Alexander Pope’s the Rape of the Lock Essay

The Rape of the Lock begins with a passage outlining the crush of the poetry and invo mightiness the aid of the muse. Then the fair weather (Sol) appears to initiate the leisurely morning routines of a wealthy household. Lapdogs shake themselves awake, bells begin to ring, and although it is already noon, Belinda still sleeps. She has been dreaming, and we determine that her guardian Sylph, Ariel, has sent the dream. The dream is of a hand around youth who tells her that she is defend by unnumbered Spiritsan army of supernatural beingnesss who once lived on earth as human wowork force. The youth ex on the face of its that they atomic number 18 the invisible guardians of womens chastity, although the credit is usu exclusivelyy mistakenly given to Honor quite a than to their heaven-sent stewarf bedship. Of these Spirits, one particular groupthe Sylphs, who dwell in the air help oneself as Belindas personal guardians they argon devoted, jockeyr-like, to both woman that reje cts mankind, and they regard and reward the vanities of an elegant and frivolous lady like Belinda.Ariel, the chief of all Belindas puckish protectors, warns her in the dream that s everal(prenominal) dread incident is going to be pass her that day, though he can tell her vigor much(prenominal) specific than that she should bew are of Man Then Belinda awakes, to the licking diction of her lapdog, Shock. Upon the delivery of a billet-doux, or love-letter, she stops all about the dream. She then product to her severing table and goes by an elaborate ritual of dressing, in which her protest chain in the mirror is described as a supernal image, a goddess. The Sylphs, unseen, assist their charge as she prepares herself for the days activities. inputThe opening of the song establishes its jeer- venturesome air. pope introduces the conventional larger-than-life subjects of love and war and includes an invocation to the muse and a dedication to the man (the historical mag ic trick Caryll) who commissioned the poem. Yet the tone already designates that the high seriousness of these conventional topics has suffered a diminishment. The second line confirms in explicit hurt what the graduation line already extracts the amrous causes the poem describes are non similar to the grand loveof Greek heroes rightful(prenominal) quite a represent a trivialized version of that emotion. The contests pope alludes to will prove to be aptitudey barely in an ironic sense. They are card- jeopardizes and flirtatious tussles, not the great battles of epic tradition. Belinda is not, like Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships (see the SparkNote on The Iliad), but or else a face thatalthough in any case beautifulprompts a lot of dandified nonsense.The beginning(a) ii verse-paragraphs emphasize the comic inappropriateness of the epic mood (and corresponding mind-set) to the subject at hand. pope bring home the bacons this discrepancy at th e aim of the line and half-line the proofreader is meant to dwell on the incompatibility between the two sides of his parallel contourulations. Thus, in this world, it is little men who in trade union movements so unfearing engage and soft bosoms are the dwelling- built in bed for mighty rage. In this startling juxtaposition of the petty and the grand, the former is veridical epoch the latter is ironic. In mock epic, the high idea runic style works not to dignify the subject but or else to threaten and ridicule it. Therefore, the canonic irony of the style supports the substance of the poems satire, which attacks the misguided values of a lodge that takes small matters for serious ones while failing to at pass to issues of genuine instantance. With Belindas dream, Pope introduces the machinery of the poemthe supernatural sources that influence the action from backside the scenes.Here, the red sprites that watch over Belinda are meant to mimic the gods of the Greek an d Roman traditions, who are sometimes benevolent and sometimes malicious, but al miens intimately postulate-to doe with in earthly all the samets. The scheme also craps use of other antediluvian patriarch hierarchies and systems of order. Ariel explains that womens spirits, when they die, return to their scratch line Elements. Each female personality example (these types correspond to the four humours) is converted into a particular kind of sprite. These gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and nymphs, in turn, are associated with the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The airy sylphs are those who in their lifetimes were light Coquettes they have a particular concern for Belinda because she is of this type, and this will be the aspect of womanish nature with which the poem is intimately concerned. Indeed, Pope already begins to sketch this lawsuit of the coquette in this initial canto. He draws the portrait indirectly, through characteristics of the Sylphs rather than of Belinda herself.Their priorities reveal that the commutation concerns ofwomanhood, at least for women of Belindas class, are fond ones. Womans joy in gilded Chariots indicates an obsession with display and superficial splendor, while love of Ombre, a fashionable card game, suggests frivolity. The sexy charge of this kindly world in turn prompts another central concern the protection of chastity. These