Pope has given an EPIC TREATMENT to an EXTREMELY LUDICROUS subject in “THE RAPE OF LOCK”. Discuss.

LATIN VERSE- Nolueram, Belinda, Tuos violatre capillos;

Sed juvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.

-Martial

The Cave of Spleen episode, seen to be an integral to the poem. Its relevance in the mock-epic framework is clear; it parodies a serious epic convention for comic and satiric purposes. The episode presents a picture of the artificial and hypocritical nature of the soci’ty ladies and at the same time mocks these affectations. This is in keeping with the general satiric purposes of the poem. The whole passage has a dreamy (perhaps, nightmarish) quality which speaks greatly of Pope’s artistic and imaginative skill. In this episode, all the sex symbols are gathered as if in dream fantasy, and the Freudian symbols are unmistakable. In this aspect too, the Cave of Spleen episode is relevant to the poem as a whole, for The Rape of the Lock as the title itself suggests has distinct sexual connotations. In the confused values of the society the poem portrays, virginity is not as important as a favourite lock of hair, and appearance is all that counts. In the context of the “moral” of the poem good sense and good humour are advocated; in other words, the Goddess of Spleen and her gifts are to be painstakingly avoided.

“This lock, the Muse the stars consecrate to Fame,

And mid’st the stars inscribe Belinda’s Name!”

In “The Rape of the lock” the satire is directed towards the “little” men and the gentle ladies who are capable of such mighty rage. The habits and artificial modes of the aristocratic society of eighteenth century England are the targets of Pope’s satire. The vanities of women are also ridiculed. Through the minute description of Belinda’s toilet, Pope ridicules women’s excessive concern with self-embellishment. But of, the most important subject of satire here is the utter moral confusion of that society.

“This Verse to Caryll, Muse! Is due;

This, ev’n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:

Slight is the Subject, but not so Praise

If She inspire,and He approve my Lays.”              -I sing.

 Following the Restoration, in 1660, of the Stuart king, CharlesII, to the throne of England the manners of the seventeenth century society became quite coarse, politics scandalously corrupt and the general tone of society brutal. But on, people soon grew sick of the outrageous licence of the fashionable circles and the early 18^th century witnessed a resolute attempt in the direction of moral regeneration.

Exaggeration is another effective device of satire in Pope’s hand. There is more than a touch of it in the passage in which Pope speaks of the souls of ladies continuing the same life of fashion in the form of spirits. It is evident also in the description of how the sylphs protect them by making them more flirtatious with a wider range of men.

“Belinda still her downy Pillow prest,

Her Guardian Sylph prolong’d the balmy Rest.”

The address by Ariel in the Second Canto of the poem serves to raise, in a mock-heroic manner, the fantastic supernatural order of spirits to cosmic order. There are various orders of spirits, each order with specific functions assigned to it.  They control such various events as the movement of stars and the safety of the British throne. Thus, these supernatural beings are given a wider perspective and at the same time their mock-heroic significance is never forgotten.

“Where Wigs with Wigs Sword-knots Sword-knotts strive,

Beaus banish Beaus, and  Coaches Coaches drive.”

This desire for improvement was feature of the literature of this age, and particularly of the literature that was created by middle class writers who were most strongly influenced by the moral considerations. But for, the people of this age were quite as hostile, on the other hand, to the religious zeal and fanaticism of the Puritans. And thus, though England began to regain lost ground morally, she did not recover the high passion or the spiritual fervor of the Elizabethan age. People, in their dread of the emotional excesses of the Puritans, fell into a mood of chilly apathy, virtue was preached and recommended, but any manifestation of earnestness, even in the Pulpit was regarded as ‘enthusiasm’ and hence, shockingly bad taste. ‘Good sense’ became the idol of the time, and by ‘good sense’ was meant a love of the reasonable and the useful and a hatred of the extravagant, the mystical and the visionary.

“By the same laws which first herself ordain’d.

Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem.

To copy Nature is to copy them.”

This is shown in the field of religion in which the prevailing principles were rationalism and utility. The same temper marks the literature of the age which exhibits a similar coldness and want of feeling, and a similar tendency towards shallowness in thought and formality in expression. It is a literature of intelligence-intelligence which rarely goes much beneath the surface of things.-of wit and of fancy and not a literature of emotion, passion or creative energy which are the essential elements of high class literature. In this literature, spontaneity and simplicity are sacrificed to the dominant mania for elegance and correctness, this is true even of poetry, which seldom travelled, beyond the interests of that narrow world of the ‘Town’ by which men’s outlook was commonly circumscribed, finding its publicity in the coffee houses and the drawing rooms, drew for its substance upon the politics and the discussion of the hour; and the couplet was its accepted dress. Such poetry, however clever, was necessarily more or less fugitive; it lacked inevitably the depth and grasp of essential things which alone assure permanence in literature. And the quest for refinement in style resulted too often in stilted affections and frigid conventionalism.

“A sudden Star, it shot thro’ liquid Air,

And drew behind a radiant Trail of Hair.

Not Berenice’s Locks foirst rose so bright,

The Heave’ns bespangling with dishevel’d Light.

The Sylphs behold it kindling as it flies,

And pleas’d pursue its Progress thro’ the Skies.”

Feminine frivolity is the target of Pope’s satire. The Rape of the Lock is an exquisite continuation of “The strain of mockery against hoops and patches and their wearers, which supplied Addison and his colleagues with the material of so many Spectators” as Leslie Stephen observes.

The scheme of the Rosicrucian spirits is well assimilated by Pope into poem. We can safely say that the inclusion of the machinery has enhanced the brilliance of the poem. Further, it gives a touch of imaginative beauty to the work. It is also part of the mild satiric-moral scheme of the poem, for by implication, the sylphs and gnomes and salamanders are telling comments on the vanities, frivolities and follies of the female sex which Pope was satirising.

This was the kind of life led by fashionable people of the upper classes in the Age of Pope, and Pope has described it in gorgeous colours on the one hand and with scathing satire on the other. While he 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 brilliance and artistically. No English poem is at once so brilliant and so empty as The Rape of the Lock. It reflects the artificial age with all its outward splendour and inward emptiness. “It was”, says Lowell, “a mirror in a drawing room, but it gave back a faithful image of society, powered and roughed, to e sure, and intent on trifles, yet still human in its own way as the heroes of Homer in theirs”. In The Rape of the Lock, Pope has caught and fixed forever the atmosphere of his age.

“These swell their Prospects…

…Your Grace salutes their Ears.”

 ‘Spleen’ or ‘hypochondria’ denoted ill-humour, irritable and peevish temper-qualities which were to be avoided, as Clarissa’s speech points out. The all glory of the Cave of Spleen is brilliantly conceived to satirise the mixture of ill-humour and affection which marked many a society lady of the time. The gift bag of sighs and sobs and “the war of Tongues” given by the Goddess of Spleen to Umbriel is able to conquer Belinda (who is otherwise the epitome of cheerfulness) because there is one ingredient of Spleen in Belinda’s character-namely, affectation.

“Favours to none, to all she Smiles extends.

Oft she rejects, but never she offends.”

The Rape of the Lock depicts to a nicety the petty pleasure-seeking life of the fashionable lady of the time. It also depicts the small follies of the female sex, as in the brilliant satire of the Cave of Spleen-the sighs, sobs, soft sorrows and flowing tears, as well as the wild shrieking tantrums.

“And one describes a charming Indian screen;

A third interprets Motions, Looks, and Eyes;

At ev’ry Word a Reputation dies.”

And it was in this palace that Belinda and her companions played cards and enjoyed coffee. And it was here that her lock of hair was cut off. There is also a mention of the Lake of Rosamonda, a notorious place for love-trysts, and of Partridge, a fake astrologer of the day. We are also told about Hyde Park and of its famous drive where fashionable people rode in their coaches and sedan chairs.

“Jove’s Thunder roars, Heav’n trembles all around;

Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing Deeps resound;

Earth shakes her nodding Tow’rs, the Ground gives way;

And the pale Ghosts start at the Flash of Day.”

The Rape of the Lock bears fully the witticism of its age. In his conception of the theme and selection of the title, Pope displays his unsurpassable wit. The theme of the poem is the rape of the lock of a fashionable belle by one of her haughty admirers. This is quite a trivial affair but Pope makes an amusing epic out of it. The whole course of the poem from the dream of Belinda to the mysterious disappearance of her lock is ingeniously contrived, and speaks only of Pope’s wonderful sense of wit. The very title of the Pope’s epic is comically associated with a mere lock of hair, and echoes wittily the epical episodes of Homer and Shakespeare.

“Descend, and sit on each important Card;

First Ariel perch’d upon Matadore,

Then each, according to the Rank they bore;

For Sylphs, yet mindful of their ancient Race,

Are, as when Women, wondrous fond of Place.”

Pope’s social banter is a marvel of wit and art. His sharp invectives are critically enwrapped in fancy and fantasy to prevent them from degenerating into personal libel. The social banter of The Rape of the Lock, couched in a mock heroic style, is hardly surpassed by other work. “To have given in a single work the maximum expression to the social and moral characteristics, manners and literary taste of an epoch is a feat that few have been able to perform.”The poem reflects the confusion of values. As Elwin points out: “The relative importance of things, the little with them is great, and the great little. They attach as much importance to a China jar as to their honour, as much to religion as to dances and masquerades, as much to their lap-dogs as to husbands.”

Belinda and other fashionable ladies took several cups of the inspiring coffee and liquor. And that was her undergoing. For coffee which makes the politician wise,

-Sent up in Vapours to the Baron’s Brain

New Stratagems, the radiant Lock to gain.

Levity was the prominent feature of the women and men of this age. Their manners and behaviour were artificial and affected. They practised lisping, hanging their heads aside, going into fainting fits and languishing with pride. They would sink on their rich quilts and pretend sickness so that young gallants should come to inquire after their health and see the costly gowns which they were wearing.

“The Nymph exulting fills with Shouts the Sky,

The Wall, the Woods and long Canals reply.”

Belinda represents the typical fashionable ladies of the time. What is her life, and how does she spend her day? There is not the slightest glimpse of seriousness or sincerity, goodness or grandeur of human life in any of her words and actions. Belinda is a beautiful lady; she has a host of admirers; she is a flirt and coquette. But of, despite all their flirtations and the disdain they showed for their lovers as Ariel, the guardian sylph, discovered about Belinda. Though these beautiful ladies apparently seemed to reject their suitors, they secretly harboured ambition to get married to lord and guided by considerations of material prosperity, through matrimonial relationships. They were always searching for more and more prosperous matches. For this reason, they scoffed at matrimonial alliances which were below their expectations. And dreaming of their rich prospects, women like Belinda sleep late and are used to rising late from their beds, and Pope describes it beautifully equating the beast with the beauty. And also Belinda goes to sleep again and when she finally does awake she is engaged immediately with her toilette which takes up a large part of her time.

“This Casket India’s glowing Gems unlocks,

And all Arabia breathes from yonder Box,

The Tortoise here and Elephant unite,

Transform’d to Combs, the speckled and the white,

Here Files of pins extend their shining Rows,

Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux.”

The Rape of the Lock is an epitome of the eighteenth century social life. In The Rape of the Lock Pope has caught and fixed forever 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, this poem is very arresting because of the presentation of social life of the age. The artificial style of the poem is in conformity with the artificial life and ways of thought of the time. This age is empty, hollow and devoid of all ideals. So the poem is as meretricious as the age was. It reflects ad mirrors the true picture of the contemporary society. The classicism of Pope is the shadow of classicism; it is false or pseudo-classicism.

“A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos’d;

Fate urg’d the Shears, and cut the Sylph in twain,

(But Airy Substance soon unites again)”

Belinda is what she is not.  She deceives others as she deceives herself. Her pretensions and her real intentions are at logger-heads. Outwardly, she wishes to be considered virtuous but inwardly, she is ready to have fun with the young folk. She loves the Baron at heart. But of, she rebukes and abuses him. Ariel, her guardian spirit gives up his duties of guarding her virtue when he discovers her hypocrisy. Though she is a flirt, she wants to be worshipped as a queen of virtue. All her anger is intended   only to deceive others into thinking that she is a paragon of honour.  Belinda is very mindful of the virtues, though she would not care if she lost her virginity in some secret love-affair. She is very conscious about her reputation, about her morals. Actually she is fond of men and of having a good time with them on the other hand she would not like to be called cheap or frivolous but only as a goddess of beauty and virtue.

“Then flash’d the living Lightning from her Eyes,

And Screams of Horror rend th’ affrighted Skies”

The toilette, in fact, is the great business of her life, and the right adjustment of her hair, the decorating of her face, and the chief employment of her time. The beauty of Belinda and the elaborate details of her toilette are all set forth with matchless grace, but behind all this fascinating description, there is a pervading sense of vanity and emptiness. Pope’s satirical gift is shown at its best when he shows the outward charms and the inward frivolity of fashionable ladies. “Their hearts are toy- shops. They reverse the relative importance of things; the title with them is great and the great little.”

“With earnest Eyes, and round unthinking Face,

He first the Snuff-box open’d, and then the Case,

And thus broke out –My Lord, why, what rage Devil?”

It is Pope’s use of this machinery, moreover, which more than any other single feature made the poem the signal success than it is, as G.Holden holds. The gentlemen of the smart set are as frivolous as the ladies. Lord Petre and his fellows are the representatives of the fashionable society of the time. They are all idle, empty-minded folk, and seem to have nothing else to do but making love or flirting with ladies. The “battle” between the ladies and gentlemen shows emptiness and futility of their lives. They visit clubs and coffee-houses, and there they indulge in empty scandalous talks. Apparently, the ladies of Pope’s age were pre-occupied with petty trifles. Belinda, in a way, symbolizes the woman of that age-beautiful in a superficial way (though one must admit there is a note of genuine appreciation in Pope’s lines on her), but concerned mostly with self-embellishment, gossip, shopping, card-playing and flirting. Cosmetics are worshipped, vanities carefully cultivated, art of flirtation developed. The form of poem chosen, namely the mock-heroic, precludes the possibility of portraying the society entirely; so there is no point in charging Pope with the limitation. The poem is thus, confined to the aristocratic society.

