Pope, Swift, and Aristocratic Women

The task of satirist is to criticise the vices and follies of their contemporary society. However, the purpose of satire is to be universal. In this case, we are going to focus our attention on the works of two major poets of the 18th century which can be subscribed within Augustan literature: Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room”.

In Pope’s mock-heroic verse The Rape of the Lock (1717) what is criticised is a moral fault: mainly, immoderate female moral pride. There are several versions of the poem. However, we have preferred the last one which consists of 794 lines in five cantos, as it was revised to be included in Pope’s Works (1717) and is the one which stands now. Written in heroic couplets, this work tells the rape of Belinda’s (the coquette) most appreciated lock by Sir Plume, and the consequences of the event for her. The event is based upon the theft of a lock of a young lady (Ms.Arabella Fermor) by an admirer (Lord Robert Petrel) which led to a rift between their families. The aim of the “heroi-comical” poem was supposedly to reconcile them. As it is a very long poem, we are going to focus on the description of Belinda’s toilette in Canto I.

Aristocratic women in the 18th century were concerned with their looks and image as those were intended as currency for marriage, and the characters described in both poems shared the same social status. Thus, they were always drawn to a situation of dependence upon a male relative, whether father, brother or husband. As Roger Pats explains:

‘ The major disabilities of women, in fact, were more straightforward. They had minimal rights with regard to property and the like: hence Pope’s longs battles on behalf of his half-sister...

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... Poetry 1660-1750. (Oxford, Oxford University Press), ed.1965

Rogers, Pat. “Pope and the social scene” in Writers and Their Background: Pope, ed. Peter Dixon, (G.Bells and Sons, London, 1972), pp.101-142

OTHER SOURCES:

"Prose and Verse Criticism of Poetry." Representative Poetry On-line: Version 3.0. Ed. D. F. Theall. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2009. .

"The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope - Introduction." Literary Criticism (1400-1800). Ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 60. Gale Cengage, 2001. eNotes.com. 2006. 29 Nov, 2009 http://www.enotes.com/literary-criticism/

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Pope, Alexander. "The Rape of the Lock." Cyclopedia of Literary Characters, Revised Third Edition. Salem Press, 1998. eNotes.com. 2006. 29 Nov, 2009

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