without permission.

One of the most important aspects of Homeric epics—such as the Iliad and the Odyssey—is the interference of the gods in the affairs of mankind. Canto I of Pope's comic epic introduces us to the world of Belinda, a world of luxury and refinement, and, most importantly, the "gods"—primarily, the Sylphs, Nymphs, and Gnomes who watch over Belinda (and all women). While Belinda is sleeping, for example, a Sylph prolongs her sleep:

19 Belinda still her downy pillow press'd,

20 Her guardian sylph prolong'd the balmy rest:

21 'Twas he had summon'd to her silent bed

22 The morning dream that hover'd o'er her head;

23 A youth more glitt'ring than a birthnight beau.

71 What guards the purity of melting maids, 72 In courtly balls, and midnight masquerades, 73 Safe from the treach'rous friend, the daring spark, . . . 77 'Tis but their sylph, the wise celestials know, 78 Though honour is the word with men below.

The Rape of the Lock is based on a true story of a young man who snipped a lock of hair from a young woman he was in love with. This "rape" caused a feud between the two families. Pope wrote this poem to try to create a reconciliation of the families through humor and satire. He patterned the writing style in the poem after other famous poets and wrote the entire poem in heroic couplets (rhymed iambic pentameter). By making a mountain out of such a molehill, and by doing it so stylishly and humorously, Pope penned a masterpiece of satire.

The heroine, Belinda, is in real life Arabella Fermor. Her hair is snipped while she is attending a party in Canto III. Canto I provides an elaborate description of how beautiful Belinda is while she sleeps, surrounded by angels and fairies. The narrator of the poem is Ariel (Pope). He describes how Belinda awakens, reads love letters (billets-doux), then proceeds to her dressing table to get ready for the party where she will lose the lock of hair.

In his mock epic The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope focuses on several major themes. The primary theme is the emptiness and frivolity of courtly, upper-class life, which Pope satirizes hilariously. The whole poem centers around a single lock of hair that has been clipped by the Baron from the nape of Belinda's neck. This one act of minor thievery leads to an explosion of emotions from Belinda, mock battles between ladies and gentlemen (aided by the sylphs), and an abundance of trouble. Pope is hinting, of course, that people of this class have nothing better to do or focus on than the silly act of cutting a little piece of hair. He seems to be inviting readers to think about their own concentrations in life and reflect if they, too, have sometimes overblown a very minor issue into a major catastrophe.

Pope also pokes fun at the vanity of the characters. Belinda is so inordinately upset about the loss of her lock of hair because she believes that it negatively affects her appearance, and that can simply not be tolerated, not after the immense time and effort she has put in to making herself beautiful. Her morning routine is almost religious in its elaborate rituals, as though Belinda is worshiping at the altar of beauty. Her goal is to dazzle everyone she meets and to receive their praise and adoration for her extreme beauty. Belinda, then, is so vain that she focuses completely on her external appearance, caring little about who she is as a person and worrying constantly about such matters as staining her dress or losing some jewelry. In his satire of Belinda, Pope nudges his readers to reflect on their own vanity and concerns.

Pope also delves into the theme of men, women, and their relationships. He snickers at the false heroism of men who wage their “heroic” battles at a card table and the miserable interest of a man who pours all his attention into cutting off a lock of a woman's hair. These are hardly the brave knights of old. Women, too, do not escape the cutting edge of Pope's pen. They are portrayed as vain creatures, emotional to an extreme, bent on getting exactly what they want and horrified if they do not. They are silly and shallow with little in their minds except their appearance and their desire to be admired. The relationships between these foolish creatures can be nothing else than foolish. Instead of holding a conversation with Belinda, for instance, the Baron expresses his love by snipping her hair and beginning a battle.

Finally, Pope makes fun of the false worship in which his characters engage. They worship at the altars of beauty and pleasure. Belinda's morning beauty routine is almost a religious ritual, as are the Baron's preparations for stealing the lock as he prays for help to carry out his plan. A whole crowd of spirits assist the humans in their silliness, supposedly warning and protecting them but actually often leading them directly into bad behavior. Indeed, Pope pokes at his audience's consciences a bit through this theme, making them think about what it is that they are worshiping.

As mentioned by a previous educator, one of the main themes of The Rape of the Lock is vanity, specifically the vanity of upper-class English society during the early eighteenth century. Belinda, the glamorous society lady, is an epitome of this. Each day upon rising, she enters the inner sanctum of her boudoir where she proceeds to get dressed, taking great pains to ensure that she is as beautiful and as ravishing as any woman could possibly be. The enormous effort she expends during this elaborate ritual proves well worth it, as admiring heads turn in her direction as she embarks upon her stately journey up the Thames toward Hampton Court Palace.

