To a Lady, with some painted flowers.

After having read Barbauld's "The Rights of Woman", which I found messy and an unfair criticism of Mary Wollstonecraft, "To a Lady, with some painted flowers" was a welcome surprise.
Within the title, the audience knows that the flowers being given to the lady, aren't real flowers but painted flowers. They are continually compared to the lady receiving them, but it is already known that all these things that both the flowers and the lady are, aren't actually authentic. What I found especially interesting is that without the word, "painted" in the title, the meaning it embodies would be gone as it isn't mentioned again throughout the poem.

"Flowers sweet, and gay, and delicate like you; / Emblems of innocence, and beauty too." (3 - 4). The characteristics mentioned are the same as those assigned to woman. But these aren't real flowers, just as these aren't the real characteristic of real woman. This is just how woman are painted to be.

Barbauld continues her point in describing the sheltering oak and the tougher yew that take on so much more in nature, against winds and storms, whereas flowers are only meant for pleasure. She reiterates the idea that both flowers and woman... and painting are all only meant to please the eye. The poem seems to grow more and more sarcastic throughout.

Barbauld doesn't attack the gender issue head-on and the poem may even seem a little simple, but she crafts her words much better than "The Rights of Woman".