paper_5_Assignments_Sneha_Agravat

Name::- Sneha Agravat

Batch:- 2020-22 (MA sem 1)

Paper 5:- History of English Literature

Topic name:- Victorian Poets

Roll no.:-17

Enrollment no.:-3069206420200001

 

E-mail Id :- snehaagravat2000@gmail.com

Submitted to:- S.B.Gardi Department Of English Maharaja krishnkumarsinhji Bhavngar University

Victorian Poets:-

Introduction:-

The poetic temper of the Victorian Age is not materially different from that of the early 19th century. In its individualism, play of imagination, love of the picturesque, and interest in Nature and the past, it continues the romantic tradition. But in its response to the changed conditions -- political, economic, and scientific and religions -- it no doubt acquired a distinctive character of its own. The Victorian poets lived in the world of their day which looked up to them for guidance. Democracy introduced a new face; science banished God from the universe; and religion therefore had little useful role to play. Upon what platform would England stand then? Tennyson, Browning and Arnold came to her rescue. Each came out with a message of his own to reassure his readers that their doubts, distractions and fears were all right with the world. The poets turned prophets too. Victorian poetry came to be related more to life than the romantic. It is the voice of Victorian England.

Victorian Poets:-

The poets of this age may be classified as follows: the major poets, Tennyson and Browning, Who are often compared and contrasted; the skeptics who include Arnold, clough, Fitzgerald and games Thompson; the Pre -Raphaelites consisting chiefly of D. G. Rossetti ; and the ' Decadents'. In each the trends of the age expressed themselves in different ways. For a precise treatment of the topic, we here choose only three major representative poets -- Tennyson, Browning and the woman poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the wife of Robert Browning.

From the rich imagery and rhythmic quality of Alfred Lord Tennyson to Christina Rossetti’s lyrical purity and powerful exploration of loss and faith, the Victorian period heralded a new wave of poetry that was influenced by its Romantic predecessors yet distinctly different. How did the Victorian poets approach composition, form and language, and what inspired their subjects?Victorian poets are also known as later nineteenth-century poets. Most of the writing of this period reflects current social, economic, and intellectual problems. The poetry of this period shows the crisis of religion and philosophy because of the development of science. 

Let's see some Major poets and his contribution in victorian era:-

1)Alfred Lord Tennyson:-

Tennyson is one of the most skilled and self-conscious poets of the Victorian age. He is typical Victorian who adopted the conventionalreligious and social views and values of his age. His early poems were not much accepted, but gradually he sharpened his skill.

Tennyson's later poems are serious, thoughtful and musical. His poem The Idylls of the King is preferred by many people even today. In Morte D Arthur he turned Malory’s story into poetry. He did experiment with different meters. In his long poem In Memoriam he laments for the death of his friend Arthur Hallam. Tennyson’s shorter poems are generally better than longer ones. Ulysses is his most controlled and perfectly written poem which presents the heroic voice of the aged hero. The Princess is the collection of his fine lyric which shows his best mysterious and musical quality.

 Notable works:-

The Princess

Ulysses

Mariana

In Memoriam

Idylls of the King

Locksley Hall

Enoch Arden

The Lady of Shalott

2)Robert Browning:-

Browning is a major Victorian poet who voiced the mood of optimism in his works. For Browning the intellect was more important than the music. His great knowledge was the result of his self-study and travels. His reputation is higher as the writer of dramatic monologue. One of his successful dramatic poems is Pippa Passes. We find many such poems in his dramas, but his natural gift was in poetry. Sometimes we notice his poetic style very difficult. It is because of his unusual knowledge of words and his strange sentence structure. Sordello is a good example of his difficult poem. The Ring and the Book is a poem based on a book that he found in Florence. Asolando is a collection of many fine poems which was published on the day of Browning death.

Notable works:-

The Ring and the Book

“Fra Lippo Lippi”

“My Last Duchess”

“Sordello”

“The Pied Piper of Hamelin”

“The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church”

“Pippa Passes”

“Rabbi Ben Ezra”

“Bishop Blougram’s Apology”

“Paracelsus”

3)Matthew Arnold:-

Arnold was a great poet and critic of his time. He had been a professor of poetry in Oxford for ten years. His works truly represent his age. A sad undertone runs through nearly all his poetry. His views of modern life, of its complexity, its sick hurry and divided aims are present in his poetry.

