ABSTRACT
Until recently, the issue of misogyny had received little attention in Pope studies. Even when addressed, it tended to be relegated to a minor aspect of a more general misanthropy. On the debit side, Pope is perceived as harbouring an ultimately disdainful condescension towards Belinda in The Rape of the Lock; he produces some consistently unflattering portraiture in Epistle to a Lady’, and attaches some murkily foetal imagery to the ‘Mighty Mother’ of Dulness in The Dunciad (‘How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie’ (i.59)). Against this is set the interest in a specifically female sensibility, shown in his excursions into elegy and heroic epistle; the affectionate and respectful intimacy of his addresses to the Blount sisters; and his wide-ranging awareness of the forms and conventions through which the women in his culture were ‘by Man’s Oppression curst’ (Epistle to a Lady (213)).
