Canto 5
The Baron remains impassive against all the ladies' tears and reproaches.
Clarissa delivers a speech in which she questions why a society that so
adores beauty in women does not also place a value on "good sense" and "good
humour." Women are frequently called angels, she argues, but without reference
to the moral qualities of these creatures. Especially since beauty is
necessarily so short-lived, we must have something more substantial and
permanent to fall back on. This sensible, moralizing speech falls on deaf ears,
however, and Belinda, Thalestris and the rest ignore her and
proceed to launch an all-out attack on the offending Baron. A chaotic tussle
ensues, with the gnome Umbriel presiding in a posture of self-
congratulation. The gentlemen are slain or revived according to the smiles and
frowns of the fair ladies. Belinda and the Baron meet in combat and she emerges
victorious by peppering him with snuff and drawing her bodkin. Having achieved
a position of advantage, she again demands that he return the lock. But the
ringlet has been lost in the chaos, and cannot be found. The poet avers that
the lock has risen to the heavenly spheres to become a star; stargazers may
admire it now for all eternity. In this way, the poet reasons, it will attract
more envy than it ever could on earth.
Commentary
Readers have often interpreted Clarissa's speech as the voice of the poet
expressing the moral of the story. Certainly, her oration's thesis aligns with
Pope's professed task of putting the dispute between the two families into a
more reasonable perspective. But Pope's position achieves more complexity than
Clarissa's speech, since he has used the occasion of the poem as a vehicle to
critically address a number of broader societal issues as well. And Clarissa's
righteous stance loses authority in light of the fact that it was she who
originally gave the Baron the scissors. Clarissa's failure to inspire a
reconciliation proves that the quarrel is itself a kind of flirtatious game that
all parties are enjoying. The description of the "battle" has a markedly erotic
quality, as ladies and lords wallow in their mock-agonies. Sir Plume "draw[s]
Clarissa down" in a sexual way, and Belinda "flies" on her foe with flashing
eyes and an erotic ardor. When Pope informs us that the
Baron fights on unafraid because he "sought no more than on his foe to die," the
expression means that his goal all along was sexual consummation.
This final battle is the culmination of the long sequence of mock-heroic
military actions. Pope invokes by name the Roman gods who were most active in
warfare, and he alludes as well to the Aeneid, comparing
the stoic Baron to Aeneas ("the Trojan"), who had to leave his love to become
the founder of Rome. Belinda's tossing of the snuff makes a perfect turning
point, ideally suited to the scale of this trivial battle. The snuff causes the
Baron to sneeze, a comic and decidedly unheroic thing for a hero to do. The
bodkin, too, serves nicely: here a bodkin is a decorative hairpin, not the
weapon of ancient days (or even of Hamlet's time). Still, Pope
gives the pin an elaborate history in accordance with the conventions of
true epic.
The mock-heroic conclusion of the poem is designed to compliment the lady it
alludes to (Arabella Fermor), while also giving the poet himself due credit for
being the instrument of her immortality. This ending effectively indulges the
heroine's vanity, even though the poem has functioned throughout as a critique
of that vanity. And no real moral development has taken place: Belinda is asked
to come to terms with her loss through a kind of bribe or distraction that
reinforces her basically frivolous outlook. But even in its most mocking
moments, this poem is a gentle one, in which Pope shows a basic sympathy with
the social world in spite of its folly and foibles. The searing critiques of
his later satires would be much more stringent and less forgiving.
