Hello and welcome to the Discourse. The Baron ‘half’ succeeds in his mission to rob the locks of Belinda and keep them as a trophy of his victory over the nymph in his collection of trophies. Canto 4 discusses the aftermath of this robbery. One may find it ridiculous enough, but despite being a satire, The Rape of The Lock offers a serious outlook on the struggles of genders that continues even now.
The Baron’s sexual jealousy and lust for Belinda were the reason behind his motive to steal the lock of hair. The Baron is no different than an unrequited lover of the 21st century, obsessed and deeply infatuated by a girl who doesn’t permit him to breach her reputation. What he does in return is to throw a bottle of acid on her, ruining her beauty, her charm and boasting his victory that if you can’t be mine, you cannot be of anybody else’s. As per ASTI, on average, 1500 cases of acid attack are reported every year and 80% of them are against women. Violence against women and girls is the most widespread form of systematic abuse worldwide and what Belinda faced was violence. Pope’s 794 lines long mock-epic was published in 1714 as a social satire but it would be hard to say that situations have improved even a bit.
Summary of The Rape of The Lock Canto 4 :
Lines 1-16
Pope begins Canto 4 with the description of Belinda’s sorrow over her fall of reputation and loss of a lock of hair. She is languishing in “rage, resentment, and despair.” Pope makes excellent use of Anaphora (Lines 3-8 begin with ‘Not’) while mentioning that Belinda’s “anxious cares” and “secret passions” after the loss of her lock exceeds the sorrow of imprisoned kings to unhappy women who outlive their looks, from lovers losing their beloveds to old women who want to be kissed, from tyrants dying to a woman named Cynthia whose scarf won't go straight. The Juxtaposition and comparison between Belinda’s melodramatic despair and the despair of people enduring much greater suffering than a bad haircut once again emphasize the ridiculousness of the situation. Pope accentuates the excess and impropriety of Belinda’s grief after the theft of her hair, which is a minor setback. On the other hand, he clarifies the depth of the deed done by the Baron by mentioning that the Sylphs are not protecting or consoling Belinda. She is no more a coquette, no more a virgin to be protected and revered by the Sylphs. In a sense, the Baron has metaphorically sexually violated her, making her no longer a virgin, and thus the term ‘rape’ in the title. The narrator addresses Belinda as a “sad Virgin” with “ravished hair.” Symbolism has been used here to address the depth of the Baron’s act.
As Ariel and his minion Sylphs have left Belinda to her fate, Gnomes, the other spirits much lower in the hierarchy than the Sylphs, sense their chance and Umbriel, a ‘dusky’ gnome decides to play his mischief. He immediately heads to the “Cave of Spleen.” In those times, the spleen was considered responsible for all kinds of physical diseases and problems, especially depression, moodiness, and sadness. The Cave of Spleen is somewhere “down the Central Earth.” it is a mock-epic element. Most of the classical epics including Virgil’s Aeneid and Holmer’s Odyssey mention a descent into the underworld. Pope makes use of it.
Lines 17-54
These lines are full of personification. As Umbriel descends to the subterranean Cave of Spleen, he sees the wind East languishing on a bed in a dark closed grotto where no fresh air and no glittering sunray can ever reach. East is suffering pain at her side and migraine. He enters deeper and sees two handmaids, waiting for the throne. These are Ill-Nature, and Affection, the personification of the conditions that are their names. Ill-Nature appears like an ‘ancient maid.’ She is a withered old woman in a dress of black and white, like an old nun with no sense of humor or spiritedness for life. Her heart is full of spite for others. Affectation is young and appears beautiful, but sick. She speaks with a lisp and deliberately hangs her head to the side. She is richly dressed, languishing on expensive bedding. She represents the worst excesses of put-on femininity, a belle gone too far. She pretends to be a vulnerable damsel, though she isn’t. She enjoys all comforts of wealth yet, pretends to be sickly.
