Alexander Pope - The Epistle to Doctor Arbuthnot / The Rape of the Lock

Q: "Pope's works are not merely satirical. They are a part of a social  commentary that attempts to shape the mores of the middle classes of the period." Discuss with reference to texts that you are familiar with.

The Augustan Age saw an explosive rise in literary production, and due to the influence of Enlightenment thought, the works often focused on social and political matters. Some works commented on general flaws of the human condition while others critiqued certain individuals and specific policies. Needless to say, the mode of satire was one of the most popular literary modes, of which Alexander Pope was a master. His satire showcased his devastating wit and he used it to comment on, criticize and expose the vices and follies of the society of his time. While his works are satirical, they also offer a corrective vision.

The Epistle to Doctor Arbuthnot is a harsh, attacking satire that explains why Pope writes satires. Here he defends his attacks with a work that is perhaps his greatest satire. The Epistle shares a theme common to satirists since the days of Horace and Juvenal, that is, the struggle that 'good' writers have to maintain their standard in a world full of 'bad' writers. Pope attacks bad writers, their corrupt patrons and sycophants. This brings us to the question, what benefit is there in this acerbic retaliation on writers with little skill? Pope had a personal reason in that he was often humiliated and attacked by many writers (Lord Hervey wrote that he was a 'wretched little carcass' by pointing out his bodily deformities). But, according to Pope, there is a nobler cause in condemning bad writers. Pope believes that bad writing reflects bad thinking and this in turn reflects bad living.

 From the beginning of the poem, Pope initiates a running cluster of images based on animals, insects, dirt and disease. He mentions Midas’s ass-ears, compares Codrus to a spider enthroned in the centre of his flimsy lines, mentions the slaver of ‘mad creatures’, the impurities found in amber and so on, culminating in a devastating attack on Sporus (a thinly veiled disguise for John Hervey). Pope calls him, “This painted Child of Dirt that stinks and stings” comparing him to a cherub-faces reptile, evoking Satan.

All this imagery is to show that society is full of such dirt and disease, which he calls the Plague. Sporus is a carrier of disease and he infects physically and morally. His character is a brilliant, concise metaphor to depict the evils of England of the mid eighteenth century – corrupt politics and corrupt personal morality.

Thus, Pope shows that it is the moral duty of any good man to grind such creatures under their foot. This is what he does through his satires. Pope’s aim in The Epistle is not merely to show off his prowess as a skillful satirist but to show what is good, and that it is still possible in a corrupt world. A world where such creatures as Sporus and Bufo can prosper is a world where values have been thoroughly distorted. This leads to the distortion and ‘diseased condition’ of everything else in society, including Art.

To contrast with these characters that Pope has been excoriating, he holds up the values of such characters as Arbuthnot  and his own parents. Their simple, moralistic and unpretentious characters are a testament to the fact that, despite all the ugliness in society, goodness is still possible and does exist. The poet celebrates the ‘spotless’ goodness of Arbuthnot. According to a critic, The Epistle shows, “that what is truly human is redeemable and is well worth the cost of redemption”. As Pope himself says, he is seeking “Virtue’s better end”. He bears the satirists burden of moral responsibility by striving to expose society’s evils and showing a better way.

In the Rape of the Lock, Pope’s aims are much gentler and less vituperative. It is more in the vein of Horatian satire. Here, his objective is not to attack but to laugh, by pointing out the follies and vices of fashionable upper-class London society. As Lowell stated, “Pope is the poet of society”. His scope is not confined to one particular class; his interest was in the whole spectrum of society. In the Rape, he employs the mock-epic genre to inflate the subject matter, thereby showing it for what it really is –insignificant trivialities.

In The Rape, Pope mocks the fuss made about petty things such as the breaching of decorum. The poem was based on a real incident involving the Petre and Fermor families. That Pope was successful in ‘laughing the families together’ proves that he had made his point regarding the situation, pointing out that the situation was too silly and trivial for serious consideration.

