Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock

 

The Rape of the Lock

 

"The Rape of the Lock" was first published anonymously in 1712 before it was reworked and republished in 1714 by Alexander Pope. It is a mock-epic or mock-heroic poem.

"The Rape of the Lock" summary is quite simple. Based on a true story told to Pope by a friend, the poem tells of how the Baron sneakily cuts off a lock of Belinda's hair at a party which causes her to become agitated enough to start a fight. The story ends undramatically with the lock of hair becoming lost to both Belinda and the Baron. While the story itself is straightforward, Pope created a long poem around 600 lines broken up into 5 cantos. A canto (coming from the Latin word for "song") is a section of a long narrative poem. If the entire poem "The Rape of the Lock" is an album, think of each canto as one song on the album."The Rape of the Lock" summary is quite simple. Based on a true story told to Pope by a friend, the poem tells of how the Baron sneakily cuts off a lock of Belinda's hair at a party which causes her to become agitated enough to start a fight. The story ends undramatically with the lock of hair becoming lost to both Belinda and the Baron. While the story itself is straightforward, Pope created a long poem around 600 lines broken up into 5 cantos. A canto (coming from the Latin word for "song") is a section of a long narrative poem. 

Alexander Pope 

• According to you, who is the protagonist of the poem Clarissa or Belinda? Why? Give your answer with logical reasons.

The protagonist of the poem, Belinda, is a wealthy and beautiful young woman who travels to Hampton Court for a day of socialising and leisure. Her remarkable beauty attracts the attention of the Baron, who snips off a lock of her hair in his infatuation.

The Pope has presented Belinda as a complex character. He has presented her in different roles and under different shades, some are satirical, others ironical but all entertaining. The character of Belinda has created much controversy since the publication of the poem. Some critics consider her treatment fair while others are unfair.

There are several aspects of the personality of Belinda as portrayed by Pope in The Rape of the Lock. It will be wrong to regard her purely as a goddess, or as a pretty spoiled child, or as a flirt. She is a combination of all three and yet much more than such a combination. We see her in many different lights. We see her as a vamp, an injured innocent, a sweet charmer, a society belle, a rival of the sun, and a murderer of millions. She has a Cleopatra- like variety. However, the reality lies in between these two extremes we can discuss her character as below.

Belinda is the heroine of the story. It is her character around whom the story of the whole poem is woven. We see her sleeping till noon and her awakening by her lap dog “Shock”. We are present at her toilet and watch the progress of the sacred rites of pride. Then we see her proceeding from the Thames River to the Hampton Court. Then her smiting looks upon the well dressed youths that crowd her. Pope compares Belinda to the sun and suggests that it recognizes in Belinda a rival. Belinda is like the sun not only because of her bright eyes and not only because she dominates her special world. She was as beautiful as every eye was fixed on her alone. She is like the sun in another regard:

“Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike.

And, like the sun, shines on all alike.”

Pope's attitude to Belinda is very mixed and complicated; mocking and yet tender, admiring and yet critical. The paradoxical nature of Pope’s attitude is intimately related to the paradox of Belinda’s situation. If Belinda is to find her role of woman, she must lose the role of a virgin, and the more graceful her acceptance of loss the greater the victory she achieves through it. Because the Pope is dealing with this paradox, his attitude must be mixed and complicated. It is necessary for the Pope to stress Belinda’s divinity. At the same time he does not let us forget Belinda’s mortality. He qualifies her goddess-ship by emphasising human qualities. The scene at Belinda’s dressing table, where she is both mortal priestess and the goddess worshipped in the mirror, is an example of this device. The very frailty and transience of blushes and chastity emphasise this goddess’s humanity.

Belinda is a model who more specifically represents the fashionable, aristocratic ladies of Popes age. Such social butterflies in the eighteenth century were regarded as petty triflers, having no serious concern with life, and engrossed in dance and gaiety. Belinda’s fall indicates the decadence of her class. Through her, Pope describes the flippancy and depravity of the English society of his day.

Belinda is a central character of the play. Opening lines of the poem make it very clear to the readers that Belinda is the central character and heroine of this mock-epic. Belinda is a complex character in Rape of the Lock. Her character is presented under different roles and shades. Her depiction is both satirical and ironic but with a tincture of entertainment. There are lots of controversies among critics about character of Belinda since the publication of the Rape of the Lock. Some consider Belinda’s treatment fair while others consider it unfair.

Famous Character Among English Literature:

Belinda’s character is an outstanding portrait by Pope in his mock epic The rape of the lock. Among all the other heroines in English Literature like Shakespeare’s Caleopetra Ophillia Emillia; Fielding’s Pameila; Eliot’s Maggi; Belinda had been the favourite character of Pop. The way Pope pays attributes to Belinda’s beauty with his pen; it seems that he has been enamoured with his own creation. Pope describes her paragon of beauty and wittiness: the goddess of beauty, the nymph, the fair, the rival of the sun’s beams. Pope’s Belinda resembles Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. Like her, she is a paragon of beauty and the winner of men of her age.

“Law In these labyrinths his slaves detains,

And mighty hearts ate held in slender chains”

Belinda is a perfect creation of wit and beauty. Pope describes the way she paints and decorates herself with ornaments, diamonds, powders, patches, perfumes and puffs in front of a mirror. Then she leaves to win the heart of lovers.

