Critical Review of 'Sex, Smallpox and Seraglios: a Monument to Lady Montagu'

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Sex, smallpox and seraglios: a monument to

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Frith's article entitled Sex, smallpox and seraglios: a monument to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was written in order to show the way life was for a woman in the eighteenth century. Her article illustrates what the role of men and women were during the 18th century. Furthermore, it shows what happened to women when they broke through these societal restrictions. There were three underlying points in Frith's article, she mainly focused on; the restrictions that women had in society, the extreme importance of beauty in western society and the societal differences between western society and eastern society regarding women. Frith is also trying to show that our world has not changed that much in the years since Montagu was alive, and that in the West women are still placed below men in many job situations and beauty is still extremely highly regarded. In the East, the world has changed even less in some ways, where many of the customs from the 18th century are still very predominantly practiced.

The article starts off looking at the limitations and duties of a woman in the 18th century from the point of view of a man. Women were not permitted to do many professions such as law, economics or science related; these professions were reserved for men. Women were meant to be "the object of knowledge rather than its producer" (Frith 1994, 101) meaning that women were not to be educated but were to only of their responsibilities for pleasing a man, staying beautiful, and staying virtuous. Women were believed to be inferior intellectually and were therefore not to be educated and were basically forced to marry if they wished a decent life. However, Montagu feuded t...

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...ted based on their physical appearance and not their education, beliefs, or actions. In the East it is a similar situation, women still wear veils to cover themselves which as stated earlier grants them freedom from persecution from other women because they are all equal no matter what their physical appearance. Similarly, it is still permitted for men in the Arab world to take more than one wife, which is still socially unacceptable and illegal in most parts of the West. Frith's essay shows that even with medical advancements social constraints will determine the way people are received and treated in life.

Works Cited

1) Frith, Wendy, "Sex, smallpox and seraglios: a monument to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu," Femininity and Masculinity in the Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture ed. Gill Perry and Michael Rossington, (Manchester University Press, 1994), 99-122.

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