No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
Imperfect Enjoyment at Market Hill: Impotence, Desire, and Reform in Swift's Poems to Lady Acheson Judith C. Mueller Swift's Market Hill poems to Lady Acheson, and "An Epistle to a Lady" in particular, reveal important eighteenth-century British assumptions about gender and sexuality, and their relation to discourse. 1 Furthermore, these works reflect specifically on Swift's own sexuality and discourse, which often seem to deviate from the norm. Throughout the "Epistle," in shifting postures of resignation, rage, and glee, Swift portrays himself as impotent—as writer, moralist, and, implicitly, as sexual being. Although the "Swift" of the "Epistle" conforms to many eighteenth-century assumptions about impotent men, however, he treats his impotence as curiously advantageous, even potent, in relation to the Lady he addresses—a Lady he seeks to reform throughout the Market hill poems. The "Epistle," as well as the other poems to Lady Acheson, seem oblique attempts to protect and promote the phallic authority that Swift's own self-supposed unmanliness in these poems would appear to undermine. "An Epistle to a Lady" was apparently occasioned by Lady Acheson's request that Swift "write some verses upon her in the heroic style," but, in an artfully jumbled fashion, the poem also addresses Swift's concern about the public and political effects of his writing.2 It offers an unusual mix of satiric theory, political ranting, as well as Swift's explanation for why he must deny his friend's request. He insists he simply cannot write heroic verse, not only because he thinks it ineffective, but also because it goes against his "natural vein"; were he to attempt it, he claims, he would "make a figure scurvy." 3 Swift's discussion of his satire and his alleged stylistic incapacity in the "Epistle" bridges the poem's public and personal subject matter; he explains why the jocular and colloquial suit him better than a "lofty style" (230), whether he writes about Walpole or an intimate friend. In either case, Swift's writing seeks to reform, and throughout the poem, he asserts the greater reforming effectiveness of Horatian laughing satire over heroic verse or Juvenalian ranting. Nonetheless, Swift betrays unmistakable Juvenalian rage not far beneath his laughter.4 [End Page 51] In part, this rage is provoked by the frustrating impotence of Swift's satiric efforts; though he decries the folly and corruption of both public figures and friends, regrettably, "neither mends" (56). The poem's central fantasy offers some small compensation for that impotence: Swift dreams that, through ridicule, the "Epistle" might incite a "heedless, ignorant, forgetful" (7) Lady Acheson to accept his instruction, grow "wise" (286), and participate in "conversing, listening, thinking" (137) in the manner of a worthy, learned gentlemen: one bearing a striking resemblance to Swift himself. 5 This fantasy contrasts sharply with his actual and acknowledged failure as satirist to so transform powerful men—indeed, even to so transform the historical Lady Acheson. 6 Through a comparative analysis of the Market Hill poems, with special emphasis on the "Epistle," the first part of this essay examines and historicizes Swift's self-styled impotence. The second part discusses the consequences of his supposed incapacity for his Lady and her desires. As I will argue, while Swift disappoints the Lady's stated desire, he imposes his own desire upon her through a rhetorically coercive assumption of impotence. I The issue of impotence has frequently emerged in discussions of Swift's satire. Commentators have long noted "a curious blend of impotence and power" in Swift. 7 His need to mask his rage and launch indirect attacks on the powerful implies the satirist's actual, practical impotence. Yet, that the powerful attempt to suppress such attacks, as the "Epistle"'s history itself demonstrates, suggests the potency of satire; the poem caused considerable legal grief for those involved in its publication because of its jabs at Walpole. 8 Patrick Reilly has shown how Swift's frequent lament that his satire does little to reform a corrupt world points up the impotence of language itself and the folly of attempting to influence human behavior with words, though Reilly contends that Swift's satire is most potent, and most...
Loading…
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 42 citations exist upstream.
Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.