Arnold was also the headmaster of Rugby School. He wrote a poem entitled Rugby Chapel. Thyrsis is a poem of lament for his friend, Clough. In his poem The Scholar Gipsy the poet talks about an Oxford man who joins a band of gypsies and wanders with them. Memorial Verses is his sad poem in which the poet laments for the deaths of many poets at home and abroad. He also wrote a critical sonnet of Shakespeare, whom he praised too much. One of his other poems, Empedocles on Etna, has been highly praised, perhaps because it is not altogether sad.

Notable works:-

“Culture and Anarchy”

“Sohrab and Rustum”

“Empedocles on Etna”

“Thyrsis”

“The Scholar Gipsy”

“The Forsaken Merman”

“Dover Beach”

“The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems”

“The Study of Poetry”

“On the Study of Celtic Literature”

4)Dante Gabriel Rossetti:-

Rossetti was a poet as well as a noted painter. His sonnets are among the most musical in English. Many critics have accused him of writing a moral poems belonging to the Fleshy School of poetry. But he argued that poetry ought to be based on the senses. Many of his poetic lines are written in a way a painter’s eye captures the beauty of the thing. Rosseti wrote about nature with his eye on it, but did not feel it in his bones as Wordsworth does. Rossetti was too fond of alliteration.

Notable works:-

“The House of Life”

“Poems”

“The Blessed Damozel”

5)Elizabeth Barrett Browning:-

Another great poetess of this time was Elizabeth Barrett, who, on her marriage, became Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Some of her poems are too long, but in a sonnet she could not write too much because the form is limited to fourteen lines. Thus much of her best work is contained in Sonnets from the Portuguese. She pretended at first that these sonnets were translated from the Portuguese; they were really an entirely original expression of her love for Robert Browning.

NOTABLE WORKS:-

“Sonnets from the Portuguese”

“Aurora Leigh”

“Poems Before Congress”

“Casa Guidi Windows”

6)Algernon Charles Swinburne:-

Swinburne followed the poetic style of Rossetti, but could not use alliteration so much successfully in his poems as did Rossetti. Critics argue that his poetry does not contain much thought, though it can be sung well. When his work Poems and Ballads appeared in 1866, he was much blamed for moral reasons. A later book of Poems and Ballads is not so much offensive as the previous one. It shows his interest in French writers and includes the laments for them. Tristram of Lyonesse is usually considered to be his best work. It tells the undying story of Tristram and Iseult.

NOTABLE WORKS:-

“Poems and Ballads”

“Atalanta in Calydon”

7) Edward Fitzgerald:-

One of the greatest poetic translators was Edward Fitzgerald. He translated six of Calderon’s plays the Agamemnon of Aeschylus and the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. Most translations lose something and are not as good as the originals. But this book is considered by some Persian scholars to be better than Omar Khayyam’s work. In this translation of the Rubaiyat, he entirely omitted the hidden meanings of the original. The other poets of this age are Arthur Clough, and Christina Rossetti.

Notable works:-

1)“The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám”

8)Fleshly School of Poetry or the Pre-Raphaelites:-

The Fleshly School Poets or the Pre-Raphaelites were inspired by the Italian painters before Raphael. In 1848, a group of three young painters, who were also poets, founded the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. They followed a medieval outlook, art for the sake of art, sensuous and clear word painting, and a poetry rich in music and melody. Due to their detailed description of scene and situation, and the frank and free dealing of sexual passion, they are also referred to as the ‘Fleshly School’.

D. G. Rossetti was the chief among these young poets, as well as painters. He is sometimes criticized as a fleshly poet because his poems contain sensuous pictures of feminine beauty. But he combines the physical beauty with spiritual beauty in The Blessed Demozel. He also wrote about nature, but instead of feeling like Wordsworth, he studied it. He was also fond of alliteration, as in “flying hair and fluttering hem”.

A. C. Swinburne was a follower of D. G. Rossetti, but he misused alliteration. He wrote much political verse, but he had a new rich music in his verse drama Atlanta in Calydon. Though his music is good, there is a lack of thought in his poetry. He was also criticized for moral reasons when his Poems and Ballads was published in 1866. His best work is considered to be Tristram of Lyonese.