The poet in a very subtle manner satirises the activities of the palace. The Queen’s consultations with her ministers and her taking tea with the luminaries of her regime are equated. The serious and the frivolous have been mentioned in one breath, as if taking counsel is as routine and frivolous matter as taking tea. The intrigues of the court are also laid bare. The Queen’s palace, Hampton Court, which is  beautifully laid out with “long canals” and “Woods” turns out to be a mere place for gossip and intrigue where the nobles and ladies.

“She sighs for ever on her pensive Bed,

Pain at her Side, and Megrim at her Head.”

Under Queen Anne the profligacy of men never decreased. Fashions held great sway over them. The petty vanities of women were indulged in more and more. It was one of Addison’s purposes to check this perilous wave of female vanity. In some letters of the Spectator are given the accounts of the fashionable-world, of how the high head-dresses have disappeared, but the coverings for the lower portion of the body has increased. And Addison, wittily, remarks that this shows lack of proportion in architecture since the base grows in proportionately bigger than the top. The pettiness and empty pride of the females of the society is part of the confusion of values rampant in the society as a whole. To the fashionable lady of the time, the breakage of a China vase is an important as a disaster of Fate, a stain on honour equals a stain on a brocade dress, and husband and lapdog are held on the same level of importance. (Line 253-258 amply bring out the moral bankruptcy of the ladies through ridiculous contrasts).Loss of virtue may not be as important as the snipping of a lock of hair and this point out the petty pride and vanity of the female sex.

“The graver Prude sinks downward to a Gnome,

In search of Mischief skill on Earth to roam.

The light Coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair,

And sport and flutter in the Fields of Air.”

In The Rape of the Locks, the ladies and gentlemen alike, meet in the Hamilton Court where

-To taste awhile the Pleasures of a Court;

In various Talk th’ instructive hours they past, Looks and Eyes;

Who gave the Ball, or paid the Visit last:

One speaks the Glory of the British Queen,

And one describes a charming Indian screen;..

A dress was not the only vanity. There were other absorbing things – rouge, puff, powder and ornaments. Women devoted much time to their toilet. The average life of a society woman was to dress, to visit clubs and coffee-houses where young gallants assembled to please and to flirt. The leisured aristocrats and the profligate young men read French romances, made love and fought duels. Women had more power over them, although they cared more for their lap-dogs. “No writer”, says Leslie Stephen, “reflects so clearly and completely the spirit of his own day as Pope does” and it is in The Rape of Lock that he reflects the life of the fashionable society of his time completely. After indulging in this kind of ‘instructive’ talk for some time, the lords and ladies play cards, and the poet describes the game in detail, because card-games seemed to occupy an important place in the daily activities of fashionable ladies and gentlemen of the period. Belinda and Lord Petre engage in the game, and when Belinda wins, she is filled with joy of victory. Pope casually refers to judges and merchantmen. Judges are more concerned with their belly than with passing correct judgment on the poor defendants. Apparently, justice was quite arbitrary. The merchants” monetary lust is also mentioned.

Cunnigham says, “In the sylphs, we witness a delightful down-scaling of the epic machinery.”

“That while my nostrils drew the vital air,

This hand which won it, shall for ever wear.”

The poem mirrors the various tastes of the people. Coffee was popular among gallant lords, ladies, and politicians and writers. The politicians, statesmen and writers used to gather in coffee houses to discuss the affairs of the day. They were addicted to coffee. And despite the best effort the poor sylph who was in charge of Belinda’s lock could not resist the Baron from committing such as heinous crime. 

“As on the Nosegay in her Breast reclin’d,

He watch’d th’ Ideas rising in her Mind,

Sudden he view’d, in spite of all her Art,

An Earthly Lover lurking at her Heart.”

The sole occupation of these ladies was their toilette, love-letters, couched in the conventional language of such letters mentioning “wound” “charms” and “ardours” and at last, though not the least, their pet-dogs, parrots and the like. They set much store by these pets. Among the ill-omens that Belinda recalled after she had lost a lock of her hair was he indifference of her two domestic pets.

While Belinda was dreaming in her sleep, The face which even a lover pines to touch is easily available to a mere dog.

So much so that Shock, her lap-dog,

-Leapt up, and wak’d his Mistress with his Tongue,

In Canto III of The Rape of the Lock, Pope gives a detailed description of the scene where Belinda’s beautiful lock of hair is to be raped. There is Hampton Court, the place of the English Queen beautifully situated on the banks of the river Thames, where

-Here Britan’s Statesmaen oft, the Fall of foredoom

Or Foreign Tyrants and, of Nymphs at home;

The age in which Pope flourished is called the Augustan or Classical Age as well as the Age of Pope, because he became its chief poet and man of letters. It was in many ways a unique age. What poetry had attained in the age of Elizabeth I and of Milton, prose achieved in this period. It is thus, the greatest manifestation, namely the work of pope. It was, no longer, inspired by that high emotional and imaginative fervour and creative spirit as in the preceding ages. It was dominated by the prevailing spirit of satire and moral preaching. And that was due to the demands of the times. “The artificial one of the age, the frivolous aspect of feminity is nowhere more exquisitely pictured than in this poem. It is the epic of trifling; a page torn from the petty, pleasure-seeking life of fashionable beauty”. Sexual connotations of the Cave of Spleen should not be missed, especially the lines in which Pope speaks of women who seemed to imagine themselves to be bottles shouting for corks. Apparently, Pope wants to suggest that a mind affected by Spleen is diseased, given to hallucinations and fantasies. Further, he also speaks against the excessive suppression of natural desires in the cause of affected “reputation” and fake “honour”. Sir Plume is another fashionable gentleman, excelling all others in his vanity and utter emptiness:

-(Sir Plume, of Amber Snuff-Box justly vain,

And the nice Conduct of the clouded Cane.)

The scene of the Cave of Spleen is almost central to the whole poem: it epitomizes the dominant passion satirized in the poem- Spleen or ill-humour which caused the quarrel between the two families. The episodes of the Cave of Spleen serve simultaneously to mirror and mock. The whole passage is a brilliant satire on the flippancy and loose character of the ladies of Pope’s time. These ladies were frivolous, artificial and obsessed with sexual desires which were unnaturally repressed. The goddess of Spleen is described as having two hand maids, one of which is Affection of pale and sickly appearance. The painted faces, assumed lisp, pretend swoons, the languishing airs and habitual sorrowful expression are all characteristics of the fashionable lady of the time, ridiculed with great effect by Pope in this passage through allegory. The passage is a masterly satire against hypocrisy and affectation.

“Matter too soft a lasting mask to bear;

And best distinguished by black, brown, of fair.”

Satire must have a moral norm to make it purposeful. The Rape of the Lock has been considered by several critics to lack a moral lesson. Indeed, it was partly in response to the criticism of some contemporaries that Pope added in Canto V (in the second version of the poem) a speech delivered by Clarissa. Its sole purpose was to make his moral norm explicit in the poem, said Pope. But even, leaving aside Clarissa’s speech, which is certainly a repository of Pope’s moral lesson, the poem does not lack any moral. It is by understanding the value of implied moral values that a critic has called the poem “a criticism of life”.

“Methinks already I your Tears survey,

Already hear the horrid things they say,

Already see you a degraded Toast,

And all your Honour in a Whisper lost!”

It would be incorrect to say that he was not a poet at all. He brought the form of poetry to perfection, and thereby made his own contribution to poetry. His scope was extremely limited but within these narrow limits how much has he done. He perfected the heroic couplet. His jewelled phrases have become current expressions of our everyday speech. His poetry does not have anything which may ennoble our thoughts and feelings but it gives us a great deal of pleasure. It may be “a miniature painting on two inches of ivory” but such a painting also has its own value. His poetry is the conventional poetry of a conventional age but it is poetry all the same. He can say what he wants to say in the best possible words, so that his common place thoughts and sentiments acquire unexpected beauty and grace. He completely achieves his own ideal of poetry-“What oft was thought but never so well expressed.”

“On her white breast a sparkling Cross she wore,

Which might Kiss, and Infidels adore.”

What does Pope mean by the word ‘nature’? Pope’s view of nature is very different from what we ordinarily understand by it. Wordsworth who killed the Popean school of poetry, called for a ‘return to Nature’. And Pope also said, ‘follow nature’. Where is the difference between the two poet’s point of view? For Wordsworth, ‘nature’ meant the external face of the universe, and those elements of human nature, which are uncorrupted by artificial civilization. For Pope, ‘nature meant that which was rational and was approves by tradition.’ Wordsworth, influenced by Rousseau, wanted man to go back to nature and to live in harmony with nature freed from all the insincerities and artificialities of so-called civilization. Pope, the poet of the artificial society, wanted men to live properly in civilized society, following the rational principles of human   conduct. Wordsworth was the apostle of nature which is untouched by human civilization. Pope speaks of “nature still, but nature methodized- not wild free nature, but nature properly manipulated and “to advantage dressed”. For Wordsworth, poetry must be natural spontaneous overflow of emotion. For Pope, poetry must be rational and avoid extremes. Thus, Pope and Wordsworth both followed ‘nature’, but their conceptions of ‘nature’, but their conceptions of ‘nature’ were poles apart.

“Gods! Shall the Ravisher display your Hair;

While the Fops envy, and the ladies stare!”

The Rape of the Lock in spite of its various excellences, cannot be called a great poem, for it deals with something that is trivial and ephemeral. It satisfies us by its workmanship, by its fineness of detail, by aptness of diction, but it is flimsy and superficial. Pope said: “The proper study of mankind is man,” but The Rape of the Lock depicts mankind as seen only in the small society of the city.  There is no wide study of mankind in it-none of universal human nature. Perhaps it does exist- but how little a piece of humanity. “A pretty rag, no thought, no passion in it. It is a small picture of life- and that also artificial and insignificant.”

Here the lords and ladies of the time often restored to taste the pleasure of the court and to talk society scandals. And

-Here Thou, Great Anna! Whom three Realms obey,

Dost sometimes Counsel take and sometimes Tea.

Pope was not happy in his experiences with women. He was a small and sickly person and as such could not expect to win the love and respect of any worthy woman. It is said that he made his suit to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, but she rejected him. As such he felt insulted and therefore bore a grudge against the fair sex. The women of the time could not appreciate his intellectual power or his poetic talent. It is quite possible that in The Rape of the Lock he gave expression to his personal feelings against the aristocratic women of the contemporary society.

“When next he looks thro’ Galilaeo’s Eyes;

And hence th’ Egregious Wizard shall foredoom

The Fate of Louis, and the Fall of Rome.”

The rape of lock is a perfect work of its kind; for wit and fancy and intention, it has never been surpassed. It is true that there is no inspiration in it- one is not inspired and lifted by the poem. But for, pure entertainment it is unmatched. There are, says, Lowell, two kinds of Poetry-one gives us the message of the eternal, i.e., tells us things which are true for all times; the other tells what the age wishes to hear. Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth give us message of the eternal: “Pope tells us of this in the one, and amusement and instruction in the other, and be honestly thankful for both.’’

“Nay, Poll sate mute, and Shock was most Unkind!”

…. The problem was how to acquire the beautiful lock of Belinda. In the game of Love, Everything is Fair… so the Lord decides to use any means to obtain the object of his heart’s desire!..Being fond of sex-intrigues, the Baron on that day was obsessed with the idea of possessing Belinda’s lock. Arriving at Hampton Court, the Baron starts his flirtation with Belinda, the Queen of beauties. He engages her in the game of cards and partly because Belinda is more intelligent than him, and partly because he is willing to surrender to her charm, he is defeated in the game. But of, his defeat spurs his anger and feeling for revenge. How should he defeat his conqueror-is the foremost thought in his mind. Sipping his Coffee, he gets an idea of cutting her lock to score over her. In the lighter vein, Pope describes the invocation of the Lord at the altar of Love. Lord Petre makes an improvised altar with twelve books of French romances and with gloves, and other gifts obtained from the women he had loved. He lights the fire with love-letters and by breathing sighs he prays to the god of Love to bless him with success.  In the manner of knights of the Middle Ages, the Baron seeks the help of his Love god in the adventure of the day. He feels very happy for his victory over his fair rival. He has won a unique prize! He regards Belinda’s hair as his most valuable possession. Perhaps this will make his name immortal. Belinda, however, is full of anger and cries vehemently for the restoration of her lock. Sir Plume, Belinda’s friend also pleads with the Baron for the return of the lock. The Baron, however, refuses to oblige both of them. His worship at the altar of love-god and his behavior at the card game is equally ridiculous. His vainglorious utterances over his cherished possession are not in harmony with his temporary success. Both in the card-game and the lock-game, Belinda turns out superior to him. The lock mysteriously disappears...becomes a part of the starry heavens. In short, the portrait of the Baron is an exaggerated and satirical portrait of a wealthy, foppish and lustful young man of the eighteenth century aristocracy.

“What dire offence from amorous causes springs,

What mighty contests rise from trivial things…”

When he is requested by his lady-love Thalestris to persuade Lord Petre to surrender the “precious hairs” of Belinda, he utters words which are unsurpassed in their emptiness. Nothing shows more clearly the futility and unthinking folly of the smart set than this little speech of Lord Plume.

“Z-ds; damn the lock! ‘fore Gad, you must be civil!

‘Plague on ‘t! ‘tis past a Jest-nay, prithee, Pox!

Give her the Hair’-he spoke and rapp’d his Box.”

