Rape of the Lock, 1712 (2 canto)1714 (5 canto)

Context

Pope's life

Born London 1688

He was Catholic - legally discriminated against, regarded as a threat to the state

lived in Windsor forest, closest to London that was legally allowed
1701 act of settlement, monarch had to be conforming Anglican. Still no Catholic monarch allowed now!

Had Potts disease, spinal tb, deformity.

Wrote satirical poetry and was a great arguer

Literary career (like Virgil's)

Pastoral
Georgics - business, farm, money, responsibility
Epic. Quasi and mock epic (Dunciad). Apparently Pope didn't think the world he lived in could support an epic.

Genre

Mock Epic

Mocks a degenerate present by comparing it to a heroic past

Draws on tropes of epic:

invocation of muse
descriptions of armour/clothing
list of armies
battles/conflict between heroes
supernatural intervention
apotheosis of major characters

Inflated style

Often has a morally serious purpose, eg Pope thought his world was idiotic

Card game 3.37-46: style of epic battle

'an heroi-comical poem'

Flimsy plot

18th century coffee houses

While only 10% of men and 1% of women could read in 1500, by now (200 years later) it's 45% men and 25% women.

Relatively ordinary people had control over cultural production rather than institutions (eg church)

People got together to discuss news, literature, their own writing (eg Pope's poems)

Contradiction between triviality and seriousness, eg 1-10

Real story an attempt to console 2 Catholics who had planned to marry, so it's supporting Catholicism (even if marriage didn't happen)

Style and literary techniques

Heroic couplets.

Can be seen as tiring/monotonous: Hazlitt: 'his versification tires by uniform smoothness and harmony' not necessarily an insult I think?

Open: with a comma, enjambed
Closed: with an end stop.

'sharp definitions made possible by Pope’s energetic,
carefully structured syntax' - Pat Rogers.

movement of scissors are a good emblem of how heroic couplets work, division and reunification

Societal development 1650-1750

Sophisticated urban life growing

Imperialism

Overseas trade growing

Development of the two party system, wigs vs tories

In general, more of a public sphere, places for entertainment. Society often seen as superficial.

Growing middle class, new life of kinda luxury

Superficiality and priorities in the wrong places

Could get the death penalty for small things - society a bit Extra

3.6-22, priorities skewed

Britain joining with Scotland - Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707.

Appropriation of 'exotic' cultures, and a display of colonial exploitation.

Queen Anne taking tea 3.78

The Scriblerus club

Pope and Swift at the centre
Wrote satirically, on abuses of learning

Gossipy, knowing quality in RotL

'this long disease, my life

Has been argued that this gave him an ambivalent gender position: was very well educated, but couldn't partake in physical masculine activities, and was short and frail.

Gender

Women in the 18th century

'separate spheres' ideologically, though not really in practice, and only applies to a small class of people. Really, women were in the public life.

Women as 'sex', men are unmarked, 'women are always connected with [their sex]' - Knellwolf, 1998.

Apparently, women had a narrow range of desires: power and pleasure, but men nmore varied, or Pope's 'Epistle 2: to a lady' implies so.

Belinda is weak and vain. HOWEVER she needs to be, that's the only way she can make put herself in a safe and comfortable position in life in the society she's in.

'beware of all, but most beware of man'

As soon as she's attractive she's vulnerable to assault

Misogynistic? Like she's asking for it?

Magical beings

all come from different kinds of women
Coquette: woman that leads men on
though technically, angels have no gender

Pets seen as frivolous, unecessary, lapdogs like a replacement husband, same love attached.

Cave of spleen (lots of quotes on ele)

Spleen: melancholy, subject to visions

Sexuality only called aloud in the underworld, 'call aloud for corks', to penetrate and stifle.

15-50 is the reproductive age

Anne Finch wrote 'The Spleen' in response to Pope

Clarissa

carrying moral of story? But he mocks actual female writers
speech modeled on one from the Iliad
But beauty generally prized above brains for women

Canto 1, toilet scene: femininity held to blame for exploitation of the world's riches? Image of a female dressing means mercantile capitalism in 18th century. Laura Brown ideas.

The lock:

Sympathy, but shot through with mockery and misogyny.
Celebrating or satirising women? Often hard to tell the difference.

Omniscient, focus not only on one character

Everyone is flawed, they're kinda all anti-heroes

Use of place names suggest it's not all fictitious, criticism then more effective?

A lot less expansion on the Baron's stupidity than Belinda's flaws, eg in toilet

Triviality

Extended on first version, so obvs a lot of thought went into it (toilet scene and card game added)

I think overall it's not that trivial if we're assuming that coffee house culture was prevalent and important cause it probably would have been widely discussed

HOWEVER it could have been a lot less trivial, like the Dunciad, if he'd really wanted to critique society at that point. Far-fetched, fun...

Spleen was sometimes talked of as being the cover of the womb - link with hysteria.

Cave of spleen like travelling to the underworld.

Women would give their fiances their hair, so the rape of the lock would carry more meaning then.

Pope got rich off of translating the Iliad and Odyssey. He did try to write epics, but burned them

He tells us not to take it too seriously

There's immense detail, diversions etc, eg the amount of time/number of lines between the lock being cut and Belinda's screams.

Battles

Really looks at intricacies of social interactions, maybe it's highlighting the importance we place on things as small as looks, maybe even highlighting the power of them, as well as/instead of mocking.

Pride

Fate/human nature

Emotion

'what mighty contests rise from trivial things'

What could 'compel/ A well-bred lord t'assault a gentle belle?' - gossipy tone maybe superficial, maybe linked to coffee house culture?

Sylphs

are vain and imperfect too, they used to be women.
teach arrogance and vanity, but also 'guard purity'.
'they shift the moving toyshop of their heart (toyshop = women as empty, their very hearts are superficial?)
'the sylphs contrive it all'
'guard with arms divine the British throne'
link to religion/PL: failed sylphs might 'plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie'

Do men have sylphs too?

he notes specifically 'female errors', more difficult to find male ones.

'to that her eyes she rears' - she isn't described as living with anyone, having any genuine or familial relationships, the maid is hardly even mentioned.

'the sacred rites of pride' - rather good parody

Tragedies include 'some frail china jar receives a flaw'

Morality: 'wretches hang that jurymen may dine'

Love overcomes apparent fate: sylph 'found his power expired' after there's an 'earthly lover lurking at her heart'

Over-dramatic: 'not louder shrieks to pitying heaven cast/ When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last'

'the glorious prize is mine!' - as if her hair is her entire being.

Cave of spleen

2 maids: ill-nature and affectation.
Queen 'rule the sex to fifty from fifteen' - misogyny, womb seen as the seat of spleen, womb apparently runs our whole bodies! Yes !

'touch belinda with chagrin/ That single act gives half the world the spleen'

Wished she'd never been to Hampton court (never been attacked or never in that society in the first place?)

Her hair is her whole pride, basically.

Vanity has never 'charmed the smallpox, or chased old age away'

Massively exaggerated, but humorous: 'killed him with a frown'