The Rape of the Lock - Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was the greatest English poet of his age, and "The Rape of the Lock" (1712) is generally considered one of his most brilliant satires. It is a mock-epic based upon an actual disagreement between two aristocratic English families during the eighteenth century. The Baron (the real-life Lord Petre) surprises the beautiful Belinda (i.e., Arabella Fermor) by clipping off ("raping") a lock of her hair: a social transgression that results in the dissolution of their engagement, and which Pope hyperbolizes into an earth-shattering catastrophe of cosmic proportions.

The poem mocks both the trivial etiquette of upper-class England and serious literary traditions--comparing the loss of Belinda's hair to the great battles of classic epic literature--with allusions to Homer, Virgil, and Milton throughout.

"The Rape of the Lock" is quoted in Moby-Dick's Extracts, where it first makes allusion to the fact that whalebones were once used in the manufacture of women's petticoats. The satirical effect of the extracted quatrain rests on its conflation of petticoats with chastity belts. So when Ishmael enigmatically suggests (chapter 90) that "an allegorical meaning may lurk" in the Queen of England's claim upon the tail of a beached whale--which conspicuously yields no material for a petticoat--he may be obliquely relying on the poem to impugn her chastity.

The Rape of the Lock:

• Kindle
• Google books
• Gutenberg
• Librivox
• YouTube
• Annotated

Supplemental:

• The Rape of the Lock lecture by Dr. Scott Masson
• Analysis by Dr. Octavia Cox

Extracts:

• "“To fifty chosen sylphs of special note, / We trust the important charge, the petticoat. / Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail, / Tho’ stiff with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.” Rape of the Lock." (Moby-Dick, Extracts)
• "Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across...ladies’ busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone..." (Redburn, 57)
• "As every one knows, these same “hogs’ bristles,” “fins,” “whiskers,” “blinds,” or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and other stiffening contrivances.... It was in Queen Anne’s time that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion.... [T]hose ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of the whale..." (Moby-Dick, 75 )
• "...William Prynne, thus discourseth: “Ye tail is ye Queen’s, that ye Queen’s wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone.” Now this was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right Whale was largely used in ladies’ bodices. But this same bone is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? An allegorical meaning may lurk here." (Moby-Dick, 90)
• "...Moses’ God is no mere Pam / With painted clubs, but true I AM." (Clarel, 2.33)

This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.