There were two things that I loved about Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room." First, I found it absolutely hilarious. The line "Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!" cracked me up mainly because there are few guys I know who are not in denial of this fact and it made me realize that men's intentional ignorance of women's gastro-intestinal functions is not a recent phenomenon. On a less literal level, I loved this poem because each time I read it I found a new way to interpret it. There are so many different ways the poem can be analyzed and reanalyzed that, for lack of a better analogy, its like rearranging furniture: all of the same pieces are there but how you choose to organize them in the room can create a drastically different impression. Is it making a statement about vanity? What about a lesson in minding your own business? No, maybe its a warning that things aren't always as they seem. Perhaps its a possible commentary on hope or a critique of women: are we all full of shit? And of course there are the obvious sexual undertones- is her dressing room really his undressing of her? More than likely, its all of these and then some. What intrigued me most when I read it was trying to decide if it was feminst or anti-feminist. When I first read it, it reminded me a lot of Hamlet accusing Ophelia and all women for lying and contributing to the ills of society by painting their faces. The poem appeared to be like a blatant attack on women and their supposed lack of any redeeming qualities and the constant alliteration made it seem like the narrator had a bad taste in his mouth. But when I read it again, it was almost sarcastic and mocking of men, not women. When Strephon, through his discovery of her bodily excrement, essentially realizes that women are human just like men, he throws a fit. The narrator says that Vengeance "punish'd Strephon for his peeping," which I took to mean that he was punished in the sense that because the thought of a woman being equal to men on any level so disgusted him, he was prevented from ever receiving and appreciating the beauty that is a woman. The joke was on Strephon as the narrator seems to indicate in the last few lines because if he merely "held his nose" he would see that "such gaudy Tulips rais'd from Dung." I'm not really sure what message he is really trying to convey here but regardless, this poem is definitely my favorite that we have read this semester.