Talk:The Rape of the Lock

message: I was cleaning the article up a bit and removed the following text:
:Pope could be criticizing the over-reaction of contemporary society to trivial things.
:: What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
:: What mighty contests rise from trivial things
::: — Canto I
:While describing the flamboyance of contemporary society in epic terms does ironically juxtapose the extreme triviality of this situation with the seemingly more grave situations of classical epic heroes, it is also possible that Pope was implying that within the constraints of the contemporary Beau Monde, it was equally heroic, for example, for a woman to succeed in life by marrying well, or for a suitor to attain his goal.
I removed it because I felt that it was a couple of paragraphs of close reading/literary interpretation that didn't do much for the article as a whole. Maybe it just needed some transitionary material...? If someone wants it back in and can make it fit smoothly into the article, I'm fine with that.
Hbackman 00:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed text 

message: in which canto the lock of the melinda's hair are cut what was going on at th time ?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.198.5.171 (talk) 13:06, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  in which canto the lock of the melinda's hair are cut what was going on at th time ? 

message: Can anyone add an explanation of who Clarissa was, and what might be the signifcance of her speech on Good Humor? 70.179.92.117 (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarissa 

message: The rape of the lock was enjoyable to read but as the original discussion mentioned it does trivialize what a horrific thing rape actually is, and if analyzed from a modern feminist perspective it is awful and chauvinistic.  It was originally written to help pacify friends of Pope at the request of one of his teachers.  His friends had undergone a similar situation of what happens in the mock epic and Pope was assigned to ease the tensions between the two parties by trivializing the matter in this mock epic.  However I would argue that the girl that this actually happened to had every right to be angered.  For a woman to give a lock of her hair usually signified her giving her love, for a man to simply steal a lock of hair is similar to his forcibly taking her love.  It really is a rape of sorts to force love on someone even if it is not in a physical way.  Pope’s mock epic does try to trivialize the matter by exaggerate it to such extremes.  It is amusing to imagine Belinda being so angered and attacking the Baron with such intensity that it causes the whale bones of her corset to crack, but why should we as the reader find this as an over the top absurd reaction?   I think that Belinda or rather the person Belinda is modeled after has every right to be angry, perhaps a violent reaction is not fully appropriate, but it would be perfectly appropriate if it was an actual physical rape.  So I wonder why is her anger not acceptable in this symbolic rape?   Regardless of whether or not her anger to this extent is fully appropriate or not Pope still does a terrible thing by trivializing the very idea of rape and the horrors it can cause.
:The word "rape" does not refer to sexual violation. It means "theft", from the latin for "to take away". Paul B (talk) 20:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  autumns column 

message: It seems inspired by Rape of the Lock. Any thoughts? Porric25 (talk) 15:20, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mrs. Nickleby's plotting to test Frank Cheeryble's intentions about her daughter, Kate.