Lady Mary Chudleigh

Lady Mary Chudleigh was a devout Anglican who educated herself and challenged traditional gender roles. She fought for women's rights through her writing, and challenged the ideas surrounding the roles of women in a predominantly male-run society.

In her poem, "To the Ladies," Chudleigh begins by comparing women to servants, "Wife and servant are the same." Essentially she is saying that when a woman marries, she becomes her new husbands servant and the two words are basically synonymous. Marriage is often referred to as "tying the knot" and Chudleigh describes this hypothetical knot as being fatal, thus showing a negative tone and attitude towards marriage. Fatal can be a word used for describing a close to death situation, essentially she is using this word to provide a warning. During this time period women would not marry for love, but rather for money or social standing. Since marriage was like this, a lot of marriages were not happy marriages. Women would have no way out no matter how unhappy they were. The woman loses all of her freedom and becomes a man's "servant" as soon as they marry.

Although Chudleigh herself was married, and had five children, she was not afraid to speak out against things that would affect other women in this time period. She wrote another poem called "The Ladies Defence" which was influenced by an angry sermon preached against the fair sex.