Introduction
The poem “The Rape of the Lock”, which was written by Alexander Pope is a mock-epic poem. Right at the beginning of the poem, the poet has identified it as a “heroi-comical poem”. These types of poems basically are a mockery of humans and the society in which they live.
In the poem under consideration, the poet has depicted petty humans as well as trivial matters as extremely extraordinary. Exaggeration plays a great role in the poem and it is a mockery of the materialistic society.
The Rape of the Lock revolves around Belinda, whose guardian sylph warns her of disaster but she ignores it and gets ready to go for a party. At the party, there is a man called Baron, who has decided to cut off a lock of Belinda’s hair. The people at the party enjoy a game of cards, which has been defined by the poet as a battle. Eventually, Baron takes away a lock of Belinda’s hair, which infuriates her, and here begins a scuffle between the ladies and the gentlemen in which Belinda tries retrieving her lock of hair, but it is lost (The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, p.1). In the words of Belinda, “For ever curs’d be this detested Day, Which snatch’d my best, my fav’rite Curl away!”1
Characters of heroic poetry are used to censure 18th-century civilization in its letdown to go up to heroic standards. By relating unimportant events in gallant terms, he depicts and ridicules the stinginess of the characters concerned. In particular, he scorns the mannerism and arrogance of 18th-century women. The cutting of the hair was taken so seriously that it caused trouble between families who were friends for a very long time (An analysis of Alexander Pope’s depiction of women in “the Rape of the Lock”, p.1 and The Rape of the Lock: A Study Guide, p.1).
Analysis
In the times gone by, there was a period when scholars and knowledgeable people on the whole, tended to assume the primary half of the eighteenth century as the “Age of Pope.” But with the changing times, the period is now normally thought of and named as the Augustan Age or the Neoclassical period. Nevertheless with the previous value, regardless of its unsophisticated highlighting of the prosaic art of one man at the disbursement of immense accomplishments by others in prose literature, precisely replicates the information that Alexander Pope, equally in his wonderful expertise poetry and in his evenly crafted unrestricted personality, were thought by a vast number of exceptional literary contemporaries but for everyone else, to be the head imaginative mastermind of his time (Alexander Pope Biography, p.1).
The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic couplet presented by Alexander Pope, first put to print in 1712 in two cantos, and then published again in 1714 in a lengthened 5-canto version.
The poem presents to the readers an occurrence narrated by Pope’s friend, John Caryll. Arabella Fermor and her suitor, Lord Petre both belonged to upper-class Catholic families at an age, in England, when Catholicism was officially prohibited. Petre, deeply in lust with Arabella, had chopped off a lock of her hair devoid of acquiescence, and the consequential quarrel had fashioned a violation amid both of the families. The poem was written by Pope at his friend’s request so as to laughably join together the two. Pope makes use of the character Belinda to stand for Arabella and brings in an intact structure of “sylphs,” or protector spirits of virgins, and an intervallic description of the gods and goddesses of a predictable classic. Pope mocks a trivial wrangle by judging it against the heroic world of the gods (The Rape of the Lock, p.1).
Literature is a representation of the times in which it is printed. This can be considered very true for the Augustan Period. Alexander Pope is the cut stone of the aforementioned period. Pope is not only renowned as a grand comic writer but furthermore as a resourceful artist. He is the person who came up with the excellent The Rape Of The Lockout of a minor uproar and because of this, he cannot be deprived of the position of a creative artist. It is believed by all that in order to understand mankind one has to understand the man himself. But it was the human race as seen merely in the minute civilization of a metropolis- the life that was lived by people in London and in fictitious London. Pope is the leading role of a complete age of an outlook of intelligence of a method of writing. In a single piece of his work, he has presented to us the finest appearance to the societal and ethical manners and literary experience of age. Pope’s work of art, The Rape of the Lock is the most excellent ironic picture of fashionable culture in which he has offered the gay high jinks, manners, and ardent adventures of the stylish women of the high-class. The Rape of the Lock is a montage vivant of a civilization where the standard of a person is at the stake of every word. The complete scene is restricted to eighteenth-century upper-class life.
Pope shared with further refined Englishmen of the premature eighteenth century a sagacity of being ‘Augustans’. Augustan literature does not merely speak to but also portrays common citizens, their principles and civilization, their follies and shortcomings, pride and chauvinism. The people who were dealt with consisted of political people, vigorous merchants, and society, priests and gentlemen, men belonging to various professions and women focused on fashion. Having unexpectedly surfaced out of the marketable affluence of England, the upper class were chiefly inner-city people.
The Rape of the Lock is usually considered as being the finest satiric degree, which is consist of not just the monumental explanation and brilliant breakdown of the community handedness of the discretion related to the eighteenth century, but it is also taken to be the most factual and an extremely lively representation of the contemporary life.
The Rape of the Lock is Oration Satire, which is basically intended to bring up amusement more willingly than disrespect. Basically, the poem under consideration namely The Rape of the Lock is an idealistic composition that has been put forward to us by Alexander Pope. This mock epic is a superior filigree effort exposed to the inconsequential uproar in the teacup that should never be deprived of the position of a creative artist (Gul, p.1).
Mingling high absurdity and moralization, The Rape of the Lock puts forward an incongruous point of view on fashionable manners shared with an unfathomable admiration for the liveliness of the beau monde related to the eighteenth century. With understanding, wonderful experience, vivacious humorousness, and temperate send-up, the poem put down an unremitting assessment connecting inconsequential and noteworthy things, involving the unexciting and the interesting.
In his mock epic, Pope takes advantage of the differentiation among the sumptuousness of “heroic” flashes represented in conventional epics and the intentionally insignificant proceedings in his poem. By taking into consideration the concluding incidents as the substance of immense introduction, their irrelevance is made understandable. The poem is representative of the procedures of long-established classic poetry in plentiful insinuations to and burlesques of occurrences, characters, and subject matters from a variety of conventional and up-to-date epics, but these themes are balanced down quite well.
In The Rape of the Lock, all of the women and men are the female leads and heroes, who replace banter with the opposed sex in salons as an alternative of going to war in opposition to righteous enemies on the fields of battle. Instead of gods and goddesses interfering in the happenings taking place in the human lifestyle, sylphs and elves arbitrate, with tasks suitable to their natures (The Rape of the Lock Alexander Pope, p.1 and Pope, p.1-52).
Conclusion
The poem that has been taken into consideration is known to all as The Rape of the Lock that has been written in the eighteenth century by Alexander Pope. Alexander Pope took up writing in a period that has usually been named by all as the Augustan Age of English literature. This poem was printed distinctively to determine a solemn disagreement amid the two most important Catholic families. The grounds of the squabble was the slashing off of a lock of curls by Lord Petre from the leader of Arabella Fermor. The poem is said to go back to the models of the classical past, but the way that it has been written and the subject matters put forward in it prove the fact that it had been written back in the years of the eighteenth century.
Works Cited
Alexander Pope Biography. 2008. Web.
An analysis of Alexander Pope’s depiction of women in “the Rape of the Lock”. Academic Resources Center Inc. 2007. Pp.1.
Gul, Mamuna. Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. Planet. 2006. Pp.1.
Pope, Alexander. The Rape of the Lock and other Poems. United States of America: IndyPublish. ISBN: 1421911698.
The Rape of the Lock. 2008. Web.
The Rape of the Lock Alexander Pope. Gale Group Inc. 2008. Pp.1.
The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope. 2008. Web.
The Rape of the Lock: A Study Guide. 2008. Web.
Footnotes
- Pope, Alexander. The Rape of the Lock and other Poems. United States of America: IndyPublish. ISBN: 1421911698.