The Rape of the lock by Alexander pope

Thinking Activity: 

Questions and answers poem The Rape of the Lock by Alexander pope: 

1) According to you, who is the protagonist of the poem Clarissa or Belinda? Why? Give your answer with logical reasons.

Ans, According to me, Belinda is the protagonist of the poem. Because Alexander Pope has designed The Rape of the Lock as the representative works depicting Belinda as the model of the common fashionable ladies of his time. Belinda is the chief attraction and she becomes the heroine of it. She is the only leading character. Yet her screams and the flashes of lightning from her eyes are compared to those of an epic hero.

At the very outset of the poem, we see her as an idle and late-rising aristocratic lady who possesses a keen interest in domestic pets. Her idleness is established when we see her sleeping unto twelve. Besides, they felt interested in the love letters of their so-called beloved. When Belinda, at last, got up from bed after having been licked by Shock, her eyes first opened on a love letter.

Therefore, she is full of vanities and loves gilded chariots and ombre. At the same time, she is ambitious to get married to peers and dukes or to other high officials. This is why she frequently visits the Hampton Court in the river Thames. She passes an aristocratic life and mixes with the Barons recklessly. Moreover, Belinda is the embodiment of coquetry, the art, the artifice and false pride. However, Ariel acquaints us with her flirtatious nature when exhorting his fellow spirits to remain vigilant. Ariel discovers surprisingly that in spite of all her pretence, she is amorously inclined towards a gallant.  

Then, we get the picture of her shallow outlook on religious faiths and beliefs. She is a worshiper of beauty who prays to the goddess of beauty and offers all the items of cosmetics before her. She is a typical presentation of women’s excessive attention to self-decoration and embellishment. She gathers all the fashionable items from all over the world-Indian glowing gems, Arabian perfumes, files of pins, puffs, powders, patches etc. In a satirical passage, Pope describes Belinda in a Confucius mood before her dressing table.

Here files of pins extend their shining rows,

Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux.

Thus, assigned by her maid Betty, Belinda seeks to improve her bodily charms. However, she does not show any respect for the holy book, Bible.

Therefore, the moral bankruptcy of these ladies is further ridiculed when Thalestris points out the need for sacrificing everything, even chastity, for reputation. They consider that virtue might be lost, but not a good name.

among all the outstanding female characters of English Literature, Belinda is a much more complex character than any other. She is not an individual character but a true depiction of the aristocratic class of 18th century England. Her character reveals the aimlessness, shallowness and purposelessness of the women of Pope’s age. Pope worshipped her beauty clearly and had prime respect for a girl of charms. The way Pope used a lofty and sublime wording to pay attribution to her heroine in his poem of the “Rape of the Lock“, no other writer had given such sort of honour to his heroine. 

“If to her share, some female errors fall, 

Look on her face, and you’ll forget all”

So, according to me, Belinda is the protagonist of the poem. 

2) What is beauty? Write your views about it. 

Ans, We are told a lot of different things when we are growing up. As children, we may be made to believe that outer beauty is of the utmost importance. Some of us are raised with quite the opposite told to us. Some people are told inner beauty is the most important thing to tend to. Others are told both are equally vital in our lives.

However, the truth of the matter is that inner beauty is the one we should be focusing on all of our lives. Because in the end, it's what is the most important. Outer beauty fades as we age, but our inner persona never goes anywhere. Beauty is more than what is on the surface. It refers to qualities both internal and external.

What makes someone beautiful is confidence, finding strength in flaws, and feeling good gives power to beauty.

Wish people change their perspective about Beauty and emphasize more on the inner beauty of a person than outer beauty. There's nothing wrong in making efforts to look good and pretty, look presentable but if the same person doesn't have a good heart then what's the point in having beauty outside.

Beauty is the compassion a person has for others. It is the kindness, grace and respects someone encompasses to another, whether a friend or stranger. It is the happiness conveyed from a person's heart, which affects their actions in everyday life. Beauty is something God created, which is untouched by man. It is something that is beyond physical measure and cannot be recreated by any individual. Sunsets, Beaches, Mountains, Oceans-these things are all beautiful. These things are all created by God, who shows us what beauty is in His creation."

"Beauty is the summation of every feature, every small gesture, every flaw, every uniqueness and every trait that reflects an individual's soul. It's never the appearance of someone that sticks with you, but rather how they make you feel that dawdles in the mind even in their absence. Beauty is an amalgamation of the perfect and the imperfect details of every individual that makes every person unique."

 Beauty isn't about having a pretty face, it's about having a pretty mind, a pretty heart and a pretty soul."

"Beauty to me comes from within. It's not the hairstyle, the wardrobe or the makeup. It's being confident in the person you are today no matter what shape, size, colour, etc. Always be the best person you can be. A Beautiful Personality = Beautiful Person with a Beautiful Heart".

 

It is said that Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, but I feel if the beholder has a good heart then only they may find someone beautiful or else they shall always find some of the other flaws in the individual.

"No Beauty shines brighter than that of a good heart" Outer Beauty attracts but Inner Beauty Captivates. Mirror lie, they don't show you what's inside.

Beauty concept in the poem: 

Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” offers a satirical glimpse into 18th-century court life, emphasizing society’s focus on beauty and appearance. Centred around the experience of a beautiful young woman, Belinda, who loses a lock of her hair to the scissors of an infatuated Baron, “The Rape of the Lock” steadily becomes sillier and sillier as it goes along and the characters descend into a kind of pretend battle over the lock. Coupled with Clarissa’s wise speech, which argues that women waste too much time focusing on their looks rather than thinking about how to be better people, it might appear at first glance that Pope’s central thesis is the idea that this kind of obsession with beauty is fundamentally absurd. But the poem’s conclusion, in which the lock ascends to heaven as a new constellation, seems to suggest that perhaps true beauty might really be of some value after all, but only if it becomes the subject of poetry and thus achieves a kind of literary immortality. Pope does seem to suggest that a day-to-day obsession with beauty is fundamentally an absurd and hopeless pursuit. However, he complicates this clear-cut moral by suggesting that ultimately beauty can have a certain kind of power in that it can inspire art, such as poetry, and as such can be part of something which truly is able to transcend time. 

3.) Find out a research paper on "The Rape of the Lock". Give the details of the paper and write down in brief what does it say about the Poem by Alexander Pope. 

Ans, This is the link to the research paper. Click here to open the research paper.

 

 This paper would discuss and evaluate the traces and proofs regarding Pope’s demonstration of disapproval about British Mannerism and exaggerated decency in his world-renowned mock-epic “The Rape of the Lock”.

The most powerful tool used by Pope to show his disapproval of so-called aristocratic and civilized mannerism prevailing in his contemporary British society is implied satire. He reveals in many lines the hollowness and emptiness of exaggerated politeness and frivolous decency found in contemporary society in an enveloped satire technique.

Pope opens the poem with an epic question whose satirical tone signals his intent to ridicule his society. As in traditional epics, Pope’s poem opens with the invocation of a muse. He then asks a question that states the topic that the epic will address. In The Rape of the Lock, the epic convention is inverted because the epic question is of a trivial subject matter.

 Pope suggests that attention to spiritual matters, the strengthening of character, and the development or value of inner beauty are matters to which society does not properly attend. Belinda, the Baron and the society they represent are obsessed with material things, such as the lock and self-worship. This attention to the material and tendency to give in to worldly temptations indicates a frivolous aristocracy, who lack virtue and morality. The Rape of the Lock is an elegantly witty and balanced parody that shows Pope’s literary virtuosity which invokes an ironic contrast between the epics structure and its content.