Gender Theme Analysis

Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” follows a beautiful but vain young woman named Belinda, who loses a lock of her remarkable hair to a nobleman known as the Baron. Belinda’s furious reaction allows Pope to poke fun at her vanity. But it is also possible to read the poem as largely sympathetic to Belinda as a figure whose concern for her looks stems from the pressure put on her by a patriarchal society. Pope goes on to further defend the intellectual and moral authority of his female characters through the wisdom of Clarissa’s speech, demonstrating female intellect and moral authority. He furthermore questions the wisdom of such a patriarchal system by critiquing the Baron’s behavior as fundamentally immoral and that of his fellow male courtiers as foolish or at least as vain as their female counterparts, allowing him to suggest that such a patriarchal society is both unfair and misguided.

It is important to note that Pope was writing in a time when women were generally believed to be the intellectual and moral inferiors of men, and on the one hand the poem seems to support the idea that Belinda’s only real value stems from her beauty. For example, in Canto II, when Belinda’s beauty is adored by all around her, the narrative voice notes that “If to her share some female errors fall, / Look on her face, and you’ll forget ’em all.” This not only suggests that any moral failings she might have are on account of the fact that she is “female,” but also that society judges her worth not through her morality but her beauty, as these “female errors” are forgotten as soon as you “Look on her face.” The implication here is that society expects women to be beautiful to compensate for their perceived inability to be as virtuous as their male counterparts.

But Pope is perhaps more empathetic to Belinda than it might first appear, and he gives her a degree of moral authority, too. Traditionally, the protagonists of epic are male, with women as secondary figures who exist only to support or impede the men. So Pope’s treatment of Belinda as a kind of epic hero in her own right, relegating the male characters to secondary figures, in itself can be read as a radical interest in female concerns. Pope also perhaps implicitly acknowledges that, while Belinda’s focus on her appearance isn’t exactly virtuous, it’s at least understandable. The Cave of Spleen, a kind of parodic idea of hell filled with female hysteria and bodily disfunction, offers a dark mirror of the world of the court, and is the only place in the poem where the reader encounters females who fall foul of the standard of beauty at court. Here Pope includes horrifying twisted images of courtly women who are no longer considered beautiful, youthful or healthy enough to remain there, such as the figures of “Ill-nature,” “ancient” and “wrinkled,” and “sickly” “Affectation.” This suggests that in a way, Belinda’s interest in her looks is completely justifiable, and even advisable, as it clearly is her most valuable asset in a world where the worst kinds of monsters are unattractive women. In this way, Belinda’s vanity isn’t a reflection on her own immorality, but rather a reflection of the superficiality of the world she lives in.

Furthermore, Clarissa’s speech at the end of the poem is an excellent example of how Pope is able to subvert contemporary expectations of women. Countering the idea that women lack intellectual and moral authority, Clarissa, a woman, gives the most lucid speech in the poem which counters the idea that all women have to offer is their beauty. She argues that “Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul”—in other words, that physical beauty may be superficially attractive, but moral worth is in truth more valuable—and that women should devote their efforts to being the best moral beings they can be. In doing so, she essentially proves the thesis of her speech, demonstrating her intellectual and moral sensitivity as she lays out such an intelligent and thoughtful argument.

In addition to showing the female characters’ virtue and intellect, Pope’s treatment of the male characters suggests a deep skepticism about their moral and intellectual integrity. For example, Pope depicts the Baron’s theft of Belinda’s lock of hair as immoral. While it is worth understanding that, at the time, the word “rape” was typically used to refer to robbery or plundering (rather than to explicitly describe a non-consensual sex act), Pope is still casting moral judgment on the Baron’s unfair acquisition of the lock simply by calling it a “rape,” since the word still connotes the taking of something unfairly or even violently. Furthermore, it is worth noting that some of the male characters introduced in the courtly battle in Canto V, such as “Dapperwit” and “Sir Fopling,” are given parodic aristocratic names, both of which suggest undue attention to one’s appearance (if someone is “dapper” they are well turned-out; a fop was a trifling and vain young man). This in turn suggests that they are relatively insubstantial figures with little moral value, allowing Pope to poke fun at the values of the male aristocratic class, the so-called moral and intellectual leaders of his time.

By showing the poem’s men to be vain and immoral, while showing the women—whom society would have automatically considered to be vain and immoral because of their gender—as actually being clearheaded and virtuous, Pope seems to be expressing skepticism about the merit of 18th-century gender relations. After all, if men have all the power, but women are smarter and more virtuous, then the dominant social order seems deeply unfair.