Summary
The Rape of the Lock begins with a passage
outlining the subject of the poem and invoking the aid of the muse. Then
the sun (“Sol”) appears to initiate the leisurely morning routines
of a wealthy household. Lapdogs shake themselves awake, bells begin
to ring, and although it is already noon, Belinda still sleeps.
She has been dreaming, and we learn that the dream has been sent
by “her guardian Sylph,” Ariel. The dream is of a handsome youth
who tells her that she is protected by “unnumber’d Spirits”—an army
of supernatural beings who once lived on earth as human women. The
youth explains that they are the invisible guardians of women’s chastity,
although the credit is usually mistakenly given to “Honour” rather
than to their divine stewardship. Of these Spirits, one particular
group—the Sylphs, who dwell in the air—serve as Belinda’s personal
guardians; they are devoted, lover-like, to any woman that “rejects
mankind,” and they understand and reward the vanities of an elegant
and frivolous lady like Belinda. Ariel, the chief of all Belinda’s
puckish protectors, warns her in this dream that “some dread event”
is going to befall her that day, though he can tell her nothing more
specific than that she should “beware of Man!” Then Belinda awakes,
to the licking tongue of her lapdog, Shock. Upon the delivery of
a billet-doux, or love-letter, she forgets all about the dream.
She then proceeds to her dressing table and goes through an elaborate
ritual of dressing, in which her own image in the mirror is described
as a “heavenly image,” a “goddess.” The Sylphs, unseen, assist their
charge as she prepares herself for the day’s activities.
Commentary
The opening of the poem establishes its mock-heroic style.
Pope introduces the conventional epic subjects of love and war and
includes an invocation to the muse and a dedication to the man (the
historical John Caryll) who commissioned the poem. Yet the tone
already indicates that the high seriousness of these traditional
topics has suffered a diminishment. The second line confirms in
explicit terms what the first line already suggests: the “am’rous
causes” the poem describes are not comparable to the grand love
of Greek heroes but rather represent a trivialized version of that
emotion. The “contests” Pope alludes to will prove to be “mighty”
only in an ironic sense. They are card-games and flirtatious tussles,
not the great battles of epic tradition. Belinda is not, like Helen
of Troy, “the face that launched a thousand ships” (see the SparkNote
on The Iliad),
but rather a face that—although also beautiful—prompts a lot of
foppish nonsense. The first two verse-paragraphs emphasize the comic
inappropriateness of the epic style (and corresponding mind-set)
to the subject at hand. Pope achieves this discrepancy at the level
of the line and half-line; the reader is meant to dwell on the incompatibility
between the two sides of his parallel formulations. Thus, in this
world, it is “little men” who in “tasks so bold... engage”; and
“soft bosoms” are the dwelling-place for “mighty rage.” In this startling
juxtaposition of the petty and the grand, the former is real while
the latter is ironic. In mock-epic, the high heroic style works
not to dignify the subject but rather to expose and ridicule it.
Therefore, the basic irony of the style supports the substance of
the poem’s satire, which attacks the misguided values of a society that
takes small matters for serious ones while failing to attend to
issues of genuine importance.
With Belinda’s dream, Pope introduces the “machinery”
of the poem—the supernatural powers that influence the action from
behind the scenes. Here, the sprites that watch over Belinda are
meant to mimic the gods of the Greek and Roman traditions, who are
sometimes benevolent and sometimes malicious, but always intimately
involved in earthly events. The scheme also makes use of other ancient
hierarchies and systems of order. Ariel explains that women’s spirits,
when they die, return “to their first Elements.” Each female personality
type (these types correspond to the four humours) is converted into
a particular kind of sprite. These gnomes, sylphs, salamanders,
and nymphs, in turn, are associated with the four elements of earth,
air, fire, and water. The airy sylphs are those who in their lifetimes
were “light Coquettes”; they have a particular concern for Belinda
because she is of this type, and this will be the aspect of feminine
nature with which the poem is most concerned.
Indeed, Pope already begins to sketch this character of
the “coquette” in this initial canto. He draws the portrait indirectly,
through characteristics of the Sylphs rather than of Belinda herself.
Their priorities reveal that the central concerns of womanhood,
at least for women of Belinda’s class, are social ones. Woman’s
“joy in gilded Chariots” indicates an obsession with pomp and superficial
splendor, while “love of Ombre,” a fashionable card game, suggests
frivolity. The erotic charge of this social world in turn prompts
another central concern: the protection of chastity. These are women
who value above all the prospect marrying to advantage, and they
have learned at an early age how to promote themselves and manipulate
their suitors without compromising themselves. The Sylphs become
an allegory for the mannered conventions that govern female social
behavior. Principles like honor and chastity have become no more
than another part of conventional interaction. Pope makes it clear
that these women are not conducting themselves on the basis of abstract moral
principles, but are governed by an elaborate social mechanism—of
which the Sylphs cut a fitting caricature. And while Pope’s technique
of employing supernatural machinery allows him to critique this
situation, it also helps to keep the satire light and to exonerate
individual women from too severe a judgment. If Belinda has all
the typical female foibles, Pope wants us to recognize that it is
partly because she has been educated and trained to act in this
way. The society as a whole is as much to blame as she is. Nor are
men exempt from this judgment. The competition among the young lords
for the attention of beautiful ladies is depicted as a battle of
vanity, as “wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive.”
Pope’s phrases here expose an absurd attention to exhibitions of
pride and ostentation. He emphasizes the inanity of discriminating
so closely between things and people that are essentially the same
in all important (and even most unimportant) respects.
Pope’s portrayal of Belinda at her dressing table introduces
mock-heroic motifs that will run through the poem. The scene of
her toilette is rendered first as a religious sacrament, in which
Belinda herself is the priestess and her image in the looking glass
is the Goddess she serves. This parody of the religious rites before
a battle gives way, then, to another kind of mock-epic scene, that
of the ritualized arming of the hero. Combs, pins, and cosmetics
take the place of weapons as “awful Beauty puts on all its arms.”
