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Homework Help: English: Books, Novels & Plays: Belles and Beaus: A Look at the Dynamics Between Them
by Christopher Davis
The Belle may not be as gentle as she appears and the Baron not as maleficent as he was originally painted to be by the negative diction used in the first Canto's early lines. In spite of Belinda's seeming innocence and beauty she appears to have some anger management problems or at least a darker side that has yet to be loosed; her bosom containing a "mighty rage" (Canto I, 12). This could be a reflection on women in general or just a charicature of Arabella, the woman for whom Pope wrote The Rape of The Lock. At the same time the Barons position as a strong male character is rebuffed as he is referred to as a 'little M[an]' engaging in tasks too bold for someone of his stature. Though he seems, on the surface, to be the driving force in the strange interaction between himself and Belinda, he may actually turn out to be someone who is in over his head in interacting with a creature so deceptively beautiful and innocent as a Belle (Canto I, 11). Little more is said of the Baron, but so much more is said for the character and behavior of Belinda, casting her in different lights. What is driving the interaction between the Baron and Belinda, the Beaus and the Belles, and where does the balance of power between the sexes truly lie?
Belinda's characterization in The Rape of the Lock is quite prismatic, but what makes her character more intriguing, and later leads to the question of what drives the interaction between the Beaus and Belles, is the seeming lack of control she has over herself in the early and later cantos. As early as the first canto Belinda is being influenced by her gaurdian sylph, being given morning dreams of a boy "more glittering than a birth-night Beau" (Canto I, 23). Probably the same image that would lead to her rape in Canto IV. From the beginning her actions are being influenced by the sylphs who themselves were once "enclosed in Woman's beauteous Mold" and probably influenced by sylphs of their own (Canto I, 48). The sylphs duty seems to be the gaurding of a Maidens purity, but they will only do so if the Maid rejects Mankind and remains chaste. The influence of this ethereal machinery is not limited to Belle's. The machinery affects the entire spectrum of women from the prude to the coquette, each different characterization of a woman being later affected by her own predecessor the same way Belles become sylphs when they die and later influence other Belles. Though Belinda appears to be a senseless flirt it is only because her sylphs literally dress her up every morning and taught her as an infant how to behave as only a true Belle should (Canto I, 89, 148). Every indication in the lines of the first canto points to Belinda being quite beautiful and flirtatious, but only because the sylphs have raised her up into the frame work of what it means to be a Belle and she has chosen to live within that framework and afford herself the protection the sylphs offer in return for her compliance (Canto I, 67). Through the middle cantos Belinda's fate is being influenced by the sylphs in their manipulation of the game of Ombre, but this has no direct bearing on the characterization of Belinda aside from her appearing to have a clever hand at the game and a knack for winning. She once again loses control over herself in canto IV when the gnome Umbriel sends her into bouts of self pity and rage, her persona becoming a visage of "beauteous grief" (Canto IV, 143). The Belle is once again acting out what an outside influence is pressing her to do, and more interesting still is her lament of the framework within which she has been brought up that comes out as a result of the gnomes doing. Belinda cries for how happy she would have been had she "rather un-admired remained" (Canto IV, 153). The question of whether Belinda ever gets to act as herself without any outside influence is suggested in her lament and also in the fact that another ethereal creature has allowed her, maybe even pressed her, into making the statement. Is there a real Belinda or is every Belle simply composed of the disciplinary mechanisms that form the frames within which they are forced to live; the Belle, the Prude, the Termagant, and the Soft Minded woman? Clarissa's speech denouncing the misplaced virtue of honoring beauty before everything else in canto five forms an elegant contrast to Belinda's discordant behavior, possibly presenting a picture of a woman who has moved beyond the control of the sylphs, salamanders, nymphs, and gnomes that assail every aspect of Belinda's life throughout her days. Clarissa's smooth, poetic delivery, and calm spirit contrast very strongly with Belinda's growing tantrum and the gap in understanding is clearly indicated in her only response to a voice of reason being a frown (Canto V, 36). Belinda loses all sense of restraint in the sadness the gnomes put upon her and in the fury the sylphs left in their absence and the absence of her perfect beauty and attacks the Baron in an all out war between the Belles and the Beaus; the entire days events being skewed, adjusted, fixed, and antagonized by the sylphs and gnomes,and none of the days events coming as a direct result of a decision Belinda made on her own.
The interaction between the Beaus and the Belles is chiefly driven by the interplay of disciplinary mechanisms, represented, in part, by the sylphs. The framework within which the Belles are raised is a cyclic one. Every woman with very good looks who swore off men and placed her beauty before all other things is by definition a Belle and was influenced by some kind of sylph who was once a Belle too, going back to perhaps the very first Belle that ever lived and played with men's hearts (Canto I, 41-58). The sylphs could represent the actual social mechanism of raising a girl to become a proper woman, or they could represent raising a girl to become the object of what men will surely desire and thus gain power over men by never allowing them to obtain her hand in a relationship, dominating her life through marriage. The sylphs influence on Belinda is very reminiscent of Focault's idea of minute disciplines in that the only power the sylphs have, though it be tremendous, is the power that Belinda grants them in choosing to become a Belle (Canto I, 66). Belinda chooses to place herself under the controls of the ethereal machinery to allow her to proof herself against the control of men, in effect reversing her relationship with men, becoming a man and making the men her subjects like women, while simultaneously forfeiting all control of herself and her fate to the sylphs, her Belle heritage. The strangeness of the interaction between the Belle and the Beau comes when in her practice of the minute sylph driven discipline of the coquette, she finds herself able to nearly dictate what it means to be a Beau by simply changing what she finds desirable in a suitor. Of course a loop occurs here in which the discipline of the Belle, to an extent, dictates what is and what is not to be found desirable, and the decision is not truly hers to make because her life is almost entirely in the hands of her gaurdian sylphs, but it does not change the fact that if a sylph were to decide a Belle was to find somthing out of the ordinary to be attractive the sylph itself could make the Belle decide to act in the same vein. What seems to drive the interaction between the Beaus and the Belles appears to be a function of mechanisms. What it means to be a Beau is a function of what the framework of being a Belle happens to dictate at the time, and the tension between the two is the Beau seeking to possess the Belle and never being able to do so because the Belle possesses all of the control and the majority of the power between the two lies within the Belle's grasp, not the Beau's. The Baron, in fact, is not the strong male character in The Rape of The Lock. Belinda's character is stronger by far. The argument can be made that the lack of control Belinda is able to excercise over herself makes her the weaker character, but the dependence of the Beau on the tastes of the Belle makes the Baron's character all the weaker.
Belinda's character is completely dominated by the actions of the airy spirits and gnomes. This is especially clear in the early cantos where the sylphs dress her and plant the seed of her rape in her head before she goes out and in the later cantos where theydrive her to self pity and unbridled anger. The question can then be posed as to who is really driving the interaction between Belinda and the Baron when the sylphs seem to dominate her so thoroughly. What drives the interaction are the mechanisms represented by the sylphs and the power vested in the Belles because the Belles can dictate whatever they desire and the Beaus will do whatever it is if it means getting closer to winning the Belles hand. What goes awry in The Rape of The Lock is the Baron stepping outside of the minute discipline of the Beau, with Calrissa's help in the form of a scissor, to get around the tangled interactions and skip to possessing Belinda, in essence raping her. Never the less, inspite of the Baron's efforts the balance of power remains with the Belles even though officially the Wits of the Beau out do the beauty of the Belle's luxuriant locks at the poems end.
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