This blog is a thinking task assigned by Vaidehi Ma’am. For more information and questions click here. I shall try to answer these questions to the best of my abilities.
1. According to you, who is the protagonist of the poem Clarissa or Belinda? Why? Give your answer with logical reasons.
According to me, the protagonist of the poem is Belinda.
Clarissa makes some excellent points on how beauty should not be valued so much that virtues are no longer necessary. If the poem had been published in today’s time period then Clarissa would have been the protagonist. However, Belinda fits the mould of a protagonist of those times. She is a rich girl, who has many admirers and literal angels protecting her.
Another thing is that, Belinda, being so vain, makes the poem a perfect satire. Pope would not have been able to send the message he intended if Clarissa was the protagonist. It is Belinda’s vanity and illogical personality that makes her a protagonist.
2. What is beauty? Write your views about it.
As people often say, “Beauty lies in the eyes of beholder”. I personally believe in that and think beauty is a changing subject. Everyone have a different beauty standard. So, there is no one trait that can be considered beautiful.
Other than that, you can consider that there are two types of beauty. 1. Inner and 2. Outer beauty. If one wants to be beautiful they should try to better themselves from the inside. This means to be kind to those around them, help someone whenever they can, etc.
3. Find out a research paper on "The Rape of the Lock". Give the details of the paper and write down in brief what it says about the Poem by Alexander Pope.
A very interesting research paper on “The Rape of the Lock”, is written by Umme Salma from the University of Queensland. It’s called “Women and Empire in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock: A rereading”
You can check out that paper here.
In this research paper, Salma discusses the symbolism in Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock." It suggests that the poem tells not only the story of Belinda's hair being cut but also symbolises the metaphorical rape of the British Empire during its imperial expansion. Just as Belinda's locks make her an object of desire, the Empire's treasures make it desirable to patriarchy and imperialism. Both women and the Empire are seen as objects to be possessed and dominated. The paper argues that Belinda's locks and the Empire's treasures symbolises each other, highlighting a connection between patriarchal and colonial dominance in the poem.
In the poem “Rape of the Lock”, hair plays a very significant role. There are a number of instances from which we can see this. Some of them are given below.
In the title, the word “Rape” is used for hair. “Rape” is a very serious crime. However, by using it for hair, Pope symbolises how important the lock of hair is.
For Belinda, the lock of hair symbolises her prestige, honour and dignity. When the lock of hair is lost, she is extremely disturbed. Pope also suggests that such heartbreak was never felt by anyone and proceeds to describe heartbreak of kings who lost battles and widows who lost husbands. By giving such examples, Pope mock Belinda and her grief but we also get to know how important the lock was to Belinda.
In this manner, the hair symbolises many things.
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