Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Rape of the Lock, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Triviality of Court Life
Beauty vs. Poetry
Gender
Religion and Morality
Summary
Analysis
The boat arrives at Hampton Court, where Queen Anne takes counsel “and sometimes tea.” The ladies and gentlemen disperse to enjoy the pleasures of a day at court—namely, gossiping with one another about everything from social engagements to the Queen to the décor. At “every word a reputation dies.” This is all happening while the governmental functions of the court continue, somewhat hurriedly, as they are about to halt for lunch. The “hungry judges” quickly sign sentences and people condemned to death are hanged at the gallows so their jurors can eat sooner.
This passage highlights the triviality of the world of the court. When Pope shows Queen Anne taking both counsel and tea, he comically mixes serious business with leisure. He also highlights this mixture in his description of the inane chattering of the lords and ladies, which nonetheless leads to the death of reputations. The darker side of this mixing of personal pleasure and serious business is revealed in the judges’ hastily condemning people to death in order that they may eat sooner, demonstrating that this is a place in which personal greed is placed above justice or empathy.
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Belinda sits down to a game of ombre with two gentlemen “to decide their doom” and arranges her cards. The sylphs glide down to perch upon the cards, their rank corresponding to the card value, apparently because their female vanity and love of social rank lives on.
The word “doom” continues Pope’s pattern of treating the events at court with exaggerated seriousness for comic effect, emphasizing their triviality. The sylphs’ love of social rank on account of their once being society belles satirizes the triviality of court life further by mocking its love of rank.
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Belinda’s cards “Draw forth to combat,” and she declares that spades will be trumps. At the beginning of the game, things are going well for Belinda as she plays her strongest cards. Her first card, the “Spadillo,” “Led off two captive trumps and swept the board.” Her next card, the “manillo,” is just as successful, but her third card, the “basto,” is less successful and only gains one trump card and one “plebian” card. But she then plays the King of Spades, which proves to be a very successful move. Thus far Belinda is winning.
Epic poetry always features spectacular battles, usually great clashes between civilizations involving both mortals and gods. Pope’s description of the “combat” of the card game offers a parodic imitation of this sort of epic struggle, though of course it is significantly less impressive, which in turn emphasizes the silliness and self-importance of life at court.
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Then the Baron begins to dominate the game. His Queen of Spades beats her King of Clubs, and then he plays his high diamond cards, creating such an upset on the table that the “pierced battalions dis-united fall.” He even wins Belinda’s Queen of Hearts with his Knave of Spades, and she fears she is about to lose. However, he plays his Ace and, to his surprise, she plays the King of Hearts, meaning that she wins.
Here Pope continues his comic treatment of the card game as a satirically poor stand-in for an epic battle, as demonstrated by his description of the “pierced battalions.” The fierce struggle between the Baron and Belinda also foreshadows the later tension between the two, as each struggles to dominate the other.
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As Belinda celebrates her success, the narrative voice laments how little mortals know of the future and the disaster that is to come on this “victorious day” when Belinda’s “honors” will be “snatched away.”
This parodies the convention in epic poetry of receiving a warning in a moment of pride. The mention of Belinda’s lost “honors” is also of note, as it sounds as if she will lose her virginity (and with it her reputation), though it is not clear yet what is actually going to happen to her.
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Coffee is served on the “altars of Japan” and on “China’s earth.” The coffee sends up steam which heads to the Baron’s brain and reminds him of his plan to steal Belinda’s lock, even though the narrative voice once again wishes he would stop before it’s too late, and urges him to think of “Scylla’s fate.”
Exotic items make a reappearance, highlighting the pompous colonialism of people at court. Pope’s description of the tea serving makes it sound as if these ridiculous characters control all the “altars of Japan” and “China’s earth,” when they really only have access to a couple of Japanese trays and some Chinese tea. Meanwhile, the narrative voice’s warning to the Baron to think of “Syclla’s fate” once again comically compares the high stakes of classical literature with the low stakes of the present situation, as Scylla was changed into a bird forever after she plucked one of her father’s hairs, a magical hair on which his power depended.
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Just at that moment, Clarissa pulls out a pair of scissors, and offers them to the Baron like a lady in a courtly romance arming a knight with his weapon. The Baron moves to chop off the lock. Suddenly, all the sylphs hurry to Belinda’s neck and attempt to fiddle with her hair and twist her earring three times to get her attention. But each time, the Baron slips away and then comes back again.
Here the comparison Pope makes between the Baron and an honorable knight from a romance emphasizes the Baron’s own self-serving form of masculinity in contrast to a knight’s brave service on behalf of others. Instead of defending ladies, the Baron seeks to steal from and humiliate them.
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Ariel accesses Belinda’s inner thoughts, but—to his shock—finds “An earthly lover lurking there.” This resigns him to the loss of the lock. The Baron snips it off.
Pope’s narration here is a little opaque, but what has happened is that Ariel has discovered that Belinda’s thoughts are not as chaste as he would wish, and so he allows the Baron to snip off the lock. It seems that Ariel feels that Belinda either deserves or wishes to be violated, particularly since the snipping of the lock has sexual undertones. This emphasizes the extreme restrictions this world places on female sexuality, where Belinda’s private thoughts—not even her actions—can result in punishment for being too sexual. This also highlights the fickleness of Ariel’s character, as in Canto I he tempts her mind with the vision of the young man, but now he judges her for her sexually-charged thoughts and abandons her.
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A sylph gets caught in the way and gets cut in half by the scissors, but he quickly recovers as “airy substance soon unites again.” Belinda cries out in horror while the Baron shouts out his victory. The narrative voice muses on how little chance the lock had against the scissors, since steel “could the labor of the gods destroy, / And strike to dust the imperial towers of Troy.”
This passage echoes Book VI of Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which the archangels battle against Satan. The humorous contrast between the incredibly high-stakes battle and the relatively low-stakes hair snipping emphasizes the triviality of courtly life. In particular, the verbal echo in question (“airy substance soon unites again”) recalls Satan’s being stabbed with a sword (“but th' Ethereal substance clos'd / Not long divisible”). This once again draws a comparison between the role of Satan and the role of the sylphs, calling their motivation into question.
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