Yet Belinda's whole world is rocked when the Baron forcibly removes a lock of her beautiful hair. We have already witnessed just how obsessed Belinda is about her personal appearance, so we can imagine just how infuriated she is by this flagrant attack upon her beauty. Belinda moves in a world that is incorrigibly vacuous and shallow, where personal appearance is everything. Her reaction to the Baron's theft of a relatively small piece of her hair may seem a trifle excessive, but her implacable wrath is a satirical reflection on just how vain Belinda and the society she inhabits really is.

The theme of vanity spills over into how the rarefied social elite treats religion. The upper classes of early eighteenth-century England clearly pay nothing more than lip-service to prevailing religious beliefs. Faith, like everything else, is something to be shown off, paraded in front of others as a means of securing their approval and admiration. The juxtaposition of faith and vanity is epitomized by Belinda. She keeps a copy of the Bible on her dressing table, which squats uncomfortably next to all her various accoutrements of vanity: hairbrushes, powders, and—appropriately enough—vanity cream.

The Baron also has nothing more than a superficial attachment to religious faith. He wakes up at the crack of dawn to pray for the success of his forthcoming plan to steal a lock of Belinda's hair. But it is all just a sham; he is no more religious than Belinda. His prayers are simply a rather cynical attempt to put a pious gloss upon an act of common thievery. Once again, the motivation for action is vanity; the Baron wants to steal some of Belinda's hair so he can boast of its possession, making him an object of admiration among the smart set.

The "Rape of the Lock" by Alexander Pope is what is known as a "mock heroic" epic, in that it follows many of the conventions of epic poetry while simultaneously satirizing epic as a genre. The term "rape" is used by Pope in a manner reflecting its Latin meaning. The verb "rapere" in Latin means "to seize" and in Pope's period did not have the primarily sexual connotations it does in twenty-first century English. Thus the title refers to seizing a lock of hair.

The poem is written in heroic couplets, i.e., pairs of lines in iambic pentameter rhyming AA BB CC, and so on. The lines are generally end-stopped and metrically regular.

The narrative is based on a story that Pope heard from his friend John Caryll about Lord Petre, a suitor of Arabella Fermor, a notably beautiful woman. Petre cut off a lock of Arabella's hair without her permission, something that so offended Arabella that she dissolved their engagement.

In the first canto, Belinda dreams about Ariel and sylphs warning her about the dangers that lurk before her. Ariel states that he and the sylphs will attempt to guard her from the perils that will befall her. As Ariel is continuing to expand on this topic, Belinda's dog, Shock, wakes her up. She then goes to her dressing table and, with the help of her maid, begins the elaborate process of arranging her hair and adorning herself.

Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," generally considered to be the finest mock-heroic poem in English literature, was written as a favor to Pope's friend, John Caryll, to help smooth over a dispute between two upper-class young people and their families.  The genesis of the dispute was the cutting of a lock of Arabella's hair by Robert, Lord Petre, and Pope's answer was this poem, two of whose major themes is the battle of the sexes and the confusion of important values.

Pope parodies the heroic poem better than anyone has done since by including such staples as  surrounding Arabella with mythological beings who help her dress and one that actually interposes herself between the scissors and hair and is cut in two, a heroic sacrifice.  In addition, there is single combat (between Arabella and Lord Petre) on the Ombre (card game) table; intervention by the gods; and what's known as apotheosis of the lock, that is, glorification by placing it in the heavens.  The battle of the sexes, of course, is supposed to be an elaborate and controlled game--the woman entices, the males closes in, and the woman backs away, and the cycle repeats itself.  Lord Petre, however, in cutting Arabella's hair, has encroached upon her person, a move that would be considered wrong under any circumstances because physicality is not supposed to be part of the courtship process.

A more important theme is the confusion of what is trivial with what really matters in the world.  For example, when Lord Petre cuts the hair, Arabella's response includes "living Lightning from her Eyes,/And Screams of Horror rend th' affrighted Skies."  Her reaction, completely consistent in a heroic poem, is in this context well over the top.  Pope makes a fairly devastating comment on this society in the next line where he writes, "Not louder Shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast,/When Husbands or when Lap-dogs breathe their last."  Pope's verse here is a fairly damning verdict on the shallowness of this society--when there is no difference between the grief experienced at the death of a husband or a lap-dog, we are looking at a society in which priorities have been flipped on their side.

Pope's use of the mock-heroic allows him to conflate the sublime (the heroic form) with the ridiculous (the rape of the lock) and gently remind the readers of what is actually important in life.