Warton said that the largest part of Pope’s work “is of the didactic, moral and satiric kind and consequently not of the most poetic species of poetry”. Lessing’s opinion is that Pope’s merit lay in “the mechanics of poetry”. Byron admired Pope, but he admired his careful finish, which Byron himself lacked. There is no doubt that Pope’s poetry does not “sing anywhere, but the abiding influence of fancy” in his poetry fully entitles him to the rank of a poet. He was undoubtedly a man of genius, a poet of fancy and he possessed two of the qualifications necessary for a poet- vivid expression of his actual subjects and artistic use of the metre employed by him. Of course, Pope cannot lay claim, says Saintsbury, to “poetic transcendence”, but  his extraordinary felicity of expression, and his wonderful  command of the metre which he employed, cannot be challenged and, therefore “it is absurd to deny poetry to Pope”.

“Know further yet; Whoever fair and chaste

Rejects Mankind, is by some Sylph embrac’d:

For Spirits, freed from mortal Laws, with ease

Assume what Sexes and what Shapes they please.”

Pope was the poet of correctness, and sought to curb wildness and disorder of unbridled imagination. The Romantic and the Metaphysical poets had corrupted poetry by indulging in extravagances and eccentricities. Pope therefore a theory of ‘A Return to Nature’.

“Gods! shall the Ravisher display your Hair,

While the Fops envy, and the Ladies stare!

Honour forbid!at whose unrival’d Shrine

Ease, Pleasure, Virtue, All, our Sex resign.”

The great deficiencies’ of Pope as poet are his lack of warmth and flight- warmth of emotion and flight of imagination. These are serious deficiencies in his poetry and inspire of its rationality, good sense and intellectual clarity, it can never claim to be real genuine poetry. But of, a great deal may be allowed to Pope in view of the age in which he lived. In his one province he still stands unapproachably alone. ‘He is the greatest satirist of individual men.” Her has given the finest expression to the life of the court or the ballroom; he has added more phrases to the language than any other poet but Shakespeare, if all these achievements make a man poet, Pope is certainly one. He is the founder of the artificial style of writing which in his hands became living and powerful. Measured by any high standard of imagination Pope will certainly be found wanting, but by any test of wit, Pope sands unrivalled.

“Our humbler Province is to tend the Fair,

Not a less pleasing, tho’less glorious Care,

To save the Powder from too rude a Gale,

Nor let th’ imprisn’d Essences exhale”..

Wordsworth did not find any poetry in Pope. Wordsworth, in fact was not in a position to do justice to Pope. A man “brought up in sublime mountain solitudes and walking on earth quivering with the throes of French Revolution, could not be expected to appreciate the poet of artificial life. ‘’ Among the great English poets who had preceded Pope, Chaucer was the painter of actual life, Spenser of imaginative life, Shakespeare of ideal life, and Milton of moral and spiritual life. It remained of Pope, says Lowell, to give rhythmical utterance to conventional life, and he was eminently fitted for the task, because he was gifted with the power of intellectual expression and perfect propriety of phrase. Poetry should not represent all aspects of life. There is indeed room for all kinds of poetry in the world of the Muses. One can enjoy both natural poetry and artificial poetry- natural poetry for its nature, artificial poetry for its artificiality- provided they be good of their kind.

“If to her share some female errors fall,

Look on her face, and you’ll forget all.”

 There is no doubt that as a literary man, Pope, represents precision and graceful expression, and as a poet (if his claim as a poet is recognised) he represents understanding as opposed to imagination, which, according to Wordsworth, is the indispensable quality of poetry. There is in Pope’s poetic work a happy union of clear thinking and understanding with clarity and accuracy of expression and the pleasure which the poetry of Pope gives us is primarily due to its intellectual quality rather than any genuine poetic substance.

“…

The meeting Points the sacred Hair dissever,

From the fair Head, for ever, and for ever. “

Dryden said: “The true end of satire is the amendment of vice by correction,” and that is what Pope set out to do in his “Rape”. By using the burlesque, mockery, innuendo and irony, Pope ridicules the deviations of his society., “Yet you may hear me witness,” writes Pope in his Dedication to Mrs. Arabella Fermor, “it (The Rape) was intended only to divert a few young ladies, who have good sense and good humour enough to laugh not only at their sex’s little unguarded follies, but at their own.” The use of the mock-heroic technique facilitates Pope’s effort at disclosing these “unguarded follies”. In the very opening lines the poet laughs at “little men” engaging in tasks so “bold”, and at gentle ladies who are capable of such “mighty rage”.  In the strange battle fought between the fashionable belles and the vain beaux, the fall of Dapperwit and Sir Fopling is particularly demonstrative of the hollowness of the people of his age. And the Pope does not spare the Queen either...

“Now awful Beauty puts on all its Arms;

The Fair each moment rises in her Charms;

Repairs her Smiles,awakens ev’ry Grace

And calls forth all the Wonders of her Face.”

Till the end of the nineteenth century the question whether Pope was a poet was hotly debated. Wordsworth and Coleridge condemned him as the founder of the mechanical school of poetry and the originator of the artificial diction.  Arnold bracketed him with Dryden as the classic of our prose. Mark Pattison described him as an unrivalled rhyme and no more. Even in the twentieth century the voices denying Pope the title of the poet have not been completely silenced. Wherein lies the truth? He has been viewed from the standpoint of periods out of sympathy with his excellences and impatient of his defects, and his influence has been regarded as a monstrous barrier restraining all deep and natural emotions until swept away by the torrent of the romantic revival.  He has figured as one who left the free-air of heaven for the atmosphere of the coffee house as the first to introduce a mechanical standard of poetry, owing its acceptance to the prosaic tone of the day. Is this the correct estimate of the poetical works of Pope?

“In various Talk th’ instructive hours they pass,

Who gave the Ball, or paid the Visit last.”

There are occasional flashes of real poetry- like the description of the sylphs-in his works, which show that he would have been a different poet in a different age. We should not judge an author for what he has done but for what he has done. We cannot, for example, deny Jane Austen the title of a great novelist because she has not written about anything outside the drawing-room.  In the same way, we cannot deny the title of a great poet to Pope because his subject is nothing outside the artificial life of his time.  We can enjoy classical poetry and romantic poetry.  There is no reason why we should not enjoy the conventional poetry of Pope. He has done so well, what he has attempted to do, that “in his own province, he stands unapproachably alone.”

“First follow Nature, and your judgement frame

By her just standard, which is still the same.”

It sometimes complained that Pope did not give a single new thought to the world. But of, originality does not always mean giving new thoughts to the world; it also means expressing a thought which we might have had vaguely, but which we had not (in the words of Emerson, “art or courage to clothe with form and utterance”. Pope may not have given a new thought to the world, but he clothed common thoughts with form, and gave them a vivid and forceful expression. Therein lies a source of the pleasure which we derive from Pope’s poetry.

“Not louder Shrieks to pitying Heav’n are cast,

When Husbands, or when Lap-dogs breathe their last,

Or when rich China Vessels, fal’n from high,

In glitt’ring Dust and painted Fragments lie!”

In the above lines from the “Rape” the antithesis is used with great effect. The mocking effect, it is clear, appears due to the pairing of such disparate things like ‘honour” with a ‘new brocade” and ‘prayers’ with a “masquerade”. Pope’s poem is a highly successful mock-epic. This not only dazzles but also edifies- It is remarkable for its wit and fancy and in Tilloston’s words “it mocks at the maximum amount of the epic”. It would not be wrong to conclude with Dr. Johnson’s words that “To the praises which have been accumulated on The Rape of the Lock by readers of every class, from the critic to the waiting maid, it is difficult to make any addition. It is universally allowed to be the most attractive of all ludicrous compositions.”

“Men prove with Child, as pow’rful Fancy works,

And Maids turn’d Bottles, call aloud for Corks.”

The epithet ‘Augustan’ was applied, to begin with, as a term of high praise, because those who used it really believed that just as the age of Augustus was the golden age of Latin literature, the Age of Pope was the golden age of the English Literature, but that is not the view of all, and hence the original significance of the term has disappeared. But of, the epithet is still retained for the sake of convenience; it serves to bring out the analogy between the English literature of the first half of the eighteenth century and the Latin literature of the days of Virgil and Horace. In both cases, men of letters were dependent upon powerful patrons and in both cases a critical spirit prevailed. In both cases the literature, not of free creative effort and inspiration, but of self conscious and deliberate art.

Pope’s Dedicatory Letter to Mrs. Arabella Fermor

To

MRS. ARABELLA FERMOR

MADAM,

It will be in vain to deny that I have some Regard for this Piece, since I Dedicate it to You. Yet you may bear me Witness, it was intended only to divert a few young Ladies, who have good Sense and good Humour enough, to laugh not only at their Sex's little unguarded Follies, but at their own. But as it was communicated with the Air of a Secret, it soon found its Way into the World. An imperfect Copy having been offered to a Bookseller, you had the Good -Nature for my Sake to consent to the Publication of one more correct: This I was forc’d to, before I had executed half my Design, for the Machinery was entirely wanting to complete it.

(The “machinery” consisting of the sylphs and spirits was added by Pope in the second version of The Rappe of the Lock, the purpose being to elaborate the poem into a full-fledged mock-epic poem. Supernatural machinery is integral to any epic poem, for it shows the relationship between God and man, and the importance of Fate in human affairs.)

The Machinery, Madam, is a Term invented by the Critics, to signify that part which the Deities, Angels, or Dæmons are made to act in a Poem: for the ancient Poets are in one respect, like many modern Ladies: Let an action be never so trivial in it self, they always make it appear of the utmost Importance. These Machines I determin’d to raise on a very new and odd Foundation, the Rosicrucian Doctrine of Spirits.

(Christian and Greek theology would be inappropriate in a mock-epic poem, as they are inherently solemn. Pope made a fortune choice in the Rosicrucian spirits-a fantastic system of supernatural being believed in by a community known as the Rosicrucian. Pope came across it in a French book Le Comte de Gabalis.)

I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard Words before a Lady; but 'tis so much the Concern of a Poet to have his works understood, and particularly by your Sex, that You must give me leave to explain two or three difficult Terms.

(“The Rape of the Lock” is a mock-heroic poem with satiric purpose. The Cave of Spleen has a special relevance both in the context of the mock-heroic scheme as well as the satiric intention.)

The Rosicrucians are the people I must bring You acquainted with. The best account I know of them is in a French Book called Le Comte de Gabalis, which both in its Title and Size is so like a Novel, that many of the Fair Sex have read it for one by mistake. According to these Gentlemen, the four Elements are inhabited by Salamanders, The Gnomes or Dæmons of Earth delight spirits which they call Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs and. in Mischief; but the Sylphs, whose Habitation is in the Air, are the best-condition’d Creatures imaginable. For they say, any Mortals may enjoy the most intimate Familiarities with these gentle Spirits, upon a Condition very easy to all true Adepts, an inviolate Preservation of Chastity.

(“The Rape of the Lock” consists of different types of these supernatural beings- salamanders, water spirits, gnomes, sylphs. All are the souls of women which after death become a spirit of the type most appropriate to their nature when alive. The sylphs are the celestial beings, occupying the atmosphere close to the earth. They are the spirits of the light-hearted spirit.)

As to the following Canto’s all the passages of them are as Fabulous as the Vision at the Beginning, or the Transformation at the End; (except the Loss of your Hair, which I always mention with Reverence). The Human Persons are as Fictitious as the Airy ones, and the Character of Belinda, as it is now manag’d, resembles You in nothing but in Beauty.

 (“The Rape of the Lock” is a title which beautifully juxtaposes the serious violence implied in “rape” with the ridiculous triviality of a “lock” of hair. The poem is concerned with love and war-two major concerns of classic epics. But of, the love here is more of flirtation and mockery and the war a grotesque battle of sexes with hair-pins and snuff over the cutting of a lock of hair.)

If this poem had as many Graces as there are in Your Person, or in Your Mind, yet I could never hope it should pass thro’ the World half so Uncensured as you have done. But let its Fortune be what it will, mine is happy enough, to have given me this Occasion of assuring You that I am, with the truest Esteem,

(The subject of the poem is, on the face of it, insignificant and absurd. Whoever heard of a lock of hair being “raped’! But of, the trivial quarrel over the snipping off a society belle’s lock of hair by a lord is given a serious and eloquent treatment to make the poem one of the best mock-heroic works in English Literature.)

Madam,

Your most obedient, Humble Servant,

                                                                                                                                                         A.POPE.

                                                                                                                                                                             

 [Except the underlined and few changes in the body and pattern of letter, the actual contents of the letter only is referred at The Rape of the Lock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Lock]

     The central incident in this poem is the ‘rape’ of Belinda’s beautiful lock of hair by the Baron and the quarrel between their two families because of this. All the main features of an epic surround this incident, we have the machinery; there is a visit to the under-world; a voyage though only on the river Thames and battles too! But of, the characters placed in this epic form cut a sorry figure and all their actions look very ridiculous. J. J. Cunningham puts it very succinctly. According to him, Pope, in this mock-epic yokes “together the ancient and the contemporary” and imparts “a modern, comparatively trivial subject, elevated treatment, simply by forcing ancient and modern into uncomfortable proximity.” Belinda has hysterics, the Hector-like Baron sneezes and the apparently grand and dignified Sir Plume turns out to be a mere being mouthing such incoherent words.

In The Rape of the Lock Pope parodies the content as well as the style of the epic. He introduces the supernatural machinery, a number of episodes like the game of Ombre, account of battles and single combats; journey to the underworld; threats of punishment to be inflicted by the chief of the supernatural on his followers and even parallels to particular epic scenes. In fact pope uses the technique of diminution.   As Tilloston says, “The epic is a long poem. The Rape of the Lock is short. The story of the epic covers years; that of ‘The Rape of the Lock’ hours. The gods of the epic are stupendous creature; Pope’s sylph is tiny”. In fact the purpose of the mock-epic is satirical. The poet, by placing the subject in a framework entirely inappropriate to its importance, makes it look ridiculous.

