Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s “Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband” – a Feminist Poem

Abstract

Although it is anachronistic to speak of feminism in the early eighteenth-century, the paper reads Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s 1724 heroic epistle “Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband” as a feminist poem. It stands as an expression of her progressive views on women and a testimony to the deep-rootedness of gender-based double standards, particularly when it comes to sexuality and sexual freedom. The paper will show how Montagu breaks the conventions of the form of heroic epistle, which is typically a passionate lament of an abandoned woman directed to her lover, to construct multi-layered meanings. It is both a poem about a failed marriage of the Yonges and a public appeal to reject social and cultural double standards that subjugate women. The poem is read in the context of Montagu’s life and her letters from Turkey in order to affirm Montagu’s position as one of the key progressive, feminist voices of her time.