William Morris was also influenced by Rossetti. His early works The Defense of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Life and Death of Jason (1867), and The Earthly Paradise (1870) are purely romantic in method and style, with an undertone of sadness.

In retrospect we can see that these attempts to bring a double awareness within the compass of a single imaginative vision were destined to failure. Modern society has made the roles of man of letters and artist mutually irreconcilable without a loss in commitment on one side or the other. The fact of communication presupposes a common language; and as Arnold knew, it is the business of the man of letters to help formulate that language, whereas the artist must speak with his own voice. Under the favoring circumstances of a homogeneous culture (for which Arnold's term was an "epoch of concentration"), the artist may find his public waiting; but when the center falls apart, the dialogue of the mind with itself sustains him. By seeking their audience rather than letting it find them, Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold split their allegiance and partially disengaged themselves from the life of the imagination. The resultant access in prestige and influence involved a fatal loss in artistic status. Their inherent poetic resources only serve to accentuate how great this loss was.

But the real influence of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold has operated subterraneously. If their outer awareness took undue cognizance of the surface ripples of Victorian life, they were inwardly aware of the deep ground-swells of change. The individual perceptions, whose concealed operation we have identified in their poetry, were to become the leading motifs of subsequent literary movements. Tennyson's "other life" of dreams foreshadows psychological theories of the imagination and accords with modern thinking about the creative process. Through his reduction of human behavior to its instinctual components Browning anticipates the emergence of modern primitivism. And Arnold's account of the deracinated artist continues to be an obsessive theme in contemporary writing. But such insights were alien to the pretensions of the society which gave rise to them. Because, however hard they tried, they could not simultaneously inhabit the worlds of the imagination and of Victorian society, a split opened, dividing the artistic awareness of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. Their failure to close this breach confirmed the alienation of the modern artist. 

Conclusion:-

In sum up we can say thatThe era ended in 1901, when Queen Victoria died. The Victorian Era still lives on today through music, literature, and art. This era will always be remembered as a great time in history when Queen Victoria ruled.All things considered, it is remarkable that Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold should have put so much of themselves into their poetry as they did, and still commanded the admiration of their age. Three possible explanations for this popularity may be proposed. Either the Victorians, like Browning's Caliban, were self-infatuated to the extent of making over their poets in their own image. Or we today have inherited a very distorted conception of Victorian habits of mind. Or, finally, Victorian artists were more successful in communicating with their audience on a high imaginative plane than has been recognized. Probably there is a measure of truth in each of these assumptions. In any event, we are [215/216] left with the realization that a body of poetry, ostensibly aimed at its age, carries in its depths an enormous burden of implication alien to that age.

References:-

1)Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Algernon Charles Swinburne". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Apr. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Algernon-Charles-Swinburne. Accessed 12 February 2021.

2)Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Edward FitzGerald". Encyclopedia Britannica, 10 Jun. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-FitzGerald. Accessed 12 February 2021.

3)Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning". Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 Dec. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-Barrett-Browning. Accessed 12 February 2021.

4)Drew, Philip. "Robert Browning". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Dec. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Browning. Accessed 12 February 2021.

5)Gaunt, William and Bryson, John. "Dante Gabriel Rossetti". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 May. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dante-Gabriel-Rossetti. Accessed 12 February 2021.

6)Robson, William Wallace. "Alfred, Lord Tennyson". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Oct. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Lord-Tennyson. Accessed 12 February 2021.

7)“Victorian Poets.” Sharma, K.N, Jan. 2014, www.bachelorandmaster.com/englishperiods/victorian-poets.html#.YCYVchhN2Nx.

8)Willey, Basil. "Matthew Arnold". Encyclopedia Britannica, 20 Dec. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Matthew-Arnold. Accessed 12 February 2021.

Word count:- 2138

paper_4_ Assignment_Sneha_Agravat

Name::- Sneha Agravat

Batch:- 2020-22 (MA sem 1)

Paper 4:- literature of Victorian period

Topic name:- The  picture of Victorian Society in Hard Times

Roll no.:-17

Enrollment no.:-3069206420200001

 

E-mail Id :- snehaagravat2000@gmail.com

Submitted to:- S.B.Gardi Department Of English Maharaja krishnkumarsinhji Bhavngar University

The picture of victorian society in Hard Times:-

Introduction:-

Hard Times generally means a period of economic depression with food shortage, low wage and unemployment. Hard Times means a general situation in which the lives of people are restricted. In such situation, people cannot have a free and spontaneous growth of their natural feelings and sentiments.It shows a situation in the novel, where mechanization and industrialism leads to slavery to routine and calculation.Hard Times by Charles Dickens is set in the Victorian age predominantly attacking on the then existing social problems, educational system, caste system, economic system and many more. The Victorian era was dominated by an aristocratic group of people whose power later slowly faded away and lost its influence.