Another criticism in the poem is on the idleness and vanity of the upper classes. These people did nothing, their only concerns, as outlined in the poem, are balls, gossip, flirting, fashions etc..  They could indeed be called parasites in society. The men are depicted as foppish and stupid, and positively non-masculine. In the battle of the final Canto, the men merely faint and the Baron’s only heroic action is to sneeze. The women are vain and care more for their reputation and appearance than about their morality. Pope uses Clarissa as a mouthpiece to inject some common sense into the situation. She says that beauty is ephemeral and that women should worry more about good qualities in character. Belinda worries not about her lost curl but that the ‘ravisher’ might display the locks in public and so hurt her reputation. She would not have minded much if he had stolen, “Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!”

By using the mock-heroic mode of writing, Pope shows us that, unlike the heroic days of the past where those such as Achilles, Agamemnon and Aeneid thrived, now the ideals and values of society have fallen so much that the Rape of the Lock is the only sort of ‘epical’ situation that occurs now. The battles raged is Ombre, the muse is Carryll, the great sea voyage is a glide up the Thames, the heroic action is the theft of a lock. Pope succinctly shows the trite values and petty concerns of contemporary society by implied comparison with epics of the olden days. Samuel Johnson called this, ‘The most attractive of all ludicrous compositions’. Not only is it attractive, but it is also instructive, without being moralizing or didactic.

In the final analysis, Pope was a poet of his times and he believed that a good poet had the moral responsibility of educating society regarding its evils and vices. In his works he took this responsibility seriously, strenuously pinpoints these wrongs and hoped for a better, improved society.

Q: What particular aspects of London society does Pope satirize and what techniques does he use to do so? Does he offer any kind of corrective vision along with his critical commentary?

The Rape of the Lock is a satire on the upper classes of London society. Pope’s subject matter arises from real life events – the falling out that arose between the two noble families, the Petres and the Fermors, erupting over a trivial incident when Lord Petre cut of a lock of Arabella Fermor’s hair. John Carryll requested Pope to write something on the incident, so as to ‘laugh the families’ back together. Pope accomplished this mission, producing a masterpiece that exposes the follies and vices of the gentry while indirectly showing us a corrective vision. The question consists of three parts:

1. The aspects of London life that is satirized in the poem

2. The techniques used for this purpose

3. Whether the poem contains a corrective vision

I propose to answer the question following the given order.

The central theme of the poem is the fuss that the gentry make over trifling matters. In the poem, it is the breach of decorum. The Augustan age was known for ‘decorum’, and great value was place on manners, values and balance. This was a major tenet of the age. The baron in the poem oversteps this line by snipping off Belinda’s lock. She takes umbrage at this act and this results in the battle between the lords and ladies. Pope shows the importance of being able to laugh off trifles rather than making the trifle the cause of conflicts. He shows how silly it is that ‘mighty contests rise from trivial things’. We cannot help but laugh along with Pope at this ludicrous situation.

Another aspect of society that he touches upon and satirizes is human vanity and the importance placed on external appearance. Belinda’s preparation at her dressing table is rendered as a religious sacrament. She is the priestess and the image in her mirror is the Goddess she serves. Then, Pope says ‘Awful Beauty put on all its arms’ in a dramatic description of her adorning herself. Pope suggests that the general tendency to worship beauty amounts to a kind of sacrilege. Pope himself was heavily criticized for his personal appearance – he was only a little over 4 feet tall, hunchbacked and stooped. It’s no wonder that he points out how petty it was to worship beauty.

Using Clarissa as the voice of reason, he shows that men worship female beauty without placing due importance on morals and character. Pope says that ‘Frail beauty must decay’. He dissuades people from placing too much importance on external beauty as it is ephemeral in nature. Belinda cares more for her outward appearance as is clear from her actions throughout the poem.

