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Character of Belinda in the light of morning dream and toilet scene
Sometime during the summer of 1711, the circle of prominent Catholic families in the
home counties was disturbed by the rash act of Robert, 7th Lord Petre, in removing
part of her coiffure from a famous beauty, Arabella Fermor
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A common acquaintance and well wisher to both families, John Caryll, an
intimate friend of Alexander Pope, desired him to write a poem to make a jest of it and
laugh them together again
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The characters of a mock-heroic poem are necessarily caricatures of familiar social
times, rather than sharply individualized life-like personalities
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Though the characters of The Rape of the Lock were derived from
contemporary society, Pope had to pine explaining in his prefatory epistle to Arabella,
the historical origin of his Belinda
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The societ,y in
which the poem is wrought is patriarchan, where women's position is clearly defined
with restraints but Pope’s “Belinda“ tries to transcend them
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The poem lacks sweetness as Pope
himself declares the purpose of the poem “is to laugh at the little unguarded follies of
the female sex”
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The Rape of the Lock introduces the readers to a typically little world of fashions and
frivolities, obsessed with its gaity, dressing, flirting, card-playing in the old London of
Queen Anne
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She is
the pivot around whom the gay world of vanity and luxury move with its show men and
women, leading lives of ostentatious dainties
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Pope
suggests that the sun recognises in Belinda “the rival of his beams” and fear her
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The brilliance of her eyes makes the sun rays shy
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Belinda's comparison to the sun again occurs in the poem, in the opening of Canto 2
,where we find an instance of Elizabethan hyperbole
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She is like the sun not only because of her bright eyes and domination over
her special world, but because of her generous munificence, with which she “shine[s]
on all alike”
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She is a coquette who desires to be admired
but is never willing to give her heart to anyone
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Belinda rises from slumber, like
“sleepless lovers” who spends sleepless nights, at midday, rings her hand bell thrice to
call her maids at her service and strikes a slipper against the floor impatient not getting
any response
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Waking up so late
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Pope here suggests that this is not merely
her laziness but the pervading influence of a Guardian Sylph, Ariel, who “prolong’d the
balmy rest”
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Ariel lowers his seductive lips on her ear and

whispers as in illusion
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The situation is reminiscent of Milton's Satan
injecting into the ears of Eve seeds of temptation
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Belinda is always made conscious of her power as a great beauty by Ariel, to rejuvenate
her Pride each time
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Ariel manipulates this immaturity of hers and urges her to give him a
heedful ear, if ever a vision, touched her pure thought of infancy, of the tales that
nurses and priests, the chief inlets of superstition, had taught about fairies in
moonlight, leaving silver coins in the slippers of dutiful servants to keep their house
clean and enclosures where fairies danced at night, or about virgins being visited by
angel powers (an illusion when Mother Mary was attended by angels to deliver that she
was to be the Christ’s mother)
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Ariel makes sure that Belinda is not sceptical about the angelical
powers, for it is to those pure and virtuous- “To Maids alone and Children” do the airy
spirits reveal some surreptitious truths which learned Wits doubt
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Ariel pierces into her mind, her
importance, such that innumerable aerial spirits forming a “light Militia”, though
unseen, always attend on her, some guarding her in the Opera, others her carriage ride
in Hyde Park
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Pope acquaints us of the transmigration of soul as found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
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Pope frivolously suggests here that with death, people's vanity do
not die out
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When

women die, they are reduced to the four elements- fire, air, earth and water
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The
women of affected modesty who do not marry to retain purity, become Gnomes
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Ariel
informs Belinda that whoever fair and chaste, do not respond or submit to the
advances of men and reject men’s offers of love, are always guarded by sylphs, in the
shape of men, for spirits once freed from terrestrial bonds, can assume any sex or
shape they want
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Ariel gives Belinda a proper
understanding of how important he is in her life
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But here too, men take up the credit of saving the maiden through their “Honour”
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Aerial reaches the summit of exaggeration
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But
the gnomes misguide them by giving the girls high expectation of extravagant
marriages, intensifying their pride
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For Ariel, it is the sole monopoly of Belinda, to reject
proposals but for lesser beauties, they must accept them as chances never come back
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According to Ariel, if a female soul is tempted too early “to roll”
their eyes, to blush by putting on mere embellishments like rouge, to fly at a Beau, a

fashionable gallant, she runs the risk of losing her chastity, if under the influence of a
gnome
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Ariel explains the weakness of women as there is no lady
who does not surrender her virtue to a new lover, unless that is counteracted by a
dance party arranged by a previous love
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Pope has exercised an excellent
metonymy in objectifying men of vanity to trivialize them, “wigs with wigs”, “with swordknots sword-knots strive”
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Ariel suddenly leaps up with his
identity to be the one of the guardian spirit, “A watchful sprite”, Ariel by name
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Ariel breaks his
spell in Belinda's dream with a last warning to “Beware of all” but most “Man”
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Her eyes first opens on a Billetdoux, the first love letter she had
received, full of conventional sighs and warmth of feelings
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Each of the Silver vases carrying powder, lay arranged in a mysterious way, known to
ladies only, as if it were a place of worship
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Belinda is the chief priestess who adores her “heav’nly Image” in the mirror,
the Goddess who is no one else but she
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The
violation of logic involved is intended, as Belinda is a goddess who puts on her divinity
at her dressing table and the paradox is that she is simultaneously the sincere devotee
and divinity herself
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In the 18th century thought, Pride remained the first of sins; by making it
sacred Belinda is obviously guilty of a serious moral fault
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One casket exposes “India's glowing Gems”, the other
perfumes of Arabia and Tortoise and Elephant after undergoing a small Ovidian
metamorphosis, is transformed to her combs
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The spacious
world enters her dressing room only in a serviceable and diminished form
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” The expansion of small into vast is effected in the pins
extending into “shining rows” or files of soldiers
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Belinda’s
beauty and charm are calculated
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She gradually arouses a purer blush ,
which might not be ironical to mean impurer but maybe a blush recollected in
tranquility, thus purer than that spontaneously overflowing with emotion, and keener
flash in her eyes as part of her defence mechanism before combating with the
handsome beaus
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When Belinda moves in her pleasure boat on Thames, she reminds us of the power of
Cleopatra's beauty in the barge on the Niles
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Pope here does not miss the chance to have an
indirect dig on flirtatious men
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Belinda nourishes her two

locks, gracefully hung in equal curls, to the “Destruction of Mankind”
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Belinda’s hair, though slender, has such a potency that they imprison the mighty hearts
of infatuated lovers in its labyrinthine convolutions
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Men, supposed to be a stronger sex, more imperial of human
race, are all ensnared by a single hair of Belinda
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Belinda’s smile makes all the world “gay”
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Belinda
has got all her priorities wrong
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It gives
her her retinue of airy guardians
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It's very fragility is part of its charm
and Pope becomes symbolist in suggesting it
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He also hints
similarly that honour is something pretty, airy, fluid to the sylphs so they haste to
protect it
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There can be no doubt after reading the poem that Pope had a special power of
observing the little weaknesses in all persons, specially women of rank and fashion
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But
Pope's attitude towards Belinda is highly ambiguous and complex
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There is indeed
something lovable and endearing in her character which no irony can entirely

undermine
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