Paper Topic:

Neoclassical and Romantic periods

Passive and indolent women can hardly be considered desirable to any man who is strong and has confidence in himself . In fact , John Stuart Mill indicates that his love for his wife stems from her ability to match him on an intellectual level . Indolence , too , is an evil that one hardly hears men enumerating as desirable in a mate . It is , rather , the industrious wife that is able to keep house and bear /rear children that non-feminists (indeed chauvinists ) usually tout as being the model of the perfect wife . As far as passivity

goes , though many persons (men especially ) may find themselves desiring such a wife , marriages may actually turn out to be quite dull if the woman performs in the role of an obsequious yes-man rather than cultivate the friendship and companionship which rests upon the possibility of individuality and democracy . A man can hardly be expected to have peace in a house where his wife fills the office of a slave . Such a dictatorship would need constant military-like surveillance to remain in tact , and therefore the husband would not feel safe in such a marriage . Therefore , passive indolent women do not make the best wives

Alexander Pope 's The Rape of the Lock ' represents a satire against the frivolities of the English culture of his time . The use of the crude and serious term rape ' for the mere removal of a lock of hair from the Belinda 's head underlines the methods satirized by Pope in which the society makes much of its own frivolous occurrences . The reaction that Belinda gives to the incident is also satirical , especially in the way Pope treats the incident . He likens it almost to the epic journey of Virgil through hell in Dante 's Inferno by describing the movement of Umbriel down through the Cave of Spleens where he goes to fetch vials of sighs and tears to bestow upon Belinda . The circumstance of these actions project an unwarranted importance upon them much in the same way that English preoccupation with appearances take on the importance that (in Pope 's estimation ) might have been better spent on more heroic efforts

In William Wordsworth 's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads ' he demonstrates his idealization of the classical methods employed in much medieval literature and art . He seeks to show that he is thoroughly opposed to the what he considered the spurious nature of the poetry being written in his day . One of the first things to which he objects is gaudiness and inane phraseology (Wordsworth , 244 . He betrays here in the initial paragraphs of his preface , that his standards retain some element of the classical . The simplicity that he advocates is a tenet of medieval classicism , which expresses itself in preference for straight lines in art and directness of speech in literature . Wordsworth , in expressing his ideas , writes that the dramatic parts of composition are defective in proportion as they [ .] are coloured by the diction of the poet 's own (260...

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