Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Canto 5 of The Rape of The Lock begins as Belinda ends her highly emotional lament for the loss of her lock. Everyone present at the Hampton court could feel her loss and pain. Despite the Baron’s attack on her reputation, she wins everybody’s sympathy. Thus, Clarissa rises to offer a moralizing retort suggesting that Belinda and society shouldn’t care much for external beauty that is sure to diminish with time. Instead, one should value good behavior, good humor, virtues, and merit more. Clarissa tries to calm Belinda and Thalestris down by offering a moral lecture that appears more like a hypocritical speech considering she aided the Baron in mutilating Belinda’s lock which was neither good humor nor an act of merit or virtue. She fails to calm Belinda and Thalesris who demand the Baron must return the Lock. The Baron being adamant refuses and declares his intention to encase the hair in a ring and wear it forever. This enrages Belinda and Thalestrist and they declare a battle against the Baron and his folks. Pope describes a party scuffle in an epic war manner. The Baron’s side is obviously more powerful and aided by god’s favor. Yet, Belinda manages to subdue the Baron and demands the lock back. But the Baron fails to do so because, during the haphazardous battle, the Lock goes missing for good. The Baron, Thalestris, Belinda, and others try to locate it everywhere possible but fail to find it.
Summary of The Rape of The Lock Canto 5:
Lines 1-34
As Belinda finishes her tearful emotional lament at the loss of her lock, everyone present at the party feels for her except the Baron. He insists that the lock is now the cherished trophy that he will entrap in a ring with diamonds and wear it until he breathes. This further enrages Belinda and Thalestris. ‘Fate and Jove’ prevents the Baron from listening to reason. Pope offers an allusion suggesting that gods interfere with humans to bring upon such crisis and compares the Baron with Aeneas, the Trojan Hero from Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid. Jove is the Roman god Jupiter who forces Aeneas to leave Carthage despite his lover Dido doing everything possible to stop him and be with him. Dido’s sister Anna too tries to stop Aeneas but he doesn’t stop. Ultimately, Dido commits suicide. While the case of Aeneas, Dido, and Anna involved very high stakes, it is a mock element. Pope’s situation of a war over the lock appears to be ridiculous. Dido was tricked to fall in love with Aeneas by Cupid, and here Umbriel is doing the stuff. One can observe the pervasive supernatural influence over mortals in the poem right from the beginning. Belinda is compared to Dido while Thalestris appears to be Anna.
Clarrisa, whose name literally means ‘clarity’ observes the situation. She aided the Baron in mutilating the lock and humiliating Belinda to make her lose her honor. Now when she listens to the reproaches of Thalestris and observes that everyone is sympathetic towards Belinda, she plays the moral card. She notes that men often call women angels and worship them as such without assessing their moral character. She observes that beauty is ephemeral: “Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn to gray; / Since Painted, or not painted all shall fade.” Clarissa argues that “frail beauty must decay” and thus, women should stress more on other qualities like virtues, merit, and good sense in particular. She says that if vain activities, such as dancing all night and dressing oneself all day, warded off smallpox or stopped one from aging, it would make sense to ignore duty and never to learn anything, and it would actively be moral to take pleasure in beautifying oneself. She addresses Belinda and says that when her tantrums (“airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding”) will fail to restore her beauty so she must value ‘good humor’ more because that will make her win again. Pope uses Anaphora again (lines 11, 12, 13, & 14 begin with ‘Why’ during Clarissa’s speech.)