Let's throw some light on this novel and his author:-

Charles Dickens:-

Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. 

Charles Dickens was a British novelist, journalist, editor, illustrator and social commentator who wrote such beloved classic novels as Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. 

Dickens is remembered as one of the most important and influential writers of the 19th century. Among his accomplishments, he has been lauded for providing a stark portrait of the Victorian-era underclass, helping to bring about social change.After suffering a stroke, Dickens died at age 58 on June 9, 1870, at Gad’s Hill Place, his country home in Kent, England. Five years earlier, Dickens had been in a train accident and never fully recovered. Despite his fragile condition, he continued to tour until shortly before his death.Scottish satirical writer Thomas Carlyle described Dickens’ passing as “an event worldwide, a unique of talents suddenly extinct.” At the time of his death, his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was unfinished.

Hard Times:-

Hard Times, novel by Charles Dickens, published in serial form (as Hard Times: For These Times) in the periodical Household Words from April to August 1854 and in book form later the same year. The novel is a bitter indictment of industrialization, with its dehumanizing effects on workers and communities in mid-19th-century England. 

Louisa and Tom Gradgrind have been harshly raised by their father, an educator, to know nothing but the most factual, pragmatic information. Their lives are devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination, and the two have little or no empathy for others. Louisa marries Josiah Bounderby, a vulgar banker and mill owner. She eventually leaves her husband and returns to her father’s house. Tom, unscrupulous and vacuous, robs his brother-in-law’s bank. Only after these and other crises does their father realize that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, retired merchant in the industrial city of Coketown, England, devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his oldest children, Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits. 

In this novel we find many themes which is used by Dickens very significantly.

Themes:-

Philosophical Viewpoints: Utilitarianism and Classical Economics:-

In Hard Times, the ideas behind Utilitarianism, statistical economics, and the way they may shape government and educational policy all run together to present a bleak future for the children raised under them. Those who idealize these social sciences imagine a logical world run according to the dictates of the marketplace. In this novel, Dickens presents us with some children raised and educated under this system.

Philosophical Viewpoints: Creativity and the Imagination:-

Paradoxically, in Hard Times, play and pleasure turn out to be a kind of work that is just as difficult as factory labor. No job is more physically demanding than that of the circus performers, who are bruised and beaten daily in order to create an imaginative release for the otherwise mundane lives of their audience. 

Education:-

There is a strong case made in Hard Times that education is not simply the classroom experience of memorizing facts. The novel expresses the view that having an emotional component to our education is crucial. It's also shown in the novel that this kind of learning can happen at any time in life. 

Wealth:-Hard Times definitely has a specific view on wealth. In this novel, the gulf between rich and poor is vast and cannot be crossed, despite the myth created by the rich that the poor can lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Those who rise do so at the expense of others, and even then their progress is slow, painful, and does not reach much higher than where they started – and anyone who says otherwise is telling self-serving lies. 

Power:-

Power comes in several forms in Hard Times. On the one hand, the numerous factory workers represent a tremendous force, both in terms of their ability to operate machinery and produce goods, and in their ability to band together to form a union and go on strike. On the other hand, in their collective form they are viewed by their employers as disposable and almost non-human. 

Women and Femininity:-

In the Victorian ideal, a woman was the repository of family morality – the one who would not only nurture the bodies of her children and husband, but also their minds. The educational experiment Gradgrind undertakes is to our eyes quite progressive – teaching his girls and boys the same things and removing the burden of ideal femininity from his daughter.

Family:-

Hard Times expresses the opinion that even an ad hoc, somewhat messily organized family is the best kind of community structure, as long as there's love present. This is shown in the descriptions of Sleary's circus, easily the warmest and most caring of the novel's many groups. In this novel, when families are close emotionally, they provide a moral education that centers on self-sacrifice and altruism.

