The Rape of the Lock: Canto I Summary & Analysis

This opening invocation of the Muse, a goddess of art and poetry, is a convention of epic poetry and thus establishes the poem’s mock epic style. The reference to “Caryl,” representing Pope’s real friend John Caryll, links the fictional world to the real incident which inspired Pope’s writing.

In this scene, when the sylph whispers into Belinda’s ear, he uncomfortably echoes Satan in Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” who tempts Eve “Squat like a Toad, close at the ear of Eve;/ Assaying by his Devilish art to reach/ The Organs of her Fancy.” This suggests that there is something devilish about sylphs, as does the sylph sending Belinda a tempting vision of a handsome young man when he’s meant to be protecting her chastity. The manner with which women’s souls are sorted into four crude categories (which distinguish between attractive women and unattractive women, or prudes and “coquettes”) also introduces the pressures that Pope’s world puts on women to be considered desirable.

The idea that some women are forced into ruin because of the influence of the gnomes and the idea that the sylphs are able to treat the human heart like a plaything (a “toyshop”) casts doubt on the freewill of the people in the poem. It is never completely clear to what extent the characters are in control and to what extent they are subject to supernatural influence. This in turn makes it tricky to judge their actions. Additionally, the lines “Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive, / Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive” deliberately echo Pope’s own translation of the Iliad, in which he writes that “Now Shield with Shield, with Helmet Helmet clos’d, / To Armour Armour, Lance to Lance oppos’d.” This direct verbal echo draws a comparison between the life-and-death struggles of epic poems like the Iliad and the triviality of life at court.

Ariel shares his name with the trickster spirit Shakespeare depicts in The Tempest, which suggests to the reader that he is likely similarly mischievous. His warning to Belinda emphasizes the importance of chastity in her world, in turn highlighting the restrictive standards of female sexuality of Pope’s day.

Belinda’s ability to quickly forget Ariel’s message as she reads her love letters points to her sense of vanity, happy to put all else out of her mind when she is reading people praise her.

This description of Belinda’s dressing routine echoes the convention in epic poetry of having a scene in which the hero is dressed in his armor. Transforming the armor scene into a dressing scene emphasizes how low the stakes are here; she’s not preparing for war, she’s preparing to socialize. The religious imagery also makes a witty moral judgement on these “rites of pride,” suggesting that the vanity at their heart is not compatible with Christian values.

This passage once again emphasizes the absurdity of Belinda’s vanity by showing just how many fancy grooming items she needs. In addition, her exotic items point to a broader trend in this period of colonialism giving the British control over other countries. When Pope describes a box of Arabian perfumes as “all Arabia,” he is making it seem like Belinda herself is a great conqueror of these foreign lands, and thus he highlights the self-importance associated with her beauty. The mention of “bibles” jumbled in with a slew of trivial items like “Puffs” and “powders” shows how Belinda has come to regard the process of beautifying herself as being just as important as her religious duties. Meanwhile, the fact that the sylphs are able to work secretly so that Betty’s work is no longer really her own once again casts doubt on the extent to which the poem’s characters truly are responsible for their actions.