Anne Ingram

1696 - 1764

About the Author:

     Anne Ingram life is from 1696 to 1764.  She is known by several different names.  She is Viscountess Irwin, aka Anne Howard and Anne Douglas.  Lady Anne Douglas was raised on the Yorkshire estate of ther father third Earl of Carlisle.  In 1732 she paid tribute to him in a poem called Castle Howard.  In 1717 she married Richard Ingram, Fifth Viscount Irwin.  The Viscount died four years later in 1721.  irwin showed her independence by traveling alone in Holland and France in 1730.  She served the Princess of Wales as a lady-in-waiting, but court life did not satisfy her. In 1937 against the strong opposition of her family, she married Colonel William Douglas; he died in 1748. 

OEUVRE:

     Her major work consist of "An Epistle to Mr. Pope".  This reveals Irwin's keen attention to Pope's work as a whole, not only to his "Epistle 2. "To a Lady"; it turns his verse technique as well as many of his principles against him.  While many of Pope's couplet's  sharpley contrast women's characters with men's, Irwin adapts the couplet form to empasize what they have in common.  Irwin argues that both sexes want the same thing: love of power motivates both sexes.  Irwin provides positive models, she adderessed the Pope as an equal, in verse mych like his own.  She proves that men and women can even think alike. 

Criticism:

N/A * sorry but I did not find one scholary source or where anyone wrote about this poem. 

Quotations:

     Untaught the noble end of glorious truth, Bred to deceive even from their earliest youth : An Epistle to Mr. Pope

     For Love of power is still the love of fame. Women must in a narrow orbit move, But power alike both males and females love.: An Epistle to Mr. Pope

     Nothing so like as man and woman old, Their joys, their loves, their hates, if truly told. Though different acts seem different sex's growth, 'Tis the same principle impels them both.: An Epistle to Mr. Pope

Commentary:

     Anne Ingram was definately a true femenist in her day, or so it seems by her poem of "An Epistle to Mr. Pope.  She was letting Mr. Pope know that What ever drove a man to do what he did, that women had the same drive as well. "Nothing so like as male and female youth, Nothing so like as man and woman old, Their joys, their loves, their hates, if truly told.  Though different acts see different sex's growth, 'Tis the same principle impels them both.  I believe that she feels anything a man can do a woman can do as well, or "better".  Anne Ingram was trying to build that bridge of equality between men and women. And so it is today women still building that bridge that women can do anything a man can do.  We have women CEO'S women in politics, women running for the Presidency and yes one day history will be made.  It took women such as Anne Ingram to stand up to men and say enough is enough.  

Documentation:

Anne Ingram. “An Epistle to Mr. Pope.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature,                     8^th ed.  Ed.  Stephen Greenblatt.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Co. 2006.  2604 -2607.