Lines 35-70
Nobody offers any thoughts to Clarissa’s reasonable speech as they could sense the hypocrisy behind all that. Belinda ignores her while Thalestris calls her ‘prude’ who is jealous as Belinda is sexually superior. Belinda calls for “To arms, to arms!” and declares a courtly war against the Baron and his folks. The narrator is observing all this as he calls Thalestris a Virago, a woman who fights like a man. All friends of Belinda start attacking the Baron and his friends. The narrator describes the battle in a mock-epic manner and compares the courtly fight of Belinda and Thalestris against the Baron and Clarissa with a battle between “Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes” and Jove and Neptune. Pallas is Athena or Minerva, the Greek goddess of wisdom, war, strategy, and defense. Mars is the god of war, Latona is the mother of Apollo and Diana, while Hermes is mercury, the god of thieves and tricksters, and the guide to the underworld. Jove is Jupiter, the king of all gods, lord of the sky while Neptune is Poseidon, the god of sea and earthquakes, tsunamis.
It’s an all-round riot at the Hampton court where Belinda’s gang and the Baron’s flock jump at each other with fans, canes, and snuffboxes, or simply wound each other with mean glances and sarcasm. Umbriel observes all this gleefully as he sees the success of Queen of the Spleen.
The fiercest warrior is Thalestris who “scatters death from both her eyes.” Sir Dapperwit and Sir Fopling perish as she throws her frowning glances over them. Dapper and Fop indicate male vanity. Pope makes it all satirically hilarious because, despite their supposed intellectual and moral authority over women, the men in this poem appear especially foolish. Other names used for males are “Beau” and “Witling.”
Pope uses ‘frown’ as a metaphor for a deathly blow and thus equates the struggle at Hampton court with that of godly wars of classic literature. While it appears juxtaposition, the idea is that the Holmer’s classical gods and their interference with human matters were equally silly and ridiculous as what is going on on the campus of Hampton court.
And then, Pope introduces eroticism within the boundaries of the battlefield and strengthens his sexual allegory. The battlefield is filled with erotic sounds of “Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack; Heroes’ and heroines’ shouts confusedly rise/ bass and treble voices strike the skies.” The petticoats made of whalebones were torn down. Pope uses ‘death’ and “perish” as a metaphor for orgasm. Sir Plume jumps on Clarissa and brings her down, winning over her but soon, another girl named Chloe from the Baron’s gang frowns at Sir Plume and he “dies.” As Chloe smiles to cherish her win, Sir Plume revives again and admires her beauty, while still atop Clarissa.
Lines 71-102
Jove, who openly favored the Baron, observes that Belinda’s gang is gaining an upper hand and thus, decides to intervene. Soon ‘Men’s wits’ start overpowering ‘Lady’s hair.’ As the whalebones of petticoats have already been cracked, one can guess what hair is being overpowered. But Belinda is in no mood to accept defeat. As she observes the “Wits mount up, the Hairs subside,” she decides it’s no time for her to ‘die’ and jumps on the Baron with excessive lightning in her eyes. She easily overpowers the Baron and “sits” over him. However, the Baron is unafraid because he “sought no more than on his foe to die.” His goal right from the start has been sexual gratification for which he ‘raped’ the lock. Pope’s parody smoothly reverses the role and presents females as aggressors. Thalestris fights as a Virago and easily overcomes many men while Belinda abandons all pretexts of lady-like grace. She pinches the Baron’s nose and throws some snuff powder on him before releasing his nose. As he breathes the snuff power in, he is forced to sneeze loudly. He promised that he won’t return the lock until he breathes, so Belinda makes sure that his breath is broken for a while.
After that, she takes her bodkin out but this is no ordinary hairpin. Once the metal was in the form of three seal rings of Belinda’s great-great-grandfather. After his death, it was melted and turned into a buckle for his widow who passed it to her grandmother as a child in the form of a whistle, and then was turned into a bodkin for her mother, and then finally passed down to Belinda herself. It is another mock-epic element as Pope creates the history of an ordinary hairpin and imbues it with the same significance as Agamemnon’s scepter or Achilles’ shield in The Iliad.
Belinda then threatens the Baron with the Bodkin who succumbs and accepts defeat. He says that one day Belinda will also be brought down like him (sexual allegory again) but wishes to be allowed to live. He says that he doesn’t fear death (metaphor) but doesn’t wish to be separated from Belinda as she is sitting on him in unison. He wishes to remain alive in this position while being burnt and tortured by the flames of Cupid.
