Pope’s criticism of Belinda and her world hinges on their
objectifying tendencies. Pope satirizes Belinda for her
materiality. She sees everything in terms of
materialism;
men become same as coaches, wigs and their status,
certain
human concerns rank the same as inanimate commodities
and
her glaring lack of any sense of priority. It’s a very
solid foundation that Pope lays down to achieve
Belinda’s
criticism and even Hampton court circle. He reduces
Belinda
to being an object. She is seemingly the protagonist of
the
poem. It seems she has been given the central space in
the
text. However, she neither initiates the action nor
controls the poem. She is nothing but an abstract idea,
a
puppet in the hands of the author who wants to
illustrate
an abstract idea. This idea, according to Ellen Pollak,
is “the myth of passive womanhood”. Belinda does not
have
that kind of agency, which would make her a real
person.
The passive idea that Pope projects in the poem is that
women exist only as sexual objects. Pollak works on the
premise that the cutting of the lock is real rape.
Working
on this idea it becomes abundantly clear that according
to
Pope, sexual subordination is something that women
cannot
avoid, try as much as they can. Therefore, the idea
of ‘rape’ becomes intrinsic to the poem. Belinda is
seen as
a woman who does not want to submit to any man. She is
seen
as a viragoish, Amazonian woman, to whom the idea of
submission is alien. The game of cards in the text
illustrates this, where she challenges two men to beat
her.
This is seen as very aggressive and ambitious.
Belinda exists in
the
centre of the poem only to as a projection of Pope’s
masculine perspective on womanhood. Belinda’s
trajectory in
the poem becomes the symbolic trajectory from a non-
conforming, strident and dangerously self-assertive
woman
to a humbled, mutilated, chastened and therefore,
valourised womanhood. The moral that Pope wants to
convey
is that aggressive women are brought low one day. It
cannot
be avoided. So, whatever she does in the poem is in-
built
within the logic of the poem.
This leads us to
a
discussion of the Paradox of the Female Power.
According to
Pope, female power is no power at all. Belinda has the
only
power to dress herself up, be attractive and
coquettish,
but eventually, it works against her. The baron in the
poem
says that her beauty was too mesmerizing. Therefore, he
cut
the lock of hair to possess her beauty symbolically.
So,
Pope thinks that this ‘rape’ was brought on by Belinda
herself and none is to blame. So the reason for the
cutting
of the lock is what Belinda does and not what the baron
does. This kind of cause and effect naturalizes
the ‘rape’.
It becomes inevitable. The cutting of the lock of hair
falls into a pattern. The more women think they can
hold
their own, more they subordinate themselves. So, this
power
becomes paradoxical.
In the end, Pope,
in
a mock-celebratory, sarcastic tone says that the lock
has
become a star. Its as if it’s good that Belinda has
been ‘raped’. The poem reifies women. Reification is a
term
derived from Marxist discourse. It means
objectification of
human relationships in a capitalist society. For a
capitalist a worker is not a human being, but a pair of
hands or amount of work. It becomes a dehumanized
relationship. Belinda, too, has become an object, an
abstract entity destined to be sexually possessed. Her
personhood is subordinated to her status as sexual
object
because she cannot avert the ‘rape’. This becomes the
reification of the idea of the passive womanhood. In
this
context, reification is used in another angle, too.
Belinda
puts human relations at the same level as material
commodity. The same thing happens to her. Pope says
that
Belinda objectifies her relationships, but Pope does
the
same to her.