Love:-

In Hard Times, love itself can be a positive or negative emotion, regardless of whether it occurs between romantic partners or parents and children. There are examples of socially sanctioned and nurturing domestic love. There's also spiritually uplifting love that inspires better behavior and the improvement of the self. 

Marriage:-

There are no happy marriages in Hard Times. In Stephen's case, it focuses instead on a missed opportunity for true companionship. In the case of the Gradgrinds, you've got an entirely intellectually unequal match where spouses are indifferent to each other. Then there's a loveless disaster where husband and wife grow to hate each other in the case of Louisa and Bounderby.

Morality and Ethics:-

In Hard Times, the key moral attributes that the villains lack are empathy, generosity, and altruism. For Dickens, these are the foundation of human relationships. There is no getting around them with any other quality, however positive. Those who possess these qualities are much better equipped to handle the world, however hostile it may be. 

Let's see how Hard Times reflect the Victorian Society:-

Hard Times by Charles Dickens is set in the Victorian age predominantly attacking on the then existing social problems, educational system, caste system, economic system and many more. The Victorian era was dominated by an aristocratic group of people whose power later slowly faded away and lost its influence.The condition of fading aristocracy has been represented through the characters, Mr. Gradgrind and Bounderby in the novel.

Dickens clearly states his hatred towards the divorce law which remains a privilege of the rich people. Stephen Blackpool, a ‘hand’ in an industry had a drunk and brutish wife, wanted a divorce from her, but can’t because of his poor financial condition and was not able to afford the costly fee of divorce law. The oppression of poor working class by the rich industrialist is the main point of indignation in the novel. The hard workers are just termed as “Hands” without any emotions, which shows that they are counted only in terms of work, production and manufacturing. Except that they are not human beings. The novel is a radical criticism against the economic disparity of the age where the rich are extremely rich and the poor have abject poverty, they can’t even have a square meal. All the system is against the blue collar workers. The ‘Hands’ were always suppressed by law, trade union and their employers.

The workers in the industries are underpaid and do not receive ample and decent facilities to run life, who ultimately go to the protest against industrialists. Dickens exposed his anger towards the developing system of industrialism in England.

The novel is a great example of “attack on the utilitarian’ of the Victorian era, where emotions and sentiments were not counted but only the working efficiency, facts, number and calculations were given more importance. The facts have replaced the love and sentiments. For Gradgrind “Love is misplaced expressions”. The Victorian era was marked with the same features. This situation has been distinctly shown by Dickens. The children of Grandgrind were not given permission to wander, to imagine, to ask questions related to emotions and even they were not told any stories and were not made hear any rhymes. For, Gradgrind the fact is all and everything. He even converts the relations into numbers and facts and convinces his daughter Louisa to get married to a man double of her age.

The educational system too was satirized by Dickens in the novel. The curriculum, the school environment and teachers were deeply, influenced by the utilitarian values. The students were taught to follow what the teachers told, but not to think or wonder upon the teaching given by them. For instance, Tom faced a problem and he was not able to deal with the situation, though he was highly educated at that time and Louisa can’t understand her own emotions because of the poor education system of the Victorian era.

The minds of human beings can be formed only upon facts. Children are considered as empty vessels to be filled with facts. Gradgrind is a man of realities, an eminently practical man, a man of facts and calculations.

The whole education system was based on pragmatism or on practical qualities, and does not touch the imaginative or emotional side of life. Gradgrind is disappointed at his metallurgical Louisa and mathematical Tom becoming curious about the circus. Mrs. Gradgrind asks her children not to waste their time in wandering at things, but to go and be something logical. The element of utilitarianism is seen in Bounderby the manufacturer and banker. He is a practical minded man and there is no touch of humanity in him, especially in his relationships with other people.

The Society of England was getting industrialized and machinery occupied the top priority in national life. Industrialization gave rise to conflict between the capital and labor due to which the trade unionism was rising. There were snobbery and hypocrisy in the minds of the upper middle class people. The aspects of Victorian life and some other evils and abuses are described in Hard Times. Mrs. Sparsit is the representative of this class of hypocrites. For such people, money is the only important thing in life. Mrs. Sparsit always mentions the fact that her husband was a “Powler”. Bounder always mentions the fact that Mrs. Sparsit has been an aristocrat just to prove that he himself has risen up from the bottom and is a self-made man.

