Weekly Response #3

Emily Schmitt

ENG 280 001

Natalie Phillips

9/11/12

Weekly Response #3

Quote; Bakhtin: “Not only parody in its narrow sense but all other forms of grotesque realism degrade, bring down to earth, turn their subjects into flesh.” (Bakhtin 688)

Quote; Swift: “On such a Point few Words are best, / And Strephon bids us guess the rest;/ But swears how damnably the Men lie, / In calling Celia sweet and cleanly.” (1. 15-18)

Question: What is it about making something seemingly beautiful or perfect seem ugly and real that is so funny to begin with?

            In the case of Swift’s poem “ The Lady’s Dressing Room”, what makes the degradation of women’s beauty so funny is the man who happens upon the evidence in the poem. The true source of the humor is not that women happen to be so ‘disgusting’, but that the man who happens upon this dressing room is truly surprised by what he finds there. In the case of something like a woman’s beauty men know, somewhere, that women aren’t just born looking like this, that there is work involved. But none of them consciously realize it until it is shoved in their faces. So for a man to be so aghast that a woman does indeed have many of the same faults in appearance that men do is quite ludicrous. It is the same with any other humor of this type. It’s the moment of realization, of the element of equality being brought to the fore, perhaps in a less than graceful manner that makes us laugh. What makes it funny is the realization that something so perfect has problems just like you do, and that thought they may be better at covering it up, they still have the problems, and maybe have a little less fortitude in admitting it is so.

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Rabelais and His World.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed.

            Julie Rikvin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 4. Print.

Swift, Jonathan. “The Lady’s Dressing Room”. 1732. Ed. Jack Lynch. Print.