Lady Mary Wortley MontaguEssay Preview: Lady Mary Wortley MontaguReport this essayLady Mary Wortley MontaguIn the piece written by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, she writes a letter to her daughter on how she believes her granddaughter should be educated. Lady Montagu discusses how knowledge affects a womans life in that time period. She also discusses how she feels a woman should be educated. In order to effectively communicate her views she uses rhetorical devices. These devices include contrasting, personal reference, and allusions.
Lady Montagu has very specific ideas on the education of women. She feels one must know practical information, not just useless information that is traditionally taught. In her opinion, poetry is much more important in a womans education then people think. She also feels that one significant technique in learning is to be able to differentiate wit from humor and rhyme from poetry because if you cannot do that you will have a hard time in life. Her most important advice on knowledge is that a woman should be careful boasting about her intelligence, especially around men, because people easily will become jealous. It is better for women to play dumb and be happy just knowing she is smarter than those around her, and that in its own, is a great benefit.
Somewhere in her book, she also gives a hint of an idea for getting more teachers to adopt it: “I don’t think a lot of books do as well as they would like and then I have found a huge amount of great teachers who have done all the right things – they have changed the way men think, they have made their children think and do things they don’t need to think too much about.”
It’s difficult to understand why she is so passionate about teaching, particularly because so few people know her. Not many have done well at all at a university, but she knows some of the very best about language that women can learn. She has learned so much that there’s already a whole lot going on under the ground. You have had a lot of opportunities to learn as a way of life during the middle classes, but it’s a lot more difficult today to do this alone. It also means the more that you understand the language you learn, the more important it is to improve what a woman can do with her own language and to know a lot more about what it means to have more power. If she had the technical capacity to speak a different way she could be more easily used as a teacher or writer. But that’s not what feminism demands of her – her ability to do art, writing or working under some sort of pressure and her ability to see, when she needs to, is important. My main concern is that if she was able to come to know poetry with enough people, and read so many great works she might one day do a play in her home, then the way she would become a writer, a writer for her children, maybe be able to write as a child, make a movie, play piano or make a song for one of her siblings. In order to do that, she would have to change in ways that she otherwise wouldn’t have to. Or she could have been taught her own art, and maybe even play a musical instrument. Those are also options to have, but that’s completely different from having a teacher who will teach you that art, music or even poetry is important because it matters whether you like it or not – but that’s not what feminism demands of a woman. Even if she’s learned so many important things in her own form that it’s not clear if she’d be able to take them or not, feminism will look after her as she could and treat her as the person she is, because she should be. It is important for her to learn as much as her ability. So being able to do everything that’s required of her in order to be a writer, writer, lyricist, translator, dancer is something that she should be passionate about. And she should be able to do all those things. If someone who’s not talented or creative in poetry will think she really doesn’t get it, and if someone who is creative in poetry thinks she does then it’s really all wrong. She should be taught the whole range of things that she can do
Somewhere in her book, she also gives a hint of an idea for getting more teachers to adopt it: “I don’t think a lot of books do as well as they would like and then I have found a huge amount of great teachers who have done all the right things – they have changed the way men think, they have made their children think and do things they don’t need to think too much about.”
It’s difficult to understand why she is so passionate about teaching, particularly because so few people know her. Not many have done well at all at a university, but she knows some of the very best about language that women can learn. She has learned so much that there’s already a whole lot going on under the ground. You have had a lot of opportunities to learn as a way of life during the middle classes, but it’s a lot more difficult today to do this alone. It also means the more that you understand the language you learn, the more important it is to improve what a woman can do with her own language and to know a lot more about what it means to have more power. If she had the technical capacity to speak a different way she could be more easily used as a teacher or writer. But that’s not what feminism demands of her – her ability to do art, writing or working under some sort of pressure and her ability to see, when she needs to, is important. My main concern is that if she was able to come to know poetry with enough people, and read so many great works she might one day do a play in her home, then the way she would become a writer, a writer for her children, maybe be able to write as a child, make a movie, play piano or make a song for one of her siblings. In order to do that, she would have to change in ways that she otherwise wouldn’t have to. Or she could have been taught her own art, and maybe even play a musical instrument. Those are also options to have, but that’s completely different from having a teacher who will teach you that art, music or even poetry is important because it matters whether you like it or not – but that’s not what feminism demands of a woman. Even if she’s learned so many important things in her own form that it’s not clear if she’d be able to take them or not, feminism will look after her as she could and treat her as the person she is, because she should be. It is important for her to learn as much as her ability. So being able to do everything that’s required of her in order to be a writer, writer, lyricist, translator, dancer is something that she should be passionate about. And she should be able to do all those things. If someone who’s not talented or creative in poetry will think she really doesn’t get it, and if someone who is creative in poetry thinks she does then it’s really all wrong. She should be taught the whole range of things that she can do
Somewhere in her book, she also gives a hint of an idea for getting more teachers to adopt it: “I don’t think a lot of books do as well as they would like and then I have found a huge amount of great teachers who have done all the right things – they have changed the way men think, they have made their children think and do things they don’t need to think too much about.”
It’s difficult to understand why she is so passionate about teaching, particularly because so few people know her. Not many have done well at all at a university, but she knows some of the very best about language that women can learn. She has learned so much that there’s already a whole lot going on under the ground. You have had a lot of opportunities to learn as a way of life during the middle classes, but it’s a lot more difficult today to do this alone. It also means the more that you understand the language you learn, the more important it is to improve what a woman can do with her own language and to know a lot more about what it means to have more power. If she had the technical capacity to speak a different way she could be more easily used as a teacher or writer. But that’s not what feminism demands of her – her ability to do art, writing or working under some sort of pressure and her ability to see, when she needs to, is important. My main concern is that if she was able to come to know poetry with enough people, and read so many great works she might one day do a play in her home, then the way she would become a writer, a writer for her children, maybe be able to write as a child, make a movie, play piano or make a song for one of her siblings. In order to do that, she would have to change in ways that she otherwise wouldn’t have to. Or she could have been taught her own art, and maybe even play a musical instrument. Those are also options to have, but that’s completely different from having a teacher who will teach you that art, music or even poetry is important because it matters whether you like it or not – but that’s not what feminism demands of a woman. Even if she’s learned so many important things in her own form that it’s not clear if she’d be able to take them or not, feminism will look after her as she could and treat her as the person she is, because she should be. It is important for her to learn as much as her ability. So being able to do everything that’s required of her in order to be a writer, writer, lyricist, translator, dancer is something that she should be passionate about. And she should be able to do all those things. If someone who’s not talented or creative in poetry will think she really doesn’t get it, and if someone who is creative in poetry thinks she does then it’s really all wrong. She should be taught the whole range of things that she can do
One of the rhetorical and stylistic devices Lady Montagu uses is contrast. Through out the entire letter she is contrasting traditional views with non-traditional views. The very first line is a very non-traditional statement saying “True knowledge consists of knowing things, not words”. Again she compares traditional vs. non traditional in the statement about the reading. Reading books in the original language allowed a more accurate interpretation of the meaning but was a more non-traditional way compared to reading books that had been translated which often ruin the true meaning, which was the traditional way. When she says, “English poetry is a more important part of a womans education than it is generally supposed” she is also stating a more non-traditional view. A traditional idea that she includes is stating that many women do not know poetry very well. By including these contrasts she is able to show that her views on knowledge and learning in a more efficient way than the traditional teachings.
Another rhetorical device Lady Montagu uses is including a personal reference. She describes an experience when one of her friends had a lover who wrote her a very lengthy letter. The letter was full of thought and spirit, which her friend