886 Pope, Alexander
Spleen, for instance—are also female (if not strictly
human).
Unlike the female characters in the poem, who
merely play at weakness, the male characters are
genuinely feeble, ineffectual, and effeminate. After
losing a card game to his female opponent, the
Baron musters the strength to snip her lock only
once he has emboldened himself with a caffeine
stimulant. The snuff-addicted Sir Plume is too
intoxicated to manage a coherent utterance let
alone a manly act. The very names of Dapperwit
and Sir Fopling suggest a highly feminized male
social type: the dandy, whose concern with delicate
tastes and French fashions extends to meticulous
adornment in wigs, cosmetics and perfumes, fancy
apparel, and shiny shoes. With a cast of male
characters like this, the reader cannot be entirely
unsympathetic to Thalestris’s disdainful suggestion
that “Men, Monkeys, Lap-dogs, [and] Parrots” be
regarded as equivalents, the pets and playthings of
women (4.120).
At the heart of this poem is a playful, if combat-
ive, dynamic between the genders and a contest for
power that culminates in a practical joke—the illicit
clipping off of Belinda’s lock of hair—cast as a vio-
lent sexual “assault” by an otherwise “well-bred Lord”
(1.9). Of course, the comparison to rape is meant
to be understood as a ridiculous one. The reader is
urged to judge Belinda’s reaction to the prank as dis-
proportionately dire, to giggle at her “Rage, Resent-
ment and Despair” (4.9), and to consider her “Airs,
and Flights, and Screams, and Scolding” (5.32), as
all too symptomatic of women’s superficiality and
emotionalism. Well-positioned, then, to appreci-
ate Clarissa’s intervention in Belinda’s histrionics,
her recommendation of “good Sense” and “good
Humor” in the face of adversity, the reader is offered
a simple antidote to the “female faults” with which
the poem is concerned (5.16, 30, 32). Clarissa’s
speech serves as a conservative appeal to Belinda
to reconcile herself to her fate as a docile “Huswife”
since the charms of youth and “frail Beauty must
decay, / Curl’d or uncurl’d, since Locks will turn to
grey, / Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade, /
And she who scorns a Man, must die a Maid” (5.21,
25–28).
Hilary Englert
vIoLence in The Rape of the Lock
If the plot of this poem is mundane enough—a
fashionable young lady awakes, dresses, and enjoys
a day of leisure playing cards, drinking coffee, and
engaging in light intrigue—this plot is persistently
rendered through grand metaphors of epic warfare
and heroic violence. Belinda’s ablutions are repeat-
edly represented as the putting on of “arms” in
preparation for “Conquests yet to come” (1.39, 3.29,
28). Her beauty enslaves “mighty hearts” and leads
to “the destruction of Mankind” (2.24, 19). More-
over, the sylphs—the disembodied female spirits
duty-bound to protect the fair and innocent—are
described as a “light Militia” (1.43) and an “Aerial
Guard” (3.31). The world of imperial conquest and
trade is invoked in the items on Belinda’s dressing
table in canto 1, in the game of Ombre dramatized
as extended “Combat” and the ritualized preparing
and drinking of coffee in canto 3, and, of course, in
the apocalyptic battle of canto 5, which ends quite
definitively in “Millions slain” (3.44, 5.146).
We may explain the prevalence of this martial
figuration by recalling its usage as a classic mock-
epic strategy. According to this method, a satirical
effect is produced when the reader reckons with
the ridiculous disparity between the poem’s banal
substance and weighty form, between the “trivial
Things” of the world and the “Mighty Contests”
to which they give rise (1.2). On the other hand,
as we have already seen, the mock-epic contrasts
of this poem seem consistently to expose serious
comparisons, proximity where the form promises
disparity, parallels where the form urges us to dis-
cover incongruity.
While the poem’s central character is associated
with—even indistinguishable from—the products
and perils of mercantilism, its plot, too, dramatizes
the violence of imperialism. This imagery is perhaps
most palpable during the card game of canto 3,
which is depicted as an epic, imperial “War,” among
“Armies,” with each card serving alternately as “Cap-
tive,” “Victor,” “Tyrant,” “Victim,” and “Imperial
consort” (3.65, 50, 64, 69, 68). The game is cast as an
elaborate political allegory, a contest between “Mon-
archs” making “easie Conquest[s]” of “Asia’s Troops,
and Africk’s Sable Sons” and competing to “grasp[ ]
the Globe” (3.74, 82, 78, 75).