“Whatever Spirit, careless of his Charge,

His Post neglects, or leaves the Fair at large,

Shall feel sharp Vengeance soon ov’rtake his Sins,

Be stopt in Vials, or transfixed with Pins;”

But in, The Rape of the Lock is not only edification. Belinda’s stuff is a perfect contemporary reference. “Coffee, tea, and chocolate...are now become capital branches of this nation’s commerce,” wrote Defoe in 1713 and all these beverages find a place in Pope’s poem. The time when Belinda challenges two gallants to a game of Ombre is the time,

“When hungry Judges soon the Sentence sign,

And Wretches hang that Jury-men may Dine.”

 One of the peculiarities of epic poetry is its grand style. Joseph Warton rightly puts this question  before us: “If Virgil has merited such perpetual commendation or exalting his bees, by the majesty and magnificence of his diction, does not Pope deserve equal praise , for the pomp and lustre of his language on so trivial a subject?” pope shunned words which were considered low or common -place. He would rather  go in for periphrasis or circumlocution and use a phrase like “finny prey”, “Earth of China”, and “The little engine” than employ such common-place words like “Fish”, “Cup” and “Scissors”. Latinisms and personifications, again, are used frequently by him to achieve the effect of elevation and dignity.  Words like “Sol”, “irriguous” and “umbrageous” are used to produce exactly this effect.  Another device which Pope was fond of using was the antithesis; that is, he brought together in the same line the great and the small, the significant and the insignificant thereby producing a stunning effect.

“But since, alas! Frail beauty must decay,

Curl’d or uncurl’d, since Locks will turn to grey;”

At the advent of the 19th century, Pope’s reputation as a poet suffered a setback. The growth of Romanticism in English literature in the late years of the 18^th century and the strong roots it took in the 19^th century was reaction to the 18^th century poetry of which Pope and Dryden are representatives and stand out the most prominent. In this connection, Arnold’s indictment of Dryden and Pope in his The Study of Poetry is an outstanding example. In this essay, Arnold, applying his principle of “high sensuousness” to the history of English poetry, delivers his judgment to the effect  that Dryden and Pope are ‘masters of prose’ , and not masters of poetry because their works according to him are lacking in grand subject, seriousness of treatment , and nobility of sentiments. The game of Ombre forms the episode of the heroic-comic epic and shows the frivolity of the age. Belinda wins and is overjoyed, but is unaware of the coming disaster, which is the crisis of the story. Immediately after Belinda’s triumph, comes the crisis. Clarissa offers to Lord Petre a pair of scissors” a two edged weapon” in the manner of ladies assisting their Knight. When the Baron is cutting off the curl,

-Swift to the Lock a thousand Sprights repair,

A thousand Wings, by turns , blow back the Hair,

This is what the great aristocratic ladies and gentlemen do gossiping, talking scandal and discussing such inane topics like dance and courtesy calls. All this reminds us the characters in the “Rape” are mere types and not whole, rounded characters. Nowhere do we get the true feelings and emotions of these characters. But on, if we keep in mind the nature of the work it will become amply clear why this is so. As it is, a poet in his satirical work of art has to paint his characters in “extremes of colours”; otherwise “the amendment of vices by correction” would not be possible.

“Do thou, Crispissa, tend her favourite lock;

Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock;

To fifty chosen sylphs, of Special Note,

We trust the important Charge, the Petticoat:”

Such vivid pictures of the contemporary society in which “lovers just at twelve, awake” is juxtaposed on to a world of the ethereal. He has equated the grave work of taking counsel on State matters with the triviality of taking tea. Pope is unremitting in his criticism of the ladies and lords of his time. Some “dire-disaster” is to overtake Belinda, but the guardian spirits do not know. The poet is making fun of the attitudes of the ladies of his time. To them, it seems, losing one’s virginity is as big or small a disaster as breaking of a China Vase! Honour is no more important than a new brocade and forgetting to say one’s prayer is like missing a mask ball. Thus, we see that the real is blended with the unreal, the fact with the fiction, creating a world of the mock-heroic.  

“Or stain her Honour, or new Brocade,

Forget her Prayers, or miss a Masquerade,

Or lose her Heart, or Necklace, at a Ball;”

For any work of art, its diction is of great importance. By diction is meant the choice and arrangement of words so as to achieve the desired effect. Naturally, it differs according to the subject, the literal form, and the age in which a particular work is written. In a good poem, the diction is in character with the person who is speaking. It was William Hazlitt who had called the Rape “the most exquisite specimen of filigree work ever invented.” But for, in spite of all the wealth of ornament and detail, the main subject of the poem is never lost sight of. In fact, all this “filigree work”, serves as a purpose and is not merely introduced to give brightness and dazzle to the work. All this ornamentation and decoration has been introduced so as to perch the characters on the pedestal and then let them fall; to show them in all their pomp and grandeur only to reveal their real hollowness and levity.

“Whether the Nymph shall break Diana’s Law,

Or some frail China Jar receive a Flaw;

Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade,

Forget her Pray’rs or miss a Masqurade”.

It is obvious that his achievements do not belong to the very highest forms of poetry. We do not breathe in his works the spirit of the broad beneficence and large humanity of Shakespeare, nor the high toned grandeur of Milton’s conceptions, nor do we hear the ineffable music of Shelley. But of, it is useless to condemn him because he was not somebody else. He is a great poet because of the many-reasons.

Brooks, however, believed that sexual symbolism runs throughout the poem. He refers to the line pointed out by the critics, and particularly the game of Ombre as a symbol of the war of the sexes. Every card and every move in the game suggests some sexual image.

“No common Weapons in their Hands are found,

Like Gods they fight, nor dread a moral Wound.”

 “The Rape of the Lock”, says Lowell: “(it) ranks itself as one of the purest works of human fancy.” But of, more than the fancy of the poem, the perfect keeping (harmony) of the poem deserves admiration. There is unity of construction and harmony in all the conceptions and images of the poem, and therein lies the supreme art of The Rape of the Lock. But of, this view of poetry and the Arnoldian attitude towards Augustan poetry were rejected later by such critics as T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis and others. According to these modern critics the criterion to judge poetry is not the subject matter but what is made of the subject, however trivial and commonplace it may be.  As Aristotle put it, a poet was primarily a maker; a maker of language adequate to the experience. And Pope’s poetic craftsmanship, his sense of structure and his handling of language and rhythm prove him to be a great poet.

The Rape of the Lock certainly does not belong to the highest class of poetry; its range is extremely limited, and it deals with artificial life. It is not to be compared with   a great poem like Paradise Lost, but within its limits shows perfection of artifice, which rises to the height of art. The Rape of the Lock is a mock –heroic poem in which the petty actions and sufferings of the fine world are epically treated and the contrasts, continually suggested with bigger things, reveal the poet’s truth.

“Hither the Heroes and Nymphs resort,

To taste awhile the Pleasures of a Court;

In various Talk th’ instructive hours they past,

Who gave the Ball, or paid the Visit last:”

The idea of the goddess of Spleen, dwelling in her place where “the dreaded East is all the wind that blows”, is a very happy one, and fits in with the story. A fight in the mock-heroic manner begins between the followers of Belinda and those, of the Baron. The spirits help in the fight just as gods and goddess did in the Trojan War described by Homer.  Belinda wins the fight and demands the return of her lock. In the meantime, the lock had ascended to the sky. It is changed into a constellation. This is the end of the poem: the lock of hair round which the poem turns is exalted to the position of a star.

“Restore the lock, She cries, and all around

“Restore the lock” the vaulted Roofs rebound.”

The keynote of the poem is struck here, and we put ourselves in tune with it. The poet then introduces the heroine Belinda. She awakes but falls asleep again to dream of the well-dressed youth who, it appears, is the chief of the pigmies of the sky. In the true epic style, pope opens his mock epic piece with an invocation, suggesting the theme of the poem.

“Down to the Central Earth, his proper Scene,

Repair’d to search the gloomy Cave of Spleen.”

The supernatural machinery of the poem is just in keeping with the atmosphere of the poem. The airy beings are as artificial as the life with which the poem deals, and the functions, apportioned to different spirits, have all the insignificance of foppery and folly. These airy beings are not and cannot be the gay fairies of The Midsummer Night’s Dream. They belong to the ethereal world of foppery, and are as vain and pleasure loving as their human counterparts. The souls of fashionable ladies, when they die, retire to their first elements, and form the light militia of the sky. It is a band of these spirits that are now waiting on Belinda. The mythology of the sylphs is Pope’s own creation, and shows his fanciful wit at its best. Indeed, ‘wit infused with fancy is Pope’s peculiar merit”. The punishments with which delinquent spirits are threatened are charmingly appropriate an ingenious.

“Clubs, diamonds, hearts, in wild disorder seen,

With throngs promiscuous strew the level green.”

The supernatural machinery employed in describing battle scene fits in with the artificial though humorous atmosphere of the poem. And Pope goes on to compare this battle of the sexes, the warriors employing such fantastic weapons like fans and bodkins-with the battle of the great gods which Homer describes. The toilet was an important feature of a fashionable lady’s daily life, and so Belinda’s toilet is described in detail. The most glittering appearance is given to everything –to paste, to pomatum, billet-doux and patches. “The toilet is described with the solemnity of an alter raised to the goddess of vanity.” Belinda, now armed with all the charms and smiles, goes out for boating. Her locks have captivated the heart of Baron, who wants to possess them by any means.  He prays for success to the Goddess of Love who grants his prayer. The ceremony accompanying the prayer is in keeping with fashionable triviality of the theme.

“Sooner shall Grass in Hide-Park Circus grow,

And Wits take Lodgings in the Sound of Bow;

Sooner let Earth,Air,Sea,to Chaos fall,

Men,Monkies,Lap-dogs, Parrots, perish all!”

The heroic-couplet is the fitting medium of the heroic-comical poem. The couples are artistically handled so as to suit on the one hand the triviality of the subject and on the other, the exigencies of the narrative where there is occasion for satire, they are full of brilliancy and wit, balance and epigram.

“Not with more Glories, in th’Ethereal Plain,

The Sun first rises o’er purpled Main,

Than issuing forth, the Rival of his Beams

Launch’d on the Bosom of the silver Thames.”

When Pope compares Belinda with the sun it is not in the same strain as when Dryden compares Shadwell with Hanibal. The comparison of Belinda with the sun is a wild exaggeration but it is nonetheless absurd merely because it is a common place image in love poetry. Pope, of course, was quite aware of this absurdity. Though the comparison is absurd it does contain an element of imaginative truth as is reflected in a different way in this line:

-Belinda smil’d and all the World was gay.

The epic, whether of  early or more modern times, is (i) a narrative poem, (ii) of supposed  divine inspiration, (iii) treating of great and momentous importance for mankind, (iv) the characters of the story being partly divine, and (v) the language and style in which the incidents are related being full of elevation and dignity. If a long narrative poem should satisfy all the tests of epic poetry, but the subject which is celebrated  be a trivial nature, like the cutting off lock of a woman’s hair, which is the story that is related in Pope’s The Rape of Lock, then such a poem is called  a mock-epic. A mock-epic poem is supposed to be the inspiration of a Muse, the characters are partly human and partly divine, and the language is stilled and grandiose, but the subject is of very frivolous and commonplace nature.

“Unnumber’d Throngs on ev’ry side are seen,

Of Bodies chang’d to various Forms by Spleen.”

Thus, wit, fancy, and satire, combining together in a harmonious form and design make The Rape of the Lock a masterpiece of art and construction within its limited sphere. “The whole poem more truly deserves the name of a creation than anything Pope ever wrote. The action is confined to a world of his own; the supernatural agency is wholly of his own contrivance and nothing is allowed to overstep the limitations of the subject…The perfection of form in The Rape of the Lock is to me conclusive evidence that in it the natural genius of Pope found fuller and free expression than in any other of his poems. The others are aggregates of brilliant passages rather than humerous wholes.”(Lowell)

“Not Tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,

Not Cynthia when her Manteau’s pin’d awry,

E’er felt such Rage, Resentment, and Despair,

As , sad Virgin! For thy ravish’d Hair.”

Pope’s The Rape of the Lock contains very few of  the directly “diminishing” image of direct and blunt satire in which Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe abounds. Pope usually makes use of the mock-heroic image which heightens the effect of the fundamental irony. “Roar’d for the Handkerchief that caus’d his Pain,” as Belinda, for the stolen lock.  Earlier in the poem, the sustained use of similies, allusions of the tiny celestial beings, elevates the game of Ombre to a higher level which in itself a merely a battle of the sexes.

“Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain

Roar’d for the Handkerchief that caus’d his Pain.”

Mock-epic or mock-heroic or heroic-comical, terms virtually interchangeable, are applied to literary works in which the epic or heroic tradition is ridiculed or mocked. Sometimes the devices of Homer’s epics are directly burlesque-as in Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, the grave-yard battle of Molly Seagrim in Fielding’s Tom Jones, and Byron’s Don Juan.  Ian Jack observes that a mock-heroic poem is a “Parody of the Epic.” He adds: “In mock epic, a dignified genre is turned to witty use without being cheapened in anyway. The poet has an opportunity of ridiculing through incongruity, and of affording his reader the sophisticated pleasure of recognizing ironical parallels to familiar passages in Homer and Virgil.”

“Sol through white Curtains shot a tim’rous Ray,

And op’d those Eyes that must eclipse the day.”

