Summary
Belinda, rivaling the sun in her radiance, sets out by
boat on the river Thames for Hampton Court Palace. She is accompanied
by a party of glitzy ladies (“Nymphs”) and gentlemen, but is far
and away the most striking member of the group. Pope’s description
of her charms includes “the sparkling Cross she wore” on her “white breast,”
her “quick” eyes and “lively looks,” and the easy grace with which
she bestows her smiles and attentions evenly among all the adoring
guests. Her crowning glories, though, are the two ringlets that
dangle on her “iv’ry neck.” These curls are described as love’s
labyrinths, specifically designed to ensnare any poor heart who
might get entangled in them.
One of the young gentlemen on the boat, the Baron, particularly
admires Belinda’s locks, and has determined to steal them for himself.
We read that he rose early that morning to build an altar to love
and pray for success in this project. He sacrificed several tokens
of his former affections, including garters, gloves, and billet-doux
(love-letters). He then prostrated himself before a pyre built with
“all the trophies of his former loves,” fanning its flames with
his “am’rous sighs.” The gods listened to his prayer but decided
to grant only half of it.
As the pleasure-boat continues on its way, everyone is
carefree except Ariel, who remembers that some bad event has been
foretold for the day. He summons an army of sylphs, who assemble
around him in their iridescent beauty. He reminds them with great
ceremony that one of their duties, after regulating celestial bodies
and the weather and guarding the British monarch, is “to tend the
Fair”: to keep watch over ladies’ powders, perfumes, curls, and
clothing, and to “assist their blushes, and inspire their airs.”
Therefore, since “some dire disaster” threatens Belinda, Ariel assigns
her an extensive troop of bodyguards. Brillante is to guard her
earrings, Momentilla her watch, and Crispissa her locks. Ariel himself
will protect Shock, the lapdog. A band of fifty Sylphs will guard
the all-important petticoat. Ariel pronounces that any sylph who neglects
his assigned duty will be severely punished. They disperse to their
posts and wait for fate to unfold.
Commentary
From the first, Pope describes Belinda’s beauty as something
divine, an assessment which she herself corroborates in the first
canto when she creates, at least metaphorically, an altar to her
own image. This praise is certainly in some sense ironical, reflecting
negatively on a system of public values in which external characteristics
rank higher than moral or intellectual ones. But Pope also shows
a real reverence for his heroine’s physical and social charms, claiming
in lines 17–18 that
these are compelling enough to cause one to forget her “female errors.”
Certainly he has some interest in flattering Arabella Fermor, the
real-life woman on whom Belinda is based; in order for his poem
to achieve the desired reconciliation, it must not offend (see “Context”.
Pope also exhibits his appreciation for the ways in which physical
beauty is an art form: he recognizes, with a mixture of censure
and awe, the fact that Belinda’s legendary locks of hair, which
appear so natural and spontaneous, are actually a carefully contrived
effect. In this, the mysteries of the lady’s dressing table are
akin, perhaps, to Pope’s own literary art, which he describes elsewhere
as “nature to advantage dress’d.”
If the secret mechanisms and techniques of female beauty
get at least a passing nod of appreciation from the author, he nevertheless
suggests that the general human readiness to worship beauty amounts
to a kind of sacrilege. The cross that Belinda wears around her
neck serves a more ornamental than symbolic or religious function.
Because of this, he says, it can be adored by “Jews” and “Infidels”
as readily as by Christians. And there is some ambiguity about whether
any of the admirers are really valuing the cross itself, or the
“white breast” on which it lies—or the felicitous effect of the
whole. The Baron, of course, is the most significant of those who
worship at the altar of Belinda’s beauty. The ritual sacrifices
he performs in the pre-dawn hours are another mock-heroic element
of the poem, mimicking the epic tradition of sacrificing to the
gods before an important battle or journey, and drapes his project
with an absurdly grand import that actually only exposes its triviality.
The fact that he discards all his other love tokens in these preparations
reveals his capriciousness as a lover. Earnest prayer, in this parodic
scene, is replaced by the self-indulgent sighs of the lover. By
having the gods grant only half of what the Baron asks, Pope alludes
to the epic convention by which the favor of the gods is only a
mixed blessing: in epic poems, to win the sponsorship of one god
is to incur the wrath of another; divine gifts, such as immortality,
can seem a blessing but become a curse. Yet in this poem, the ramifications
of a prayer “half” granted are negligible rather than tragic; it
merely means that he will manage to steal just one lock rather than
both of them.
In the first canto, the religious imagery surrounding
Belinda’s grooming rituals gave way to a militaristic conceit. Here,
the same pattern holds. Her curls are compared to a trap perfectly
calibrated to ensnare the enemy. Yet the character of female coyness
is such that it seeks simultaneously to attract and repel, so that
the counterpart to the enticing ringlets is the formidable petticoat.
This undergarment is described as a defensive armament comparable
to the Shield of Achilles (see Scroll XVIII of The Iliad),
and supported in its function of protecting the maiden’s chastity
by the invisible might of fifty Sylphs. The Sylphs, who are Belinda’s
protectors, are essentially charged to protect her not from failure
but from too great a success in attracting men. This paradoxical
situation dramatizes the contradictory values and motives implied
in the era’s sexual conventions.
