Discuss The Rape of the Lock as a critique of
the contemporary fashionable society.
Or
Discuss Pope as a
satirist with reference to The Rape of
the Lock.
(The true objective of satire is
moral. It amends vice by castigation. The satirist, in the words of Dryden, “is
no more an enemy to the offender than the physician to the patient when he
prescribes harsh remedies to an inveterate disease”. Pope’s satire, too,
functions in somewhat the same manner. Satire pre-dominates the work of Pope.
Even a cursory glance at his poetry reveals that the major part of it consists
of satire. The Rape of the Lock, The
Dunciad and Moral Essays are the
best of his satires. Pope wrote many satires against individuals, which were
deadly, sharp and bitter marked by malice. Stopford Brook in comparing Dryden
and Pope as satirists says, “Dryden’s satire has relation not to the man he
is satirizing, but to the whole of human race. Pope’s satire is thin, it
confines itself to the person and has no relation to the world.” In The Rape of the Lock, the whole
panorama is limited to the 18th century aristocratic life. Pope satirizes the young girls and boys, aristocratic women
and men, their free time activities, nature of husbands and wives, the
professional judges and politicians of the day. )*
If Shakespeare is
the poet of man, Alexander Pope is a poet of society. Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” is a
social document because it mirrors contemporary society. Pope paints about
England in 18th century. The aristocracy of the 18th century England
centered round a class which was newly formed having emerged out of the
commercial prosperity of England since the exploits of the Armada
victory. The aristocratic people were primarily urban people with easy flow of
money from trade and commerce and in some classes from the hoardings
of land. They were luxury loving people, enjoying life in idle games and fun
and frolic. Being wealthy with a new-found lust for money and craze for
fashion, most imitated from the French whose influence had come through the
Restoration. They got themselves preoccupied in trivialities, gossips,
sex-intrigues, and courting ladies. The ladies of the time loved being wooed
and playing coquets to the gentlemen. The Rape of the Lock is a
mirror to this kind of society. Of which Lord Petre for men and Belinda for
women are the representative figures.