Hazlitt has called the poem ‘the perfection of the mock-epic’. It belongs to the literary type, called burlesque or parody, on a large scale. In it, not a single poem, but the whole type or style of literature is travestied (parodied); the language and thought, proper to a serious theme are reproduced in describing something ridiculous or trivial. The eighteenth century with its passion for the ancients, was familiar with the whole epic tradition. It contains, among others, parody of Homer (in the description of the battle), Virgil, Aristo and Milton. The parallels to Paradise Lost of Milton and Pope’s The Rape of Lock are numerous, but the most crucial parallel is the scene which occurs just before the cutting of the lock, when Ariel discovers the secret longing of the beautiful Belinda. He finds an earthly lover lurking in Belinda’s heart. The situation is apparently an echo of the moment in Paradise Lost when, after the fall of Adam and Eve, the angles retire to their heavenly abode feeling sorry for them.  The two battle as depicted in the poem are inflated and treated ironically and echo the battle of Troy and Carthage. The card game is a mock-battle, a symbolical war between the sexes.  The card-game is actually an unconscious amorous skirmish. Belinda’s conduct of the war begins with words which have an epic grandeur.  In the same manner Belinda’s voyage to Hampton Court suggests the voyage of Aeneas up the Tiber, described by Virgil. The coffee drinking is a parody of descriptions of meals of Homer.  Belinda’s petticoat is treated as the seven-fold shield of Ajax, and her lament for her severed hair suggests the lamentation of Virgil’s Dido.

“If to her share some female errors fall,

Look on her face, and you’ll forget all.”

Belinda is a complex character. It is not possible to find a single label to cover up her qualities. Undoubtedly, she is a representative of the upper class women of the eighteenth century, but of she is more than a mere type. She has her own personality and stands out by her whims and fancies. The very fact that the poet first calls her a goddess and in the end a heavenly being, shows that Pope worships beauty and had an over-riding respect for the fair sex. Who would spoil his chances of success with the fair sex by satire, except at his own peril! It is impossible to find a parallel to Belinda in any other poem of the eighteenth century.

“How vain are all these Glories, all our Pains,

Unless good Sense preserve what Beauty gains:

That Men may say, when we the Front-box grace,

Behold the first in Virtue as in Face!”

The Rape of the Lock is a heroic-comical poem. A successful heroic-comical or mock-heroic poem meant much more in the days of Pope than it can possibly mean in our days. The men of letters of that age knew and reverted the classics much more than what we of modern time consider to be worthwhile to know or revere. Not only in the main frame-work but in numerous details there are so many points of similarly intentionally introduced between the old epics and the new satiric poems that to appreciate them fully is a difficult task today. The Rape of the Lock has been rightly called by Ryland “a mosaic of quotation, parodies and allusions derived from the masters of the epic and narrative poetry.” “Homer and Virgil dip forth at almost every other line; Milton and Ovid are not less persistent.” The very opening of the poem is in approved classical manner; the turn of expressions used reminds us of the epic masters. The descriptions of the functions of the sylphs and nymphs take us back to Homer, Virgil and Milton. The ‘Machinery’, Pope reminds us, is an essential part of the epic and so he cannot do without one suitable to his mock-heroic poem. The cave of Spleen is reminiscent of the grotto of Circe. The heroic bombast of the Baron are parodies of Hectorian orations. Then battle between the beaux and the belles is a right royal Homeric battle; even the game of Ombre is a delicate parody of epical fights. “It would be almost true to say”, observes Holden, “that in this heroic-comical poem, it is the comical part which makes most appeal to us, as the heroic part did do our ancestors.

Pope called The Rape of Lock a “heroic-comical poem”. It belongs to class of literature called “burlesque”. A burlesque is a parody on a large scale, in  which not a single poem but a whole type of style of literature is parodied, the language and thought proper to a serious theme being reproduced in setting forth something ridiculous or trivial.

“Belinda now, whom thirst of fame invites,

Burns to encounter two adventurous knights,

At ombre singly to decide their doom;

And swells her breast with conquest yet to come. “

The burlesque is partly a matter of treatment and partly a matter of language. By treating an insignificant subject in the manner of an epic the poem parodies that form of poetry. Instead of grand passions and great fights between heroes in which the immortals take part, we have as the theme of The Rape of Lock a petty amorous quarrel assisted by the spirits of the air. The epic portrays an age round the personality of a god or a semi-god, and its characters are heroes. The Rape of the Lock, on the other hand, gives us a picture of a fashionable society.  The central figure in that picture is a pretty society girl, and the other characters are a rash youth, a foolish dandy and a few frivolous women. Instead a deep and genuine passion, as are found in ancient epics  we come across a succession o mock passions in The Rape of Lock.

“Why round our Coaches crowd the white-glov’d Beaus,

Why bows the Side box from its inmost Rows?”

The action of The Rape of the Lock turns on a trivial incident- the cutting of a lock of hair from a lady’s head. Such a thing had taken place. One Lord Petre cut off a lock of hair from the head of Lady Arabella Fermor. There was a quarrel between the two families, and Pope was requested to make a jest of the incident, and ‘laugh them together’. This was the occasion of the composition of the poem. Pope did give to the world a fine work of wit-the best mock-heroic poem in the English language, but we do not know whether the families were reconciled. The mock-heroic character of the poem is perceived in the very title. Rape is a serious moral offence which means the violation of a woman’s chastity by force.  It also refers to the seizure of a lady by some ruffians in a grossly inhuman manner. In any case, rape is a grave crime, affecting the social decency of a human being. Pope has used this term in an amusing way.  The possession of the hair of Belinda by the Baron is described by him in a mock serious vein. The title evokes nothing but the mock sensation and well indicates the mock-heroic characters of Pope’s work.

“Fairest of Mortals, thou distinguish’d Care,

Of thousand bright Inhabitants of Air!”

The theme of the poem is suggested in the invocation, as in an epic poem, but the theme is ridiculously trivial, in comparison with the great theme of an epic. The action opens in a mock-heroic manner with the awakening of Belinda, the heroine of the poem. Belinda is the very goddess of beauty and the luster of her eyes surpass that of the sun, who peeped timorously through the white curtains in Belinda’s room. The whole structure of The Rape of the Lock is cast in the epic mould, but it could not be a serious epic, because the incident is trivial-so we have the mock-heroic or heroic-comical poem. The poem is divided into Cantos like an epic poem, and there are ironical parallels to the main incidents of the epic. As in epics, in The Rape of the Lock too, divine beings are portrayed. Belinda is in divine care of the sylphs. There is the mischievous gnome who like Milton’s Satan, is intent upon making Belinda miserable and thereby all her admirers. The gnome addresses the wayward Queen who rules the sex from fifteen to fifty. And then he collects, “a wondrous bag”, from the  “wayward Queen’’ in which she has put “The force of female lungs, sighs, sobs and passions and the war of tongues” and a vial filled with “fainting fears, soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears.”But of, then the sylphs are fragile, airy beings and they are helpless before the caprices of men. Despite all their concern for Belinda, her beautiful lock of hair is raped by the naughty Baron.

“Sudden he view’d, in spite of all her Art,

An Earthly Lover lurking at her Heart.

Amaz’d , confus’d, he found his power expir’d,

Resigned to Fate, and with Sigh retir’d.”

The epic always uses the supernatural element. In the Iliad there are gods and goddesses; in The Rape of the Lock, there are the sylphs and gnomes. These aerial spirits are small and insignificant things, and are therefore, exactly in keeping with the triviality of the theme. They guard the personality of the heroine and when there is a fight between the followers of Belinda and those of the Baron; they take part in the fight, like the gods and goddesses in Trojan War.  An epic poem must contain some episodes also. In keeping with this practice Pope has introduced the episode of the game of Ombre which is described in great detail. There is also the hazardous journey of Umbriel to the Cave of Spleen. Then there is the battle between the lords and ladies just like the battles in epic poetry, but in the true mock-heroic style this battle is fought with fans and snuff instead of with swords and spears. There are single combats also between Belinda and the Baron and between Clarissa and Sir Plume. The Rape of the Lock is a mock heroic poem-that is to say a poem in which trivial things are mockingly treated in a heroic or exalted manner. A heroic or epic style is imitated, but of a mock-heroic poem is not merely parody of the epic; in a mock heroic poem trivial things are shown by comic contrast in all their trivialities. The ‘clouded cane’ as compared with the Homer’s ‘spear’ indicates the difference of scale-the lower of the mock-heroic style.

“Say, what strange motive, Goddess! Cou’d compel

A well-bred Lord t’ assault a gentle Belle?”

In the true epic style, Pope opens his mock epic piece with an invocation, suggesting the theme of the poem. The keynote of the poem is struck here, and we put ourselves in tune with it. The poet then introduces the heroine Belinda. She awakes but falls asleep again to dream of the well-dressed youth who, it appears, is the chief of the pigmies of the sky.

“So when bold Homer makes the gods engage

And heav’nly Breasts with human Passions rage;

‘Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes arms;”

Thus, wit, fancy, and satire, combining together in a harmonious form and design make The Rape of the Lock a masterpiece of art and construction within its limited sphere. “The whole poem more truly deserves the name of a creation than anything Pope ever wrote. The action is confined to a world of his own; the supernatural agency is wholly of his own contrivance and nothing is allowed to overstep the limitations of the subject…The perfection of form in The Rape of the Lock is to me conclusive evidence that in it the natural genius of Pope found fuller and free expression than in any other of his poems. The others are aggregates of brilliant passages rather than humerous wholes.”(Lowell)

“But when to mischief Mortals bend their Will,

How soon they find fit Instruments of Ill!”

Hazlitt observes: “No pains are spared, no profusion or ornament, splendor of poetic diction, to set off the meanest thing. The balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity is nicely trimmed, the little is made great and the great made little. It is the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of foppery and folly. It is the perfection of the mock-heroic.” Thus, in The Rape of the Lock the poet has heightened the little, exalted the insignificant, in order to make the little and the insignificant look more ridiculous. He employs the mock-heroic form, not to mock the epic form, but to show the triviality of mean things by contrasting them with great things.  This is the true mock-heroic style.

“And now, unveil’d, the Toilet stands display’d,

Each SilverVase in mystic Order laid.

First, rob’d in White, the Nymph intent adores,

With head uncoverr’d and Cosmetic Pow’rs,

A heavenly Image in the Glass appears,

To that she bends, to that her Eyes she rears.”

When the first version of The Rape of the Lock appeared Addison with his usual geniality, frankly commended the poem as ‘merum sal’ or ‘a bit of pure wit’. That version, of course, has undergone immense changes and enlargement, but the original quality of wit of the poem has, in no way been, adversely affected.

“Let Spades be Trumps! She said, and Trumps they were.”

 The Rape of the Lock bears fully the witticism of its age. In his conception of the theme and selection of the title, Pope displays his unsurpassable wit.  The theme of the poem is the rape of the lock of a fashionable belle by one of her hungry admirers. This is quite a trivial but Pope makes his amusing epic out of it. The whole course of the poem-from the dream of Belinda to the mysterious disappearance of her lock-is ingeniously contrieved and speaks of Pope’s wonderful sense of wit. The very little of the poem is wittily conceived as a parody on such well-known incidents like the rape of Helen and the rape of Lucrece in literature.   The title of Pope, is comically associated with a mere lock of hair and echoes wittily the epical episodes of Homer and Shakespeare.

[Translation of the Latin Verse written to the context of letter-‘I had not wished, Belinda to dishonor your hair..

But of, it delights me to have yielded to your request.’]

The poem bears out amply how Pope has succeeded in realizing his mock-heroic design in which the little is made great and the great little. This epic frame-work contains a mock-heroic portrait, and the whole work is an entertaining travesty on epic poetry. Pope imitates the strain of the epic poem in his description even of the slight or trivial affairs. The dream which Ariel brings to the drowsy belle contains much that is humerously serious. The function of the sylphs, the effect of their work on the thoughtless brain of young lady and the frail nature of a woman are all suggested with an affected gravity that evokes only laughter. Belinda’s toilette is another engaging account in which Pope has attributed in a perfectly mock-heroic manner, the solemnity of a religious observance the luxurious toilette of a lady of fashion, and frivolity. Puffs, powders patches, Bibles, billet-doux are all brought on the same table and the slight and the serious are all strangely synthesized. The Rape of the Lock is a rare instance in which the slight theme is given an exalted treatment for satirical purposes. All through the poem, most importance is given to all that is thoroughly unimportant and insignificant and practically meaningless and farcical. The very conception of writing an epic on the rape of a lock of hair is funny and bears testimony to the poet’s effort to make ‘the title great and the great little.’

“My lord, why what the devil

Zounds damn the lock for god, you must be civil

Plague on’t, ‘tis Past is Jest-nay, prithee pox

Give her the hair”-he spoke, and rapp’d his box.”

Perhaps, Pope’s wit reaches its apex in the account given by him, about the shock of Belinda after the rape of her lock. Belinda’s frustration at the tragedy of her ravished hair is described with some witty analogies. The Baron’s resolve to retain the lock forever is also surcharged with witty mock-seriousness. Of course, Pope’s wit is not sufficiently refined and imaginative. Some marks of grossness and vulgarity are unmistakably perceptible in the poem. Like Swift’s, Pope’s wit has the trenchant shafts of satire that disturbs much of the pure fun and fancy. This defect of Pope’s wit, however, belongs to his own age. It is not his own fault. He is there, fully dominated by the literary trend of his age.

“Or the small pillow grace a lady’s bed,

While visits shall be paid on solemn days,

When numerous wax-light in bright order blaze,

While nymphs take treats, or assignations give.”

Nevertheless, Pope’s wit, as glaring displayed in The Rape of the Lock, remains in the ultimate analysis, quite engaging and impressive. The poem in the words of Hazlitt, ‘is a double-refined essence of wit and fancy”. Wilson Knight regards the poem as a synthesis of the sexual and the religious, and this is organic to its humour. He dwells on the Eros cult. Just as he God of Love was worshipped in ancient times, in the same way, the goddess of beauty as worshipped in the eighteenth century. 

“Oh thoughtless Mortals! Ever blind to Fate,

Too soon dejected, and too soon elate!

Sudden these Honours shall be snatch’d away,

And curs’d for ever this Victorious Day.”

The Rape of the Lock belongs to a literary age of wit and satire it reflects the spirits of its time and remains a distinct piece of the heroic comical poetry of the age. This class of poetry is essentially witty in substance and its success depends on the flash of wit and the roar of laughter. In theme and treatment heroic-comical poetry parodies a wittily the sublime or serious element to establish its superiority as a mere travesty.

