1. with particular reference to the response of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Reactions to female disfigurement from smallpox in texts from the Eighteenth Century
with particular reference to the response of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

2. Child suffering from smallpox

3. The effects of smallpox
A Practical treatise on smallpox : illustrated by colored photographs from life / by George Henry Fox ; with the collaboration of S.D. Hubbard, S. Pollitzer, and J.H. Huddleston. Philadelphia : Lippincott, c1902

4. David Shuttleton
existing accounts “down-play the role of the literary imagination in the cultural framing” of smallpox
(Smallpox and the Literary Imagination 3)
Approach similar to Porter and Rousseau in Gout, the Patrician Malady (1998) where they embrace the role of the imagination in rendering the experience of disease for the sufferer

5. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Suffered from smallpox December 1715
Accompanied her ambassador husband to Turkey
Brought smallpox inoculation back to Britain
Her work has increasingly attracted attention it deserves, particularly in relation to gender studies
Jennifer Keith: “[she] delineates a woman’s experience inside and outside a poetic discourse that has been associated with the ‘masculine’ world of the ‘Augustans’”
Isobel Grundy: we need “bolder thinking about the working out of gender issues” in relation to Montagu and especially her rift with Pope

6. Perception of smallpox
‘Menstruosity’ coined by Tobias Walker 1616
Fear that even hearing about smallpox could induce infection
Mirrors were removed from sufferers’ homes to prevent them from being frightened
Its “disfiguring power” epitomized the idea that “all disease is evidence of the Fall which, according to Genesis, stemmed from the specifically female transgression” (Shuttleton)

7. ‘Saturday. The Small-Pox. Flavia’
Put into the “wider context of other imaginative works presenting female scarring as moral retribution” (Shuttleton)
Identity created through appearance
Motif of mirror
Rewards/prizes for beauty

8. Other responses to female disfigurement
Mary Jones – ‘After the Smallpox’ – commercial discourse
William Thompson – ‘Sickness, A Poem’ – male survivors find transcendence: “Enamel’d, not deform’d”
The Devonshire Woman – Frances Flood – religious aspect

9. Conclusions LMWM is “slippery” (Grundy)
Dramatizes vanity in ‘Saturday’
Playful with genres
Devastating in a personal reading
Idea of retribution?
Explore responses to inoculation
Used to save beauty not lives? Henry Jones Inoculation; or Beauty’s Triumph
Inspired by traditional female practice, brought to England by woman – transgressive in many ways