"This Elegant Science": Satire and Sociability in Mary Evelyn's Mundus Muliebris, or the Ladies Dressing-Room Unlock'd (1690)

Abstract

Written by Mary Evelyn and published posthumously by her father John Evelyn, the Mundus Muliebris, or The Ladies Dressing-Room Unlock’d (1690) consists of three parts: a preface written by John Evelyn, a poem “A Voyage to Marryland; or, the Ladies Dressing-Room,” and a word list, “The Fop-Dictionary: or, an Alphabetical Catalogue of the Hard and Foreign Names, and Terms of the Art Cosmetic.” Recent criticism has glossed the Mundus Muliebris (Phillipy, 2006; Chico 2005). Chico’s study in particular finds the poem “limited to particularities”; moreover, she concludes, “[t]here is no narrative…or a change of topic” (105). The Mundus Muliebris is indeed a book abounding in material particularities and moments of narrative fallibility; however, what seems to be a fatal limitation is, in fact, the chief strength of the text. This dissertation will argue that the poem and dictionary were written by Mary Evelyn, with the addition of some recognizable passages by John Evelyn. It will also seek to show that there is a discernable narrative structure in the Mundus Muliebris featuring subtle but crucial changes in topic, tone, voice, mood, and other figures, both rhetorical (plot) and poetic (structure). These set it apart from dressing-room satires — Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (1712); Swift’s The Lady’s Dressing-Room (1732) — and suggest its resonances with other generic modes including the didacticism of the conduct manual and the female agency of the conte de fées. By examining the book’s content through a close reading and book history approaches, situating the text within Martz’s structure of metaphysical poetry and narrative theory’s discussion of time and space, and attending to its context via new historicist and cultural materialist techniques as well as structuralist approaches, we will see that the Mundus Muliebris is productive of a range of topics relating to the narrative and the larger fields of poetics, economics, and science.