Talk:The Rape of the Lock

Discussion
Point to consider: the titles is given as 'The Rape of the Lock' in most sources (also in the wiki entry on Pope) - but the article title misses 'The' - maybe rename this entry to 'The Rape of the Lock'?

Another point: most sorces, including the external links on this page indicate that the moon Ariel is named after the sprit in "The Tempest." This page http://www.indwes.edu/Faculty/bcupp/solarsys/Names.htm from the IAU corroborates.

I am highly dubious about Ariel being named for the Tempest character. Ariel was named at the same time as Umbriel, and there is an Ariel in The Rape of the Lock. Another Tempest moon wasn't added until Miranda was discovered a century later. Lassell naming two moons at the same time "Ariel" and "Umbriel" seems to me a pretty strong indication that he was naming both after Pope, unless someone can find a very specific source which says otherwise. john k 15:38, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

That is to say, I think the IAU is wrong. john k 15:41, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

And by "very specific source" I mean a source which is more than a passing reference. Obviously, if an authoritative source like the IAU got it wrong, a lot of other sources would copy that. john k 15:46, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Rape of the Lock may have been written in jest, but from a contemporary feminist perspective it can hardly be classified as simply a satire on the misplaced values of the 18th century British upper class. No. This text is trivializes female violation, and the term rape, although can be used to refer to that which is taken away, has also been used as a noun for sexual assault from as early as the 13th century. Pope cannot have been blind to these implications, and to suggest that the poem mocks the triviality of the upper class is to ignore Pope's own trivialization of female violation. (Emily Evans, another irritated English student)

Emily, please remember that while a feminist reading of a work of literature is certainly a valid reading take care not to have it cloud your judgement. Recall that English is a language constantly in motion. English changes daily. This is often why Shakespeare and Pope are nearly inaccessable to information age students(that's us)... the language has changed. Rape today is used to define a sexual violation. In Pope's time it could also be used as something akin to a kidnapping or theft... and used this way by the upper class. Think of it as a violation not of one's person(the way we would today with a rapist forcing himself on a woman), but rather a violation of one's property. To be "irritated" is your prerogative... just keep things in perspective. Satire is trivialization. If you are morally outraged... I'm afraid you've read it far too literally than it was intended. Swift's satire Gulliver's Travels(not it's real title) trivializes the religious conflicts between Catholics and Anglicans(and all religious conflicts in general) when Gulliver meets the Lilliputians. The IRA and Ulster Volunteer Force that their decades of strife is trivial. Explain how the Reformation(and the wars fought over it) were trivial... then there are the Crusades to consider. Satire holds up all folly... everything humans do which is silly or counterproductive(terrorism or war or conflict of any kind could fall under this definition)... all of this is fodder for satire. Rape is evil. Feminism is good and valid. Just remember that it is satire. Robert Sterner(English Instructor)


 * Perhaps I'm nitpicking, but if you're an English Instructor, shouldn't you know that "it's" isn't used as a possessive pronoun? Jodamn 07:37, 8 July 2007 (UTC)


 * On Feminism and Satire: There are usually two sides to every situation, so if you want to satirize, you can pick a side.  On war, for example, you can satirize the warmakers, or you can satirize the pacifists.  Or, if you’re a true master of satire, you can do both, and nobody escapes the acidic wit.  It the Petre-Fermor affair, one could satirize Petre (what a barbarian; deserves censure and ostracism), or one could satirize Fermor (what a vain, obnoxious, prig; deserves ridicule and ostracism).  Which did Pope do?  This article doesn’t say.  But a related article (on Petre) seems to indicate Pope did some of both, but was particularly hard on Petre.  Fermor (the victim) seems to have been charmed by the poem, or at least by the notoriety it brought her.  If the victim herself was not irritated by the poem, it doesn’t seem appropriate for us, centuries later, to become irritated on her behalf.


