The Economic Fragmentation of the Female Sex
in Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock”
Probal
Ganguly
Independent Researcher
Abstract:
This paper attempts to delve critically into
the intersection between the burgeoning 18th-century free-market economics and
patriarchal control over female agency as encapsulated in Alexander Pope’s “The
Rape of the Lock”. The paper argues that consumerism, although on the surface
may be perceived as a tool for liberation to the inhibited female mind as an
aid to the expression of her feminine identity, is, in fact, a reinforcement of
patriarchal structures that impede any real potential for agency. The poem
offers a microcosmic glimpse at this societal phenomenon through its
protagonist, Belinda, the epitome of the upper-class woman, a walking symbol of
beauty and consumption. Her elaborate toilette and obsession with physical
appearance reflect the societal emphasis on women's roles as objects of desire
and ornaments for men. However, the poem also highlights the limitations
imposed on women by patriarchal norms. Clarissa, a character representing the
middle-class "hus-wives," exemplifies the constraints faced by women
who do not conform to the ideals of the coquette. By examining the characters
and themes in “The Rape of the Lock”, we gain a deeper understanding of the
ways in which women's identities and experiences were shaped by the economic
and cultural forces of the era.
Keywords: Economic, Female, Sex,
Fragmentation, Patriarchal, Pope, Society
Germinating
from the explosive growth of industrialization that inundated 18th century
England, from an inchoate lurking sense of materialism to a fully formed
inescapable tenet of the prevalent economic paradigm, consumerism dug deeper
into the crevice of class boundaries that bifurcated the already oppressed
female sex. The flagrant upswing of free market economics through trade and a
jump from an agriculture-based revenue model to one resting on mechanization
led to the liberation of spaces of existence previously immune to the quagmire
of commercial consumption, namely the woman’s boudoir, the primary altar of
feminine self-identification. “Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” typically
identifies the bathetic placement of items on Belinda’s toilette as an example
of the proliferation of consumables in the poem” (Hernandez 01).
Echoing
such a sentiment, this paper seeks to emphasize how these very items are subtle
but potent pointers to an economy that drew an impregnable distinction between
women of the upper echelons and their fixation on perennial physical beauty and
feigned chastity while relegating the middle-class “hus-wives” to the role of
embodying patriarchal dogmas of expected female virtue, and a pliant apostle
with relentless dedication to police all those who dared to exist outside of
such scruples. Feminist readings of such androcentric 18th-century texts have
excavated and highlighted the misogynistic male agenda veiled by a veneer of
aesthetic ornamentation, with Ellen Pollak’s seminal work ‘The Poetics of
Sexual Myth’, wherein she sheds light on the imprisonment of 18th-century women
into an “essentially passive role as a reproductive vessel and as an ornament
to men” (Pollak 7). Pope centralizing the character of Belinda on the archetype
of the coquette is not incidental; it is a conscious choice that would enable him
to lay siege on the very facet of femininity that the women of the affluent
stratum epitomized, thereby reducing the intrinsic worth of the female subject
and conferring her value by “circulation within a masculine economy”.
“The
resulting boom in consumerism during the period meant a new and dynamic market
for consumer goods ranging from fashionable clothing and cosmetics to imported
coffee and exotic pets” (Hernandez 04). Pope’s Belinda thrives in a commercial
plenum that at once enables and deprecates; with every stroke of cosmetic
enhancement that graces her visage under the illusion of self-liberation and
indulgence, she is submitting herself for consumption to the male gaze. She
becomes a vehicle for her consumable paraphernalia, an object by extension,
blurring the demarcations between consumer and consumables.
“Belinda
embodies every social-climbing party girl (by extension, the aristocratic
fraction of the poem)” (Payne 5), and the plethora of maquillage on her
dressing table are each a representation of the tools provided by an economy
constructed by and for men, for the woman to further entrench herself into the
mantle of an object for masculine pleasure and satisfaction. Her powdered face
is the paragon of juvenescence and fertility, qualities that are so valued
within a society built upon the sanction of reproduction and familial
organization. She engages in such activities under the notion that the act is
merely a realization of her desire to assuage her physical foibles and look
beautiful for herself or seduce the one man of her liking, and fails to
acknowledge the fact that no act of self-beatification within a patriarchal
economy can be autonomous and independent when women are all but a means to an
end. Consequently, there emerges the whole fiasco regarding the theft of
Belinda’s golden lock, which only further cements the atavism that women’s
subjectivity and agency only exist because the male economy grants it to them
for their own consumption and can be crudely violated, invaded and stripped
away just as easily if a man pleases, without any ramifications.
This
tumultuous patriarchal miasma is where the character of Clarissa comes into
play: armed with her phalanx of conventional good woman virtues of servility
and moral sense, and as the only active female character, she serves as the
conduit for the narrative voice of the author in the dramatic world of the
play. Feminist scrutiny of the poem notes that Clarissa extols the sober,
virtuous, and righteous wing of the middle-class ‘hus-wives.’ She represents
the bourgeois audience of the poem, encouraging the realization that these
women, although ardent voyeurs of the erotically charged way of life of the
coquette, had little in common with the likes of Belinda.
They
are devoid of Belinda’s economic status and affluence and, therefore, resort to
attempts at inveigling her into the same formalist masculine principles they
conform to and exist in collusion with as a means to gain some semblance of
power and expression. Clarissa is the one who equips the Baron with the
scissors to perform the deed, and she is the one who proceeds to reprimand
Belinda and trivialize her feelings of distress at her debasement. She is the
authoritarian voice of patriarchy and Pope, the vassal whose identity is derived
from and limited to the male subject. It can be understood, therefore, that
excursions by female characters in Pope’s 18th-century text are perpetually
governed by an economy that, on the surface, empowers but, in actuality, strips
them of agency and drives them to a gendered civil war.
The
status and means of self-expression conferred upon Belinda through her toilette
are primarily because of her attributes of physical beauty, which make her a
cherished asset in the market of marriage and an article of male desire. Her
external magnificence helps sustain her hold on the pedestal of economic
superiority to someone like Clarissa, who is, in turn, emboldened with some
vestige of apparent agency, if only to admonish and reproach a class of women
she will never be allowed into by the same economy as it rejects her for her
lack of somatic appeal, relegating her to the unsavory role of unctuous moral
policing. This paper thus concludes that 18th-century commodity fetishism
exemplifies the existing bifurcation in the female masses, and fuelled by the
patricentric economy, coerces them into class-determined roles functioning
through patriarchal edict, successfully enacting a fragmentation of the female
gender.
Works Cited
Hernandez, Alex E.
"Commodity and Religion in Pope’s “The
Rape of the Lock”." SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900,
2008, https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.0.0020.
Payne,
Deborah C. “POPE AND THE WAR AGAINST COQUETTES; OR, FEMINISM AND ‘“THE RAPE OF
THE LOCK”’ RECONSIDERED—YET AGAIN.” The Eighteenth Century, vol. 32, no. 1,
1991, pp. 3–24.
Pollack,
Ellen. The Poetics of Sexual Myth: Gender and Ideology in the Verse of Swift
and Pope. University of Chicago Press, 1985.