Children grow up learning that just because someone teaches something, it doesn't mean they'll follow their own advice. In Rape of the Lock, Clarissa lectures:
“Say, why are beauties praised and honored most,/ The wise man’s passion, and the vain man’s toast?/ Why decked with all that land and sea afford,/ Why angels called, and angel-like adored? Why round our coaches crowd the white-gloved beaux,/ why bows the side box from its inmost rows?/ how vain are all these glories, all our pains,/ Unless good sense preserve what beauty gains;/ That men may say when we the front box grace,/ ‘Behold the first in virtue as in face!’” (Canto 5 9-18).
Clarissa explains that men are dense and dim witted, as beauty is ephemeral and more importance should be focused on intelligence, temperament, and integrity. While at first glance, this speech may appear to be the message of the story, Pope thinks otherwise. Her speech, to use an old cliché, is a prime example of “do as I say not as I do” as Clarissa’s involvement in the “rape” complicates the situation, since she was the person who gave the Baron the scissors to cut Belinda's hair. Also, Pope contradicts Clarissa’s speech about beauty being ephemeral by ending the epic poem with Belinda’s lock turning into a star for everyone to see for Eternity. Although Belinda’s vanity seems to be the cause of the “rape” as it seemed she set herself up for failure by her constant conceit, this is not the case. Literature can serve to point out character flaws and make people see themselves as other characters and bring to light different outlooks on someone's behavior. Another example of leaders abandoning their own words of wit is Bruce Springsteen. Francine Prose writes, "Bruce Springsteen once tried ...
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Many people see Susanna Rowson’s book, “Charlotte Temple”, as a comment on the need for youth to listen to their elders. However, the theme is far more complicated than this as it shows that the advice itself is flawed. As the characters travel from England to America, the inherent problems of the advice appears. It is here that Montraville father’s advice which is assuming similar experiences leads to lifelong misery. Charlotte the most obvious proof that ignoring your parents advice leads to trouble suffer far greater consequences because of the reversibility of that very same advice. Even the readers experience the dangers of advice as the author cautions the mothers reading the novel that their views and consequently advice are not enough because of the inherent problem of advice not being law. Montraville’s, Charlotte’s, and reader’s stories show that it is not enough to follow parental advice if the advice is misguided, founded in untrue expectations, creating more trouble and misery for the youths.
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vain, then human nature cannot by any means be justified and redeemed from God’s most
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...y men of the age. An affinity between them is revealed by Pope's empathy, fine judgements, and carefully aimed criticisms, and Pope must have been at least a little fascinated by the 'beau-monde' to apply his talents to this poem which, in an ironic way, celebrates Belinda and her world and, as Pope himself suggests in the final couplet of the poem, has preserved them for posterity.
On the surface, The Rape of the Lock is a retelling of an episode that caused a feud between two families in the form of an epic. One might believe that in his version, Alexander Pope portrayed the women of the story as shallow, vain little girls, however on a deeper level the women are crucial to the story. Aside from not being as helpless as they appear, each woman possesses a different kind of power that contributes to their character greatly. Rather than being the conceited and shallow figures expected of the time period, the women in The Rape of the Lock posses more power than meets the eye.