• What is beauty? Write your views about it.

Beauty:

Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” offers an ironic glance of court life in the 18th-century, highlighting societies centralized on beauty and appearance. The poem’s centre of focus is around the experience of a beautiful woman, Belinda, who lost her lock of remarkable hair to a nobleman known as the Baron. As the poem starts to go along, it steadily becomes sillier and sillier and the characters collapse into a battle over the lock. Pope added Clarissa’s speech into the poem, which argues that women spend much time on their looks rather than thinking to become a better person and serve society. The main thesis of Pope was that this kind of self-obsession is useless and radically nonsense. However, the poem’s conclusion seems to suggest that true beauty would be of some value, but if it becomes the subject of poetry, thus it achieves a kind of literary immortality.

Pope mocks Belinda’s obsession with her beauty by comparing it with a hero which is about to go into battle. She beautifies herself all day and appears at court as insignificant. When she lost the lock of her hair, her furious reaction allowed Pope to poke fun at her vanity.  Alexander Pope kept defending the intellectual and moral authority of his female characters through the wisdom of Clarissa’s speech, demonstrating female intellect and morality. He further questioned the wisdom of such a maternal system by outlining the Baron’s behaviour as immoral. His fellow male courtiers are foolish. They allowed him to suggest that a maternal society is both unfair and unfounded.

It is important to note that at the time the Pope wrote the poem it was generally believed that women were both intellectual and moral inferiors of men. The Pope seems to say that vanity itself is folly, but to appreciate great art, thus it can be said that one should be careful not to underestimate the role of beauty in inspiring great works like poetry. By using a mock epic into the poem, he not only glamped up the whole scenario by giving it huge fairy dust powder, but also entertained the question of responsibility in the poem.

According to me beauty isn't about outer beauty but real beauty is inner beauty.

• Find out a research paper on "The Rape of the Lock". Give the details of the paper and write down in brief what it says about the Poem by Alexander Pope.

Pope’s transformations are numerous, striking, and loaded with moral -implications. Pope’s use of the mock -epic genre is intricate and exhaustive. TheRape of the Lock is a poem in which every element of the contemporary scene conjures up some image from epic tradition or the classical world view, and the pieces are wrought together with a cleverness and expertise that makes the poem surprising and delightful. loaded with moral -implications. Pope’s use of the mock -epic genre is intricate and exhaustive. TheRape of the Lock is a poem in which every element of the contemporary scene conjures up some image from epic tradition or the classical world view, and the pieces are wrought together with a cleverness and expertise that makes the poem surprising and delightful.

Research Paper (Click here)

Work cited :

Shah, Umama. “Majors Themes in Rape of the Lock by Alexender Pope.” Academia.edu, 24 Oct. 2014, https://www.academia.edu/8949032/Majors_themes_in_Rape_of_the_Lock_by_Alexender_Pope.

• Write your views about the significance of hair. Is it symbolic?

Belinda's lock of hair comes to symbolise the absurdity of the importance afforded to female beauty in society.

Belinda’s lock of hair comes to symbolise the absurdity of the importance afforded to female beauty in society. Pope offers a hyperbolically metaphorical description of the two locks in Canto II, humorously framing the locks as alluring enough to virtually incapacitate any man who looks at them. The locks are “labyrinths” in which Love “detains” “his slaves” by binding their hears with “slender chains,” thus poking fun at the idea that Belinda’s beauty is truly powerful enough to make such a deep impact. This absurdity only grows as the poem progresses and after the Baron has snipped of Belinda’s lock. Under the influence of Umbriel, Thalestris laments the loss of the lock as the symbolic loss of Belinda’s reputation in society, exclaiming, “Methinks already I your tears survey, / Already hear the horrid things they say.” In Pope’s day, the respectability of a woman in society depended upon her having a spotless reputation and being perfectly virtuous, and, in particular, sexually pure. Thalestris then is essentially saying that the loss of Belinda’s lock is a rupture which damages all of the rest of her beauty, and the Baron’s having taken it in so intimate a fashion compromises the idea that she is chaste, and that people will think she in some way allowed him to violate her body. Obviously, this makes very little sense, allowing the Pope to satirise the idea that beauty and virtue are so closely related. The lock’s final ascension into the heavens is the most absurd part of the whole thing, and Pope’s choice to cap off the whole poem with the transparently silly idea that the lock is too precious to remain on earth, that no mortal deserves to be so “blest” as to possess it, emphasises the ridiculous amount of emphasis placed on female beauty in society.

The Lock:

The lock of Belinda's hair referred to in the title is also a powerful symbol both of vanity and of the power of female beauty over men. According to the poem, Belinda has nourished her locks, meaning she has trained them to be at their most fabulous, hanging temptingly down her neck. As such, they are portrayed as "Chains" or even "Sprindges," or snares, to entrap an unsuspecting young beau. When Pope initially introduces the locks, he says they have been nourished "to the destruction of mankind," meaning they have great power and have been groomed in such a way as to have even more power. They are doing their job—in fact, they do it too well, causing the Baron to fall so completely in love (as it turns out later) with Belinda that he simply has to have her locks, or one of them, as a souvenir. This results in the entire battle and, indeed, the resentment between the two that comes as a result of it.

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