 * Having said that: Stealing hair was clearly a serious violation of the courtly etiquette of the day, and the courtly etiquette of the day can be interpreted (at least in part) as the safeguard that protected courtly women from (among other outrages) sexual assault, from which lower-class women were not nearly so effectively protected.  So, if Pope undertakes (however humorously) to justify or excuse hair-stealing, he can fairly be seen as taking a chink (however small) out of the barrier against sexual assault.  This is not good, but the (alleged) fact that Pope was hard on Petre, and Petre therefore did not like the poem, argues that Pope stood up fairly strongly against hair-stealing, and in favor of maintaining the traditional protections for women.


 * One wonders if people of that time “connected the dots” in this way, from hair-stealing to sexual assault. I suspect they did.  Even in our much more permissive times, a similar incident of hair-stealing would raise a lot of red flags, suspicions of perversions and of all manner of nefarious ulterior motives.  The fact that Petre commissioned a famous poet to address the situation could itself be interpreted as a satire (If you’re going to make such a ridiculous fuss about this hair-thing, I’ll make an even more ridiculous fuss by involving Alexander Pope!), or it could be interpreted as an acknowledgement that the offense was a serious mark against his character, and called for an extraordinary form of atonement.70.179.92.117 (talk) 22:07, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

For John Kenney... Ariel (moon) is named after the character from The Tempest and not Pope's Ariel according to United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the International Astronomical Union Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN). This link will take you to their page. http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/append7.html  Robert Sterner

see Talk:Sylph about the accuracy of the point that "Pope ... introduces an entire system of 'sylphs', or guardian spirits of virgins, a parodic version of the gods and goddess of conventional epic." 72.60.88.172 06:40, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I find the writing of this article convoluted with unnessecarily long sentences. They confuse rather than inform, not due to their content, but their rambling length. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.109.240.19 (talk • contribs) 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * ...wow, definitely agreed. I wonder if someone who wrote this felt like satirizing literary interpretation... I'll fix it up when I have the time. Hbackman 02:15, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

As Pope was trying to reconcile the families, naturally he would try to play down the theft of hair into something harmless. 13:07, 1 July 2018 (UTC)Seadowns (talk)

Removed text
I was cleaning the article up a bit and removed the following text:


 * Pope could be criticizing the over-reaction of contemporary society to trivial things.


 * What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
 * What mighty contests rise from trivial things
 * &mdash; Canto I


 * While describing the flamboyance of contemporary society in epic terms does ironically juxtapose the extreme triviality of this situation with the seemingly more grave situations of classical epic heroes, it is also possible that Pope was implying that within the constraints of the contemporary Beau Monde, it was equally heroic, for example, for a woman to succeed in life by marrying well, or for a suitor to attain his goal.

I removed it because I felt that it was a couple of paragraphs of close reading/literary interpretation that didn't do much for the article as a whole. Maybe it just needed some transitionary material...? If someone wants it back in and can make it fit smoothly into the article, I'm fine with that.

Hbackman 00:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

in which canto the lock of the melinda's hair are cut what was going on at th time ?
in which canto the lock of the melinda's hair are cut what was going on at th time ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.198.5.171 (talk) 13:06, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Clarissa
Can anyone add an explanation of who Clarissa was, and what might be the signifcance of her speech on Good Humor? 70.179.92.117 (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

autumns column
The rape of the lock was enjoyable to read but as the original discussion mentioned it does trivialize what a horrific thing rape actually is, and if analyzed from a modern feminist perspective it is awful and chauvinistic. It was originally written to help pacify friends of Pope at the request of one of his teachers. His friends had undergone a similar situation of what happens in the mock epic and Pope was assigned to ease the tensions between the two parties by trivializing the matter in this mock epic. However I would argue that the girl that this actually happened to had every right to be angered. For a woman to give a lock of her hair usually signified her giving her love, for a man to simply steal a lock of hair is similar to his forcibly taking her love. It really is a rape of sorts to force love on someone even if it is not in a physical way. Pope’s mock epic does try to trivialize the matter by exaggerate it to such extremes. It is amusing to imagine Belinda being so angered and attacking the Baron with such intensity that it causes the whale bones of her corset to crack, but why should we as the reader find this as an over the top absurd reaction? I think that Belinda or rather the person Belinda is modeled after has every right to be angry, perhaps a violent reaction is not fully appropriate, but it would be perfectly appropriate if it was an actual physical rape. So I wonder why is her anger not acceptable in this symbolic rape? Regardless of whether or not her anger to this extent is fully appropriate or not Pope still does a terrible thing by trivializing the very idea of rape and the horrors it can cause.


