Assignment- Paper no. 102 Neo classical period.
This Blog is part of an Assignment of sem -1 Paper no. 102 Literature of Neo classical period Assigned by Dr. Dilip Bard sir Department of English,mkbu. In this assignment I am dealing with the topic of Themetic study of Rape of Lock.
Personal Information:
Name : Kavita N. Chauhan
Roll No. : 17
Enrollment No. : 5108230010
Semester : 1st
Paper No. : 102
Paper Code : 22394
Paper Name : Literature of the Neoclassical period
Topic : Thematic Study of Rape of Lock
Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi,Department of English,MKBU
E-mail : kavitanchauhan2002@gmail.com
• Introduction:
The poem “The Rape of the Lock”, by Alexander Pope, first became available for public reading in 1712. The poem is a mock heroic and the Pope is criticizing the upper class of London and their ways of that time. This poem saw many stages and got modified with each. Its length was two cantos only in the original version. With time, the story moved forward and became longer. In 1714, its modified version was published, which was composed of five cantos. This version did really well in the market and sold thousands of copies in the first few days. In 1717, the Pope published the final version, as we know it now. This includes Clarissa’s speech that aided in bringing to light the morality in the poem.
•About the Author:
•The Rape of Lock:
The story of “the Rape of the Lock” was in fact a true incident that happened between two people, of which Pop’s friend, John Caryll told him. Belinda was actually Arabella Fermor and Baron was Lord Petre, who was her suitor. On his friend’s request, to calm down the situation, Pope wrote this epic, including supernatural creatures and comparing the two worlds of heroism and society. Throughout the poem, he put emphasis on how trivial this one event was and how much conflict it had caused between the two families.
By the time the latest version was completed, a lot had changed between the two families. Arabella got married and Lord Petre died by falling ill to smallpox. Therefore, the clash that was to settle down by this poem had already ended and was of no significance then.
In 1714 Pope wrote “A Key to the Lock” to warn people wittily to not take the poem so genuinely.
•Thematic study of The Rape of the Lock:
Some of the major themes in The Rape of the Lock are beauty, religion and morality, femininity, pride, love, pursuits, and morality of upper class
1. Theme of Beauty in Rape of the Lock:
Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” offers an ironic glance of court life in the 18th-century, highlighting societies centralized on beauty and appearance. The poem’s center of focus is around the experience of a beautiful woman, Belinda, who lost her lock of remarkable hair to a nobleman known as the Baron. As the poem goes along, it steadily becomes sillier and sillier and the characters collapse into a battle over the lock. Pope added Clarissa’s speech into the poem, which argues that women spend much time on their looks rather than thinking to become a better person and serve society. The main thesis of Pope was that this kind of self-obsession is useless and radically nonsense. However, the poem’s conclusion seems to suggest that true beauty would be of some value, but if it becomes the subject of poetry, thus it achieves a kind of literary immortality.
Pope mocks Belinda’s obsession with her beauty by comparing it with a hero which is about to go into battle. She beautifies herself all day and appears at court as insignificant. When she lost the lock of her hair, her furious reaction allowed Pope to poke fun at her vanity. Alexander Pope kept defending the intellectual and moral authority of his female characters through the wisdom of Clarissa’s speech, demonstrating female intellect and morality. He further questioned the wisdom of such a maternal system by outlining the Baron’s behavior as immoral. His fellow male courtiers are foolish. They allowed him to suggest that a maternal society is both unfair and unfounded.
It is important to note that at the time the Pope wrote the poem it was generally believed that women were both intellectual and moral inferiors of men. The Pope. seems to say that vanity itself is folly, but to appreciate great art, thus it can be said that one should be careful not to underestimate the role of beauty in inspiring great works like poetry. By using a mock epic into the poem, he not only glamped up the whole scenario by giving it huge fairy dust powder, but also entertained the question of responsibility in the poem.
2. Religion and Morality:
Religion and morality is also one of the major themes in Rape of the Lock. Pope’s poem is full of moral questions about religious culture and life in the 18th-century. The time when the poem was written, England’s last Catholic monarch had been deposed. England, once again, became a Protestant Nation. At that time, Protestant bitterly criticized Catholics, believing that Catholics had strayed from the worship of God. Pope was from a Catholic family. Throughout the poem, it is possible to detect humorous evaluation of Protestantism. Protestants made life very difficult for Catholic families to own a land or live in London. The Pope parodies the hypocritical religious rhetoric of that time and suggests that Christianity is not the best lens. It cannot be used to understand the mysteries of human behavior and self-obsession.
