The Rape of the Lock 885world she represents in the violence of early 18th-
century mercantilism.
It is in this context that we may understand
the appearance of the commodified objects in
this and other scenes of the poem as more vivid,
animated figures than the characters who pos-
sess them. It is Belinda’s accoutrements more than
her company that are active and alive, “glittering,”
“glowing,” “breathing,” and “shining” (1.32, 33, 34,
37). Later, as the party prepares for coffee, it is the
beans that “crackle,” the mill that “turns round,” the
Japanese lacquered table that “shin[es],” and the
china cups that “receive” the “grateful . . . fuming
Liquor” (3.106, 107, 110, 109, 114). Even the inte-
riority of female character is depicted as a “moving
Toyshop . . . Where Wigs with Wigs, with Sword-
knots Sword-knots strive, / Beau banish Beau, and
Coaches Coaches drive” (1.100–103). The things in
these passages stand in metonymically for people,
implying a world of dynamic objects and a reality
defined more by relations with things than with
other people.
The final and most famous line of the toilet pas-
sage dramatizes the logic of arbitrary accumulation
that characterizes the fashionable consumerism at
the heart of the poem. Among the beauty supplies
on the table lie “Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles,
Billet-doux” (1.138). The proliferation of objects
accelerates apparently randomly, even as the formal
elements of the line—its alliteration and familiar
meter—suggest order and meaning. The effect is
that of a world of different, even incommensurate,
things masquerading as equivalents and a reality in
which the exchange of falsely equivalent but inter-
changeable objects has taken over all meaning.
Hilary Englert
Gender in The Rape of the Lock
Centrally concerned with “Female errors” and
“faults” (2.18, 17), The Rape of the Lock is often read
as a satire on female manners and on the fashion-
able, highly feminized social world that Belinda
represents. While universally adored, this “Fairest
of Mortals” (1.27) is nonetheless portrayed as vain,
artificial, selfish, and temperamental, more invested
in appearances and surfaces than in realities and
depths, more protective of her reputation than of her
virtue. In her decorative self-fashioning, ornamental
accomplishments, and rule-governed social interac-
tion, Belinda may be seen as ironically submitting to
a naturalized set of gender norms and imperatives,
which require that she act as accomplice to her own
trivialization and containment.
To be sure, the poem trafficks in an array
of misogynist pieties—in particular the idea that
women are fickle, vain, and consumed with trivial
pleasures and petty forms of power. Significantly,
however, the critique focuses on women’s artificial
manners—that is, on the “gay ideas” that “early
taint the Female Soul, / Instruct the Eyes of young
Coquettes to roll, / Teach Infant-Cheeks a bidden
Blush to know, / And little Hearts to flutter at a
Beau” (1.83, 87–90). The emphasis of these lines
is on female learning, on the external forces and
social conventions that condition female habits and
sensibilities. In other words, the passage refrains
from assigning an innate frailty to women. Instead,
the codified manners of the fashionable lady are
conditioned by corrupting teachers, who are them-
selves given concrete form as the sylphs, gnomes,
and other personified figures populating the cave of
Spleen. “Affectation” of canto 4, for instance, models
the alluring gestures of female weakness, as she,
“Practic’d to Lisp, and hang the head aside, / Faints
into Airs, and languishes with Pride; / On the rich
Quilt sinks with becoming Woe, / Wrap in a Gown,
for Sickness, and for Show” (4.31, 33–35).
Female weakness is exposed in the poem as a
ruse, a performance calculated to function ironically
as a form of power. Despite strict adherence to a
code of female conduct, Belinda is early character-
ized by her “graceful ease, and sweetness” (2.15),
which are connected to her commanding presence,
her personal power and the sway that she holds over
men. Her image is “heavenly” (1.125), all men bow
to her; and she is depicted as a goddess and a war-
rior: “Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare,/And
beauty draws us with a single hair” (2.27–28). Her
glances commit “Murders,” and “Millions” are “slain”
by her smiles (5.145, 146). Indeed, the poem’s epic
action is dominated by Belinda and Clarissa, its two
central female characters. Clarissa is presented as the
poem’s moral center, and the other figures of gravity
or authority—Ariel, Umbrial, and the Goddess of