Several female poets make Circe stand up for herself, using the soliloquy form to voice the woman's position. The 19th-century English poet Augusta Webster, much of whose writing explored the female condition, has a dramatic monologue in blank verse titled "Circe" in her volume "Portraits" (1870). There the sorceress anticipates her meeting with Ulysses and his men and insists that she does not turn men into pigs—she merely takes away the disguise that makes them seem human. "But any draught, pure water, natural wine, / out of my cup, revealed them to themselves / and to each other. Change? there was no change; / only disguise gone from them unawares". The mythological character of the speaker contributes at a safe remove to the Victorian discourse on women's sexuality by expressing female desire and criticizing the subordinate role given to women in heterosexual politics.