Coketown is described as a town of machinery and tall chimneys, with similar streets, similar people, and similar boring life. It is a mode of industrial pollution. The workers working in the industries are not supposed to have any soul. This neglect of workers gives rise to union leaders like Slackbridge, who only want to continue their agitation against the manufacturers and do not really care for the welfare of the workers.

Conclusion:-

In nutshell we find that Dickens very significantly described the Victorian Society of that time. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. By the end of the novel, Gradgrind has reversed course.Dickens's primary goal in Hard Times is to illustrate the dangers of allowing humans to become like machines, suggesting that without compassion and imagination, life would be unbearable.

References:-

1)“Charles Dickens.” Collins Philip, 2021, www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Dickens-British-novelist.

2)“Hard Times.” The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2021, www.britannica.com/topic/Hard-Times-novel-by-Dickens.

3)"The Picture of Victorian Society in Hard Times" 

www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanfiction/victorian-society-in-hard-times.html#.YCXm4XlN2Nw. 

4)"Dickens's Hard Times as a Social Novel" www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanfiction/hard-times-as-a-social-novel.html#.YCXmrHlN2Nw.

Word count:-2184

Paper_3_Assignment_Sneha_Agravat

Name::- Sneha Agravat

Batch:- 2020-22 (MA sem 1)

Paper 3:- (Literature of Romantic period)

Topic name:- A comparison between Pride and Prejudice and Pamela 

Roll no.:-17

Enrollment no.:-3069206420200001

 

E-mail Id :- snehaagravat2000@gmail.com

Submitted to:- S.B.Gardi Department Of English Maharaja krishnkumarsinhji Bhavngar University

Introduction:-

In a social context of gender and classrepression (and oppression), Jane Austen managed to tell her story and the story of women in a way that still nowadays is controversial and a matter of study. How could she do that in a world ruled my men? As Anne Elliot states in Persuasion, “men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in 

their hands” (Austen [1813] 2012, 276). How did Jane Austen portray women and their situation? Which influences did she have and how did she use them? Is there a difference in the treatment of women, their portrayal and the portrayal of their situation in the works of a male and a female writer and, in particular, is there a difference in the way Richardson and Austen portray women? This study will focus on the way Richardson and Austen portray women and their situation in Pamela and Pride and Prejudice, in the differences that can be established in their portrayal and the motives and purposes behind them. It will also focus on the influence that Richardson had in Austen and in which senses she used this influence, the influence of a man writing about women, to portray women in her novels.

First we talk about Samuel Richardson and his Pamela:-

Samuel Richardson A man telling stories about women Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded was Samuel Richardson’s first published novel in 1740 and it had an immediate great success. It is an epistolary novel that comprises mostly the letters from Pamela (a young maiden) to her parents about the misfortunes and trials that she has to endure and overcome after her Mistress’s death and the following attacks and abuses of her former Mistress’s son, Mr. B. He is presented as an abusive, tyrannical Master that is obsessed with having Pamela and “ruining” her. Pamela will defend her virtue and innocence to the extent of almost committing suicide; and it is her goodness and virtue what will, by the end of the novel, be rewarded by Mr. B’s reformation and their following marriage, really advantageous to Pamela economically and socially speaking. There is a diversity of opinions from scholars about Pamela’s rebellious behaviour and the reasons behind it. Some of them consider Pamela as a revolutionary novel because of Pamela’s behaviour to her master when he intends to abuse her, and others see Pamela as a subordinated woman who only rebels for religious purposes and who,once married, is completely submissive to her husband. Pamela rebels against class and gender oppressions in order to maintain her virtue, as she considers God’s Will superior to her Master’s. According to Jocelyn Harris,“Pamela teaches Mr B. that there is an ordering of duties. According to the domestic conduct books which Richardson knew well, a Christian first duty should be to God’s laws, his second to himself, and his third to social relations such as that between master and servant” (1987, 30). Harris also states that “an outsider by birth, education and profession, Richardson found common cause with women in a world that needed change. Employing forms familiar to them, letters and tales of courtship and marriage, he urged his readers to train their powers of reason and morality by debating the issues.of his novels”.

Margaret Doody considers Pamela “revolutionary,” precisely because of Pamela’s rebellious behaviour to her master: “In defending her virginity so vigorously, Pamela, the first important English heroine to actually work for her living, rebels against the social attitudes which dictated that lower-class girls were not supposed to set a value on themselves. 