“That while my nostrils drew the vital air,

This hand which won it, shall for ever wear.”

Juvenal and Horace are the two well-known satirists in verse of Roman literature. The former’s satire is pointed, full of force and often savage. The fierce indignation of Juvenal’s censure and ridicule stands comparison with that of Swift in English literature, only that the latter is a prose satirist. Horace’s irony is more graceful and easy; he chides with a smile. His manner might be compared with that of Addison in the Spectator Papers. Satire is a distinct element in Chaucer, and yet he cannot be called a satirist. There is no misanthropy or cynicism in him, and his heart is too full of the milk of human kindness to qualify him for the trade of a satirist. In the Elizabethan Age, John Donne (1573-1631), John Marston (1575-1634), and Joseph Hall (1574-1656), wrote poetical satires; their work is lacking in vigour, but it makes up for it in scrutiny and abuse. In the seventeenth century, Dryden wrote a number of satires: Political, Absalom and Achitophel, personal, Mac Flecknoe, religious, The Hind and the Panther. In the succeeding period Pope is the great master of verse satire. The Dunciad or The Progress of Dullness, in which most of the writers who had the misfortune to incur the enmity of Pope are pilloried, and some of his Epistles belong to this class of writing. According to Richard Garnet, “the expression in adequate terms of the sense of amusement or disgust excited by the ridiculous or unseemly, provided that humour is a distinctly recognized element, and that the utterance is invested with literary form. Without humour satire is invective; without literary form it is mere clownish jeering.”

“Should only rule who not resembles me.

Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,

Mature in dullness from his tender years;”

The mention of the losing of honour by Belinda clearly refers to the loss of her chastity. From the technical standpoint, The Rape of the Lock is essentially witty in character. The poem, in fact, is not simply a satire on the fashionable and frivolous English society of the eighteenth century. It is a witty parody of the heroic or epic style in poetry. The form of verse is quite comical with the diverting fall from the lofty thought to the mean.

“But this bold Lord, with manly Strength indu’d,

She with one Finger and a Thumb subdu’d:

Just where the Breath of Life his Nostrils drew,

A Change of Snuff the wily Virgin threw;”

The element of the wit is marked all through the poem. Belinda’s toilet is conceived in quite a entertaining and humerous manner. The description of the belles as the priestess of the sacred rite of pride is truly witty and the details of the object of toilet are drawn with a rape sense of the comic. Equally witty in conception is the alter built by the Baron with ‘twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt.’ The game of Ombre, which is patterned after some epic battle is too a gift of pure wit. The servance of the lock from Belinda’s head by the ‘glittering forfex wide’ shows the same gift of wit. The amusing portrait of Sir Plume, with amber snuff box and ‘clouded cane’ is a fine piece of wit, and equally witty is Pope’s presentation of his utterance of absolute nonsense.

“How awful beauty puts on all its arms;

The fair each moment rises in her charms.”

The rhetorical from known as anti-climax, is fully exploited by the poet here to produce a truly comical and witty effect, as evident in the lines below-

-Here thou, great Anna whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take and sometimes tea.

Besides this, there are many suggestive words and phrases like “soft bosoms” “winning lips “,”the melting maids”, “midnight masquerades”, “white breast”, “the charge of the petticoat” which have obviously sexual implications and are not capable of giving any other meaning. But of, triumph of Pope’s wit is, perhaps evident in his depiction of the strange battle, fought between the fashionable belles and the vain beaux. The fall of the Dapperwit and Sir Flopping is particularly couched in a witty vein. Belinda’s triumph over the Baron with a pinch of snuff is contrivance, hardly outmatched in wit anywhere else. Lastly, the explanation given for the cause of the disappearance of Belinda’s lock, in the same way, bears out Pope’s wit that triumphs all through the poem.

“The adventurous Baron the bright locks admired:

He saw, he wished,and to the prize aspired.”

When Shadwell is called the “last great prophet of tautology” in Mac Flecknoe, Dryden is not only passing an adverse judgment on Shadwell alone but on the whole race of poetasters. Pope’s range on the other hand, is somewhat limited. In The Rape of the Lock the whole panorama is limited to 18^th century aristocratic life. In the strange battle, fought between the fashionable belles and the vain beaux, the fall of Dapperwit and Sir Fopling is particularly demonstrative of the hollowness of the people of this age. And even the greatest of the great, the Queen herself is satirized to produce a truly comical and witty effect. Even for the Queen the taking of counsel and the taking of tea is the same trivial matter.

“Her joy in gilded Chariots, when alive,

And Love of Ombre after Death survive.”

The true objective of a good satire is moral. It amends the vices by castigation. The satirist, in the language of Dryden, “is no more an enemy to the offender than the physician to the patient when he prescribes harsh remedies to an inveterate disease.”In Dryden’s “Mac Flecknoe”, Flecknoe is in search of a successor to his throne of foolishness finds no one better than his  son Shadwell (whom Dryden considers to be a poetaster and a fool) of whom he says,

-Tis resolved, for nature pleads that he

Should only rule who not resembles me.

Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,

Mature in dullness from his tender years;

Shadwell alone of all my sons is he

Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretence.

But Shadwell never deviates into sense.

Poetic satire might very properly be regarded as didactic poetry, for the object  it has in view is the reformation of men and manners, and to this end the satirist takes the liberty of boldly censuring vice and  vicious characters.“The true end of satire is the amendment of vice by correction,” says Dryden. And most people agree that satire is a “criticism of life, an exposure of human weaknesses, follies, absurdities and short comings.” The satirist uses humour, wit, mockery, ridicule, innuendo and irony gives him the standard or ideal with which he ridicules the deviations of society.

“Or lose her Heart or Necklace at a Ball;

Or whether Heav’n has doom’d that Shock must fall.”

The Rape of the Lock is a satire on the aristocratic strata of the 18^th century society.  In the very opening lines, the poet laughs at “little” men engaging in tasks so “bold”, and at gentle ladies who are capable of such “mighty rage”.  The contrast between “tasks so bold” and “little men” and another between “soft bosoms” and “mighty rage” is very wittily constructed and cuts down to size these vain people of Pope’s time.

“Let Wreaths of Triumph now my Temples twine

(The victor cry’d) the glorious is mine!”

With such scathing ridicule no other poet would dare to write again and Dryden has been completely successful in his mission. This is exactly the function of satire. Pope’s satire, too, functions in somewhat the same manner. In The Rape of the Lock when Lord Plume is requested by his lady-love to persuade Lord Petre to surrender the “precious hairs” of Belinda, he utters words which are unsurpassed in their emptiness. What a torrent of meaningless words! Satire predominates in the works of Pope. Even a cursory glance at his poetry reveals that the major part of it consists of satire or is satiric in spirit. The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, Moral Essays, Satires and Ephistles of Horace Imitated are the best of his satires. Pope wrote many satires against individuals, which were deadly and sharp and they are marked by bitterness and malice. Stopford Brooke, while comparing Dryden and Pope as satirists, points out that Dryden’s work is done in large outline. “It has relation not only to the  man he is satirizing, but to the whole of human nature, Pope’s satire is thin, it confines itself to person, it has no relation to the greater world beyond his clique, and its voice both sharp and querulous, rises sometimes to a shriek of feeble vacuity.”

“Hear me, and touch Belinda, with Chagrin;

That single Act gives half the World the Spleen.”

The satire in The Rape of the Lock is directed not against any individual, but against the follies and vanities in general of fashionable men and women. Pope started writing this poem with the object of conciliating two quarrelling families but as the poem progressed, the poet forgot his original intention, and satirized female follies and vanities. Belinda is not Arabella Fermor; she is the type of the fashionable ladies of the time, and in her the follies and frivolities of the whole sex are satirized. And   the Baron represents not Petre but typifies the aristocratic gentlemen of the age. The strange battle between the sexes shows what sort of people these were. Just one example will amply demonstrate the levity of these people and also show that the criticism was leveled not against any individual alone but against the whole gamut of the aristocratic vanguard. And these lines which come earlier:

-When bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down,   

Chloe stept in and kill’d him with a Frown;

She smil’d to see the doughty Hero slain,

But, at her smile,the Beau reviv’d again.

Pope’s satire is intellectual, and full of wit and epigram. His picture of Addison as Atticus though unjust and prompted by malice, is a brilliant piece of satire. “As an intellectual observer and describer of personal weakness, Pope stands by himself in English verse.”(Lowell).Not only that, the poet has also satirized the system of justice and the judges.  At four in the afternoon, judges hurriedly sign the sentence so that they could have their dinner in time. This is their sense of responsibility. Even the concept of friendship has been attacked. Friends are hollow and fickle. Belinda’s friend Thalestris is as shallow as the age in which she lives. As soon as the reputation of Belinda is gone, she does not like to e called her friend, because it will be a disgrace to be known as her friend henceforth.

“Propt on their Bodkin Spears, the Sprights survey

The growing Combat, or assist the Fray.”

But of, Pope’s criticism is not negative. He strikes mightily with his sweeping banter, but he instructs and advises, too, for the cure of the moral degeneration of his age. The poem has a moral purpose, and this constitutes the constructive aspect of Pope’s cynicism of life. The long speech, given to Clarissa, at the beginning of Canto V chiefly contains his unambiguous instruction to his age, particularly to the ladies of fashion and rank of his time. Through this lecture, Pope tries to enlighten and rectify the frivolous society of his time.  He gives his wise counsel here to the gay and silly pursuers of pleasures and vanities, about the transience of all fashions and show, and the triumph   of the quality of the character. After all, beauty with all its charms and allurements, must pass away ere long, and can gain nothing, in the ultimate analysis without the virtue of heart. All the female charms of a lovely belle would seem meaningless, unless a good and loving husband brings out the best in her.

“Mean while, declining from the Noon of Day,

The Sun obliquely shoots his burning Ray;

The hungry Judges soon the Sentence sign,

And Wretches hang that Jury-men may Dine;”

Addison was too condescending with his pretty pupils; but under Pope’s courtesy there lurks contempt, and his smile has a disagreeable likeness to a sneer.  If Addison’s manner sometimes suggests the brilliant wit, Pope’s contempt has a keener edge from his resentment against fine ladies blinded to his genius by his personal deformity. Even in his dedication, Pope with unconscious impertinence insults his heroine for her presumable ignorance of his critical jargon.  His smart epigrams want but a slight change of tone to become satire. It is the same writer who begins an essay on women’s characters by telling a woman that her sex is a compound of “Matter too soft a lasting mask to bear; And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair”, and communicates to her the pleasant truth that every woman is at heart a rake. Women, in short, are all frivolous beings, whose genuine interest is in love-making. The same sentiment is really implied in the more playful lines of The Rape of the Lock. The sylphs are warned by omens that some misfortune impends; but they don’t know what!  We can understand that Miss Fermor would feel such raillery to be equivocal. It may be added that an equal want of delicacy is implied in the mock-heroic battle at the end, where the ladies are gifted with an excess of screaming power.

“In Tasks so bold can Little Men engage,

And in soft Bosoms dwell such mighty Rage?”

We see her, next going with a party of admirers, up the river Thames to Hampton Court palace and holding her Darbar there as if she were a queen. She smiles upon well-dressed fops that crowded round her. Then follows an account of the game of cards and of coffee drinking, leading to the catastrophe, the cutting of her lock of hair. He then describes the hypocritical fits of passion and battles for the severed lock of hair. ‘Here is an epic of the frivolous’. Pope paints the vanity and shallowness of this life. Likewise, the poet also gives us an account of the frivolous young men. They run after ladies, now this, now that; they hang about their boxes in the theatres and their coaches in the Hyde Park. They display their hair in rings; give parties and invite people to balls. They are as insincere and hollow as ladies whom they love.

“The men may say, when we the front box grace,

Behold the first in virtue as in face.’’

Pope was inspired by a prevailing sentiment of contempt towards the whole female sex. The witty lines are read not with kind irony but as disagreeable sneers. If Miss Fermor was pleased, as she seems to have been with her reflection in the character of Belinda, she certainly gave countenance to what was evidently Pope’s opinion.  Perhaps the idle society- women of Pope’s day deserved no higher estimate: but it is not to be supposed that the whole sex was dominated by puffs, powders, patches and billet-doux.  It is fair to laugh at the lovers and lap-dogs, the devotion to Bohea and China vases:  it is not fair to leave us with the impression that nothing higher was possible. But for, as Pope thought it is not a poet’s business to look beyond his age, the result may be accepted, because the poem undoubtedly strikes off a vivid picture of certain current fashions which were as ludicrous as they were transitory. The picture remains bright and entertaining because under similar conditions these fashions do arise from certain traits in female character which seem to be fundamental.

“This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless Skies,

When next he looks thro’ Galileo’s Eyes;

And hence th’ Egregious Wizard shall foredoom

The Fate of Louis, and the Fall of Rome.”

The poem is a reflection of this artificial and hollow life, painted with a humorous and delicate satire. It paints the idle life of the pleasure-seeking young men and women. It introduces us to a world of frivolity and fashion, which was busy with its pleasures.  These pleasures were petty and frivolous-dressing, flirting, card playing, driving in Hyde Park, visiting theatres, writing love-letters, and so on and so forth. Their whole day’s programme seems to be nothing but a waste. We see, here, Belinda sleeping on till noon and dreaming of young lovers and fashions of dress. Her lap dog Shock awakens her with a lick of his tongue. This is significant. She first reads love-letters and then goes straight to her dressing or toilette table. Pope gives a very original and witty account of her toilet. So vain is she that dressing seems to be some religious rite or ceremony. He calls it ‘the scared rites of Pride’. The number of cosmetics on the table, the whole procedure of preparing the toilette, etc., is a great satire on fashionable ladies of the times. Their dress is frivolous, their minds are sprightly and their hearts moving toy-shops which they sell now to John and then to David.