are women who value above all the purview marrying to advantage, and they have learned at an archaeozoic age how to promote themselves and manage their suitors without compromising themselves. The Sylphs become an allegory for the mannered conventions that govern female neighborly behavior. Principles like honor and chastity have become no more than another part of conventional interaction.Pope makes it clear that these women are not conducting themselves on the basis of abstract moral principles, but are governed by an elaborate social mechanismof which the Sylphs slue a fitting caricature. And while Popes technique of employing supernatural machinery allows him to critique this situation, it also helps to hold in the satire light and to exonerate individual women from too severe a judgment. If Belinda has all the typical female foibles, Pope wants us to recognize that it is partially because she has been educated and trained to act in this air. The society as a whole is as much to blame as she is. Nor are men exempt from this judgment. The competition among the young lords for the attention of beautiful ladies is depicted as a battle of vanity, as wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive.Popes phrases here expose an absurd attention to exhibitions of pride and ostentation. He emphasizes the inanity of discriminating so coatingly between things and people that are essentially the said(prenominal) in all important (and even most unimportant) respects. Popes personation of Belinda at her dressing table introduces mock-heroic motifs tha t will run through the poem. The scene of her toilette is rendered first as a religious sacrament, in which Belinda herself is the priestess and her image in the looking glass is the Goddess she serves. This parody of the religious rites in the lead a battle gives way, then, to another kind of mock-epic scene, that of the ritualized arming of the hero. Combs, gloams, and cosmetics take the place of appliances as awful Beauty puts on all its arms.Canto 2SummaryBelinda, rivaling the sun in her radiance, sets out by boat on the river Thames for Hampton cost Palace. She is go with by a party of glitzy ladies (Nymphs) and gentlemen, but is far and away the most striking member of the group. Popes explanation of her charms includes the sparkling plow she wore on her white breast, her quick eyes and lively looks, and the easy approving with which she bestows her smiles and attentions evenly among all the adoring guests. Her crowning glories, though, are the two volutes that flatt en on her ivry neck. These curls are described as loves labyrinths, specifically designed to ensnare any poor heart who might rile entangled in them.One of the young gentlemen on the boat, the power, especially admires Belindas locks, and has determined to dislocate them for himself. We read that he rose early that morning to build an altar to love and pray for success in this project. He sacrificed several tokens of his former affections, including garters, gloves, and billet-doux (love-letters). He then prostrated himself before a pyre built with all the trophies of his former loves, fanning its flames with his amrous sighs. The gods listened to his prayer but decided to grant only half of it. As the pleasure-boat continues on its way, everyone is slaphappy except Ariel, who remembers that some bad event has been foretold for the day. He summons an army of sylphs, who assemble around him in their iridescent beauty.He reminds them with great eucharist that one of their duties, aft(prenominal) regulating celestial bodies and the weather and guarding the British monarch, is to tend the Fair to keep watch over ladies powders, perfumes, curls, and clothing, and to assist their blushes, and inspire their airs. Therefore, since some dire disaster threatens Belinda, Ariel assigns her an extensive troop of bodyguards. Brillante is to guard her earrings, Momentilla her watch, and Crispissa her locks. Ariel himself will protect Shock, the lapdog. A band of fifty Sylphs will guard the all-important petticoat. Ariel pronounces that any sylph who neglects his assigned duty will be severely punished. They disperse to their posts and clutches for fate to unfold. inputFrom the first, Pope describes Belindas beauty as something divine, an sagaciousness which she herself corroborates in the first canto when shecreates, at least figuratively, an altar to her own image. This encomium is certainly in some sense ironical, reflecting negatively on a system of public values in which external characteristics rank higher(prenominal) than moral or intellectual ones. hardly Pope also shows a real reverence for his heroines physical and social charms, claiming in lines 1718 that these are compelling enough to cause one to forget her female errors. Certainly he has some inte quiet in flattering Arabella Fermor, the real-life woman on whom Belinda is based in order for his poem to achieve the desired reconciliation, it must not offend (see Context. Pope also exhibits his appreciation for the ways in which physical beauty is an art form he recognizes, with a mixture of censure and awe, the fact that Belindas k immediatelyn locks of hair, which appear so natural and spontaneous, are actually a guardedly contrived effect.In this, the mysteries of the ladys dressing table are akin, perhaps, to Popes own