"Mock-Epic" Literature

The mock-epic literary genre was especially prominent in 18th century literature. Central literary figures like Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift used the mock-epic, also known as the mock-heroic, for satirical purposes. The use of Classical forms, doctrines and imagery either to emphasise or deliberately blow trivial events out of proportion offered an efficient method for satirising and elaborating on the object of their critique. THis could by illustrated by the quite similar excerpts from The Rape of the Lock by Pope (1712), Swift's The Lady's Dressing Room (1714) and Description of a City Shower (1710).

The Rape of the Lock and The Lady's Dressing Room both describe aspects of the ladies' toilet by using Classical myths and literal methodology. Where Pope draws parallels between the rites of beauty and the rites of mass, Swift uses imagery from Greek and Roman mythology (such as the myth of Celia and Strephon and the myth of Pandora's box). While Pope draws further parallels between Belinda's toilet and the Classical armor of a hero, the entire mock-epic satirically expands the petty squabble of two Catholic families into an epic struggle in the manner of the Iliad.

Swift's Description of a City Shower evokes biblical, diluvian imagery to rain scorn upon what he considers to be a corrupt and doomed city. Political conflict, which was slowly tipping in Swift's disfavour, prompted him to make use of imagery from the Aeneid, drawing parallels between Aeneas and Dido and Tories and Whigs sheltering from the weather. Also, the use of biblical references, such as describing dust (the biblical material for the first man) as evil further marks this out as a mock-epic.

Sources:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume C: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, 8th edition, New York and London: Norton, 2006
Goring, Paul: Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, London: Continuum, 2008

Literary Characters - The Learned Lady and The Female Wit

To understand 18th century Britain's reaction towards the Learned Lady or the Female Wit, it is necessary to see how female sexuality and female knowledge was understood as linked.

The female wit of the Restoration stage had always incorporated an element of sexuality, as was natural for a character mirroring the rake. As the long 18th century rolled on, however, and attitudes to female sexuality changed so did those towards female wit. As female writers like Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood rose to prominence, satires suggested that having and flaunting knowledge would be the same as having and flaunting sexual knowledge. A woman writer, using the most public medium to "flaunt" her knowledge, was considered not only to "prostitute her mind" but also to appropriate male prerogatives. This made them unnatural women and unfit for the ideal role of a modest, virtuous and silent wife/mother.

Here it is important to distinguish the learned lady and the female wit from the other female characters. While these were characters of performance and sexual impropriety (qualities writers like Pope, Swift and Addison often ascribed to womanhood as a whole), the learned lady and the female wit neither put on a performance nor show off their sexualty.

Alexander Pope did not think highly of women of knowledge
and was subsequently targeted by women writers like Montagu and Burney

Although satires often linked them with sexuality, the real outrage of the display of feminine knowledge was the implication that women were capable of higher thought like men were. This was a perversion that went beyond mere authorship. Thus, this would be ridiculed e.g. with Charlotte Lennox' Lucy or Henry Fielding's Mrs. Slipslop struggling with difficult words and consepts they presume to master.

What became central to the discussion of female knowledge was education. Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters argue that whatever could be found to be lacking in women's knowledge was due to faults in their education. (This is also the chief obstacle in Lennox' The Female Quixote.). Elizabeth Carter and Frances Burney tried to show how learning and femininity could be combined without subjecting the learned lady or the female wit to the scorn of contemporary society. These writers represented a trend in women's right to aquisition and presentation of knowledge which were to change literature and society.

Source: Elaine M. McGirr, Eighteenth-Century Characters: A Guide to the Literature of the Age (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

Literary Characters - 17th to 18th Century Female Characters

In the restoration comedies, female characters were witty, beautiful and often the male characters' equals. As the centruries progressed, however, certain processes turned these independent characters into innocent victims and chaste wives which, in Alexander Pope's words "have no characters at all" (77). This post will trace this trajectory.

The Restoration saw the first female actresses entering the stage. Previously, female characters had been played by boys who often did not possess the same skills as their older counterparts (which might account for the comparatively few lines given female characters). With an actress-mad king (whose most famous mistress was the actress Nell Gwynn) and the rise of the restoration comedy, female characters on stage would equal male ones in wit and design to the extent of wearing breeches. (So called "breeches parts" would not only show off actresses' legs, but also comment on the boys playing female roles earlier on.). This equality, finding precedents in Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing, could be seen in plays like John Dryden's Secret Love and Marriage á la Mode and William Wycherley's The Country Wife.

Nell Gwynn

With female characters claiming more influence in new dramatic genres it was inevitable that they should enter the formerly male dominated tragedy. Nicholas Rowe's "she-tragedies", like The Fair Penitent and The Tragedy of Jane Shore turned the tide for the female character. In these tragedies, the female character would regret and ripe the results of her Restoration exuberance and women would increasingly be portrayed as victims, as witnessed in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa which relies heavily on Rowe. With the decline of the rake came the decline of its female counterpart. Both Lovelace and Clarissa dies, preparing the ground for the female character who has learned.

Charlotte Lennox' The Female Quixote is the arena in which the several female roles are sorted. The independent heroin of her own romance, Arabella, is at odds with or even above society throughout the novel. At the end, however, after encountering a fallen woman (the Country Maid Miss Groves), the Town Lady Miss Glanville, a cross-dressing Tommy prositute, the Learned Lady (the Countess) and being lectured by a clergyman, she becomes the ideal 18th century heroine. The submissive, passive and chaste wife or victim.

Source: Elaine M. McGirr, Eighteenth-Century Characters: A Guide to the Literature of the Age (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)