Our Poetry Editor, Ira Maine commented on Sunday regarding: “…Brickdust Moll…’ from Jonathon Swift’s poem, ‘A description of the morning’ as follows:
The Swift poem tells us she went ‘screaming’ through the streets. I have tried hard to discover an alternative to the idea that ‘..Moll’ was selling brickdust. I think Swift was saying something else here. The chimney sweep and the Smallcoal Man had recognisable ‘cries’, but Moll was ‘screaming’… This does not suggest a cry that people might recognize and respond to in order to buy her wares… rather it suggests to me a madwoman ‘screaming’ as she proceeds about.. There is also a familiarity about this character, this ‘Brickdust, Moll’. She is (to Swift) someone we recognise easily, or she represents a condition we recognise.. I don’t want to read too much into this but simply calling her ‘Moll’ is surely significant. According to the OED, ‘Moll’ in the early 17th century was a euphemism for a prostitute. This, within a few years, is precisely when Swift was writing. And why was she screaming? Well, perhaps, and I am on unsteady ground here, perhaps we are dealing with the madness associated with the disease of syphilis which was rampant amongst sex workers of the day. Alternatively Moll is perhaps a metaphor for the all that is rotten, uncaring and ruthless in any big city.
it is interesting too that in Australia, in modern common parlance, the guaranteed way to defame a woman is to describe her as ‘…some old mole…’
Back in Humphrey Bogart’s time, a baddie’s girl was described as a ‘ gangster’s moll…’
The word still has currency, and is still used to denigrate women.
I still don’t understand the ‘…Brickdust…’ reference. One day…
To which ‘Spongedoll’ rejoined
One thing I ponder on sometimes, as one who warps in and out of numerous caricatures of woman, is how you find yourself feeling (railing against being denigrated) by other’s modelling of you …aka the box they’ve fashioned for you in their own perception… whether as mother, boss, older person in general, member of small town community. Just want to lash out and surprise them. I remember being in the kitchen of a close friend of Mum’s when I was a teenager, feeling very secure in my perception of her as housewife and mother of 5 (and completely missing the point that she’d just graduated from uni with English Lit honours). I must have said something that hit the denigration nerve in her, and she tossed a raw egg across the kitchen at me with a casual “Here catch!”. I dropped it of course. Completely took me by surprise and changed my perception of her forever – broke the box so to speak. I didn’t realise the significance of that moment till years later when I was well modelled into role perception by others! She was ‘fascinating out-of-the-box person’ in tandem with irreplaceable unconventional ‘mother-friend role-model’.
Back to the bigger picture:
Can’t help noticing the mop and broom reference here but I can’t quite see Sue Butler of the Macquarie Dictionary running screaming through the streets :
On ‘brickdust’ – when googling Swift’s poem just now, saw a reference to brick-dust being used as cheap rouge by prostitutes in the 17th century…
Enough for now
Cheers
Spongedoll …wailing at the moon
Ira Maine, concurrently wrote:
Bear with me, ole socks, but something else has just occurred to me regarding the Swift poem.
Before the Church of England came into being, (Henry the Eighth and all that) Catholicism held sway. A principal, monumental figure amongst the Cafflicks was Mary, the mother of God. She was Catholicism’s version of a much older tradition. The worship of the Earth Mother, the female principle (corrupted of course by a celibate priesthood which by it’s very nature rejects the female principle).
When the Church of England took over control of English Christianity, Mary’s importance went out the window and the new God was Male, a vengeful, unforgiving, business oriented, ruthless, empire building God who would brook no deviation from the line.
Of course, to bring people round to this new, crime and punishment way of thinking, the pre-Christian Earth Mother idea had to be utterly rejected and the new pulpit-pounding ‘You’ll all be damned to Hell!’ male hellfire stuff took centre stage.
The hugely popular name ‘Mary’, (and it’s pet name ‘Molly’) was deliberately downgraded in a calculated attempt to divorce the Marian principle from the new English Christianity. (It is fair to say that the Catholics brought this upheaval on themselves because of their church’s endless corruption.)
Very quickly, through deliberate church propaganda, the name ‘Mary’ or ‘Molly’ fell so low as to become synonymous with prostitution. The names were demonized, much as Muslims are demonized today.
Sadly, in modern times,the Church of England still has no room for for the Marian, Earth Mother idea even though their clergy now are free to marry and produce families!
In my estimation we absolutely must take up the female principle again, and rid ourselves forever of our present adolescent male, macho man sniggering behind the lavatories way of life.
Women surely deserve better than this.