 * The word "rape" does not refer to sexual violation. It means "theft", from the latin for "to take away". Paul B (talk) 20:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I think Pope is a bit deeper than some realise. Perhaps he gave his readers a little too much credit for their ability to read his meanings. In this poem there is emphasis on the four elements, recalling the famous doctrines of Empedocles. Empedocles regarded the world as the four elements governed by Love and Strife (philotes kai neikos}, which Pope mentions specifically in his Temple of Fame. In the Rape, the characters, especially perhaps Belinda, incline towards strife rather than love. As a little example, she chooses spades for trumps, spades being swords, or "spade" in Italian. She could have chosen hearts. She could have taken the seizure of the lock lovingly, but she chooses the opposite. Pope's ostensible purpose was to replace strife bettween the families with love, saying, like Queen Anne in his Windsor Forest, "Let Discord cease' (words borrowed from Creech's Manilius), though no doubt he also realised that he had created a work of exceptional brilliance that would advance his own fame. I sometimes also wonder if he considered the loss of some hairs as absurdly trivial compared to his own bodily state. Seadowns (talk) 20:22, 21 February 2017 (UTC) Seadowns (talk) 15:20, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

I would add that the title echoes the title of the poem "the Rape of Helen". That "rape" led to the great Trojan war, whereas the rape of Belinda's lock led to a drawing-room brawl. It is all part of the parody. If feminists don't like the poem, too bad: it remains a masterpiece. Seadowns (talk) 22:25, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Mrs. Nickleby's plotting to test Frank Cheeryble's intentions about her daughter, Kate.
It seems inspired by Rape of the Lock. Any thoughts? Porric25 (talk) 15:20, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

The Rape of the Bucket
Ping @Johnbod; @Tim riley. I 've requested clarification regarding some of the content introduced in this gf edit (by Sweetpool50), and (while I'm no expert :) I've tried to provide (here) some reliably-sourced chronological context. Please note that per multiple secondary (and primary) sources, Ozell's translation dates back to 1710. 86.177.202.247 (talk) 15:52, 20 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I was alerted to the changes made by @86.177.202.247 and was in the process of correcting my edit when he immediately reverted it, disregarding WP:BRD. The original inclusion of a section on The Rape of the Bucket was not mine and it has struck me since that much there was WP:OFFTOPIC, especially since there is now an article on La secchia rapita which gives more context. Pope's political differences with Ozell are beside the point in this article, as is an extended consideration of the difference between Tassoni's and Boileau's poems - better suited to the article on the mock-heroic genre, perhaps, since Tasssoni's poem is also mentioned there. Sweetpool50 (talk) 20:34, 20 March 2024 (UTC)


 * {Sigh}. For the sake of clarity, based on this hefty diff (+3,605) (already cited above), I struggle to understand Sweetpool50's assertion above that The original inclusion of a section on The Rape of the Bucket was not mine.... Remarkably, that original addition of content (which seems to have remained substantially unchanged until I came across it today) actually began by focusing on Pope's political differences with Ozell: "Although John Ozell and Pope belonged to different political factions and later exchanged bitter insults..."


 * FWIW, I have no attachment to the clumsy way this section is presented: I have just tried today to rectify *some* of the multiple editorial issues introduced in that opaquely sourced (WP:OR?) addition of content, including (but not limited to) factually incorrect/confusing information such as the implication that Ozell's translation was [first] "published the following year", i.e. 1713 (rather than 1710), and that the occurrence of the two publications "at about the same time"[?] was necessarily a "coincidence". 86.177.202.247 (talk) 21:45, 20 March 2024 (UTC)