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3.2 The Rape of the Lock
‘T(caps)he Rape of the Lock’ is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope. It was published anonymously in Lintots's Miscellany in May 1712 in 334 lines {Two Cantos}. The poem was revised and expanded into 5 canto version, 794 lines in Pope's name in March 2, 1714.
The poem was written to commemorate a real life event – a quarrel that involved young Lord Petre and Isabella Fermor. The latter's hair was cut off by young Petre. All the feuding parties were Roman Catholic families. Alexander Pope wrote the poem to end the quarrel based on the advice of his friend, John Carl. The Catholic background of the feuding parties is the reason for the elaborate use of religious expressions or terminologies in Pope's poem.
Isabella Fermor and her suitor, Lord Petre, came from aristocratic Catholic families at a period in England when Catholicism was banned. Petre, who was lusting after Isabella, had cut off a part of her dreadlock uninformed. This led to a great quarrel between the two popular Catholic families. Alexander Pope thinks of the possibility of uniting the conflicting parties through the use of humour.
The two Catholic families were seen by Pope to be playing the gods in the quarrel; hence he compared the incident to the epic world of the gods. Pope created a character he named Belinda to represent the real Arabella and imaginatively journeyed into the world of 'Sylphs' or guardian spirits, imitating the gods and goddesses. And in a mockery of the traditional classical epics, the act is humorously considered to be synonymous to a rape.
We have to see beyond the art of Belinda's hair and the petty conflict that ensured to extract the important theme of the beauty and loss of beauty in the poem. In the Augustan tradition, women's hair was considered a very important part of their beauty, and women's beauty generally was very important to them and their society. It then means that the loss of one's beauty was an important matter, as the woman ought to be decorative apparel, for beauty in the age of Pope had the highest scoring degree than any other feminine virtue attainable. Her hair was more important. When the Baron took a secret look into the lock's hair, he cherished its shining and inviting mythical nature and nursed the secret desire to cut it, as he invokes the similar voyage of the gods. Pope remarks:
The peer now spreads the glittering furfex wide,
To inclose the lock, now joins it, to divide
Ev'n then, before the fatal Engine clos'd
A wretched sylph too fondly interpos'd,
Fate urged the sheers and cut the sylph in twain.
The poem discusses the themes of wealth, laziness of the society of the time as well as the making of complex conflicts out of the trivial issues of life. We were immediately introduced to the heroine, Belinda, and then immediately afterward connected to the supernatural, the sylph, an imitation of the gods of the Romans and Greek. Alexander Pope's verse reveals man as a predator, a natural predator whom every beautiful Belinda must beware of because of his egoistic and overpowering purpose which he often achieves through sexual ego. Pope equates the might in man's tendency when confronted with Belinda to the gods of the Greeks and Romans (epics); thus every woman should beware of man, according to Pope. Women too, as Belinda, are obsessed with their beauty, which they nurture desperately and determinably. In Canto I of the poem, Belinda is preoccupied with beautifying or adoring herself in front of the mirror. She glorifies herself, and this also suggests that Belinda already elevates herself to a goddess who must be worshipped. She worships her reflection in the mirror, the reflection of her own vanity, the vanity of every human being, her goddess-like beauty that everyman desires to prey on.
Fully dressed, Belinda sets off to a social occasion in Canto II of the poem. On her journey, Pope reminds us of her two famous locks of hair as well as the ambition of the Baron to possess them as a token of her love. The Baron turns to the supernatural to assist him possess the totality of Belinda's love, but half his wish is granted, one lock, not both. But, as Belinda sails off beautifully, flowing temptingly in the air, Ariel, who is now disturbed, ordered the sylphs to be on her trail to be able to guard her against predators.
In Canto III of the poem, Belinda arrives in Hampton court palace, where she plays a game of cards described in epic term as the parody of the battle scenes. Pope invokes the theme of waste here in Belinda as the much treasured time and energy meant for serious purpose is channeled to gambling by her. Belinda and the Baron flirt over a pack of cards. The social engagement extends to the coffee time, perhaps to direct Belinda's attention from his genuine or real intention. Baron borrows a pair of scissors from Clarissa and snips off one of Belinda's locks. Belinda shrieks in dismay, the Baron triumphs as Belinda lost one of her locks, somewhat similar to a successful rape of Belinda. Pope equates the successful cut of Belinda's hair to the fall of an empire.
The fourth Canto explains Belinda's emotional feelings to the triumphant will of violent passion. The gnomes and Umbriel descends to the underworld care of epic heroes such as Aeneas Spleen and Odysseus and returns with a bag filled with violent passion and a bottle with little sorrows. With the mixture of passions and sorrows released into Belinda, she is further empowered. At last, Belinda comes off her ego as she pleads but her plea shows admixture of bitterness as she recalls her bitter experience. With all these, the curtain is drawn off to unveil Clarissa's speech to correct and unite the quarrelsome, justifying the intention of Pope's friend, John Carl, that Pope should write an epic poem to immortalize the conflict. But Clarissa's speech would have gotten the much praiseworthy effect, but for the fact that she played the accomplished in the defeat, cutting off Belinda's hair, by giving the Baron the fatal engine with which Belinda's lock was cut. Thalestris and Belinda, elegant ladies, and other men in attendance descend to violence, fighting. At last, Pope achieved the erotic intention of his epic, the erotic quality realized in the physical contact, the snuff which Belinda throws in the Baron's face makes him to sneeze and then collapses, as Pope's way of reversing Belinda's defeat. The latter threatens him with a long hair pin, demands her lock back, but the irony is that the hair cannot be returned because it got lost, consumed in the confusion. With this, Pope achieved a mock-heroic end, a compliment to the lady. Other themes of the poem are secret desire, violence, vanity, praises, and deception.
