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Mirror to the 18th century: The Rape of the Lock is a mirror to this kind of society. Of which Lord
Petre and Belinda are the representative figures. Belinda is presented as dazzling charming like the sun,
and lap-dogs were another indispensable ingredient of their lives.
It is significant that how Pope brackets lap-dogs and lovers as though lovers were no better than lap-dogs.
Glittering fashion, celebrations in the form of parties, dances with amorous intentions beneath, were the
typical features of the people belonging to the aristocratic class. Ariel’s speech that Belinda hears in a state
of dreaming portraits the sex-intrigues of the dancing balls. The ladies spent more time applying to
themselves beauty aids, a large variety of cosmetics from distant lands. They were always burning to win
the heart of their lover. They spent hours at the toilets, played card games, danced and considered the
dressing table a place of worship. Coquetry was the only art that these ladies practiced sedulously: rolling
the eye ball for furtive glances or winking in a debonair, apparently indifferent manner, blushing at the
right moment to attract the admiring eyes, were the manners that they worked hard to acquire. The ladies
as well as the gallant young men were fickle-minded, inconsistent, unreliable frankly trivializing valuable
human relationship. Pretension, dissimulation and hypocrisy constituted their way of life. Levity was their
common characteristic. The following shows their picture.
Pope gives minute details of the ladies’ constant concern for enhancing their beauty effect with artificial
means. For these ladies, the conventionally serious things of life had lost their importance. Their moods
and passion were ruled by trivialities. Trifles would make them anxious or angry. These ladies, in other
words, were devoid of any real moral sense, or any serious, meaningful purpose in life. To them, the death
of husbands affected them only as much as that of their lap-dog or breaking of China jars. Honor, to them,
was almost equal to nothing. The loss of chastity was no more serious than staining of brocades. To them
Church meant nothing. Missing a church congregation was not a serious affair, but missing a ball was
considered an important thing. Losing heart or indulging in sex was less important than the loss of a
necklace.
All this goes to show that utter moral confusion prevailed in the aristocracy of the eighteenth century.
Serious purpose had evaporated from their lives. Men were chiefly concerned with getting richer and
carrying on sexual adventures with fashion-frenzy coquettish ladies. Their love letters were more sacred
to them than the Bible. In the Rape of the Lock, the adventurous Baron builds an Alter of Love; it is built
of twelve voluminous French romances and all the prizes gained from him former love; and significantly,
the fire at the altar is raised with the heaps of love-letters that he had received. Lord Petre’s sense of
victory at the cutting of Belinda’s lock is symbolic of the shallowness, triviality, in fact, the emptiness of
the youths of the contemporary aristocratic class.
Shallowness of Judges, the fashion of coffee-taking.
The Rape of the Lock is an epitome of the eighteenth century social life. In this poem, Pope has caught
and fixed for ever the atmosphere of the age. No great English poet is at once so great and so empty, so
artistic and yet so void of the ideal on which all high art rests. As Dixon asserts: Pope is the protagonist
of a whole age, of an attitude of mind and manner of writing. Hence, the poem is highly arresting
because of its presentation of social life of the age. It reflects and mirrors the contemporary society.
Conclusion: Pope fully bears the witticism of its age. In his conception of theme and selection of the tile,
Pope displays his unsurpassable wit. This was the kind of life led by the fashionable people of the upper
classes in the age of Pope, and Pope has described it in gorgeous colors on the one hand and with scathing
satire on the other. While it shows the grace and fascination of Belinda’s toilet, he indicates the vanity and
futility of it all. There is nothing deep or serious in the lives and activities of the fashionable people, all is
vanity and emptiness and this Pope has revealed with art and brilliance. The Rape of the Lock reflects the
artificial age with all its outward splendor and inward emptiness. It the mirror of a particular aspect of life
in the age of Pope. It was, says, Lowell, a mirror in a drawing room, but it gave back a faithful image of
society.