Mary Leapor – “An Epistle to a Lady”

“An Epistle to a Lady” (Leapor’s friend and patron Bridget Freemantle) is a rather depressing poem by a very depressed person. She says that the addressee of the poem strives in vain to make Mira (Leapor) thrive, because she was born under a bad star, namely under the influence of Saturn. The books she reads do not bring her any comfort but rather make her more dejected. When she is asleep, she dreams about having money, books and pictures, but then the clock rings and she is back to sweeping her kitchen and mending her clothes. Anyway, as she feels sick, she finds  the things she used to like less and less enjoyable, but she hopes at least the pleasure of friendship will be the last to go. She remembers the death of her mother, who died peacefully, with her only care in the world being her daughter’s well-being. She doesn’t wish to stretch out her life as she sees nothing good in her future. She hopes to die resigned and finds some strange comfort in the thought that on the same day when she dies, thousands of people around the world will die as well.

Mary Leapor – “An Essay on Woman”

Mary Leapor, as a working-class writer, introduces an element of intersectionality in the section on women’s writing. She was a daughter of a gardener, who worked most of her adult life in various country manors as a servant or a cook. At some point, she was befriended by the daughter of a retired Oxford don, who liked her poetry and tried to publish it. But before she achieved it, Leapor, whose health was always not very good, was finished off by measles. On the other hand, maybe this early death (we all know how album sales spike after an artist dies) coupled with the novelty of “untutored country girl writing poetry” did help to get the whopping six hundred subscribers for Leapor’s first volume of poetry – more than Pope had for the first edition of his translation of The Iliad! (Susbscriptions were like the 18th-c. Kickstarter plans, when readers agreed to advance the money to the writer and get the book later. Having the names of esteemed literary figures or aristocrats on the list of the subscribers, which was attached to the book, also could help its sales to non-subscribing readers.)

In this poem, written like everything else in the 18th c. in rhyming couplets, Leapor’s main point is that women are screwed, no matter what their social standing is. Wife is a slave, maiden is neglected, the pretty ones are betrayed, and the ugly ones despised. But if a woman happens to be wealthy, all men perceive her as beautiful – until she gets married. What’s the point of having advantages? “Sylvia”, who is beautiful, is neglected by her husband. “Pamphilia”, who is wise, is disliked by women and feared by men. And “Cornelia”, who is rich, is also stingy and finds no joy in her wealth, nor does she share it with anyone. But Leapor implores Muses to give “Mira” (her nickname for herself) to give her some of this wealth which could buy her “indolence and ease”, while she also would like to have “a friend to please”. The poem ends with reiterating the claim that no matter what the woman is, admired or despised, she is still ‘a slave at large”.