ABSTRACT
The Rape o f the Lock is a mock-epic, intended to defuse the tensions that arose within the upper-class Roman Catholic
174 Pope, Homer, and Manliness
community when Lord Petre (1690-1713) snipped off a lock of hair from Miss Arabella Fermor (1688-1738). Describing the activities of a beautiful young coquette in terms appropriate to the exploits of an epic hero might seem merely belittling to the former, but the comparison works in surprising ways. Belinda, the heroine, paral lels Achilles. Her unsurpassed loveliness is the modern feminine equivalent to his supreme valour: she grows her locks ‘to the Destruction of Mankind’ (II, 19); at her dressing table, ‘awful Beauty puts on all its Arms’ (I, 139). She also resembles Achilles in that both must learn to devote their exceptional attributes to the public good. As Lord observes, ‘Belinda’s insistence on winning and her intransigent hostility to the Baron are clearly the Augustan mock-epic counterparts of the narrow notion of heroic honour that nourished the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles’ (1987: 176). Achilles must cooperate with his allies; Belinda must display enough good humour to attract a husband. A belle who rejects love is as futile as a hero who will not fight. Yet each remains gloriously anomalous. Achilles’ return of Hector’s body to Priam transcends military discipline. By taking Priam prisoner, or even failing to conceal his presence in the Greek camp, Achilles could have ended the war instantly: the Iliad's emphasis on his magnanimity gives the hero’s personal development priority over taking Troy. Belinda, too, enjoys partial exemption from normal rules. Although she is encouraged to regard the theft of her lock with equanimity, it is endowed with enormous importance:
A sudden Star, it shot th ro’ liquid Air, And drew behind a radiant Trail o f Hair. Not Berenice's Locks first rose so bright, The Heav’ns bespangling with dishevel’d Light.
