Thinking activity on The Rape of the Lock

The poem satirises a small incident by comparing it to the epic world of the gods. It was based on an actual event recounted to the poet by Pope's friend, John Caryll. Arabella Fermor and her suitor, Lord Petre, were both from aristocratic recusant Catholic families, at a time in England when, under such laws as the Test Act, all denominations except Anglicanism suffered legal restrictions and penalties. (For example, Petre, being a Catholic, could not take the place in the House of Lords that would otherwise have been rightfully his.) Petre had cut off a lock of Arabella's hair without permission, and the consequent argument had created a breach between the two families. The poem's title does not refer to the extreme of sexual rape, but to an earlier alternative definition of the word derived from the Latin rapere (supine stem raptum), "to snatch, to grab, to carry off" —in this case, the theft and carrying away of a lock of hair. In terms of the sensibilities of the age, however, even this non-consensual personal invasion might be interpreted as bringing dishonour.

Pope, also a Catholic, wrote the poem at the request of friends in an attempt to "comically merge the two" worlds, the heroic with the social. He utilised the character Belinda to represent Arabella and introduced an entire system of "sylphs", or guardian spirits of virgins, a parodised version of the gods and goddesses of conventional epic. Pope derived his sylphs from the 17th-century French Rosicrucian novel Comte de Gabalis.Pope, writing pseudonymously as Esdras Barnivelt, also published A Key to the Lock in 1714 as a humorous warning against taking the poem too seriously.

Pope's poem uses the traditional high stature of classical epics to emphasise the triviality of the incident. The abduction of Helen of Troy becomes here the theft of a lock of hair; the gods become minute sylphs; the description of Achilles' shield becomes an excursus on one of Belinda's petticoats. He also uses the epic style of invocations, lamentations, exclamations and similes, and in some cases adds parody to imitation by following the framework of actual speeches in Homer's Iliad. Although the poem is humorous at times, Pope keeps a sense that beauty is fragile, and emphasizes that the loss of a lock of hair touches Belinda deeply.

The humour of the poem comes from the storm in a teacup being couched within the elaborate, formal verbal structure of an epic poem. It is a satire on contemporary society which showcases the lifestyle led by some people of that age. Pope arguably satirises it from within rather than looking down judgmentally on the characters. Belinda's legitimate rage is thus alleviated and tempered by her good humour, as directed by the character Clarissa.

A brief introduction to The Rape of the Lock

• The significance and impact that Pope’s The Rape of the Lock had on the English literary scene was, and still is, unquestionable. Critics that have extensively dealt with Pope’s work agree that The Rape of the Lock blends the most characteristic traits of eighteenth-century literature in England. The poem is deeply suggestive and breathes a profoundly evocative  atmosphere, which is nurtured upon a far-reaching multiplicity of classical and contemporary sources. It is no wonder, thus, that, from the moment in which the final version of the poem came out (1717), it has received critical attention, as well as being the object of a variety of critical  approaches. The Rape of the Lock, therefore, can be acknowledged as one of Pope’s masterpieces, and, clearly, as the work that consolidated his already prestigious literary status. Furthermore, the poem reaffirmed Pope’s mastery over the satiric mode, which he later on developed and improved with The Dunciad, the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, the Imitations of Horace, or the Epilogue to the Satires.

•  The Rape of the Lock emerges as one of the most representative examples of the so￾called “mock-epic” tradition, which basically consists in drawing on the conventions of epic poetry in order to expose the triviality of an ordinary event. In the poem, we can see how Pope achieves this effect by means of an extraordinarily rhetorical and grandiose language very similar to that of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Pope makes use of hyperboles, constant alterationof the habitual syntactic structure, and also, creates a very unusual “divine apparatus,” which is not integrated by Zeus, Aphrodite or Mars, but mainly by tiny sylphs and gnomes whose resemblance with the epic gods and goddesses is, as we will see, practically non-existent. Pope also deflates the most typical epic themes and symbols: the figure of the hero, the adventures and hardships he has to undergo, the battles he has to fight and the enemies he has to defeat are continuously ridiculed by the poet. The Rape of the Lock no longer presents Achilles, Ajax, Hector or Aeneas as the main protagonists, but rather, a set of characters whose unheroic disposition is clear from the very beginning of the text. Instead, we have Belinda, a woman that epitomises the ideals of beauty and elegance demanded by the upper-class circles she belonged to. 

• commenting on the context in which it was written. Pope based the poem on a real event, and then, recreated the most appropriate scenario for the development of the action. Pope was commissioned to write this poem by John Caryll, one of his closest friends. Caryll asked Pope to compose a poem whose main purpose should be to reconcile two families. The reason for their dispute was the following: the Petres and the Fermors were two families of landowners, whose cordial relation came to an end when Lord Petre decided to cut off a lock from Miss Arabella Fermor’s hair. This incident brought about an enormous controversy, since the Fermors firmly believed that Arabella’s honour had been stained. Caryll, perceiving that the relationship between the two families was increasingly deteriorating, contacted Pope and told him to write a humorous poem to encourage both families to laugh the whole event off. Pope eventually accepted Caryll’s offer and set out to write The Rape of the Lock, which he finished off in less than two weeks. In these five cantos, Pope constructs, in an apparently frivolous and loose style, a pungent and biting satirical attack on the social conventions of his time, focusing particularly on the frailties and trivialities of the world of belles and beaux. In order to better understand the general implications of the poem, it may be worth.

Reading materials:-

1].   Explanation of all 5 Canto.

2].   Themes

3].    Mock-heroic-poem

4].     Supernatural element

5].     Pope's portrayal of women

6].      Satire.

Answer the questions

1] Did this poem has characteristics of mock- heroic -poem ?

2] Do you think that Clariss's speech is waste of time ?

3] Do you think that this poem is narrated only for joy or is it a satire on contemporary society and  time ? 

4] Can we say that Belinda is  modern womon or foolish women or fashionable womon or practical womon ?

5] The Rape of the Lock Explain this title give your point of view .


Work Citation

1]   The Rape of the Lock. (2020, April 10). Retrieved from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Lock

2].    Anjum, Arslan. “Rape of the Lock Themes.” Academia.edu, www.academia.edu/39289782/Rape_of_the_Lock_Themes.

3].    Shah, Umama. “Supernatural Elements in Rape of Lock.” Academia.edu, www.academia.edu/8949130/Supernatural_elements_in_Rape_of_lock.

4].    Csécsi, P. (n.d.). The Rape of the Lock-analysis. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/38450422/The_Rape_of_the_Lock-analysis