The Rape of the Lock

The Queen of Spleen is a goddess in “The Rape of the Lock” that symbolizes melancholy, hysteria, and other emotional turbulences. Her representation suggests that these maladies of mood are exclusive to women and reveal Pope’s gender bias. The Queen’s handmaids, Ill Nature and Affectation, are also symbols that comment on women’s temperaments. Affectation is of note, as it mirrors one of the poem’s central arguments: appearance versus reality. In Pope’s time, the spleen (an organ that cleans the blood in the body) was thought to be the center of emotional and psychic ailments. These ailments were largely attributed to “female concerns” and used as evidence against a person’s character.

In the “Rape of the Lock,” the lock is not just a coil of Belinda’s hair. The lock becomes a symbol of value, power, and control. Belinda’s value and limited power as a woman in society is directly related to her intact hair. The final lines of Canto 4, “Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize / Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!” (Lines 177-78) suggest Belinda’s hidden pubic hair. These lines directly relate the lock to Belinda’s virginity and therefore affect her social status and marriageability.