Belinda : Alexander Pope - Summary and Critical Analysis

This extract (Belinda) is a section of "Rape of the Lock" in which the main character Belinda is doing her make up before going to a place where all the high-class people chat, gossip and drink tea and coffee. First of all, Belinda dressed in white robe and bareheaded, worships with concentration the deities who preside over the art of makeup. Thus, she looks at her own reflection in the mirror. The reflection reveals to her heavenly beauty. Therefore, she looks to the details of her make-up and embellishments.

She stoops down to examine the lower portion of her body right, and then she looks again at the reflection in the mirror. The inferior priestess stands by the side of the sacred table. She is there to assist Belinda in her make-up and dressing, and trembling with fear for the best she begins the ritual of dressing up her proud mistress. Numerous caskets are opened, each of which contains precious presents from different parts of the world. From each casket, Betty, the inferior priestess, takes out skillfully and with exact care some bright and precious things to adorn the Goddess (Belinda).

     From one casket she picks out the most brilliant pearls and diamonds of India, and from another she takes out the best perfume of Arabia. Next, she takes up the spotted combs make of tortoise shells, and the milky white combs made of ivory. Then she uses the rows of shining pins, hairpins, puffs, powders, patches, bibles and love-letters.
     The awfully beautiful Belinda now puts on her different ornaments and cosmetics to add still further to her beauty. Her entrancing beauty appears to greater advantage with every adoring piece of jewels. Her smiles become more attractive and her graces more important by the use of cosmetics and jewels. All the wonders of her face area roused when her cheeks are artfully roughed. Her eyelashes and eyelids are delicately colored so as to give to her eyes the brightness of lighting.
     When we critically analyze this piece of extract from the classical mock-epic (or mock-heroic) poem The Rape of the Lock, a description of make-up being done by the heroine of the poem, Belinda, as she prepares to go for a daily idle gathering in the afternoon. This is a parody of an epic hero preparing for the battle. The piece, in its original context, can also be interpreted as a bitter social satire of the time (18th century).
     In its literal paraphrase, the poem simply describes the dressing table of Belinda and how she does her make-up. Belinda, wearing white dress, first appreciates her cosmetic materials. Then, she looks at the mirror with pride and self-praise. Her belongings are seen to be many and disorganized. As the make-up proceeds, Belinda looks more and more beautiful.
     However, at each point, we can see that the poet has ironically compared her with an epic hero putting on armor before going for battle. First Belinda worships her "Cosmetic Powers" and that is the parody of the hero worshipping his ancestors, gods and goddesses for giving him strength and courage. After that, she worships herself, and may be this is more than the epic hero's ritual! Like the hero, she then begins other rites, though her rites are not the tribal or religious rites but "scared rites of pride", that is make up and false pride in artificial beauty. Next, the poet parodies the description of the epic hero's weapons by describing her dressing table with a lot of satire on the girl and her society. He uses words from real epics like "spoil", "arms", "files", etc. And finally, our mock-hero is prepared with lighting in her eyes and 'repaired' smile n her lips. Her weapons also include "Puffs, Powers, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux", she doesn't know herself what is what! Combs, pins, perfumes, gems, artificial blush and the artificial fairness may also parodies deadly weapons!
     More important than parody is satire in the extract as well as in the whole poem. Belinda prays to cosmetic objects. That shows how the women of the time gave 'divine' value to petty things. Her narcissistic self-worship is another deadly satire on vain women's foolishness. But that was asocial behavior of the time and therefore it is a social satire! Pope uses many words of religion to suggest that the girl was giving herself, too, a religious importance. The deification is completed with the metaphor "Goddess" (line 10).
     The satire on the particular girl Belinda is not only meant to criticize female vanity but the vanities and absurdities of that society. Besides, there are more complex political satires, too. The "spoil" (weapons or wealth seized from victims of battles) from all the world are offerings of the British empire, specially to its lazy ladies at home! The British Empire had seized the gems of India, perfumes of Arabia, and killed animals like elephants and tortoise everywhere to make cosmetic offering to these good-for-nothing hypocritical women around the queen. In general Belinda's narcissism, pride and vanity, over-estimation of petty things, confusion of values, false beauty and every other weakness represent a culture of the time. Pope is giving an example of a society and culture so full of corrupted lazy, hypocritical and vain behaviors, especially in women in his time. The line "Puffs, powders ..." is the example of how the people of the time put everything together because they didn';t know their difference in value or appropriateness. On the same table, there are puffs (symbols or aristocratic standard, and hypocrisy), powders (feminine beauty, and artificiality), patches (political batches, and dogma), Bible (religious life, and apparent faith), and billet-doux (love letter, affectedly in jilting romance). Like Belinda, the society was confused between and among the spiritual and the worldly, the religious and the profane, the great and the mean, the genuine and the pretentious, the political, the romantic, and so on. The general social satire is symbolically represented by the table and Belinda's behavior and attitude towards things and herself. In the larger context of the poem, it is more a social satire then personal or that of the gender only. In short it satirized the false culture of artificial "personality" of the time.
     The extract is from a classical poem, and it also exhibits many classical features. The metaphors, the use of poetic diction, the structure of sentence, the use of words in unusual sense, and the rhythm and rhyme of the classical heroic couplet are the features of classical poetry. The words like Nymph, Priestess, altar and Goddess are religious metaphors ironically used to suggest the "sacred rites of pride", which is another satiric metaphor. The war and epic metaphors like breathe, files, spoil, arms, and lightning are also ironic satires: there is nothing heroic and artificial preparation of the awful beauty by a flirt who has no real powers or skills. The words like robed, uncovered, unnumbered, unlocks, ope, yonder, billet-doux, etc, belong to the special poetic diction (vocabulary). Finally, the use of the pair of rhyming lines with iambic pentameter in both, called heroic couplet, is another feature of classical poetry.
     The combination of three images- the first of the vain goddess becoming goddess by putting on make-up appearance, the second image of an epic hero putting armors, and the third image of the chaotic scene of a woman's toilet' - make the poem really funny, striking and deeply satirical. Pope is perhaps the best of satiric poets, with a special gift for technical mastery, too. It's a rare word-game, though the music is conventional, and the expression is rather difficult to understand without someone supplying us with the general context.