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Beauty and Femininity
Caught up in the Baron’s desire to possess Belinda’s beautiful hair are questions about the value Pope’s contemporaries placed on femininity. The poem’s overall tone toward women is sexist, portraying femininity as materialistic, shallow, and irrational. The narrator takes a tone of mock solemnity when describing Belinda’s toilette as a ceremony. He often implies that women have shallow values by suggesting they would consider a lapdog’s loss as tragic as a husband’s, or that lost chastity would be as tragic as missing a masquerade. His use of the Rosicrucian guardian spirits further depicts women as not having minds of their own, behaving according to strange, mysterious dictates. Using Ariel and Umbriel, he divides women’s emotions into the airy and the earthly. They can be light, beautiful, and flirtatious, but also moody, sullen, and melodramatic. Under the careful tending of these sprites, Belinda is never fully in control of her own emotions and thoughts, acting almost as a puppet placed there to vex men. This hollowness is also evident from how Pope describes her curls as a trap. Whether Belinda intends it or not, her hair functions that way.
With femininity portrayed as unserious and shallow, Pope implicitly asks why it is treated with such importance by his society. As Belinda slumbers in Canto 1, Ariel whispers to her, “Hear and believe! Thy own importance know…” but offers no reason other than beauty for her importance. However, the Baron’s own behavior justifies Ariel’s pronouncement. Possessing Belinda’s beauty is so important to him that he behaves in a bizarrely ungentlemanly fashion at court and he even compares cutting off the lock to the Achaeans’ siege of Troy. The comically exaggerated value placed on Belinda’s beauty in these instances questions whether it has value at all. The overemphasis men place on women’s beauty is further shown during the fight, where a young woman’s glare can kill, but her smile can revive. The inherent ridiculousness of the scene emphasizes the silliness considering a woman’s favor a matter of life or death. The poem thus singles out the femininity of beautiful young women as a target of its satire, portraying it as pleasant and pleasing but deeply unserious.
The Irrationality of Human Passion
Throughout the poem, strong emotions such as desire, anger, and sorrow are portrayed as antithetical to rational thought, a common sentiment in the works of British Neoclassical writers such as Pope. The poem portrays its characters as not fully in possession of their wits during moments of strong emotion. The Baron’s desire for Belinda's hair is accounted for by the hair’s tempting nature, which is described as having the power to “man’s imperial race ensnare.” Umbriel must travel to the Cave of Spleen to enhance Belinda’s reaction to losing her favorite curl. Additionally, the behavior of everyone in reaction to the Baron cutting Belinda’s hair is comically exaggerated. The guests all shout at the Baron to “restore the lock,” a task useless or perhaps impossible depending on how we read the word “restore.” Belinda even draws a small dagger to threaten the Baron, making an unpleasant situation life-threatening. Eventually, the poem describes the god Jove weighing “men’s wits” against Belinda’s curl, once again emphasizing that no one in the entire hubbub is truly using their higher faculties.
The Cave of Spleen itself is a testament to the irrationality of emotion. “Spleen” here refers to melancholy, and its domain is full of fantastical creatures such as talking pies and living teapots. The nonsensical, Wonderland-like atmosphere of Spleen suggests that when someone dwells in melancholy, continuing to be sad or discontent over something, they dwell amongst nonsense. The wording of Umbriel’s request to the Goddess of Spleen further emphasizes this idea that melancholy is irrational. He suggests spleen to be behind a person reading rudeness into innocent conversation, becoming mad when losing a game, or being horrified by a pimple. In each of these instances, the person’s behavior is out of proportion with the actual severity of the situation, and yet, upset is common in each of these instances. The world of Spleen, according to the poem, is inherently fanciful and unreasonable.
The Shallowness of British Nobility
One of the primary objects of Pope’s satire is 18th century British high society, which he portrays as shallow and foolish. Throughout the poem, Pope juxtaposes trivial matters with important ones, often employing metaphors involving battles and epics. The contrast between the smallness of what is being described and the gravity of the terms used to describe it creates a comical effect that emphasizes the superficiality of Hampton Court. When describing the social scene at Court, the narrator observes someone praising the Queen in the same couplet as another admiring a folding screen. To go from speaking of matters of state to mere decor signifies that here these topics of conversation are given similar importance. The Court’s overall emphasis on aesthetic beauty causes Belinda’s loss of a lock of hair to feel disastrous. Even though she has done nothing wrong, the humiliation could affect her reputation, as Umbriel reminds her, and her hair is now asymmetrical. The unpopularity of Clarissa’s reminder that beauty fades further highlights the group’s frivolousness. The characters of the poem live in a beautiful world full of beautiful people and appear to value this beauty above all else.
