Canto 3: The Rape of the Lock - Alexander Pope - Context

Then flash’d the living lightning from her eyes,

And screams of horror rend th’ affrighted skies.

Not louder shrieks to pitying Heaven are cast,

When husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their last;

Or when rich China vessels, fall’n from high,

In glitt’ring dust and painted fragments lie!

 

            Excerpted from the Canto 3 of the Rape of the Lock by the acclaimed satirist, Alexander Pope explicates a burlesque of the vanities and idleness of the 18^th Century elite society portrayed in this epic, parodying the great classical epics.

The allegory recalls a scandalous incident that occurred in the upper class society between two estranged families who had formerly been friends: Lord Petre had cut off a lock of Arabella Fermor’s hair. A common acquaintance; John Caryll proposed Pope to write a humorous poem to make a jest of the incident and laugh them together again. The masterpiece gives us a depiction of a fashionable idle society that had existed during the era.  The vital figure in the epic is a beautiful hypocrite maiden, and a rash youth, a foolish dandy and a few frivolous women. Instead of deep and genuine passions as found in ancient epics, we come across a succession of mock passions in The Rape of the Lock.

“Then flash’d the living lightning from her eyes,” the rape of the lock is done, has reached its climax; Belinda’s realization that a lock of her hair has been ‘raped’ makes her reaction explosive. Here Pope's craftsmanship is at its best. Belinda, lies sickly mystified when she realizes Baron, a gentleman in her communal circle, cut off a lock of her head of hair. This passage these lines displays the most ridiculous absence of sense and reason from both Belinda and the Baron. Her response to her slight is quite natural and she is really angry and horrified. “And screams of horror rend th’ affrighted skies.” Pope uses a hyperbole to depict her immense horror and rage. But he does not allow it to be a tragic situation. Pope, by using pathos for the comic effect, illustrates as the most outstanding example in the English language of the genre of mock-epic, in my perspective.

Belinda’s screams of outrage are formidable; “Not louder shrieks to pitying Heaven are cast,” The writer goes to extremes of exaggeration, by emphasizing the high frequency of the screams to be loud enough to be heard by the Heavens to sympathize the victim, over the petty situation. She literally “shrieks to the high heaven.” To her, the lock of hair is gone from her fair head, forever and forever is as if she’d lost an arm and it would never grow back. Sure anyone would be pretty angry if someone cut off a lock of their hair without permission, but they wouldn’t mourn the loss.  The symbolism of the "lock" can be viewed as a kind of gender criticism that defies the patriarchy. The trimming of the hair can be used by the patriarchy to demonstrate their power and domination over Belinda, who is in direct opposition with the Baron. In my view point Pope’s use of the mock-epic genre is intricate and exhaustive, yet it has every element of the contemporary scene that conjures up some image from epic tradition or the classical world view, and the pieces are wrought together with a cleverness and expertise that makes the poem surprising and delightful.

“When husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their last;” The extreme

humor intermingled with the stern high diction, makes it quite impossible to control our laughter when “husbands” and “lap-dogs” are measured on the same scale of importance by the fashionable ladies. Belinda, incredibly vain and protected by an innumerable army of Sylphs to preserve her beauty, is more distraught and heartbroken over the loss of one lock of hair than she would be over the death of a lover or her beloved lapdog. These things which provoke comparable screams are demise of lapdogs “Or when rich China vessels, fall’n from high,” Are the screams of agony when seeing a prized vessel shattered into shards corresponding to the screams of realization of her lock being “raped” (by force ravish)?”In glitt’ring dust and painted fragments lie!” The last two lines complete the comic effect intended by Pope. Thus to me Pope’s attempt in mocking the folly of the dispute by portraying it as if it were a battle of epic scales, exceeds the expectations of
any reader. 

The verse form of The Rape of the Lock is the heroic couplet; Pope still reigns as the uncontested master of the form. The mind of the reader is engaged by novelty, when it so unexpectedly finds a thought or object it had been accustomed to survey in another form, suddenly arrayed in a ridiculous garb. A mixture of ridiculous and comic images, with serious and important ones, add also no small beauty to this kind of poetry, as in the passage where real and imaginary misfortunes are coupled together. Therefore it elucidates to me there’s no questioning of Alexander Pope’s magnificence in composing such a mock heroic epic with great satire.