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Here living teapots stand, one arm held out, One bent; the handle this, and that the spout: A pipkin there like Homer’s tripod walks; Here sighs a jar, and there a goose-pie talks; Men prove with child, as powerful fancy works, And maids turned bottles, call aloud for corks. Safe passed the Gnome through this fantastic band, A branch of healing spleenwort in his hand. Then thus addressed the power: “Hail, wayward Queen! Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen, Parent of vapors and of female wit, Who give the hysteric, or poetic fit” Meaning. This passage continues Umbriel’s journey through the Cave of Spleen, a fantastical subterranean world filled with bodies warped by spleen. (Spleen was a medical term of the period describing what was believed to be the source of much female bodily dysfunction.) Filled with ghoulish creatures which darkly mirror the glittering world of the court above, the creatures in the Cave of Spleen are often read as a kind of collection of the outcasts from the world above, the casualties of a world which demands that, like Belinda, its women all be beautiful, distinctly feminine and chaste. This passage in particular supports this reading. Here women’s bodies are literally transformed into objects associated with ladylike behavior, such as the “living teapots,” who look like the ladylike practice of serving tea has totally consumed them. Further on, “Men prove with child” (they are pregnant, in other words), a flagrant violation of the extremely gendered rules of the world above, while “maids turned bottles, call aloud for corks,” a grotesque image of female lust, the opposite of the obsession with chastity expected in the world of the court. Umbriel is able to pass safely through this world carrying “A branch of healing spleenwort,” a kind of plant believed to counter the effects of spleen, until he reaches the Queen of Spleen herself. He describes her as one who governs women “to fifty from fifteen” (i.e. the years in which women menstruate). This once again draws out the rather slippery ideas about morality which run through the poem. For instance, the sylphs’ interference in mortal affairs has already raised the question of whether the mortals are indeed in charge of their own actions. Similarly, here Umbriel represents an internal force of the female body, menstruation, as one which is externally inflicted on individuals, causing them either to descend into “hysteric” or “poetic fit.” Thus, he once again raises the question of whether the world of the poem can really support any moral judgements of human behavior, since humans seem to have little control over their fate.