“To the Ladies”, written by Lady Mary Chudleigh, is a poem that expresses feminism, and gives women a taste of how they would be treated in a marriage. Chudleigh displays this poem as a warning to women who are not married yet, as she regrets getting married. She uses such words that compares to slavery, and negative attitudes toward future wives to warn them. Back in this time period when the poem was published in 1703, women were known as property of men and you won’t have an opinion or a say so. The poem expresses a life of a naïve woman, who is bound to marriage by God, and she cannot break the nuptial contract. She must fear her husband and listen to his every command. “Wife and servant are the same/ But only differ in the name” (1-2). She exhibits affinity between a wife and a servant by using a metaphor. The title of being a wife is the only thing that makes them different. In line one when the speaker compares the wife to a servant, you think of a slave that is a property of a powerful man, and does all …show more content…
When the speaker says a husband “with the power, has all the wit” (20), she implies that the husband has all the powers and can make her do anything he wants her to do. “Then shun, oh! Shun that wretched state/and all the fawning flatterers hate” (21-22). Shun means to get rejected or ignored. She tries to ignore all the affections that she doesn’t want from her husband. As the poem comes to an end the speaker talks to the ladies from an experience that if you do such and such, it would make your more wiser and happier. A woman must remember her importance and cherish her values as a strong individual. “Value yourselves, and men despises/ you must be proud, if you’ll be wise” (23-24). She ends the poem with a strong inspirational opinion, that even if a man breaks you down and does not value you, you have to value yourself, and must be proud of yourself, and for that you will be