“A Beau and Witling perished in the Throng,

One dy’d in Metaphor, and one in Song.”

Thus, the poem is a delicate, playful, humorous, original, witty satire on the upper class society of the eighteenth century. Though genial and gentle, it is at times deadly. It does not condemn Swift; it exposes the follies with a light ridicule. The poem is, in fact, satire upon feminine frivolity. It continues the strain of mockery against hoops and patches and their wearers, which supplied Addison and his colleagues with the materials of so many Spectators. Even in Addison there is something which rather jars upon us.  His persiflage is full of humour and kindness but underlying it there is a tone of superiority to women which is sometimes offensive; it is taken for granted that woman is a fool, or at least should be flattered if any man condescends to talk sense to her. With Pope this tone becomes harsher, and the merciless satirist begins to show himself.  In truth, Pope can be inimitably pungent but he can never be simply playful.

“Jove’s Thunder roars, Heav’n tremble all around;

Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing Deeps resound;”

Pope seems to be enamoured with his own creation. He describes her in superlatives- the goddess, the nymph, the fair, the rival of sun’s beams. In this way he plays a homage to this beautiful character who resembles Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. Like her, she is a perfection of beauty, and a winner of men. Secondly, Pope regards her as a fair warrior who wins the battle of life. She is the conqueror of Hampton Court; she knocks down two knights at the card table. Her protests against the attack of Lord Petre put a premium on her virtue. On other hand, Pope is not blind to her human side with her weaknesses and whims. He mocks her at times and laughs at her fragilities. In fact, she is the goddess of sex who knows all the tricks of the sex-games. Belinda’s reaction to the loss of her lock is quite natural. It is a breach of hero- worship and rules of chivalry and courtship. All in all. Pope makes her a living human personality full of life to the finger-tips.

“Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting Grace,

A two-edg’d Weapon from her shining Case:

So Ladies in Romance assist their knight,

Present the Spear, and arm him for the Fight.”

The Rape of the Lock is a triumph of English satire, although it is not a personal satire, like The Dunciad or Mac Flecknoe. Its moral purpose is directed not to any individual in particular, but to society, specially the polished society of Pope’s age. In his Dedicatory Epistle to Miss Fermor, Pope writes of the purpose of his poem: “It was intended only to divert a few young ladies who have good sense and good humour enough to laugh not only at their sex’s little unguarded follies, but at their own.” The poem, indeed, is a refined, playful satire on the universal follies and foibles of the fashionable people of all ages, particularly those of England of the eighteenth century. The superiority of the poem as a satire is patent, in no less measure, in the moral aspect.

“Think not when Woman’s transient Breath is fled,

That all her Vanities at once are Dead:

Succeeding Vanities she still regards,

And tho’ she plays no more, o’erlooks the Cards.”

Pope’s portrait of Belinda is also animated with a truly comic spirit. In Belinda, he found the charm that a fair and fashionable woman brings to society, together with all her pride and vanity. Her bright appearance contrasts sharply with her fickle nature. Pope makes her quite amusing and trivial by showing her very lack of discrimination, and her failure to catch the true value of things. Her heart is “a moving toy-shop” where image follows image without any distinction and nothing serious has any place.  The rape of her Lock and her Reaction to its symbolically testify to the frail nature of her fashionable society, where sexual behavior is subject to society for certain conventional standards. Pope equates, with a rare sense of the comic, virginity with China wares and woman’s honour to a new brocade, and husbands with lap-dogs.

“And trust me, Dear! Good  Humour can prevail,

When Airs, and Flights, and Screams, and Scolding fail.

Beauties in vain their pretty Eyes may roll;

Charms strike the Sight, but Merit wins the Soul.”

All in all, though sex is not the main theme of the poem, it has been sufficiently exploited to rouse the interest and curiosity of the reader. Pope’s main aim is to speak for the need of good sense and toleration in human relationships. The moral lesson is contained in Clarissa’s speech which pleads for healthy relationship between men and women through companionship of love and marriage. Good humour and good sense are as essential in life as love and beauty. Hyman thinks that the word “Lock” stands for the female organ and all keys are fit in it. The cutting of the Lock may be regarded as a sexual act.  This becomes clear as Belinda protests and cries after losing her lock of hair. Of course, the restoration of the Lock is impossible like the restoration of virginity. Hyman also refers to the line, “And maids, turned bottle, call aloud for cork”, which make it clear that women are fond of sex. It may not be possible for us to agree with Pope’s view of sex.

“Think not when Woman’s transient Breath is fled,

That all her Vanities at once are Dead:”

Pope has succeeded in harmonically blending a satire on contemporary London society with a witty parody of the epic or heroic style.  In fact, it is the parody of the epic which lends such a sting to the satire on the contemporary 18th century London society.  As Geoffrey Tillotson puts it: “The best mock heroic poets mock at the literary form for carrying the contemporary  ‘low’ human material, but they mock more severely at the material for being so unworthy of the form.  For though the mock heroic poet adopts a different angle from the epic poet, he is standing on the same ground. Both are serious, morally interested, and in earnest.  The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries considered the moral element in the epics their first glory and they did not mock at that as they mocked at the machinery.”

“Tis these that early taint the Female Soul,

Instruct the Eyes of young Coquettes to roll,

Teach Infant-Cheeks a hidden Blush to know,

And little Hearts to lutter at a Beau.”

Mark Pattison calls Pope the representative of his Age. Belinda is an object of Pope’s chivalrous devotion to women. Some critics have found fault with Pope’s attitude towards Belinda. Taine, the French woman critic wrote- “The truth is, he (Pope) is not polite, a French woman  would have sent him back his book, advised him to learn manners, for one commendation of her beauty she would find ten sarcasms upon her frivolity.” This criticism cannot be sustained because Pope only reflects the eighteenth century view of women of high society. They were regarded as pretty triflers, and having no serious concern with life and engrossed in dance and gaiety. Lord Chesterfield writing to his son treats women with equal contempt.  “A man of sense” he says, “only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them about, nor truss with them, serious matters, though he often makes them believe that he does both, which is the thing in the world that they are proud of… No flattery is either too high or too low for them. They will greedily swallow the highest and gratefully accept of the lowest.” Moreover, as the poem is written in Mock-Heroic vein, Belinda could not be any other than a mock heroic. It is quite clear that the poet wrote in a playful mood and his light satire should not be taken seriously.

“Just where the Breath of Life his Nostrils drew,

A Charge of Snuff the wily virgin threw;

Sudden, with starting Tears each Eye O’er flows,

And the high Dome re-echoes to his Nose.”

It would not be wrong to say that Pope did have a moral pre-occupation, even if it is covered in a veneer of wit and humour.To her even the amorous supplication of the fashionable youth is highly desirable, but she cannot resist from giving a warning and stating the disadvantages of shunning mortality. In fact, Pope cannot resist revealing Clarissa’s hypocrisy either. Even Clarissa forgets her sense of mortality and perhaps out of envy towards Belinda or simply out of goodwill towards the Baron aids him in his heinous crime of ‘raping’ the lock of Belinda. Even Clarissa is tempted towards evil and she aids the Baron in his evil designs.

“With tender Billet-doux he lights the Pyre,

And breathes three am’rous Sighs to raise the Fire.

Then prostrate falls and begs with ardent Eyes

Soon to obtain, and long possess the Prize:”

It’s this ‘merit’ –the ‘good humour’ which wins the soul; that Pope wants his ladies to imbibe and not merely ‘charms’ that only ‘strike the sight.’ And all through this mock -epic poem Pope sets himself to poke fun at this terrible and excessive obsession with one’s beauty. The women spend most of their time with their ‘toilet’ and in reading letters and the men with writing these obnoxious love-letters replete with conventional romantic phraseology. But in, Clarissa is not at all a prude as the quoted above might convey. Hers is the one same voice advocating a sense of good humour so as to preserve all the achievement of the beauty and charm of her sex. Even in her beautification is not undesirable.

“Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,

Mature in dullness from his tender years;

Shadwell alone of all my sons is he

Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.”

Actually Pope’s satire is a double-edged sword; it cuts both way. At the very moment when he is using Clarissa, a sort of mouth piece of his, to lay down the moral tenets for his age (itself of a flimsy nature as  is the subject of his mock-epic) he is making fun of her and revealing her weakness and hypocrisy. He leaves none unscathed. So strong is the vanity and the deep –rooted rottenness of their nature that their shortcomings stick with them even after their death. Even the men turn to gnomes after death, with all their vices. But of course, Pope does all this ‘beating’ in good humour and tries to laugh off the vices in men.  In the opinion of Matthew Arnold, poetry is at bottom a criticism of life. This criticism, however, should not be merely critical. It must imply a contrast between what life is and what life ought to have been. Judged from this criterion The Rape of the Lock is a satisfactory work by Pope. It is not merely a scathing satire but a criticism of life in the true sense of the term and it is in a style which is witty and humerous.

“Are nature still, but Nature methodis’d,

Nature like liberty, is but restrain’d”

But of, satire in Pope is so finely chiseled by wit, that it is rarefied into pure humour. Thus, in such a scheme of poetry there is not much scope for serious moral lessons.  Even the moral lesson that is there in Clarissa’s speech is one more facet of Pope’s consummate wit and humour. Even so what can we call these lines of Clarissa as setting a strict moral standard for the 18^th century ladies.

“Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,

And she who scorns a Man, Must die a Maid;

What then remains but well oue Pow’r to use,

And keep good Humour still, whatev’r we lose?”

A particular incident in the battle scene of Canto V shows Pope’s mystery in reducing to size the pompous men and women of his age.  It is the scene where Belinda vanquishes the Baron with a pinch of snuff.  What a sorry figure the Baron cuts! And what scandalous behavior on the part of an aristocratic lady! In one stroke Pope has demolished the pompousness of his vainglorious characters.

“Soon as she spreads her Hand, th’ Ariel Guard

Descend, and sit on each important Card”

Some of Pope’s contemporaries, like John Dennis found The Rape of the Lock immoral and distasteful. According to them it lacked true wit and judgment. Dennis’s remarks on Mr. Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (1728) severely criticizes the poem for deviating from the rules of the epics.  His charge was that Pope dealt in trifles, without moral, in his mock epic. However, most critics feel that Clarissa’s speech at the opening of Canto V sets the moral tone. As Warburton put it, Pope introduced Clarissa’s speech “to open more clearly the moral of the poem.” Pope knew that a moral was thought by critics to be important to an epic. From the very beginning, The Rape of the Lock had a moral motive. His aim was to teach the lesson of “concord” and good humour between two quarrelling families.

“And now, unveil’d the Toilet stands display’d,

Each Silver Vase in mystic Order laid.

First, rob’d in White, the Nymph intent adores

With Heaf uncover’d the Cosmetic pow’rs.”

Pope’s pointed and critical survey of his age is amply evident in his descriptions of the toilet of Belinda; the strange alter raised by the proud Baron and the ‘nice conduct’ of Sir Plume and his ‘clouded cane’. Belinda’s long and laborious toilet clearly demonstrates her vanity and pride which are certainly unfortunate sins. Pope brings out forcefully the obdurate female pride as well as vanity of his age through his portrait of Belinda and her conduct.

“With varying Vanities, from ev’ry Part,

They shift the moving Toyshop of their Heart.”

The mention of the losing of honour by Belinda clearly refers to the loss of her chastity. Besides this, there are many suggestive words and phrases like “soft bosoms” “winning lips “,”the melting maids”, “midnight masquerades”, “white breast”, “the charge of the petticoat” which have obviously sexual implications and are not capable of giving any other meaning. The Baron’s conduct too is, indicative of the moral depravity of the age. Sir Plume stands for the shallow lazy punctilio of the age that has no strength of character of force of mortality.

“Oh, hadst thou, cruel! Been count to seize,

Hair less in sight, or any hairs but these!”

And how ridiculous the Baron looks when he,

-But chiefly Love-to Love an altar built,

Of twelve vast French romances neatly gilt.

They lay three garters, half a pair of gloves;

And all the Trophies to his former Loves.

A true satire is purposive and instructive. In fact, the real end of satire is ‘the amendment of vices by correction.’ The Rape of the Lock is a perfect specimen of satiric literature, and its moral tone is quite patent. Here comes the element of the criticism of life in Pope’s mock-heroic satire. The Rape of the Lock contains a good deal of the poet’s critical evaluation of the English social life of the eighteenth century. Pope’s subject of study here is the showy, artificial and frivolous life of the aristocratic, fashionable society of his own time. He ruthlessly exposes here the gay and thoughtless   belles and the idle and vain beaux of the time. He misses no chance to hit hard at all that characterizes that shallow, artificial age- its affection and vanity, its coquetry and frivolity, its gay foppery and spineless morality. 

“Now Lap dogs give themselves the rowzing Shake,

And sleepless Lovers, just at Twelve, awake:”

Hyman thinks that the word “Lock” stands for the female organ and all keys are fit in it. The cutting of the Lock may be regarded as a sexual act.  This becomes clear as Belinda protests and cries after losing her lock of hair. Of course, the restoration of the Lock is impossible like the restoration of virginity. Hyman also refers to the line, “And maids, turned bottle, call aloud for cork”, which make it clear that women are fond of sex. It may not be possible for us to agree with Pope’s view of sex. There is the reference to the public hair and the private hair which grows on the part of the women. Belinda refers to them when she bewails the loss of the lock. Much more than the loss of the private hair.

