milieu so obsessed with the question of appearance and reality, art forms like comedy and satire thrived. Augustan satire was largely devoted to this question of appearance and reality, because under the lighthearted veneer of these satires reside the more serious social issues of self-knowledge that derives its life force from a proper understanding and knowledge of the society that one finds around oneself. Much of the comic force of Augustan satires ultimately derives from the exposure of this contradiction, the contrast between what appears and what 'is'. Swift's poem is very much an exercise within this prime concern of the age. The exposition of the prostitute, as she sheds her various ornaments and endowments is an exposition of the hypocrisy of the age. The poem thus appeals and operates at two different levels. The first level is a movement from a microscosmic movement from appearance to reality, where the real 'ugly' Corinna is exposed under her pretty 'appearance'. At a deeper level, though, it exposes a society which is given to judgment of character and human beings on the basis of pretty appearance, ignoring the ugly 'reality' that lies beneath. Another idea, related to the question of appearance and reality, which Swift amply presents in this poem is a sense of questioning the romantic ideals of the age before him. Love as a virtue was being questioned in the largely skeptic environment of the post Restoration period. Both class and money were becoming determining factors in judging love, and love was brought down considerably from its high pedestal of the ideal. This skepticism about love is best exemplified in the system of marriage a la mode that Fielding, a few decades later, was criticizing heavily in his works. Vanity and Exposure: The Undressing of Corinna The vanity of womankind was a common motif for the exposure of the social hypocrisies in the period following Restoration. The use of make-up and other endorsements as ways to hide the true 'self', and 'beauty' - which following Burke was integrally associated to the question of 'truth' - was used by almost all major poets of the Augustan age. Swift had precedence in Pope, whose use of unguents, perfumes and powders as modes to dress up and transform the natural beauty of womankind became a standard following the magnificent dressing-table scene of Belinda in 'Rape of the Lock'. However, in contrast to Pope's dressing up, what Swift presents is a stripping down. Both Pope and Swift have been accused of misanthropic tendencies of the highest order. However, what we as literary critics appreciate and understand today is their disgust on a society that was growing increasingly vain, increasingly committed towards manners and the trappings of accepted behavior rather than a cultivation of the truth of humankind. (Mandell, Page: 21) The very application of the heroic couplet by Swift, in the tradition of Pope and Dryden is significant in this respect. Heroic couplet, it has been variously observed, is the best prosodic tool to carry the rhetorical tool of the bathos, and commonly featured in all forms of poetry between the Reformation and the onset of the pre-Romantics. The unrhymed iambic (heroic meter) has traditionally been the vehicle for heroic poetry, following a tradition that dates back to Homer, Virgil and used to fantastic effect by Milton in his English epics. The best of Elizabethan poetry has been composed in blank verse, iambic lines which may or may not rhyme, and in most intense moments they usually do not. The very application of the iambic proposes heroism: a virtue that is integrally linked with a purity of emotion, irrespective of how overstrained and extreme that emotion is. Heroism, in fact, is in some way about the unbending and almost aggressive application of a particular emotion that overwhelms socially and psychologically acceptable limits. (Dickinson, Page: 330) However, by using a rhyme scheme within the Iambic immediately takes away the promised heroism, turning the literary heroic to the contrived and stylized mock-heroic: a promise of heroism unfulfilled, dissociation between emotion and action, a cleavage between truth and appearance - the very concern of the Restoration poets. (Blamiers 162) Similarly, the title of the poem portends a promise that is not fulfilled. The Restoration poets in England have been the most Classical in spirit of all poetic schools. Their references to the Latin literature of Ovid, Ariosto and Cicero were almost compulsive. It is expressed in the very naming of the age as 'Augustan', fashioned after Caesar Augustus. The title of the poem is a reference to the nymphs, mythical beautiful creatures that have a strong presence in Classical literature. The clear pastoral promise of the title 'A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed' is a direct allusion to the pastorals of Ariosto. Swift had a solid grounding and a lasting fascination for the formal pastorals of the Classical times. At the same time, he was acutely conscious of the impossibility of the application of the same poetic ideals in his own times. For him, as it would be for Eliot two centuries later, the absolute dissociation between reality and appearance in his times was in complete antithesis to the purity of the Classical age, where action and emotion was united as a single and continuous entity. The Nymph, we find out, is Carrina, a prostitute who operates from Drury Lane and Covent Garden, two highly notorious localities in eighteenth century England. From such a point of departure, we find Swift completely overturn the pastoral types and present us a picture of moral and physical depravity that is characteristic of the rather caustic Swift in the later stage of his career. It must be remembered that the poem was written by Swift as an exile in the period between 1714 and 1741. His disillusionment with mankind in general is easily manifest in the poem. The particular charm of the poem engenders from the clever juxtaposition of classical tropes with the common language or slang terms that were common in eighteenth century London. (Rosenthal, Page: 42) Let us, for the purpose of