Advice To Young Ladies By A. D. Hope

“Advice to Young Ladies” by A.D. Hope is a poem with an ABBA rhyme scheme arranged in twelve quatrains. It observes the oppression of women and subtly contrasts it with the power of men. The poem begins with an allusion to ancient Rome and the “vestal virgin Postumia” (3). The speaker opens the poem with subtle alliteration in lines 3 and 4 that continues throughout the entire piece. The use of alliteration adds emphasis to what the speaker is trying to convey to the reader. Postumia is depicted as a woman who has wrongfully been performing sexual acts and is now being tried for her crimes. Postumia was deemed “perfectly pure”, with alliteration used to emphasize her perfection, and was released back into the public (5). The speaker then uses asyndeton to portray how others have seen Postumia as “too witty...too lively...too smart” which led to the investigation into her sexual life (7-8). The fact that people recognize her in such a way characterizes her as an intimidating woman with more power than socially acceptable.
Such an order can be easily related to present day rape cases in which the question, “Well what was she wearing?” is always asked. The head of the priests who gave her these orders hints that her sexual misconduct was most likely due to the way she dressed and she was, as he dared to say, asking for it. In the end she was able to leave the court “reprieved, but in disgrace” (12). Postumia found that everyone was more concerned with what the men in the town were doing but obeyed and was observed wearing a “dowdy dress” that was rather unattractive and most definitely unfashionable