We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected]
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Mary Evelyn’s Mundus Muliebris: Or, the Ladies Dressing Room Unlock’d, and her Toilette Spread was written before 1685 and published anonymously in 1690. The poem, accompanied by a preface and a dictionary of “hard and foreign names, and Terms of the Art Cosmetick,” aroused enough interest to require a second issue and a second edition within a year, followed by yet another edition in 1700. Significant textual evidence supports the claim that later male satirists borrowed without acknowledgement from her work. Further, significant evidence from the Evelyn family papers supports the claim that the teenage author, eulogized by her father John Evelyn as exceptional in her piety, demurred from his angelic portrayal. Her published poem about an imaginary dressing room, in combination with unpublished documents found in her actual dressing room, and in contrast to male-authored works that borrowed from her, establishes a perspective on her single but significant contribution to the history of women and satire. Mundus Muliebris ridicules the marriage marketplace and its effects on women’s bodies and minds. Exposed to a prospective husband, the dressing room’s lavish space documents women’s involvement in that marketplace, in all its glittering, dehumanizing, disturbing, and at times disgusting detail.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.