Pope also satirizes the idleness and the ignorance of the nobility of his time. He depicts them as only interested in trivial matters. Their gossip is confined to the insular world of aristocratic life, such as an Indian screen. The game of Ombre is cleverly used to laugh at their frivolity; Ombre is an excuse for flirting and gambling, but Pope elevates it to the scale of an epic battle, showing that this is the only way the aristocratic youth of modern times can achieve heroic fame. The Baron and the other men are portrayed as vain fops, without true manly qualities. Their sole world revolves around the petty interests of court. The ladies only want attention from the men while ‘playing hard to get’ to use the modern phrase.

Another theme in the poem is the expectations that society has of women. Women had to be demur, perfect and chaste. They had to attract a suitable husband but they could not lose their reputation or their chastity – such a loss would be unacceptable in society. Thus, women had to paradoxically attract and repel men simultaneously. Pope depicts this double standard through Belinda’s hair which attracts male admiration, and through her closely guarded petticoat which is a barrier. Belinda’s narrative allows Pope an opportunity to explore female sexuality of his times.

Finally, Pope depicts his anxieties concerning religious piety and the loss of morals. Pope himself was a strong Catholic and suffered much due to this, at a time when England was hostile to Catholics. In The Rape, he shows that society has embraced other objects of worship rather than God. We have a good instance of this in Belinda’s toilette where she seems to worship her own image and the billet-deaux is equated to a Bible in importance. Later on, in Canto II, the Baron is shown as building an altar to Love and prostrating himself at it. Belinda also wears a cross on her ‘white breast’ which ‘Jews might kiss or infidels adore’. It is ambiguous whether they will kiss and adore the cross or the breast. Pope purposely leaves this out.

In this way, pope was able to comment on the laxity towards religion and morality that was increasing in his day. These were the aspects of London life that he criticizes. Let us now examine the techniques that Pope employs in order to satirize the particular aspects of London society.

The main device is the use of the ‘mock epic’ genre. The Augustans were so called because they imitated the original Augustan writers such as Ovid, Virgil and Horace. Pope’s Rape of the Lock is modeled upon Virgil’s Aeneid. While the latter is an actual epic of heroic proportions, The Rape of the Lock is  merely a parody or a ‘pastiche’. The aim is to show the insignificance of the incidents by elevating it to the level of an epic thereby showing to be what they actually are. The mock epic as mentioned above, is thus a burlesque of the classical epic. Pope uses the same convention as the classical epic, but in a satirical manner. For example, a common epic convention was to invoke the muse: one of the nine goddess sisters of mythology. In the poem, Pope invokes his friend Caryll. Other epic conventions are descriptions of soldiers preparing for battle (implied in Belinda’s preparation for the ball), a description of heroic deeds (the game of Ombre), an account of a great sea voyage (Belinda’s journey up the Thames) and so on. Pope, thus, establishes an ironic contrast between the structure and the content of the poem.

To mock the epic and emphase the trifling nature of the subject Pope uses the heroic couplet. The heroic couplet is an artificial, formal and restrictive form of writing, and in a way, it reflects the society it describes. Pope highlights the satire by setting up a heroic tone and undercutting it with a silly rhyme.

A slew of other literary devices are used such as anaphora (He saw, he wish’d, and to the Prize aspire’d), hyperbole (Ope’d the eyes that must eclipse the day), zeugma (Lose her heart or necklace at a ball) and so forth. All these make the work rich and dazzling with wit.

Finally, in speaking of his corrective vision, it can be argued that while he obliquely puts forth his opinion, Pope does not enforce his views upon the reader. He only exposes and illuminates, leaving the reader to think for himself. By exposing the follies and vices of his society, Pope shows what is wrong with it and therein exists his corrective vision. He is not vituperative or harsh, merely gently satirical. The poem exposes the ills of the Augustan society that Pope recognized. He is ironically laughing at human nature. When we read the Rape of the Lock, we can agree with Samuel Johnson that, ‘It is a masterpiece of delicate fancy.”