Dangers Of Consumption In Alexander Pope’s Rape Of The Lock

Alexander Pope’s mock-heroic poem, “The Rape of the Lock” published in 1712, condemns and critiques Belinda’s excessive consumption (brought about by an increase in trade) by not only associating it with the moral and religious decline of individuals and entire classes of consumers but also with the neglect of social and governmental duties. Through his mocking tone narrative Pope addresses Belinda’s consumption, consumption in regard to Faith, and the actions of a consumption obsessed upper class society. Pope ultimately perceives increased consumption as a threat to the character and identity of individuals and the nation as well as faith.

Alexander Pope’s attitude about the dangers of consumerism is seen most clearly through Belinda and her relationship with society and her 'Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux”. The early eighteenth century was unique in that it had seen an exponential growth in their international trade and the number of citizens with expendable income. The resulting explosion of consumerism meant a new and dynamic market for goods ranging from fashionable clothing and cosmetics to imported food and games, Belinda's dressing table is illustrative of this change, as it is covered by both foreign and domestic commodities made available through the market: “Unnumber’d treasures open at once, and here / The various offerings of the world appear”. Her collection consists of such items like Indian gems, Arabian trinkets, and when 'Tortoise here and Elephant unite, / Transform'd to combs, the speckled and the white'. The decadence of these items and the way they are depicted is portrayed as ridiculous. For example, just for Belinda to have a pair of combs one man must have hunted and then killed such magnificent beasts, cut off their tusks and removed their shells, transported the ivory and the shells from one part of the world to another, then carved women's combs out of the ivory and tortoiseshell and marketed them. Both the labor and material and presumedly the cost is obviously unnecessary. And like everything else she owns it is unnecessarily self-indulgent.

The placement of the Bible among the other consumables on Belinda's table suggests Alexander Pope is identifying a specific conflict between religion and consumer culture. For in the first canto, Pope criticizes those who would commodify Christianity by suggesting that, like the powders used to beautify Belinda, the Bible may become simply another accessory for those positioning themselves socially and/or implying that society now worships commodities instead of religion. The suggestion that the Bible has become cosmetic comes from the placement of the Bible among the purchased beauty tools on Belinda’s table. Like a beautiful face adorned with foreign purchases suggests beauty and status, the displayed bible suggests virtue. This is a perversion of its intention. It seems Pope intends to suggest that instead of using a Bible as a false advertisement of piety a truly moral and religious person would reject such excessive consumerism. For instance, in Clarissa’s moralist speech to Belinda she rejects fashionable consumables in exchange for virtue:

But since, alas! frail Beauty must decay,

Curl’d or uncurl’d, since Locks will turn to grey,

Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,

And she who scorns a Man, must die a Maid;

What then remains, but well our Pow’r to use,

And keep good Humour still whate’er we lose…

Beauties in vain their pretty Eyes may roll;

Charms strike the Sight, but Merit wins the Soul. 

Like a “maid”, if England continues on its path of surrounding itself with consumables and exciting items brought from foreign lands, in the following years the excitability of it will fade and the society and government will have “decay[ed]” because they had abandoned virtue and faith to pursue tangible items.

Alexander Pope suggests that, in addition to religion becoming perverted by those obsessed with consumption, that worship of consumerism has superseded religion. He does this by describing Belinda’s preparations for the day using religious imagery and language. Pope explicitly identifies Belinda's toilette as the “Altar” at the service of the “Rites of Pride”. The “Toilette” is no longer a dressing table but indicative of the altar of a Christian Mass cluttered with the instruments of the liturgy; but where the altar in Mass displays the host and chalice for the Eucharist, Belinda’s altar displays the various ornaments, vases, “mystic Order,” that are used to invoke “Cosmetic Pow’rs”. The worshipers of the Mass are replaced by Ariel and the Sylphs who service her and later the men who will worship her at Hampton court.

She is described as a “painted Vessel,” gliding down the Thames. The imagery of paying for a trading vessel and decking a lady with “all that land and sea afford” are closely related activities which seem to suggest that trade and Belinda are, in fact, inseparable. Belinda is associated with, and is the product of, 'various offerings of the world'. She has everything from 'India's glowing Gems' to “Arabian breathes”, from French fashions to the Spanish card game Ombre, from 'Altars of Japan,', to Chinese jars, and 'China's earth', as well as coffee, tea, and chocolate. She, and her fellow society members, represent the international trade. But this association and description of the members of the Hampton court is portrayed with a sort of grotesque decadence that at best favors the elite and at worst “the hungry judges soon the sentence sign, / And wretches hand that jurymen may dine”. The balance of trade here heavily favors the importers, and not general society. Even causing their leaders to behave to their detriment and deprivation.

Not only is Belinda representative of consumerism, but she is also, in a sense, a commodity herself. She is being traded and advertised as a potential wife. It is her body, in the end, that is exploited by the Baron and it is her body, in the end, that acts as the main commodity of Hampton court. Her body is also a receptacle for the objects she owns and is used to display her status. And overall, her status, beauty, and honor are her only values in society. Those intangible commodities must be protected from the dangers of the immorality that Pope suggests that it elicits in members of society. Because the beauty, or value of, her face overturns moral judgment: 'If to her share some Female Errors fall, / Look on her Face, and you'll forget ‘em all”.

This depiction of Belinda as representative of a consumable is met with the dangerous desire for consumption displayed by the Baron who wants a souvenir lock of Belinda’s hair. On one level this lock is trivial, but it represents the dangerous truth of how a society's desire for material goods such as “shining ringlets” have the potential to bring about “the destruction of mankind”. the lock of hair is described as “slender chains” that will “slaves detains, / And mighty hearts are held”. This critique is to comment on how when relations between people have turned into relations between things, individuals will be ensnared by their desire and will lose the ability to make conscious moral choices. Alexander Pope saw that uptick in moneyed wealth and desire for consumables as encouraging practices and ways of thinking that he as a Catholic and a Tory would be suspicious of or consider sinful. The Baron “meditates the way, / By Force to ravish, or by Fraud betray,” because he is driven by acquisitive desire. What he wants is not a woman’s love; it is a “Prize,” a valued thing: “He saw, he wish’d, and to the Prize aspir’d”.

Clarrisa’s speech is the only outright discussion of morals within this mock epic. But as I have shown in my essay it was not necessary as the dangers of consumerism were already spelled out. In fact, the poem says more by the way it chooses to describe its events than any individual speech could. No supplementary speech in “The Rape of the Lock” could have pointed out, for example, Pope’s opinion that a profound change in human relations had occurred. A new economic and social order, heavy in trade and consumer greed, had become disturbingly dominant. One which was not just immoral (encouraging luxury, pride, and violence) but actively detrimental because it reduced everything, including morality and religion, to the level of a socially useful artifact. Or how female beauty, like any commodity during that time, was responded to with the obsessive, greedy, and ultimately violent and destructive values of bourgeois society. Overall, Pope perceived the increase in consumption as damaging to the character and identity of individuals, England, and everyone’s good sense and morality.

Works Cited

• Pope, Alexander. “The Rape of the Lock. Canto 1-5.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, vol. c, edited by James Noggle, 10th ed., Norton, 2018, pp 507-525.