literary art, which he describes elsewhere as nature to advantage dressd. If the secret mechanisms and techniques of female beauty get at least a passing nod of appreciation from the author, he nevertheless suggests that the general human readiness to worship beauty amounts to a kind of sacrilege. The cross that Belinda wears around her neck serves a more cosmetic than symbolic or religious function. Because of this, he says, it can be adore by Jews and Infidels as readily as by Christians. And there is some ambiguity about whether any of the admirers are really valuing the cross itself, or the white breast on which it liesor the felicitous effect of the whole. The great power, of course, is the most significant of those who worship at the altar of Belindas beauty. The ritual sacrifices he performs in the pre-dawn hours are another mock-heroic element of the poem, mimicking the epic tradition of sacrificing to the gods before an important battle or journey, and drapes his project with an absurdly grand import that actually only exposes its triviality.The fact that he discards all his other love tokens in these preparations reveals his capriciousness as a lover. Earnest prayer, in this parodic scene, is replaced by the self-indulgent sighs of the lover. By having the gods grant only half of what the powerfulness asks, Pope alludes to the epic convention by which the favor of the gods is only a entangled blessing in epic poems, to win the sponsorship of one god is to witness the wrath of another divine gifts, much(prenominal) as immortality, can face a blessing but become acurse. Yet in this poem, the ramifications of a prayer half granted are negligible rather than tragic it merely means that he will manage to steal fair(a) one lock rather than both of them. In the first canto, the religious imagery surrounding Belindas grooming rituals gave way to a militaristic conceit. Here, the same pattern holds. Her curls are compared to a trap suddenly calibrated to ensnare the enemy. Yet the character of female coyness is such that it seeks simultaneously to attract and repel, so that the counterpart to the enticing ringlets is the formidable petticoat.This unmentionable is described as a protective armament comparable to the entertain of Achilles (see Scroll XVIII of The Iliad), and supported in its function of protecting the firsts chastity by the invisible might of fifty Sylphs. The Sylphs, who are Belindas protectors, are essentially charged to protect her not from mishap but from too great a success in attracting men. This preposterous situation dramatizes the contradictory values and motives implied in the eras informal conventions. In this canto, the internal allegory of the poem begins to come into fuller view. The backup of the poem already associates the pathting of Belindas hair with a more explicit intimate conquest, and here Pope cultivates that suggestion. He multiplies his sexually metaphorical language for the incident, adding words like ravish and betray to the rape of the title.He also slips in some commentary on the implications of his societys sexual mores, as whe n he remarks that when success a Lovers toil attends, / few ask, if fraud or force attaind his ends. When Ariel speculates about the possible forms the dire disaster might take, he includes a breach of chastity (Dianas law), the breaking of china (another allusion to the mischief of virginity), and the staining of honor or a gown (the two incommensurable events could happen equally easily and accidentally). He also mentions some pettier social disasters against which the Sylphs are equally prepared to fight, like missing a freak (here, as grave as missing prayers) or losing the lapdog. In the Sylphs defensive efforts, Belindas petticoat is the battlefield that requires the most extensive fortifications. This fact furthers the creative thinker that the rape of the lock stands in for a literal rape, or at least represents a threat to her chastity more serious than just the mere theft of a curl.SummaryThe boat arrives at Hampton Court Palace, and the ladies and gentlemen disembark to their courtly entertainments. After a pleasant round of chatting and gossip, Belinda sits graduate with two of the men to a game of cards. They play ombre, a three-handed game of tricks and trumps, somewhat like bridge, and it is described in terms of a heroic battle the cards are troops combating on the velvet plain of the card-table. Belinda, under the watchful care of the Sylphs, begins favorably. She declares spades as trumps and leads with her highest cards, sure of success. Soon, however, the hand takes a turn for the worse when to the mightiness fate inclines the field he catches her king of clubs with his queen and then leads back with his high diamonds. Belinda is in danger of being beaten, but recovers in the last trick so as to just barely win back the amount she bid.The next ritual amusement is the serving of coffee. The curling vapors of the steaming coffee remind the power of his intention to attempt Belindas lock. Clarissa draws out her scissors for his use, as a lady would arm a knight in a play. taking up the scissors, he tries three times to clip the lock from behind without Belinda seeing. The Sylphs endeavor furiously to intervene, blowing the hair out of harms way and tweaking her diamond earring to make her turn around. Ariel, in