'The Rape of the Lock' by Alexander Pope

  Here, I write a blog about work of Alexander pope " The rape of the Lock"  activity given by vaidahi ma'am. 

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

  The Rape of the Lock, mock-epic poem in heroic couplets by Alexander Pope. The first version, published in 1712, consisted of two canto; the final version, published in 1714, was expanded to five cantos. The Rape of the Lock recounts the story of a young woman who has a lock of hair stolen by an ardent young man. 

 There are several aspects of the personality of Belinda as portrayed by Pope in The Rape of the Lock. We see her as a vamp, an injured innocent, a sweet charmer, a society belle, a rival of the sun, and a murderer of millions.Belinda is the heroine of the story. It is her character around whom the story of the whole poem is woven. We see her sleeping till noon and her awakening by her lap dog “Shock”. We see her proceeding from the Thames River to the Hampton Court. Then her smiting looks upon the well dressed youths that crowd her. Pope compares Belinda to the sun and suggests that it recognizes in Belinda a rival. Belinda is like the sun not only because of her bright eyes and not only because she dominates her special world.

 Belinda is a model who more specifically represents the fashionable, aristocratic ladies of Popes age. Such social butterflies in the eighteenth century were regarded as petty trifles, having no serious concern with life, and engrossed in dance and gaiety. Belinda's Fall indicates the decadence of her class. Through her, Pope describes the flippancy and depravity of the English society of his day. The paradoxical nature of Pope’s attitude is intimately related to the paradox of Belinda’s situation. If Belinda is to find her role of woman, she must lose the role of a virgin, and the more graceful her acceptance of loss the greater the victory she achieves through it. 

 She was as beautiful as every eye was fixed on her alone. She is like the sun in another regard, 

    "Bright as the sun,

      her eyes the gazers strike.

      And, like the sun,

  the shines on all alike.” 

 Thus, we get the picture of her shallow outlook about 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. So, looking at these things it can be said that Belinda is the protagonist.

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

 "The Rape of the Lock” offers a satirical glimpse into 18th-century court life, emphasizing society’s focus on beauty and appearance. Centered 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. Belinda was a very beautiful woman. She is a worshiper of beauty who prays to the goddess of beauty and offers all the items of cosmetics before her. Beauty is one of the main symbol of this work by the pope.

 The world is beautiful if you know where and how to look. Beauty is known as the quality in something or someone that has the ability to attract someone. It is a sense of pleasure, love and appreciation. Defining beauty depends completely on the individual’s way of looking at things. 

 We may find a person with wonderful shape, long hair, and so on to be beautiful. Yet beauty is not limited to a person’s external appearance. The true beauty of a person is their decent behaviour, respect, the way they portray themselves, and so on. Our entire lives are dedicated to the pursuit of beauty in numerous ways. 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.

 In our society no one focuses on inner beauty. In our society it doesn't matter if the girl is independent or not well educated or not, what matters is she should be "Fair and Beautiful" we see this all things in social media also, even we also see advertisement state that "Fair Bano fair chuno"

Beauty is a means of empowering yourself, loving yourself for who you are and accepting others for who they are. Beauty is not only about having a pretty face, it's about having a pretty mind, pretty soul.

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

 According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, literacy can be defined as the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy, Learning, and Teaching research papers discuss an order on a literature review of a multicultural education and cultural and linguistic diversity. 

 Here I give a brief look on research paper based on The rape of the lock". Dr. George kolenchery professor of Bayan college Oman - English language and literature. Firstly he introduced the writer of this work. Alexander Pope has been the most representative poet of the eighteenth century. He is as representative of his age as Chaucer was of the late fourteenth century and Tennyson of the Victorian Age that his age is known as the Age of Pope speaks of the sovereign position in his age. His most representative poem 'The Rape of the Lock' very faithfully mirrors at least a certain section of English society in the eighteenth century. 

 He described the incident of young Lord Petre having snuck up behind a young lady, Belle Fermor, and snipped off a lock of her hair without her consent. That actually happened. Neither Belle nor her parents appreciated this assault on her hairstyle, especially since they had been considering Lord Petre as a potential husband for her. He gives a definition of words 'Rape' also. How we used this word in now time it's significance the horror but in the time of pope the term rape had a broader definition.

 He described the rape of lock in this word - a mirror of the age, The frivolities of womenfolk This was the kind of life led by the fashionable people of the upper classes in the age of Pope and Pope has described it in gorgeous colours on the one hand and with scathing satire on the other. While he shows the grace and fascination of Belinda’s toilet he indicates the vanity and futility of all. There is nothing deep or serious in the lives and activities of the fashionable people – all is vanity and this pope is revealed with brilliance and art.

4) Write your views about the significance of hair. Is it symbolic?

 A classic example of Eighteenth century rape of the lock is written by Alexander pope. In this work the hair symbolizes both vanity and chastity. At certain moments in the poem, Belinda's obsession with her hair seems like the foolish preoccupation of a young woman who is rather silly and unserious. However, at other times, it represents her virtue. In that sense, the hair could also be said to represent the experience of womanhood more generally. Belinda's lock of hair comes to symbolize the absurdity of the importance afforded to female beauty in society. Pope offers a hyperbolically metaphorical description of the two locks in Canto II, humorously framing the locks as alluring enough to virtually incapacitate any man who looks at them.

 

 To begin with, the hair in The Rape of the Lock symbolizes Belinda’s beauty and youth, which is why she feels humiliated when the lock is cut off. From the immemorial, long hair was the sign of women’s beauty which they were immensely proud of. Belinda is depicted in The Rape of the Lock as a beautiful woman with marvelous hair and “nourished two locks. There is no doubt that hair makes every woman beautiful, especially long golden hair, as often depicted in fairy-tales. After all, all the magic stories with female characters present their heroines with long splendid hair like Cinderella, Rapunzel, and others which serves as a symbol of their beauty. In addition, the hair symbolised the character's youth.

 What else should be mentioned is that hair is the symbol of social position in The Rape of the Lock. Though this is never mentioned in the poem, Belinda belongs to the upper class. There are several moments which testify to this fact. At those times men preferred to choose wives among women of equal social status. Besides, the Baron must have known Belinda from the like social events which are organized for wealthy people. Hair was often regarded as a sign of social rank. For instance, in many countries only young women who belonged to the upper classes were allowed to show their hair in public. In our time we see old age ladies tie-up their hair. Thus, in case with The Rape of the Lock the hair symbolizes high social rank of its owner, Belinda. So,We can consider this as a main symbol of this work.