Pope uses classical borrowings, referring to the gods of the Latin, Roman and Greek to situate the heroic status of Belinda in elevated language; the Syiphs, Homer's The Iliad, Aeneas, Tiber, Thames, Achilles, dressed up in the suitable language of lamentation and incantations, as well as parody, similes, and exclamations seen in Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. The long epic is clothed in humor, for instance, when the Baron secretly saw the lock. He immediately developed an irresistible secret desire; first, he admires it and desires to possess or get it cut off. Thus Pope creates something out of a ridiculous and trivial situation.
The style of Pope's 'Rape of the Lock' is mock-heroic. The structure of the epic like others before it expands and makes sense out of trivial issues in a witty or humorous manner, yet, in grander language. Belinda's weakness and vanity are combined with her unrivaled beauty, a beauty that typifies the godliness of the Greek and Roman. Her beauty made her a heroic target of the Baron, of preying men; but Pope reorders life's possibilities in the poem. Belinda's weird beauty, which is her source of attraction, reduces her to prey for the Baron, thus Belinda's private world of beauty, as created by Pope, soon became her major weakness as she combines godlike qualities with human to make her delicate and irresistible. This ensnares men and draws them to errors, to fall at her feet. Pope insists:
If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all
In Pope's willful exaggeration combined with dark humor, even the sun notices Belinda's dazzling beauty and mocks her as pretentious and predatory. For instance, when she adorns herself ready for a visit to Hampton Court in Canto I, she stands or sits before a mirror to ascertain her irresistibility to men when she moves into society. And she didn't set out for the journey until she was sure she had certified herself in re-creating or refashioning her beauty, like an army set for battle. This could be the reason Pope alludes to an epic scene like the arming of Achilles in Homer's The Iliad. He also states that her power or beauty could affect any judgment or change the natural order of things; the same way Belinda's very exaggerative beauty in the epic penetrated and gauged the conscience of the Baron, thwarted it and empowered it to nurse a secret and desperate evil against her.
3.2.1 Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
The first stanza of the poem published in 1717 begins with a meeting with the ghost of a young woman who has just stabbed herself to death. We do not know why she killed herself, but the suicide may have to do with love. The poet believes that she is such a good woman who should not have lived in this world because she is so pure and innocent, the reasons for her early death. We are left to further imagine and probably feel her brother may have tried to lure her into marrying a man she did not really love. Our poet sympathizes with the unfortunate lady and regrets her early and unwarranted death in exile. This tragedy makes the poet feel deeply for the innocent woman on whose grave he devoted some beautiful lines. It seems that the poet generalizes the human habit of suicide, probably either for concealed reasons or reasons too trivial to warrant an act of suicide; hence Pope leaves our memory confused or wandering on the identity of the unfortunate woman he invites us to mourn. The poem reminds us of the violent habit of an average Augustan or of the Neoclassical age and society.
3.2.3 Eloisa to Abelard (Translated Poetry, French to English Language)
The poem, a heroic epistle that reminiscences John Hughes epistle of Eloisa and Abelard, was originally written in the French language. It imitates the Roman poet, Ovid. In what appears like a poetic craft of legendary people in dilemma (the legend of Dido's letter to Aeneas after they separated and then eventual suicide of Dido), the poet contrasts emotion with suicide. The poem probes man's psychological state of mind, the progression of thought (invented by the American psychologist, William James in the 20th century) running in him, and the inner will to arrive at a violent end. In the heroic epistle, the poet registers the vital emotional concerns of Abelard and Eloisa, a myth that was famous in the age. The duo were great in learning and history but famous for their unfortunate passion, experience of the chains of calamity after which they resigned to religion to overcome their tragedy for the rest of their lives. Several years after they separated, Abelard writes to a friend explaining his bitter experience but the letter got to Eloisa, provoked by a series of conflicting emotional responses leading to celebrated passion, the frightening mysteries of love, emotional relationships directly in conflict with Eloisa's love for her Abelard and Christian duty. We see in Eloisa, the conflict between stunning and burning erotic desire of Christianity as well as tradition. Pope's emphasis is more on man's carnality than spirituality.
The poem takes off with Eloisa's outburst and excitement over the letter from Abelard after which the poet recounts the history of their love relationships and their current state of affairs, especially why Eloisa decides she will not marry Abelard. The violent end of their love and how Eloisa becomes a Nun are expressed. The poet unites Eloisa's state of mind with her environment, her being a nun, and private secrets. At last, apparently unable to overcome her emotion, she thinks of the peace that is attainable in the grave as a way to escape the vanity of love and ephemeral or vanishing human affairs. The unanticipated trials that await future lovers are the concern of the poet. Pope may have recreated his love life as he was said to have been involved with two women, Lady Mary Wontley Montague and Martha Blunt. His conflictive and deep psychological experience may have informed this poem.
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