Umbriel continues further down through the Cave and encounters a strange vapor through which, strange shapes arise out of nothing and then vanish. In these vapors, Umbriel sees women who are “expiring,” “glaring fiends,” “snakes,” “Pale spectres,” “gaping tombs,” “lakes of liquid gold” and “angels in machines.” The narrator says that the magical vapors are like the “Elysian Scene” and contrast compares this grotesque, horrible place with Elysian Fields, the Ancient Greek version of Heaven. Umbriel sees talking teapots and small clay jars (Pipkin). There Umbriel sees ‘Homer’s Tripod’, pregnant men. And “maids turned bottles,” women who have been transformed into bottles and call out for corks. There are intense sexual innuendos in these lines. The cave includes women with distinctly unladylike sexual appetites. The term ‘expiring’ can be used to denote both, death and orgasm. The women metamorphosized into bottles craving phallic-shaped corks. And there are pregnant men. All the masculine and feminine rules of the world have been turned upside down in the underworld. There are snakes, and angels forced into labor machines. Another allusion to Satan’s underworld from Paradise Lost by Milton. Is the Queen of Spleen, the Sin, daughter, and lover of the fallen angel? Homer’s Illiad mentions magical walking three-legged tables that are also present here.
Lines 55-88
Even the mischievous Gnome couldn’t bear all this madness of the underworld but he had aid and hence Umbriel passes along safely, holding a piece of “spleenwort” in his hand. Then he reaches the depth of the Underworld where the Queen of Spleen resides in all her glory. Umbriel is humbled, he hails her as the goddess of all women between the ages of 15 and 50, making them either hysterical and ill or making them frantically attempt to compose poetry and plays. Remember Aphra Behn who wrote Oroonoko and The Rover? Her pen name was Astrea.
Then Umbriel complains to The Queen of Spleen about Belinda, the beautiful woman who hasn’t yet succumbed to the Queen’s power. She enjoys herself too much and is so proud. And he complains that there are thousands more like her. He then cajoles the Queen and says how he has always served her with utmost devotion and mentions how he ruins women’s complexions, brings about cuckoldry, and rumps up petticoats and bedding to make it seem like illicit sexual encounters have taken place where they haven’t, messes up a prude’s headdress, and even kills a beloved lapdog. Umbriel says that he spoils the grace of the proud girls “Or raise a pimple on a beauteous face.”
Umbriel addresses the queen as the ruler of “the sex to fifty from fifteen.” He means the Queen rules all girls and women between ages 15-55, which is the general age of menstruation periods. This suggests that the spleen is closely related to sexual dysfunction and erratic behavior. Thus, though society frowns upon ugly women and those who are adulterous, the real culprit is Umbriel and the Queen of Spleen. Umbriel then requests the Queen of Spleen to affect Belinda with “chagrin.”
Initially, it appears as if the Queen is disinterested but then she grants him his wish and binds together a bag of gifts for him which appears no different than the bag which once Ulysses held to contain the winds. It is an allusion to Homer’s Odyssey in which Ulysses, the protagonist was given a bag full of all winds except the west wind, as the west wind was assigned the task to blow his ship home from the Trojan War. However, as Ullyses’ ship reaches the shore, his men accidentally open up the bag and all the captured winds come out of the bag. As a result, their ship is blown far away. It takes them ten years to get home again. Umbriel’s bag contains “the force of female lungs, / Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues.” The Queen also grants Umbriel a vial that holds “fainting fears, / Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears.” Entire Canto 4 appears to be an allusion to Aeneas’s trip to the Underworld in the Book 4 of Virgil’s Aeneid.
Lines 89-140
As Umbriel returns with the gifts of Queen of Spleen, he sees that Belinda is distraught, with her disheveled open hair that was so beautifully combed and threaded a little while ago before the Baron ravaged her. She is being consoled by Thalestris who laments at Belinda’s loss of lock. Thalestris’s name and her personality are other allusions to Greek mythology. In ancient Greece, there lived a Queen of the Amazons, a tough female warrior who was more than a match for Alexander the Great, her name was Thalestris. Umbriel could have no better moment than this to open his bag and let the magic of Queen of Spleen bring more discord. As he opens the bag, all the “Furies” get out. This is another allusion to Greek mythology. The Furies were always angry and vengeful creatures unleashed by the gods to punish criminals. Umbriel’s Furies fan the anger and ‘mortal ire’ of Belinda and “fierce Thalestris raise the fire.” She was quietly consoling just a while ago but suddenly, she loudly cries "Oh wretched maid!" and grasps Belinda in her arms.
