We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2009
For, what was ever understood
By Human Kind, but Flesh and Blood?
“A Receipt to Restore Stella's Youth,” (Poems, II, pp. 758–60, lines 35–6)It could have been his dripping nose, “the first time I ever got a new cold before the old one was going,” or it could have been the more pressing uncertainties of the Tory ministry, but in spite of Christmas, Swift sounds less than charitable in his estimation of post-partum joys:
I was to see lady —, who is just up after lying-in; and the ugliest sight I have seen, pale, dead, old and yellow for want of her paint. She has turned my stomach. But she will soon be painted, and a beauty again.
(JS, p. 443)Lady — might possibly be Lady Pembroke, around forty-three years of age, but her situation more than her identity is the issue, for her bare corporeality offends. Paint, Swift suggests, can cover over her flaws, turning her into a “beauty” once again, but beauty so restored reveals itself to be rotten, the (dead) body beneath the varnish always retaining a certain stench.
Notable here is the neutrality, the flatness of the description. Swift is perfectly capable of lashing feminine offenders for any number of vices he longs to root out.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
