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
Belinda is still quite upset about the loss of her lock, and her frustration and despair are deeper and more consuming than the despair of “ardent lovers robbed of all their bliss” and “tyrants fierce that unrepenting die.” In this moment, the sylphs leave her.
The comparison between Belinda’s melodramatic despair and the despair of people enduring much greater suffering than a bad haircut once again emphasizes the silliness of what’s going on. The fact that the sylphs, guardians of beautiful virgins, now leave her reinforces the idea that there is a sense in which the Baron has metaphorically sexually violated her, making her no longer a virgin.
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Umbriel, the gnome, a “dusky melancholy sprite,” appears and descends to the subterranean Cave of Spleen. When he first enters, he encounters the personified East wind languishing on a bed, away from the rays of the sun, with a migraine.
Many epics include a descent into the underworld, for example Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid. Here Umbriel echoes that descent as he flies down to the Cave of Spleen, a kind of hell of female bodily dysfunction, as shown by the East wind’s painful migraine, (as the wind was historically thought to be the source of migraines).
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As he moves deeper into the Cave, Umbriel sees the Queen of Spleen’s two handmaids—Ill-Nature and Affectation. Ill-Nature is a withered old maid in a dress of black and white, with a heart full of spite for others. Affectation is youthful and sickly, and has been taught to speak with a lisp and to hang her head to the side. She is richly dressed, languishing on expensive bedding.
The Cave of Spleen acts as kind of a dark mirror for the lively court above and offers a grotesque glimpse of what happens to the women who are excluded from court life on account of failing to be youthful and beautiful society belles. Ill-Nature is thus depicted as a kind of social outcast, an old and unmarried woman, while Affectation represents the worst excesses of put-on femininity, a belle gone too far, whose unattractive lisping and hanging her head to the side is designed to strike the viewer as helpless and who may be surrounded by the comforts of wealth but is still sickly.
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Umbriel continues through the Cave. A strange vapor hangs in the air, out of which strange shapes arise. These include women who are “expiring,” “glaring fiends,” “snakes,” “Pale spectres,” “gaping tombs,” “lakes of liquid gold” and “angels in machines.” There are also various bodies warped by the powers of spleen on all sides, including “living teapots,” men who are pregnant, and women who have been transformed into bottles and call out for corks. Umbriel passes along safely, holding a piece of “spleenwort” in his hand.
In Pope’s time, the spleen—an organ—was believed to send up vapors to the brain which induced hysteria and neurosis, as mirrored in the presence of the strange vapor which hangs in the air of the cave. But the effects of spleen were also believed to include various forms of sexual dysfunction. So, fittingly the cave includes women with distinctly unladylike sexual appetites, those who are “expiring” (a term used to mean both death and orgasm), and women transformed into bottles calling out for phallic corks. These, in conjunction with the pregnant men, represent a hellish vision of the utter violation of the gendered rules of the world above.
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Eventually Umbriel reaches the Queen of Spleen herself. He hails her as the ruler of women between the ages of 15 and 50, making them either hysterical and ill or making them frantically attempt to compose poetry and plays. Umbriel explains that there is a beautiful woman who enjoys herself too much and looks down on the Queen’s powers, and he cites his past services for her, mentioning ruining women’s complexions, bringing about cuckoldry, rumpling up petticoats and bedding to make it seem like illicit sexual encounters have taken place where they haven’t, messing up a prude’s headdress, and killing a beloved lapdog. He then asks her to touch Belinda with “chagrin,” as this one act will create a great deal of discord.
That the Queen of Spleen influences women aged 15 to 50 (the years in which women typically menstruate) reinforces the idea that spleen is closely tied to sexual dysfunction. Meanwhile, Umbriel’s list of ways he has interfered with mortals once again highlights the extent to which mortals in the poem are not totally responsible for their actions. While society likely judged these women for their bad complexions or adulterous affairs, it’s suggested here that, since Umbriel is actually to blame, these women cannot be judged for their actions.
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Although it seems like the Queen of Spleen will reject Umbriel’s request, she does grant it. She binds together a bag for him like the one in which, according to myth, Ulysses once held the winds. This bag contains “the force of female lungs, / Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues.” She also gives him a vial which holds “fainting fears, / Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears.” He is overjoyed and speeds back to the world above ground.
“Ulysses” is the Latin name for Odysseus, so here Pope is referencing a scene from Homer’s Odyssey, in which Odysseus receives the winds from Aeolus. This continues the mock epic style of the narration, which comically draws a contrast between the lofty and high stakes world of epic poetry and the triviality of this poem’s own narrative.
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When Umbriel returns, he finds Belinda in the arms of Thalestris, a lady at court, who is lamenting the lock’s loss. She asks if it was for this that Belinda took such pains with her hair, doing everything from using “torturing irons” to straining her “tender head” with “fillets.” She worries that the Baron will put the lock on display for everyone to see and that Belinda’s reputation will be ruined. She further worries that being Belinda’s friend will reflect badly on her, and even that the Baron will have the lock placed in the center of a ring and display it on his hand for the rest of time.
Thalestris’ melodramatic description of all the pains Belinda has taken to perfect her hairdo, including “torturing irons” and “fillets,” suggests the absurd importance of beauty at the court. She thinks of Belinda as having bravely and dutifully carried out these painful rituals and attributes that to virtue, rather than vanity.
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Thalestris goes to her suitor Lord Plume, who is apparently particularly proud of his expensive snuff box and fashionable cane. He confronts the Baron and demands that he return the lock to Belinda, but the Baron refuses. He says that although it is a pity that Sir Plume speaks so finely in vain, he will not give up the lock while he breathes air through his nostrils.
Lord Plume’s name recalls the word “plume,” meaning a decorative feather (like a peacock’s). Coupled with the details of his fancy snuff box and cane, he forms a parodic portrait of a vain male courtier, a counterpart to the vanity of the ladies at court.
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Umbriel is not satisfied, however, and breaks the vial of “sorrows” over Belinda, who appears dejected. She gives a speech about how she wishes she had never tasted the pleasures of court and had stayed at home instead. She insists that the day was full of bad omens, including her dropping her “patch box” three times, “The tottering china shook without a wind,” and Shock behaving unusually. She even remembers that a sylph warned her that a disaster was to come, but that she didn’t understand until it was too late. She wishes to tear off the remaining lock, feeling that it “tempts once more” the Baron’s “sacrilegious hands.”
Umbriel’s pouring the vial of “sorrows” over Belinda means she is not totally responsible for her actions—a recurring problem in the poem, since mortals are influenced by supernatural forces. It is thus difficult to tell if she really means anything she says about wishing she had been more modest and stayed away from the glamorous court. The mention of omens also ties into the mock epic style, trivially parodying the serious warnings of the gods in epic poems with the mention of totally banal events like Belinda’s dropping her “patch box” or her china shaking.
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