Belinda’s lock of hair comes to symbolize the absurdity of the importance afforded to female beauty in society. Pope offers a hyperbolically metaphorical description of the two locks in Canto II, humorously framing the locks as alluring enough to virtually incapacitate any man who looks at them. The locks are “labyrinths” in which Love “detains” “his slaves” by binding their hears with “slender chains,” thus poking fun at the idea that Belinda’s beauty is truly powerful enough to make such a deep impact. This absurdity only grows as the poem progresses and after the Baron has snipped of Belinda’s lock. Under the influence of Umbriel, Thalestris laments the loss of the lock as the symbolic loss of Belinda’s reputation in society, exclaiming, “Methinks already I your tears survey, / Already hear the horrid things they say.” In Pope’s day, the respectability of a woman in society depended upon her having a spotless reputation and being perfectly virtuous, and, in particular, sexually pure. Thalestris then is essentially saying that the loss of Belinda’s lock is a rupture which damages all of the rest of her beauty, and the Baron’s having taken it in so intimate a fashion compromises the idea that she is chaste, and that people will think she in some way allowed him to violate her body. Obviously, this makes very little sense, allowing Pope to satirize the idea that beauty and virtue are so closely related. The lock’s final ascension into the heavens is the most absurd part of the whole thing, and Pope’s choice to cap off the whole poem with the transparently silly idea that the lock is too precious to remain on earth, that no mortal deserves to be so “blest” as to possess it, emphasizes the ridiculous amount of emphasis placed on female beauty in society.
COURTESY: www.litcharts.com
No comments:
Post a Comment