Alex’s Analysis Of Any Abject Abuse Essay, Research Paper

Alex’s Analysis of Any Abject Abuse

The destruction of the grand style of the epic is just what Pope was

after in his mock epic, “The Rape of the Lock.” Pope had no such universal goal,

or moral pronouncements to make as did Milton. His purpose was merely to expose

the life of the nobility of his time. While Milton chose blank verse to express

the immensity of the landscape of his epic, Pope chose to utilize the heroic

couplet to trivialize this grandeur. Pope’s quick wit bounces the reader along

his detailed description of his parlor-room epic. His content is purposefully

trivial, his scope purposefully thin, his style purposefully light-hearted, and

therefore his choice of form purposefully geared toward the smooth, natural

rhythm of the heroic couplet. The caesura, the end-stopped lines, and the

perfect rhymes lend the exact amount of manners and gaiety to his work.

Writing for a society that values appearances and social frivolities, he

uses these various modes of behavior to call attention to the behavior itself.

Pope compares and contrasts. He places significant life factors (i.e., survival,

death, etc.) side by side with the trivial (although not to Belinda and her

friends: love letters, accessories). Although Pope is definitely pointing to

the “lightness” of the social life of the privileged, he also recognizes their

sincerity in attempting to be polite and well-mannered and pretend to recognize

where the true values lie.

Pope satirizes female vanity. He wrote the poem at the request of his

friend, John Caryll, in an effort to make peace between real-life lovers. The

incident of the lock of hair was factual; Pope’s intention was to dilute with

humor the ill feelings aroused by the affair. He was, in fact, putting a minor

incident into perspective, and to this end, chose a mock-heroic form, composing

the poem as a “take-off” epic poetry, particularly the work of Milton. He is

inviting the individuals involved to laugh at themselves, to see how emotion had

inflated their response to what was really an event of no consequence. For the

reader, the incident becomes a statement about human folly, a lesson on female

vanity, and a satire of the rituals of courtship. Perhaps Pope also intended to

comment on the meaningless lives of the upper classes. The poem was published

in 1712 and again in 1714; probably the satire is more biting in the later

version than in the one presented to Miss Fermor. Pope could hardly have

hope to soothe the lady’s wounded pride by pointing out her vanity and empty-

headedness.

In keeping with his choice of mock-heroic form, Pope employs a “high-

toned” poetic diction and the stately iambic pentameter of dignified epics like

Paradise Lost. And of course, Pope’s mastery of the heroic couplet, and the

balanced, measured rhythms of his lines, lend an even greater air of solemnity.

To achieve this effect, he inverts the syntax of ordinary speech, as in these

lines: “Her lively looks a spritely mind disclose” (ii, 9), “”Favors to none, to

all she smiles extends” (II, 11), and “Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers

strike” (ii, 13). The effect of this inversion is to add rhetorical weight to

the end of the line; the sentence feels particularly “complete.” At the same

time, the reader is always aware that the poem is a joke. Pope comes right out

and says so. For example, one epic tradition is to open with a statement of

purpose and an invocation to the Muse. Pope states his purpose as being to sing

of the “dire offense” that springs from “amorous causes” and the “mighty contest

s” that rise from “trivial things” (1-2) — hardly the lofty and weighty

subjects of epic poetry — and names his Muse “Caryll” (3) for his friend John

Caryll, the relative of the young lord who stole the lock of hair from Arabella

Fermor — not the proper sort of Muse for epic poetry. By way of mythological

spirits hovering over earthly concerns, Pope gives us sylphs that are really the

spirits of young women like Belinda. Milton’s Adam had the angel Raphael

looking out for him; Belinda has Ariel, one of the “light militia of the lower

sky” (42). He jokingly raises Belinda to the exalted stature proper to epic

heroines by addressing her as “Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished care/ Of

thousands bright inhabitants of air” (27-28) and exorts her: “thy own importance

know” (35); but because Belinda is really only a “gentle belle” (8), a pampered

and privileged young woman, capable of mere “infant thought” (29), the effect is

humorous.