convenience, take a look at the following early lines of the poem: No drunken Rake to pick her up, No Cellar where on Tick to sup; Returning at the Midnight Hour; Four Stories climbing to her Bow'r; Then, seated on a three-legg'd Chair Takes off her artificial Hair. (Pope 533) These first few lines clearly lay out the rhetorical plan of the entire poem. The prosody is strict heroic couplet written with a kind of no-nonsense straightforwardness that is almost typical of Swift. Swift's heroic couplet may not be as masterful as Swift, not as scathing as Dryden, but it is more direct in its statement than both his predecessors. As a poet, Swift is inferior to both, but as a reformer and pamphleteer, Swift is second to none in the boldness of the presentation of his social message. His directness and 'unpoeticness' here is conducive rather than detrimental to his poetic agenda, giving the poem a kind of unprecedented force. Coming back to the emphases in the above section, we find that Swift cleverly juxtaposes Classical allusions with London slang terms, always creating a pattern of expectation and anti-climax: rake, a disorderly and gay man according to Johnson's definition and tick, meaning credit is immediately followed by a reference to the highly poetic possibility of the 'midnight hour', promising consummation of love. That is again followed by a reference to the two-stories - an image that evokes dingy and crowded establishments of the London underworld as opposed to the open and idyllic setting of the Latin pastorals, which is followed by a word as stylized and as literary as 'bow'r': loaded with literary significance. The entire section thus moves towards a final bathos which happens in the final act of taking off of the artificial hair. (Morgan, Page: 417) This pattern is discreetly followed in every act of disrobing that follows: taking off the eye-brows, plumpers, teeth, rags, bodices, bolsters, shankers and finally make-up from her face. The graphic quality of the descriptions almost verge towards the scatological and the grotesque: a device cleverly employed to counter the almost equally heightened beauty of the beloved in traditional love poetry. One should remember that the subtitle of the poem is the rather tongue in cheek , which makes it clear that the poem is meant to serve at least partially as a caveat, with women in particular in mind, and human beings in general: nothing 'is' as they 'appear'. If the romantic pastorals heighten human beauty to height that is almost dehumanizing the subject, then the opposite should also reach the very depths of ugliness that is equally dehumanized. The graphic description of every body part with almost a kind of loving affection is a direct reference to the traditional description of the beloved's beauty in traditional pastoral and romantic poetry: Her Shankers, Issues, running Sores, Effects of many a sad Disaster; And then to each applies a Plaister. (30-33) These lines, among many others, are doubly significant because they represent a physical deformity that is integrally connected to the moral depravity of the city 'Nymph'. This introduction of the moral element gives a particular depth to this otherwise light-hearted work intended to be a warning for city people not to be gulled by feminine beauty. For Swift, following Classical philosophy, inner or moral wholesomeness is the source of physical well being. One can here refer that in all forms of plastic arts of the Classical age, physical perfection has been traditionally used as a representation of inner and moral perfection. Following the same precept, it is imperative that moral depravity and inner ugliness will be represented in physical ugliness - an ugliness that can at times be covered by the application of external tools but remains ugly inside: the ugly reality behind pretty appearance. (Scott, Page: 463) Through such a satiric exposition of the feminine self, Swift presents a solid critic of an age where reality has surrendered to appearance, and there has been a deterioration of truth to seemingness, manners to humanity and love to lust. The second last stanza starting from line 65 becomes more of a social critique rather than a critique of Corinna herself: it is an age where the Classical muse cannot be evoked but with a shade of irony. With the purity of age gone, the beauty from art is fled too. The wholesomeness of the human self is now dismembered and broken into separate constituent parts, broken into intention and expression, action and emotion, truth and appearance. The dismemberment and cleavage is wonderfully brought forward in the lines: The Nymph, tho' in this mangled Plight, Must ev'ry Morn her Limbs unite But how shall I describe her Arts To recollect the scatter'd Parts The bashful Muse will never bear In such a Scene to interfere. (65 - 72) It can thus be concluded that 'A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed' is a wonderful exposition of the major social and philosophical concerns of Swift's age. Swift's strong sense of social reform, disillusionment with the state of affairs of which he was not the least of sufferers and scathing anti-romanticism are brought to the fore by this wonderful piece of poetry in the Augustan style, making it one of the most representative poems of the age. Works Cited: 1. Swift, Jonathan. Major Works: Major Works by Jonathan Swift. Contributor Angus Ross, David Woolley. OUP: 2003. 2. Blamier, Harry. A Short History of English Literature. Routledge: 1985. 3. Scott, Walter. The Works of Jonathan Swift. Harvard University Press. 2008. 4. Dickinson, H.T. A Companion to Eighteenth-century Britain. Blackwell Publishing. 2002. 5. Mandell, Laura. Misogynous Economies: The Business of Literature in Eighteenth-century Britain. University Press of Kentucky. 1999. 6. Rosenthal, Laura Jean. Infamous Commerce: Prostitution in Eighteenth-century British Literature and Culture. Cornell University Press. 2006. 7. Morgan, Kenneth O. The Oxford History of Britain. Oxford University Press. 2001. 8. Baugh, Croll; George Wiley Sherburn; George Sherburn; Albert C Baugh; Donald F Bond. A Literary History of England. Routledge. 2004. Read More