ALEXANDER POPE

Rape of the Lock

Q. Analyse pope‟s „Rape of the Lock‟ as a mirror to the contemporary social fashions and
follies.
OR
Q. Pope has been regarded as pre-eminently, the poet of his age “Justify with reference to
the „Rape of the Lock‟.
OR
Q. “In the „Rape of the Lock‟, Pope has represented both the achievements of the 18 th century
English society”- examine this statement with illustration from the poem.
Q. “In Pope‟s work, the social life of the time is reflected as in a mirror”-illustrate this from
“Rape of the lock”.
OR
Q. “In Pope‟s work, the social life of the time is reflected as if in a mirror…” - Illustrate this
from the „Rape of the Lock‟ as an example the close relationship between literature and
society in the 18th century.
OR
Q. Show how „The Rape of the Lock‟ conveys to us the glitter and elegance of the 18 th
century.

Answer: The ‘Rape of the Lock’ is a poem in which Alexander Pope shows himself
emphatically as the spokesman of his age. This poem pictures the artificial tone of the age and
the frivolous aspect of feminity. It is the epic of trifling, a page torn from the petty and pleasure-
seeking life of fashionable beauty. We see in this poem, the elegance and the emptiness, the
meanness and the vanity, the jealousies, treacheries and intrigues of the social life of the
aristocracy of the 18th century.
At the very outset, we become acquainted with the idleness, late-rising and fondness for
domestic pets of the aristocratic ladies of the time. Belinda wakes up at the hour of twelve and
then falls asleep again. We also become acquainted in the very beginning of the poem with the
superiority of the ladies who loved gilded chariots and affected a love of the game of Ombre.
Their ambition to marry peers and dukes or men with high titles is indicated in the opening
canto:
“Then gay ideas crowd the vacant brain
While peers and dukes, and all their sweeping train …”
The poem brings out the coquetry, the art, the artifice and the varying vanities of the ladies of the
time. These ladies learnt early from their life how to roll their eyes and to blush in an intriguing
manner. Their hearts were like toy-shops which moved from one gallant man to another -
“With varying vanities from every part, they shift the moving toy-shop of their heart”

One gallant could drive out another gallant and one coach could drive out another coach. Levity
was the hallmark of these women. Their manners and behaviour were artificial and affected.
They knew the art to lisp, to hang their heads aside, to faint into airs and to languish with pride.
They used to sink on their rich quilts and pretend sickness so that young gallant men should
come to inquire after their health and in this way also see the costly gowns which they were
wearing.

The women of the time felt glad to receive love-letters. Thus, when Belinda at last gets up from
her bed, her eyes first open on a love-letter expressed in the conventional language of such
letters. Another of the vanities of these ladies was to keep domestic pets such as dogs and
parrots.
Aristocratic ladies treated toilet as their chief concern.
One important passage in the ‘Rape of the Lock’ describes Belinda at her dressing table. Before
commencing at her toilet operation, she offers a prayer to the cosmetic powers. The ladies lose
their tempers over trifles. Screams of horror from Belinda rend the affrighted skies, she is
described as the ‘fierce Virgo’. The ladies in the poem are depicted as very aggressive and it is
they who start the battle. Women have been jealous of one another from time immemorial.
Clarissa stealthily hands over a pair of scissors to Baron in order to assist him in his wicked
design. It is in all probability, Clarissa’s jealousy of Belinda’s beauty and fame that prompts her
offer this assistance to baron.

The ladies have no moral scruples. ‘Honour’ is a word with little meaning for them. A lady’s
missing a dance party is as serious a matter as her forgetting her prayers. A lady’s losing her
necklace is as serious as losing her heart. The death of a lapdog or the breaking of a rich china-
vessel is as serious a matter to the lady as the death of her husband. These are all examples of the
superficial nature of the ladies of the time. There is a complete confusion of moral values in their
minds. Belinda herself has no real sense of feminine virtue or honour. She is in love with Baron
and for this reason Aries gives her up when he sees ‘an earthy lover lurking at her heart’. Her
lament over the loss of a lock of her hair is sheer hypocrisy.

The aristocratic young men of the time were, like the ladies, lacking in any serious purpose or
morality. Florio and Demon are the representatives of those gallants and tops who vie with each
other two win the favour of the ladies. There is a keen competition among men to win feminine
favours. Wigs strive with wigs and sword-knots strive with sword-knots. The attitude of these
fops to love is amusingly described in the manner in which the Baron tries to propitiate heaven in
order to win Belinda’s heart. The life of the fops is empty and the shallowness and superficiality
of the time is also clear from the kind of gossip that goes on at the court. Coffee drinking was
another important diversion of the time. Coffee made the politicians wise. It was coffee that gave
rise to a clever device in the Baron’s brain for obtaining possessions of a lock of Belinda’s hair.
We are given a satirical picture of the judges, jurymen and merchants. The judges are in a hurry
to sign the judgement and the jurymen are in a hurry to pronounce the verdict of ‘guilty’ because
they want to get back home for dinner .The merchants spend feverish hours at the exchange.
The glitter and the elegance of the period are also effectively depicted in the poem. Belinda’s
charm receives much attention. We see her as a coquette, a sweet charmer, a society belle, a rival
of the sun and a murderer of millions.

The idealizing words used by Pope for Belinda reflect the homage which society paid to the
image of the beautiful women.
The portrait that Pope paints of Belinda is of course, satirical, but we also feel compelled to
admire this women who is not less than a divinity. Pope’s attitude, and therefore our attitude,
towards Belinda is mocking and yet tender, critical and yet admiring.