Lines 103-150
Mounted over the Baron, Belinda feels no emotions, no remorse, the only thing on her mind is her lock and she demands and shouts “Restore the Lock!” Her fierceness and intensity are no less than Othello searching for the handkerchief of his wife Desdemona to ascertain her infidelity before killing her. Pope brings another allusion to Shakespeare’s famous tragedy of Othello, the Moor, and presents a juxtaposition between an incredibly tense and dramatic situation and a silly situation. Pope equates Belinda's lock of hair with the handkerchief which causes Othello's jealousy and his eventual murder of Desdemona. Satire cuts both ways, so Pope is mocking Othello’s lack of trust too.
Now when the Baron has been forced to break his breath and sneeze by Belinda, he is not bound by any promise and thus, he accepts defeat and decides to return the lock to Belinda. But then he realizes that during the haphazard struggle, he has lost the lock. Everybody stops fighting and starts searching for the lock which is nowhere to be found. The narrator then suggests that the lock was perhaps too “blest” for any mortal to possess. Some of her friends soothe Belinda by saying that the lock has been passed to the “lunar sphere” where things lost on earth can supposedly be found. The narrator informs that the moon’s realm is the place where everything is lost, from “broken vows” to “lovers’ hearts” to “Cages for gnats” to “the courtier’s promises” to “sick man’s prayers” to “dried butterflies” can be found.
However, the narrator doesn’t agree with these people as he claims that only his Muse, the goddess of art and poetry is witness to the fact that Belinda’s lost lock rose to the heights of the sky just like Romulus’ ascent to the heavens was seen only by Proculus. "Trust the Muse—she saw it upward rise" and the "quick Poetic Eyes" of the narrator were able to see it too. Pope makes another allusion to the greatness of Belinda’s lock and equates it to Romulus, the founder of Rome, whom Proculus the second saw in his vision, ascending to heaven after his death. The narrator doesn’t stop at that and claims that the lock attained greater heights aided by the Sylphs who saw it rise like a shooting star and shine more brightly than Berenice’s locks. This is the ultimate allusion that Pope makes in honor of Arabella Fermor, the historical inspiration for Belinda. The allusion is to the Ancient Egyptian mythical queen Berenice who sacrificed her marvelous long hair to save her husband's life. The gods honored her sacrifice and placed the locks into the sky as a constellation that we now know as the constellation Coma Berenices.
The narrator then affirms his statement and says that now the beau monde (or the fashionable high society people) who spend their time at prosperous and fashionable places of London like the Mall and the Rosamunda’s Lake at St. James’s Park can see the shining lock in the sky. The narrator further weighs in and says that “Partridge” will be able to spot Belinda’s lock through “Galileo’s eyes”. John Partridge was an English astrologer infamous for hoax prediction and quackery. Pope satirizes him here while “Galileo’s eyes” are an allusion to the Galilean telescope.
The narrator then addresses Belinda directly and tells her not to be sad as now her lock will outlive her and will remain young, lovely, and shining beautiful forever. Her lock will inspire the Muse to write Belinda’s name among the stars like Berenice’s was written. Pope ends the poem here with all praises to beautiful Belinda, despite all her follies.
While Clarrisa’s speech mentioned that beauty is ephemeral, “Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn to gray; / Since Painted, or not painted all shall fade,” the narrator and the poet himself offer a counterpoint. The narrator agrees that beauty is transient but suggests that beauty is yet valuable and it may achieve a degree of immorality with the aid of the Muse, the goddess of art and poetry. Because a poet may raise things above the trivial world and into the world of eternal literary fame the Pope does with the lock of Belinda. Thus, Pope ends The Rape of The Lock in the manner of a Horatian satire that gently and humorously points out the evils of high-class society but keeps a sympathetic attitude towards the characters despite their follies.
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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