This has profound significance for the Pope's treatment of Christianity. At the heart of Christianity is that people are in control of their wills and actions, but God will judge people accordingly.
The Pope shows his ideology that the whole Christian religion, Catholic or Protestant, follows human actions. These actions are mysterious and their motives are opaque. Because of this, it is absurd to believe that anyone could be straightforwardly judged.
3. Theme of Immorality and Carefree Nature of Upper Class:
The Pope has presented that in a matter of times the careless and casual response of high society is dangerous. He presented the society where the upper class is busy in pursuit of their own goals through trivial and vain. He portrayed that upper-class people just think about themselves and obsessions. In this poem, the society displayed is one that fails to distinguish between things that matter and things that do not. What they care about is their personal life, luxuries, pomp, and vanity. A life that is matchless to the ordinary and the common. He makes fun of their stupid deeds and self-obsessed attention. He has disguised that this society just leads to immorality and distraction between humans. Alas, in the end, all upper-class people stay empty-handed.
It is serious that a woman’s hair is cut, but she has rejected a lord and such crimes are frivolities and fun of life in ease of nobility.
4. Female Desire and Passion:
The Pope has made fun of women; they just think and are concerned about their beauty aids alone. He presents Belinda like an epic heroine. He symbolizes that this mock-heroic epic is Belinda’s maidenhood. The Pope says that women do not have a fair chance because they are even more self-conscious and limited by society’s rules and regulations than men are. Clarissa’s speech is a fine example of this attitude and also deals with the situation ideally with a smile rather than doing anything to change it. Women, in the poem, are illustrated as being more in control of society than men are.
It is obvious to us that if you put a bunch of attractive, well-off, and bored young men and women together. They will get attracted to one another, feel a desire for one another, have dreams about one another; maybe they even fell in love. Pope depicts in The Rape of the Lock the trouble with the society is absolutely threatening and no way for anyone in it to safely express or act on his or her sexuality, desire, lust, life, feelings or love.
5. Theme of Love in Rape of the Lock:
The Pope thinks that love has no importance for the characters in this poem. For the Alexander Pope, the upper class believes only in victory and defeat. Love has no value in their unthinking minds. Belinda meets with a smile but yields and bow down to none. The poem has also symbolized Belinda’s character as a strong modern woman, who loves her beauty more than anything else. Baron loved to have an affair but without feelings and pure attention, it would be considered a victory. The society portrayed in The Rape of the Lock seems constructed to deny each other’s real feelings. For them, live-in relationships were common, but love in those relationships was counted as something odd.
6. Theme of Pride in Rape of the Lock:
Pride is also one of the major themes in the Rape of the Lock. We can say that the pride of a woman is natural to her, never sleeps, until modesty is gone. Beauty can be without pride and our dear Belinda handles it best of all. She takes care that no one would go without looking at her with a full glance. Baron takes revenge on Belinda by stripping her beloved lock of hair. Baron tried to get Belinda by force but not by marrying her, he tried to win over her but failed. Belinda's pride, self-respect and beauty were more important for her than anything else.
The Rape of the Lock, reveals that the central concerns of the poem is pride, at least for women like Belinda and other social ones found in that society. The Pope wants us to recognize that if Belinda has shown all her typical female weakness, then that would be against her pride, partly it is because she has been educated and trained to act in this way. The society as a whole community is as much to blame as she is or the men free from this judgment.
•Conclusion :
One of the central themes of “The Rape of the Lock” is morality and the development of virtue. Because the poem is a satire, a textual example of a moral or virtuous person is absent from the poem itself, but Pope uses the characters to reveal an absence of morality or virtuousness.
Thank you for visiting 😊
Words: 1855
Images: 6
•References :
Butt, John Everett. "Alexander Pope". Encyclopedia Britannica, 10 Sep. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-Pope-English-author. Accessed 16 November 2023
Sayeda , Javaria . “Major Themes in the Rape of the Lock.” Literary English, 5 Aug. 2023, literaryenglish.com/major-themes-in-the-rape-of-the-lock/. Accessed 16 Nov.
2023.
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