“A heav’nly Image in the Glass appears,

To that she bends, to that her Eyes she rears;

Th’ inferior Priestess, at her Altar’s side

Trembling begins the sacred Rites of Pride. “

The introduction of the machinery of the sylphs and the gnomes heightens the mock-heroic effect of the poem.  Thus In place of the gods and goddesses of Homer, we have in The Rape of the Lock a band of tiny spirits. As G. Holden points out, “It is Pope’s use of this machinery, moreover, which more than any other single feature made the poem the single success that it is.” It is the machinery which enables him, in various ways, to create the mock epic effect. All the epic poets like Homer, Virgil, Tasso and Milton made use of the machinery, and it was in the fitness of things that Pope should also parody it in his mock-epic. In an epic the machines are strong and mighty, here they are tiny and weak. “In the sylphs” says Cunningham, “we witness a delightful down- scaling of the Epic Machines.” In the ultimate analysis, Pope’s machinery, a sure proof of his artistic excellence. And what Pope himself once wrote to his friend is not all wrong. “The making of that (the machinery) and what was published before fit so well together, I think is one of the greatest proofs of judgment of anything I ever did.”

“Say, why are Beauties prais’d and honour’d most,

The wise Man’s Passion, and the vain Man’s Toast?

Why deck’d with all that Land and Sea afford,

Why Angels call’d, and Angel-like ador’d?”

Pope has succeeded in harmonically blending a satire on contemporary London society with a witty parody of the epic or heroic style.  In fact, it is the parody of the epic which lends such a sting to the satire on the contemporary 18th century London society.  As Geoffrey Tillotson puts it: “the best mock heroic poets mock at the literary form for carrying the contemporary  ‘low’ human material, but they mock more severely at the material for being so unworthy of the form.  For though the mock heroic poet adopts a different angle from the epic poet, he is standing on the same ground. Both are serious, morally interested, and in earnest.  The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries considered the moral element in the epics their first glory, and they did not mock at that as they mocked at the machinery.”

“'Tis but their Sylph, the wise Celestials know,

Tho’ Honour in the Word with Men below.”

The use of machinery is a traditional and distinctive feature of epic poetry. The action of the heroic characters are represented as subject to the intervention of gods and controlled by destiny. This interposition may take different forms of varying significance.  The immortal figures may remain only the watchers of the scenes from the clouds, or bestir themselves actively upon the earthly stage.  At times it seems that the real plot is being enacted in the skies and the mortals are mere pawns with which these divinities play out their game. Thus, we find the gods taking part in the epics of Homer, Milton, Virgil and in the epics of the Hindus, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.  There another poem in which destiny overhangs the plots. From the  constructional point of view its importance  is  well brought out in the bantering words of Pope himself: “The  use of these machines is evident: synced  no  epic  can possibly subsist without them, the wisest way is to reserve  them for your greater necessities: when you  cannot extricate your hero by any human means, or yourself by your won wit, seek relief from heaven , and the gods will do your business very readily.”

“The Knave of diamonds tries his wily arts,

And wins (oh shameful chance) the queen of hearts...”

The original machine was a sort of crane used in the Greek theatre for the purpose of bringing down the gods as though descending from the sky to intervene and solve the insuperable difficulties. Hence, it came to mean a supernatural person or agency introduced into a poem, and the allied word “machinery”, the set of supernatural devices used for denouement in a drama or poem.

“Even then, before the fatal Engines clos’d,

A wretch’d sylph fondly interposed;

Fate urg’d the Sheas, and cut the Sylph in twain

(But Airy Substance soon unites again).”

The poem was now fully complete as a mock-heroic. The machinery, an essential part of epic poetry, was now supplied to it. Whoever had heard of an epic poem without machinery? In this letter to Miss Fermor, Pope himself explains the term. “The Machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the critics to signify that part which the Deities, Angels, or Demons are made to act in a poem.” In the Iliad this part is played by the gods and goddess of Greek mythology, while in Paradise Lost, it is played by the angels. In The Rape of the Lock this part is played by the spirits which are entirely in keeping with the trivial subject and the foppish characters of the poem.

“For when the Fair in all their Pride expire,

To their first Elements their Souls retire.”

Pope felt the need to introduce the machinery in his The Rape of the Lock after having read a book by French author, Abbe-de- Villiars, containing an account of the Rosicrucian doctrine of spirits.  It struck him that he could incorporate this fairy like mythology in his little poem. All his friends with the exception of Addison approved of the idea and Pope adjusted to the poem the parts of the supernatural spirits. The complete poem was published in 1714 with the author’s name.

“This Lock, the Muse the stars consecrate to Fame,

And, mid’st the stars inscribe Belinda’s Name!”

The first version of The Rape of the Lock was made up of only two cantos, containing the main incidents of the game of cards, cutting of the lock and the ensuing battle therewith.  This humorus piece was meant to bring about a happy reconciliation between the two families of the Fermors and the Petres. This version, however, was never published and it had not yet taken the shape of a mock-epic. It was meant to be read by a selected number of people related to or close with the two families. Pope saw the possibility of expanding it into a mock-heroic poem and he expanded it into the mock epic form before he got it published.  This was done by in clung into the body of the poem the supernatural creatures like the sylphs and gnomes who seem to be the guiding force behind the central action of that poem.

“A constant Vapour o’er the Palace flies;

Strange Phantoms rising as the Mists arise;

Dreadful,as Hermit’s Dreams in haunted Shades,

Or bright as Visions of expiring Maids.”

Pope took the name of Ariel from Shakespeare’s Tempest and the idea of the sylphs from a French book, Le Comte de Gabalis, which gives an account of the Rosicrucian mythology of spirits. According to this mythology, the four elements are inhabited by spirits, which are called sylphs (air), gnomes (earth), nymphs (water) and salamanders (fire). The gnomes or spirits of earth delight in mischief, but the sylphs, which dwell in air, are the best conditioned creatures imaginable. Two of these kinds-sylphs and gnomes-are introduced by Pope in The Rape of the Lock.

“Soon as she spreads her Hand, th’ Aerial Guard

Descend, and sit on each important Card.”

In spite of all the careful vigilance of Ariel and the sylphs, the lock of Belinda’s hair is raped. The spirits do not in the least influence the action; they neither prevent the danger nor retard it, unless it be for one futile moment. The visit of Umbriel to the Cave of Spleen reminds one of the visits to the underworld described in the epics, and is introduced for the sake of mock-heroic effect. It is an episode, which gives an opportunity to the poet to satirise the evil nature and affection of the ladies and gentlemen of his society. It also serves the action of the poem, for Belinda becomes alternatively angry and sad as Umbriel empties the bag of passions and the vial of sorrows over her head.

“On the rich Quilt sinks with becoming Woe,

Wrapt in a Gown, for Sickness and for how.

The Fair-ones feel such Maladies as these,

When each new Night- Dress gives a new Disease.”

These aerial spirits of Rosicrucian mythology were tiny, light being which would exactly suit his mock-heroic poem. The gods and goddesses of Homer would not do for his flimsy poem, nor would angels of Milton’s Paradise Lost. The pigmy beings, like the sylphs and the gnomes, are suited to the theme and atmosphere of the poem and they are as artificial as the society depicted in The Rape of the Lock.

“Triumphant Umbriel in Sconce’s Height

Clapt his glad Wings, and sate to view the Fight.”

Another fault that is to be found with the poem is, as Stopford Brooke points out, that it is overworked, that even its exquisite technique is too plainly technical; in fact, it is even more artificial than the society it treats of. Pope, when he wrote it, was much more in love with his own skill than with his subject. ‘Pope, while writing The Rape of the Lock was extremely punctilious about the construction of the poem. He imitated the epic manner accurately in all its details, from the invocation to the rising of the lock to the heaven as a constellation. The poet seems to be more attentive to the construction of the poem than to its subject-matter.” We miss that ease or spontaneity which is the mark of great poetry. There is everywhere the mark of labour and artifice. Hence, Brooke rightly says that the poem is ‘overworked”. The fault of the poem lies in its faultlessness.

“Coffee, (which makes the Politician wise,

And see throu’ all things with half-shut Eyes)”

The fairies of The Midsummer Night’s Dream are also tiny beings, but they are different in nature and spirit from the sylphs, and the gnomes of The Rape of the lock. The former are gay, delightful spirits, wandering about in moonlight; they embody all the beauty and freshness of nature and in their limited sphere, they are endowed with supernatural power, and play pranks on human beings. Puck cries out:”What fools these mortals be.” The light militia of the lower sky, represented in The Rape of the Lock, is of a very different character. They are artificial spirits and they have all the vanity and superficiality which they had when they were” one enclosed in woman’s beauteous mould.” They take delight in the game of Ombre and help Belinda in her game.

What are the functions of the aerial spirits in The Rape of the Lock? Ariel has a premonition that some calamity is impending over Belinda. Therefore, Ariel who guards Belinda assigns different functions to the spirits under his control. One was given the charge of Belinda’s fan, another was to take care of her ear-rings, the third was to look after her watch, and fourth was to guard her favourite lock. Ariel was to take charge of the dog. The important duty of guarding the petticoat was given to fifty chosen sylphs. Ariel warned the pigmy band of spirits against negligence in their duties. Severe punishment was to be awarded to those who failed in the discharge of their duties, and the punishments were exactly adjusted to the size and nature of the spirits. The punishment with which the delinquents were threatened was: to be shut up in small bottles, to be pierced through with pins, to be held fast in the eye of the bodkin, or to be struck up in gums and pomades.

“Not louder Shrieks to pitying Heav’n are cast

When Husbands, or when Lap-dogs breathe their last.”

We may safely conclude that John Dennis made an incorrect assessment of The Rape of the Lock when he said that the poem has no moral. Nor is it correct to say that the moral lesson is unimportant- for, then the satire loses its purpose.  The moral is very much an integral part of the poem, criticizing the life it describes, implying in the confusion of values it depicts the correct moral norms to be aimed at.

“There she collects the Force of Female Lungs,

Sighs, Sobs and Passions, and the War of Tongues.”

Though The Rape of the Lock is a poem of frivolity and satire, its aim was reconciliation between two families which had quarrelled on account of cutting of the hair of a maid by a Lord. The eighteenth century critics regarded it as a work of satire on the frivolous activities of the aristocracy, the twentieth century critics have read sex symbolism in this poem. Hyman, the twentieth century critic regards The Rape of the Lock as a poem on the loss of virginity. Undoubtedly, Pope did not know of Freud’s interpretation of sex as the latter was born in the present century.  The punishment, with which Ariel threatens his followers, if they neglect their duties, is equally funny. The spirits are to be shut up in “vials”, to be pierced with pins, to be made fast in the eyes of bodkins or to be stuck up in gum and pomades. The most important function performed by these spirits in the poem is the enhancing of satirical and fanciful nature of the poem. It is through these spirits that Pope satirises the vanity and fickleness of the ladies of the day.

“With thunder Billet-doux , he lights the Pyre,

And breathes three am’rous Sighs to raise the Fire.”

The first two lines of the poem, give below certain words like “assault” (Criminal act) and “rejects” which have sexual implications. Similarly at the end of the poem, Thalestris incites Belinda to punish the Baron for his criminal act. She calls the lover “ravisher”.

 -Say what strange Motive, Goddess! cou’d compel

A well-bred Lord t’ assault a gentle Belle?

O,say what stranger Cause, yet unexplor’d,

Cou’d make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?

Besides supplying an essential requirement of epic poetry, the spirits in The Rape of the Lock serve another purpose also. In the dedication of the poem, Pope claims that, ‘Human persons in this poem   are as fictitious as the Airy ones.’ Still, most people knew that Belinda was Arabella Fermor and the Baron was Lord Petre. By introducing this fictitious machinery, therefore, Pope made the poem more impersonal and thereby substantiated his claim.

“The light coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair,

And sport and flutter in the Fields of Air.”

The artificial mythology of the sylphs harmonises with the artificial story. It is full of the most fanciful wit. Indeed, “wit infused with fancy is Pope’s particular merit.”The difference between these pigmy spirits of Pope and the gods and goddesses of Homer and the angels of Milton is the measure of difference in scale between Pope’s tiny work and the great epics of Homer and Milton. But of, the choice of these sylphs and gnomes is very appropriate in The Rape of the Lock for through them the poet gets the full opportunity of showing up the follies and the vanities of the fashionable ladies of the time. Through the use of Ariel and the other celestial beings Pope has managed to point out satirically woman’s excessive fondness for rank and pomp. And if they could have their way, they would maintain it even after death.

“Rather than so, ah let me still survive,

And burn in Cupid’s Fames,-but burn alive.”

As Wilson Knights points out, machinery increases dramatic suspense and therefore story-depth, since they fore-know and warn  about the central disaster: help to universalize semi-humorously the whole action, forming indeed, the binding symbolism of the little drama; are related to certain paradise and in Umbriel’s journey-hellish colourings, touching Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton; and finally reflect the implied belief of poetic art-forms in general that humanity and its sensible world do not exhaust the total of the comprehensive psychic statement. They are of a race that lives in the pure upper light; that  guides orbs in heaven like the child spirit in Shelley: or follows shooting stars by moonlight; and indeed variously associated with the rainbows, mists, tempests, and earth; and guardianship of the British throne . As unseen helpers they recall the attendant spirit in “Comus”. They are explicitly related to traditional beliefs, both trivial and profound.

“In fields of purest ether play

And bask and whiten in the blaze of day.”

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[EXCEPT SETTING OF THOUGHTS-SETTING OF SENTENCES IN MANY PLACES-IDEAS-REFERENCES-QUOTES WITHOUT INVERTED COMMAS AND ELABORATION OF IDEAS; -WORDS AND SENTENCES FROM DR.SEN’S-CRITICAL EVALUATION ON ‘THE RAPE OF THE LOCK’ THOUGH EVEN THERE WITH AFEW CHANGES OF WORDS FROM THE ORIGINAL BOOK]     AND

 [Except the underlined and few changes in the body and pattern of letter in the box  that provided in my document, the main constituents of the letter only is referred at The Rape of the Lock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

“Tis more to guide than spur the Muses’steed;

Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed;

The winged courser, like a gen’rous horse,

Shows most true mettle when you check his course,

Those rules of old  discover’d not devis’d,

Are nature still, but Nature methodis’d,

Nature like liberty, is but restrain’d

By the same laws which first herself ordain’d.

Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem.

To copy Nature is to copy them.”