The Rape of the Lock as a mock-heroic poem

Alexander Pope’s masterpiece “The Rape of the Lock” is one of the greatest mock-heroic poems in English literature. He has drawn the real picture of his contemporary society. In the mock-epic, Pope reveals himself as the spokesman of his age. He has written the poem in epic style. The incident of the poem is of trivial nature but the treatment is heroic. In fact, a mock heroic poem is not satire on heroic poetry. The purpose of a mock heroic poem is satirical.

A mock-epic is narrative poem which aims at mockery at laughter by using almost all the characteristic feature of an epic but for a trivial subject. In it there are invocation to muses, proposition of subject, battles, supernatural machinery, journey on water, under world journey, long speeches, coffee houses, Homeric similes and grand style but all for a simple family dispute instead of a national struggle.

The central incident in “The Rape of the Lock” is theft of a lock of hair and the ensuring quarrel between two families. All the main features of epic surround this incident. The style is elevated; there is the celestial machinery in the form of the sylphs, a voyage to the underworld and battles. By placing this incident in such frame work, Pope hoped to show the rape as trivial and so to reconcile the two families. He failed in this purpose, but he has given lasting pleasure to his readers even since.

In an epic poem the action of the mortals was not enough, it was always intervened by the divine powers. So in “The Rape of the Lock” Pope therefore added four bodies of fairy creatures– sylphs, nymphs, gnomes and salamanders. They are nothing but parody of gods and goddess in the epic poems. The use of this supernatural machinery in The Rape of the Lock considerably heightens the mock epic effects of the poem.

An outstanding mock-heroic element in the poem is the comparison between the arming of an epic hero and Belinda’s dressing herself and using cosmetics in order to kill. Pope describes a society-lady in terms that world suit the arming of warrior like Achilles. In The Rape of the Lock, like epic heroes, Belinda pays due homage to her own beautiful image reflected in the warrior-

“A heavenly image in the glass appears

To that she bends, to that her eyes she nears.”

          In Canto III, the first of the two battles, are ironically given an inflated treatment. The game of ‘ombre’ is a mock battle symbolizing the war between the sexes. In the description of this battle, there are several echoes of Troy and Carthage and just at the right moment, Jove intervenes with its golden scales and decides that victory should go to the side of the fair sex.

          In a nutshell, it can be said that without any doubt that The Rape of the Lock is one of the finest piece of mock-epic. But it is not just a parody of epic tradition. It gives Pope a position of a great artist and moralist.