She reminds Belinda of all the pains she took for that splendid lock of hair from “torturing irons” to straining her “tender head” with “fillets.” How she nourished them with “bodkin, comb, and essence.” Thalestris is worried that the Baron will make good use of the robbed lock for humiliating Belinda by displaying it for everyone to see how he breached her reputation. Thalestris says that once Belinda does lose her honor, even she herself won't want to be Belinda's friend, as everyone will talk about her too.
Then Thalestris brings upon the symbolism that suggests that the lost lock wasn’t just simple hair. She is horrified that now when the Baron has Belinda’s lock, he will place it in the center of a ring and display it on his hand for the rest of time. Could it be the marriage ring? Firstly, Belinda was metaphorically sexually ravaged and now, the Baron may force marriage on her for further humiliation and marital sexual exploitation and she wouldn’t be able to say no to such a situation once she loses her reputation. Thalestris makes Belinda imagine all this horror as “the fops envy” (at the Baron’s victory trophy), and “the ladies stare” (at Belinda’s fate)!
Thus, Thalestris is adamant that they must do everything possible to bring back the hair of the lock that the Baron cut down and kept as a trophy of his victory over Belinda. All this further burns Belinda in anger and shame. Thalestris says that the rumormongering has already begun and compares Belinda with a “degraded toast.” Thalestris then wonders what she can do to protect her friend’s honor. She must do something quick enough before the “rapacious” Baron completely disgraces Belinda and force her to marry heat his terms. She decides to get back the lost lock of hair before the Baron decides to set it in the center of a ring and adorn it in his hand to display the glory of Belinda’s lock of hair “heighten'd by the diamond's circling rays,” to the world. Thus, Thalestris asks help from her beau, her suitor Lord Plume, who is a fop with an expensive snuff box and fashionable cane. Lord Plume goes to face the Baron and demandsssss the lock of Belinda back. The Baron says that though Lord Plume speaks so nicely, it's all in vain because he will never return the lock of hair he gained while cherishing the smell of hair that Belinda nourished with essence. He then declares, “This hand, which won it, shall forever wear." Thus, Thalestris’s fears prove to be true.
Lines 141-176
Umbriel was observing the whole event while marveling at the effect of the furies on Thalestris and Belinda’s heads. Yet, he was net, satisfied, and didn’t wish to go slack. He diligently opens up the vial from which Sorrow starts to flow and that vial directly affects Belinda who appears disillusioned, languishing, crying with tears flowing out of her eyes. She cries about her fate and says that she wishes she hadn’t visited the court and stayed at home instead. She now remembers the whole day was full of bad omens, offering warnings to her about what might happen. She remembers how she dropped her “patch box” three times and how she observed, “The tottering china shook without a wind.” She further says that even her lapdog Shock was behaving unusually as if the dog had some inkling of the impending attack on her. Then she mentions the Sylph that came in her dream and warned her. She laments that she ignored the warnings of the Sylph, she couldn’t understand him until it was too late. She is sad about the loss of her hair, but she is more disgusted by the feel of the hand of the Baron on her. She wishes to tear off the remaining lock, feeling that it “tempts once more” the Baron’s “sacrilegious hands.”
Yet, her real worry is that it is open for all to see that now she has a lonely lock on her head. She confronts the Baron and asks why did you take my lock whose loss is so obvious. She says that if the Baron was so obsessed with her hair, he could have taken “Hairs less in sight, or any Hairs but these.” She meant her pubic hair. She says that it might have been much crueler but wouldn’t have caused public humiliation to her. It further suggests the pretense of Belinda who admits that she would rather compromise her virtue than suffer damage to her looks. Thus, Pope shows the misplaced significance and value that society places on external appearances.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards.
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