Q. What is a mock –heroic quality of the “Rape of the Lock “

OR
Q. Pope describes the „Rape of the Lock‟ as a heroi-comical poem. What did Pope mean
and how far does he succeed in his purpose?
OR
Q. Write a note on the mock heroic character of the „Rape of the Lock‟.
OR
Q. “Rape of the Lock is a poem largely distinguished among mock epics by employing a
variety of ironic contrast” - Discuss.

Answer: The mock epic is a poetic form which uses the epic structure but on a miniature scale
and has subject that is mean or trivial. The writer makes the subject look ridiculous by placing it
in a framework entirely inappropriate to its importance. The purpose of a mock-heroic or mock
epic poem is satirical. Pope description of the Rape of the Lock as a heroi-comical poem misled
some readers into thinking that the comic attack was intended against heroic poetry. In fact,
mock-heroic poem is no a satire on heroic poetry. The target of the attack may be a person or
persons, an institution or the whole society. The subject of such a poem as has already been
indicated is trivial or unimportant but the treatment naturally arouses laughter.
The central incident in the ‘Rape of the Lock’ is the theft of a lock of hair and the quarrel which
arose between two families as a result of that theft. Pope emphasized it in the full pomp and
splendour of the epic verse. No poet has ever succeeded so well in using a vast force to lift a
feather. The use of the grand style on little subject is not only ludicrous, but a sort of violation of
the rules of proportion and mechanics.

All the main features of an epic surround the principle event of this poem. Trivial occurrences
are handled with all the seriousness and dignity which properly belonged to the epic. In other
words, there is a deliberate and sustained discrepancy between the theme of the poem and the
treatment of the essence of this particular kind of parody.

The poem employs a variety of ironic contrast. The principal contrast is between the mighty and
the trivial. The poem follow all the precepts laid down for the epic expect the crucial one- dignity
of subject. The trivial theme is treated on the grand manner. This is the most striking contrast.
We have in this poem a general mockery of the epic form- the epic manner with its invocation,
its similes, its frequent use of ‘He said’. There is a mockery of the epic matter or substance with
its machinery, its battles and its journeys on water and to the underworld. Apart from this, there
is a particular mockery of a scene or a detail or a certain speech or a comment by the poet. And
the scale of the mockery is always varying. We find Belinda flashing lightening from her eyes as
in Cowley’s epic ‘Davideis’, Saul flashes it. She screams like the Homeric heroes. But she is a
mere slip of a girl, a mere fashionable lady. This is the ironic contrast.

The poem contains parodies of Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, Spenser and Milton as well as
reminiscences of Catallus, Ovid and the Bible. There are several instances of burlesque
treatment.

There are three major parallels between the ‘Rape of the Lock’ the great English epic ‘Paradise
Lost’. First, there is the dream of pride and vain glory insinuated into Belinda’s ear which
recalls the insinuation of the dream into Eve’s ear in books V and VI of Paradise Lost. Second,
there is the parody of the ceremony performed by Belinda at her dressing table where Belinda
worships herself and which vividly recalls the new born Eve’s admiration of herself as mirrored
in the pool of Eden in book IV of ‘Paradise Lost’. But perhaps the crucial parallel is the third
which occurs just before the cutting of the lock of hair when Ariel searches out the close recesses
of the virgin’s thought. There he finds an earthly lover lurking in her heart and Pope tells us that
Ariel retired with a sigh and resigned to fate. This situation echoes the moment in ‘Paradise Lost’
when, after the fall of Adam and Eve, the Angels of Heaven withdraw. The Angels could have
protected Adam and Eve against any force attempted by Satan but against man’s own free choice
of evil, they are as helpless as Ariel and his comrades are in the face of Belinda’s choice of an
earthly lover.

An outstanding mock-heroic element in the poem is the comparison between the arming of an
epic hero and Belinda’s dressing herself and using cosmetics in order to kill. Pope describes a
society lady in terms that would suit the arming of a warrior like Achilles. Then there are two
battles which receive an ironically inflated treatment. In the description of these battles, there are
several echoes of Troy and Carthage. The first battle is the game of cards between Belinda and
the Baron. The second battle which has even more of the mock heroic element is the battle of the
sexes which is compared to the battles of gods and goddesses as described by Homer.
Again and again, Pope introduces us into the epic world and brings us back to the words of
trivialities. To take only one example, the transition from the ‘declining of the day’ and ‘the sun
obliquely shooting his burning ray’, to the merchant returning from the exchange after the day’s
work is a startling lapse from grand generality to trivial particulars. Such switches in and out of
the epic words and the heroic style are of course, characteristic of the mock epic but few mock
heroic poets are able to accomplish them with such dexterity.

In addition to the mighty-trivial contrast we have other contrasts which many be described as
follows:
Primitive- sophisticated, antique-contemporary, masculine-feminine, principled –opportunistic,
dramatic-histrionic.

The ‘Rape of the Lock’ is a poem ridiculing the fashionable world of Pope’s day but there are
several occasions when we feel that the epic world of Homer and Virgil has, in the poem, been
scaled down wittily and affectionately to admit the coffee table and the fashionable lady’s bed
chamber.

Thus Pope’s ‘Rape of the Lock’ possesses all the essential features of other well- known epics in
English literature. Hence it will not be on exaggeration to say that ‘Rape of the Lock’ is, beyond
any shadow of doubt, a mock-heroic poem.
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