Page 246 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 24: Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock

The work must be concise . . . Notes
The language should be grave at times, but often funny, sometimes rhetorical and poetic, sometimes
urbanely smooth.
Here we see something slightly more reminiscent of The Rape of the Lock, but nevertheless, the
style of language found in Horace’s Satires— even in the most poetic instance, is far below that of
Pope’s mock epic. This is hardly surprising, for the foundation of the former is Old Greek Comedy
and the latter Greek Epic. If there is no similarity in diction, the low, mundane content described by
that diction, in The Rape of the Lock, is certainly reminiscent of Horace.
We might now turn to Belinda. We have already said that she is a character whose heroic propensities
are a belittlement of the epic hero, and thus ideal for the mock epic, but now we shall examine her
thematic importance.
“Still, false desires fool a large proportion of mankind, / they’ll tell you, ‘Nothing’s enough. What
we own we are.”
Although here Horace refers to money, it seems wholly appropriate to see this as applicable to
Belinda, for her lock represents not only her vanity, but the vanity of women, and so “what we own
we are” clearly explains the importance of the theft. And yet, since that importance is but shallowness,
the reader is witness to the irony of the affair. Likewise, those guilty of the numerous foibles exposed
by Horace are often ignorant not only of their guilt but of the foibles themselves. It is this exposure
which is key to Horace’s method, and which we find also in The Rape of the Lock.
Certainly, Belinda—and the general woman she represents—is as much ignorant of her own guilt
as of the crime itself. Indeed, the stand Pope seems to be taking is one which can be seen all through
both books of Horace’s Satires, namely that happiness comes not from external but internal sources—
and only then when the doctrine of moderation is present: “Eating’s highest pleasure lies in you,/
not in the flavour of your food.” In fact, the “simple life,” (moderation in all things) takes on great
thematic importance for it unifies all eight satires of Book II. And it is Belinda vanity, her concern
with the pleasures of the external world which ties, thematically, The Rape of the Lock with the
Satires of Horace.
Another connection which Belinda brings to mind between The Rape of the Lock and the Satires is
the idea that bad example teaches. This is essential to both Pope and Horace. Because of the implicit
nature of the lesson in The Rape of the Lock, the poem itself must stand as testament to the above
maxim. Horace though, in typical conversational and autobiographical clarity, declares: . . . if perhaps
I laugh too much at people, grant me my right and your indulgence. The best of father’s made me
this way. By the use of bad examples he taught me how to live.
We should also bear in mind that Belinda is young, and that Pope, in the introductory letter to Mrs.
Arabella Fermor—the real life Belinda— says of his poem: . . . it was intended only to divert a few
young ladies, who have good sense and good humour enough to laugh not only at their sex’s
unguarded follies, but at their own.
Certainly, Pope is being extremely diplomatic here, for if the young ladies had good sense, then the
source of The Rape of the Lock would never have existed. The point though is that Pope speaks of
“young ladies,” (my italics). This satire not only targets the young as its subject, but also the young
as its audience, who should learn from the work. This too is reminiscent of Horace: “if someone
now decreed the tastiness of roasted gull,/Rome’s youth, docile students of debauchery, would
obey.” Here Horace not only depicts the young as being impressionable, but logically, because of
that impressionability, they are in most need of moral lesson; and Horation satire—with its aim not
so much to attack vice but to present vice and thus the lesson, as well as the absence of causticity—
is the perfect vehicle for that lesson, as well as for that group of people.
As we have seen, even though style and conventions separate mock epic from Horace’s satires,
Pope has managed, in The Rape of the Lock, to fuse the two. From epic we have high language,

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