a last-minute effort, gains gateway to her brain, where he is surprised to find an earthly lover lurking at her heart. He gives up protecting her then the implication is that she secretly wants to be violated. Finally, the cut back close on the curl. A daring sylph jumps in between the blades and is cut in two but being a supernatural creature, he is quickly restored. The deed is done, and the powerfulness exults while Belindas screams fill the air. scuttlebuttThis canto is full of classic examples of Popes masterful use of the heroic couplet. In introducing Hampton Court Palace, he describes it as the place where Queen Anne dost sometimes counsel takeand sometimes tea. This line employs a zeugma, a rhe torical device in which a word or phrase modifies two other words or phrases in a parallel construction, but modifies each in a different way or harmonise to a different sense. Here, the modifying word is take it applies to the paralleled terms counsel and tea. But one doesnot take tea in the same way one takes counsel, and the effect of the zeugma is to show the royal residence as a place that houses both serious matters of state and frivolous social occasions. The reader is asked to contemplate that paradox and to reflect on the relative value and splendor of these two different registers of activity. (For another example of this rhetorical technique, see lines 1578 Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast, / when husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last.)A similar point is made, in a less compact phrasing, in the second and third verse-paragraphs of this canto. Here, against the gossip and chatter of the young lords and ladies, Pope opens a window onto more serious mat ters that are occurring meanwhile and elsewhere, including criminal trials and executions, and frugal exchange. The rendering of the card game as a battle constitutes an ridiculous and deft narrative feat. By parodying the battle scenes of the great epic poems, Pope is suggesting that the energy and passion once applied to brave and serious purposes is now expended on such insignificant trials as games and gambling, which often become a mere front for flirtation.The structure of the three attempts by which the lock is cut is a convention of heroic challenges, particularly in the romance genre. The romance is further invoked in the image of Clarissa arming the Baronnot with a real weapon, however, but with a pair of sewing scissors. Belinda is not a real adversary, or course, and Pope makes it plain that her resistanceand, by implication, her consequent distressis to some degree an affectation. The melodrama of her screams is complemented by the ironic comparison of the Barons fea t to the conquest of nations.Belindas anxious cares and secret passions after the loss of her lock are equal to the emotions of all who have ever known rage, resentment and despair. After the disappointed Sylphs withdraw, an earthy gnome called Umbriel fly down to the spelunk of Spleen. (The quick excitation, an organ that removes disease-causing agents from the bloodstream, was traditionally associated with the passions, particularly malaise spleen is a synonym for ill-temper.) In his descent he passes through Belindas bedroom, where she lies prostrate with discomfiture and the headache. She is attended bytwo handmaidens, Ill-Nature and Affectation. Umbriel passes safely through this melancholy chamber, holding a sprig of spleenwort before him as a charm. He addresses the Goddess of Spleen, and returns with a bag of sighs, sobs, and passions and a vial of sorrow, grief, and tears. He unleashes the first bag on Belinda, fueling her ire and despair.There to commiserate with Belind a is her title-holder Thalestris. (In Greek mythology, Thalestris is the name of one of the Amazons, a race of warrior women who excluded men from their society.) Thalestris delivers a diction calculated to further foment Belindas indignation and iron out her to avenge herself. She then goes to Sir snare, her beau, to ask him to demand that the Baron return the hair. Sir Plume makes a weak and slang-filled speech, to which the Baron disdainfully refuses to acquiesce. At this, Umbriel releases the contents of the rest vial, throwing Belinda into a fit of sorrow and self-pity. With beauteous grief she bemoans her fate, regrets not having heeded the dream-warning, and laments the lonely, pitiful state of her sole remaining curl.CommentaryThe canto opens with a list of examples of rage, resentment, and despair, comparing on an equal footing the pathos of kings imprisoned in battle, of women who become old maids, of evil-doers who die without being saved, and of a woman whose dress is disheveled. By placing such disparate sorts of aggravation in parallel, Pope accentuates the sacrosanct necessity of assigning them to some rank of moral import. The effect is to switch a social world that fails to make these distinctions. Umbriels journey to the Cave of Spleen mimics the journeys to the underworld made by both Odysseus and Aeneas. Pope uses psychological allegory (for the spleen was the seat of malaise or melancholy), as a way of exploring the sources and nature of Belindas feelings. The presence of Ill-nature and Affectation as handmaidens serves to indicate that her grief is less than pure (affected or put-on), and that her display of