This Blog is Written In response of the thinking activity on Alexander Pope's 'The Rape of The Lock' given by Vaidehi Ma'am At the Department of English, MKBU.
'The Rape of The Lock
The Rape of the Lock was written by Alexander Pope and first published in 1712, then reworked and published again in 1714. The poem is a mock-epic that satirises the upper-class in London at the time. The story focuses on the central character, Belinda, whose lock of hair is cut off at a social gathering.
1.) According to you, who is the protagonist of the poem Clarissa or Belinda? Why? Give your answer with logical reasons.
The whole poem is written surrounding the character of Belinda and the incident of cutting the Lock of Her hair so it is Clear that the Character of Belinda is the main character of the poem indeed. The canto 1 of the poem deals with description of the beauty of Belinda and throughout the poem the focus is on the character of Belinda. However the character of Belinda is Somewhat hypocritical and representative of most of the women and the high class life of England. On the other hand there is the character of Clarissa that seems to be realist and intelligent. She has the speech in the canto five and in it speaks about how physical beauty is ultimately fleeting and that instead women should concentrate on being as morally upright as they possibly can, but even though she becomes sideline the ultimate focus stays with Belinda, so it seems that even though she is somewhat better in understanding and realist the main character or protagonist is still Belinda.
2.) What is beauty? Write your views about it.
Beauty is something that is discovered, when we find something that is pleasing to our eyes or to our mind then we consider it as Beautiful. So in that sense beauty is not just outer thing but also inner, but the inner beauty is not easy to discover as we can see the outer beauty. When we see something that is beautiful from the outside, then we will like it, but eventually it will lose its importance as we discover other beautiful things. Same goes for the people that we consider beautiful will lose importance as we find other beautiful people.
The inner beauty works in a different way. Inner beauty is hard to find in people or the thing and as we get to know about it more and more, we become addicted to it.
3.) Find out a research paper on "The Rape of the Lock". Give the details of the paper and write down in brief what it says about the Poem by Alexander Pope.
DEPICTION OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE IN THE RAPE OF THE LOCK
This research paper is written by Dr. GEORGE KOLANCHERY
in this research paper he talks about
‘The Rape of the Lock’ – a Mirror of the Age
'The Rape of the Lock' as The Frivolities of Womenfolk
Hollowness of the Gentlemen of the Day
4.) Write your views about the significance of hair. Is it symbolic?
As a man i can say that the importance of heir is trivial and as Carissa says in her Speech the women should focus on being morally upright, but that does not change the importance of the heir for women as the world first see the beauty and than discover the morels so it was important in the time of pope and in present that women must look beautiful. So, the lock of the heir Does hold importance. And if we talk about Belinda the lock of hair held great importance, and that was her lock of hair, and cut by Beron without permission so it was something that we can not look down, even if it was a trivial matter, even it was the part of outer beauty, it was Belinda's Hair and cutting it without her concern was a act like crime.
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