The stakes in this mock-heroic epic are Belinda’s maidenhood, and the

convention of the epic warning comes by way of Ariel’s reading of bad omens:

“Late as I ranged the crystal wilds of air,/ In the clear mirror of thy ruling

star/ I saw, alas! some dread event impend/ . . . Beware of all, but most beware

of Man!” (105-114). Belinda’s performance of her toilette, assisted by Betty,

her “inferior priestess” (127), is described as the arming of the epic hero:

“Now awful Beauty put on all its arms” (138), and the images evoked in Pope’s

description of the various creams and perfumes on Belinda’s vanity invests them

with a value and exoticism they don’t deserve: “Unnumbered treasures,”

“glittering spoil,” “India’s glowing gems,” “all Arabia breathes from yonder

box,” “The tortoise here and elephant unite” (129-135) By means of hyperbole,

Pope manages to reveal the true worthlessness of these substances.

Pope advocates the use of concrete, Saxonate words over abstract,

Latinate ones in poetry, and offers numerous examples from eighteenth century

poetry of how the effect of abstraction is to show a lack of emotional

engagement and possibly even a physical distance between the poet and his

subject. Yet Pope defends Miltonian “poetic diction,” in “Rape,” as sometimes

being the most proper and natural style for a particular poet to use. Certainly

such a style is well-suited to “The Rape of the Lock,” exactly because it does

strike the reader as “too much,” as “too high” for the subject matter. “Not with

more glories, in the ethereal plain,/ The sun first rises o’er the purpled

main,/ Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams/ Launched on the bosom of the

silver Thames” (ii, 1-4). The use of such “high falutin’” rhetoric to describe

a young lady on her way to Hampton Court to play cards is witty and hilarious.

Further, it allows the reader a sense of satisfaction to be “in” on the joke.

Besides, Po pe balances such abstract, Miltonian description with concrete

images as well. He explains, for instance, that such female vanities as a “love

of ombre” survive after death (56), certainly a specific, concrete image, and

shows us “lapdogs giv[ing] themselves the rousing shake” (15). Particularly

effective is when Pope combines the abstract with the concrete in a single

couplet, as in such lines as “Think what an equipage thou hast in air,/ And view

with scorn two pages and a chair”(45-46), or when he combines Miltonian style

with upper class English slang, as in “If to her sharesome female errors fall,/

Look on her face, and you’ll forget ‘em all” (ii, 17-18). This shows that just

because the subject of Pope’s writing is mere frivolity, it should not be

concluded that the writing itself is whimsical. Pope can brag that he wrote his

timeless epic merely about two quarreling Catholic families and a lock of hair,

whereas Milton had Satan, God, Eve, Adam, and the entire creation of the

universe to ponder a bout.

In conclusion, Pope focuses on a particular woman and thus succeeds in

creating a convincing portrait that the reader accepts and applies to a general

population of young women. Belinda may be superficial and rather empty-headed ,

possessed of “a sprightly mind . . ./ Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as

those” (9-10), but she is charming and innocent, too. Many of the works that

have been read in this class depict Time as a destructive and baleful force.

Time plays a significant role in Pope’s underlying message which is that all

earthly things must succumb to the inevitable nature that is Time:

“But since, alas! Frail beauty must decay,

Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn gray;

Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,

And she who scorns a man must die a maid;” (V, 25-28)

“For, after all the murders of your eye,

When, after millions slain, yourself shall die:

When those fair suns shall set, as set they must,

And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,” (V, 145-148)

Pope questions why a society with so much potential wastes its energy in

trite behavior, thinking, and judgment. She is the product of her culture, her

social class and the times. At times, we can see that Pope can relate with

Belinda. Much of the blame for her can be pointed to the needless customs of

her society. When Pope says, “Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of

pride,/Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide” (II, 15-16) the

reader knows he’s being generous; we’ve already seen her fault. Pope elevates

Belinda to the stature of a goddess, although the rest of the poem effectively

strips her of this undeserved title.

Pope seems to be pointing his critical and sarcastic finger at human

nature. There is a sense of duality in his style that praises his subjects on

one level and criticizes them the next. That is why the ending is so fitting.

He addresses the duality of human beings as an animal capable of reason, but an

animal nevertheless. It is the internal human struggle that Pope wishes to

address, and hopefully, bring to light. By using a satirical and cynical

approach to address the values and ideas of a maladjusted society, along with a

combination of such elements as sarcasm, wit, and humor, Pope complete a

narrative worthy to be ranked amongst the greatest literary works of all time.