temper has hidden motives. We learn that her sorrow is decorative in much the same way the curl was it gives her the occasion, for example, to wear a new nightdress.The speech of Thalestris invokes a courtly ethic. She encourages Belinda to think about the Barons misdeed as an affront to her honor, and draws on ideals of chival ry indemanding that Sir Plume challenge the Baron in defense of Belindas honor. He makes a muddle of the task, masking how far from courtly behavior this generation of gentlemen has fallen. Sir Plumes speech is riddled with foppish slang and has none of the logical, moral, or oratorical power that a knight should properly wield. This attention to questions of honor returns us to the sexual allegory of the poem. The real danger, Thalestris suggests, is that the ravisher might display the lock and make it a source of public humiliation to Belinda and, by association, to her friends. Thus the real question is a superficial onepublic reputationrather than the moral imperative to chastity. Belindas own words at the close of the canto corroborate this suggestion she exclaims, Oh, hadst thou, cruel been content to seize / Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these (The hairs less in sight suggest her pubic hair).Pope is pointing out the degree to which she values outward sort (whether b eauty or reputation) above all else she would rather suffer a breach to her integrity than a breach to her appearance. The Baron remains stolid against all the ladies tears and reproaches. Clarissa delivers a speech in which she questions why a society that so adores beauty in women does not also place a value on good sense and good humour. Women are frequently called angels, she argues, but without reference to the moral qualities of these creatures. Especially since beauty is needfully so short-lived, we must have something more substantial and permanent to fall back on. This sensible, moralizing speech falls on deaf ears, however, and Belinda, Thalestris and the rest ignore her and proceed to launch an all-out attack on the pique Baron.A chaotic tussle ensues, with the gnome Umbriel presiding in a situation of self- congratulation. The gentlemen are slain or revived according to the smiles and frowns of the fair ladies. Belinda and the Baron meet in combat and she emerges victo rious by peppering him with snuff and displace her bodkin. Having achieved a position of advantage, she again demands that he return the lock. But the ringlet has been lost in the chaos, and cannot be found. The poet avers that the lock has risen to the heavenly spheres to become a star stargazers may admire it now for all eternity. In this way, the poet reasons, it will attract more envy than it ever could on earth.CommentaryReaders have often interpreted Clarissas speech as the percentage of the poetexpressing the moral of the story. Certainly, her orations thesis aligns with Popes professed task of putting the dispute between the two families into a more liable perspective. But Popes position achieves more complexity than Clarissas speech, since he has used the occasion of the poem as a fomite to critically address a number of broader societal issues as well. And Clarissas righteous stance loses authority in light of the fact that it was she who originally gave the Baron the scissors. Clarissas failure to inspire a reconciliation proves that the hostility is itself a kind of flirtatious game that all parties are enjoying. The description of the battle has a markedly erotic quality, as ladies and lords wallow in their mock-agonies. Sir Plume draws Clarissa down in a sexual way, and Belinda flies on her foe with flashing eyes and an erotic ardor. When Pope informs us that the Baron fights on unafraid because he sought no more than on his foe to die, the expression means that his goal all along was sexual consummation.This final battle is the culmination of the long sequence of mock-heroic military actions. Pope invokes by name the Roman gods who were most active in warfare, and he alludes as well to the Aeneid , comparing the stoic Baron to Aeneas (the Trojan), who had to appropriate his love to become the founder of Rome. Belindas tossing of the snuff makes a completed turning point, ideally suited to the scale of this trivial battle. The snuff causes the Baron to sneeze, a comic and decidedly unheroic thing for a hero to do. The bodkin, too, serves nicely here a bodkin is a decorative hairpin, not the weapon of ancient days (or even of Hamlets time). Still, Pope gives the pin an elaborate history in accordance with the conventions of true epic.The mock-heroic conclusion of the poem is designed to compliment the lady it alludes to (Arabella Fermor), while also giving the poet himself due(p) credit for being the instrument of her immortality. This ending effectively indulges the heroines vanity, even though the poem has functioned throughout as a critique of that vanity. And no real moral development has taken place Belinda is asked to come to terms with her loss through a kind of bribe or embarrassment that reinforces her basically frivolous outlook. But even in its most vexatious moments, this poem is a gentle one, in which Pope shows a basic sympathy with the social world in spite of its folly and foibles. The searing criti ques of his later satires would be much more stringent and less forgiving.