The Lady's Dressing Room

"The Lady's Dressing Room" was rather disgusting but humorous. This poem made me research exactly what Pandora's box was and like Celia's box it contained some ill stuff in it. But the history of the box is "Pandora had been given a large jar and instruction by Zeus to keep it closed, but she had also been given the gift of curiosity, and ultimately opened it. When she opened it, all of the evils, ills, diseases, and burdensome labor that mankind had not known previously, escaped from the jar, but it is said, that at the very bottom of her box, there lay hope" (wikipedia.org). Therefore, the box contained Celia's shit is rather funny because like the Pandora's box it contained something rather awful. Swift's poem discusses how this goddess who seems so lady like is in fact not: "But swears how damnably the men lie, In calling Celia sweet and cleanly" (lines 17 and 18). The poem describes the contents in the dressing room: "Filled up with dirt so closely fixed/ No brush could force a way betwixt/ A paste of composition rare/ Sweat, dandruff, powder, lead, and hair" (lines 21-24). And this Stephon is determined to expose that she is not the goddess that she portrays herself to be. So his curiosity run wild just like Pandora's and he finds shit in her box: "Thus finishing his grand survey/ The swain disgusted slunk away/ Repeating in his amorous fits/ Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia, shits!" (lines 115-118). I wonder this: Montagu did not like Swift so does that mean that Swift did not like Mantagu? Because if so then perhaps Swift is talking indirectly about Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and how she may act so high and mighty that perhaps she is just like Celia and not at all.