Rape of the Lock

NOTES ON THE RAPE OF THE LOCK

This is possibly of Arabella Fermor (1696-1737), a famous London society beauty.

She was the heroine of Alexander Pope 's humorous poem, 'The Rape of the Lock',

about the theft of a lock of her hair. (http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/11948-

popup.html)

Did you know that “The Rape of the Lock” is such a famous poem that it even

has its own website? Here is its address, as well as some other very helpful

websites on the poem, the mock-heroic and Alexander Pope:

The Rape of the Lock Home Page –

http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/pope/rape.html

http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/locknote.html

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Biblio/satirebib.html

http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~sconstan/

BACKGROUND:

The Rape of the Lock had its origins in an actual, if trivial, incident in polite society:

in 1711, the twenty-one year old Robert, Lord Petre, had, at Binfield, had

surreptitiously cut a lock of hair from the head of the beautiful Arabella Fermor,

whom he had been courting. Arabella took offence, and a schism developed between

her family and Petre's. John Caryll, a friend of both families and an old friend of

Pope's, suggested that he work up a humorous poem about the episode which would

demonstrate to both sides that the whole affair had been blown out of proportion and

thus effect a reconciliation between them. Pope produced his poem, and it seemed to

have achieved its purpose, though Petre never married Arabella. It became obvious

over the course of time, however (especially after a revised and enlarged version of

the poem, which existed at first only in manuscript copies, was published in 1714)

that the poem, which Pope maintained "was intended only to divert a few young

Ladies," was in fact something rather more substantial, and the Fermors again took

offence -- this time at Pope himself, who had to placate them with a letter, usually

printed before the text, which explains that Arabella and Belinda, the heroine of the

poem, are not identical.

The Rape of the Lock is the finest mock-heroic or mock-epic poem in English:

written on the model of Boileau's Le Lutrin, it is an exquisitely witty and balanced

burlesque displaying the literary virtuosity, the perfection of poetic "judgement," and

the exquisite sense of artistic propriety, which was so sought after by Neo-classical

artists. Repeatedly invoking classical epic devices to establish an ironic contrast

between its structure and its content, it functions at once as a satire on the trivialities

of fashionable life, as a commentary on the distorted moral values of polite society,

and as an implicit indictment of human pride, and a revelation of the essentially trivial

nature of many of the aspects of human existence which we tend to hold very dear.