I always enjoy a good satire and The Rape of the Lock is no exception. What I really liked about this was the way Pope incorporates the spirits. Pope claims that these spirits are behind every human action and so he shows them involved in everyday tasks. For example, he describes the way Belinda gets ready in the morning as orchestrated entirely by the several spirits. This was a fun part to read but the part I really enjoyed was Pope’s description of the card game. He lays it out as a dramatic battle. I know it’s not the same game, but all I could think about was the card game War. Reading the way Pope writes the tale of the card battle, I can see why this poem is considered a type of epic. It certainly is reminiscent of the Iliad.
In addition to making his poem epic, Pope’s incorporation of the spirits into every part of life gives an element of ritual to everything. Belinda’s vanity/dresser is shown as a type of altar. Not only that but Pope describes the man who wants Belinda’s lock as creating a shrine to Love and praying to it. This is where the satire is most evident. Clearly nobody really saw their morning routine or their thoughts of women to be a religious practice. And yet Pope presents these and other everyday actions as such to point out the ridiculous amount of time and effort his society was putting into them.
I wasn't going to include this, but I'm actually curious if anyone has any insight into this. I noticed that the main spirit is named Ariel. This is the same name as a sprite/fairy in Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Do you think this is significant? Did Pope want to be associated with Shakespeare? Or was this just a typical name for fairies/sprites/spirits?
P.S. I commented on Rachael’s and Jamie’s posts
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