So, what is Richardson’s purpose for making his heroine rebel (at the beginning of the novel) against her Master, a man and her superior in terms of class? Is he trying to denounce the oppressive and repressive situation of women or is he trying to make a religious defence of the principles of morality, virtue and innocence? We can think of Pamela as a heroine that rebels against gender and class oppression or as a “selfless, sexless woman” (LeGates 1976, 23) exhibiting obedience to her master. This contradiction could perhaps be explained by Richardson’s purpose when writing the novel. Was it to denounce the situation of women or to exemplify a model of Christian virtue, innocence and duty to instruct his readers? The clue to solve this contradiction may be the change of attitude in Pamela, from rebellion to obedience, 

once Mr B. goes from being her tyrannical Master to her beloved husband.

His portrayal of womanhood in Pamela Women are variously characterized in Pamela. They are praised for their modesty,prudence, humility, virtuosity, etc. As Pamela explains by the beginning of the novel, Mrs Jervis is pleased at her for her “prudence” and “modesty:” “and told me that she was very well pleased to see my prudence and modesty, and that I kept all the fellows at a distance”. When women are criticized it is for being artful, hypocrite, not submissive or rebellious. “’O the little hypocrite!’ said he; ‘she has all the arts of her sex; they werebborn with her.”. Pamela is criticized, especially by Mr B., when she is rebellious and decides not to please him and be submissive.

  

Let's see Pride and Prejudice novel by Jane Austen:-

Jane Austen and feminism:-

Jane Austen is considered a feminist in the sense that she places women in an epistemological key position; her stories are focalized through a woman’s gaze. Austen makes emphasis on the social differences and inequalities between men and women, and how women are placed in a much inferior, less advantageous position. Even if all her heroines end up getting married, and marriage could seem the main goal of the narrative, there has to be aldifference established between the “story” and Austen’s ‘discourse’. As Robyn Warhol states, “in Austen, the interplay between story, in which the independent heroine must, as some critics have it, ‘swindle into a wife’, and discourse, through which traditional power relationships can be subverted, carries important implications for feminist literary theory” (1996, 22). 

Brown also raises questions about whether marriage can be seen as a “narrative goal” in her novels or whether “her satiric treatment of love and marriage in some works . . . does arise from the feminist’s skepticism, not about sex and marriage per se, but about the way in which both have functioned in the woman’s identity? (1973, 324). We could conclude that Austen, apparently writing stories where all her heroines end up happily marrying, which actually seems to be the goal of the narrative, raises questions.about the situation of women, the inequalities between gender and the oppression and repression that women suffered. As Brown states “Jane Austen’s treatment of marriage in her work is best understood in relation to her skepticism about male definitions of female emotions, sexuality, education and modesty” (1973, 336). 

In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth ends up getting married to Mr Darcy, so, she actually “swindles into a wife” (Warhol 1996, 22), but throughout the novel we can see her opinions about different matters concerning the situation of women. Elizabeth is, in fact, an intelligent heroine, mostly praised because of her intelligence and her “quickness” and it is this intelligence and her capacity of expressing her opinions what makes Mr Darcy fall in love with her. Many questions regarding women and their place in society are presented in Pride and Prejudice: the problem of inheritance for women, the need of getting married, the education of women, the high expectations and many attributes that a woman must possess to be ‘accomplished’, etc. As we have mentioned, Elizabeth Bennett states her own point of view (that perhaps we could see as similar to Austen’s) in every one of these aspects. Jane Austen makes use of her characteristic irony toemphasize these controversial questions and satirizes the traditional descriptions of women in order to denounce, or at least make the reader notice existing class and gender oppressions. Her portrayal of womanhood in Pride and Prejudice In the very first chapter of Pride and Prejudice we can see Mr Bennett praising Elizabeth because she “has something more of quickness than her sisters” who he classifies as “silly,” “ignorant” and “vain.” This pattern will be repeated throughout the whole novel:On the other hand, Elizabeth, who has been already described as “quick” by her own father is described by Mr Darcy on their first encounter as “tolerable; but no handsome enough” (12). However, he soon starts taking notice of her: “he began to find it [her face] uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes” 

We can see that the first positive adjective that he uses to describe her is “intelligent.”Manyinstances of the situation of inequality between men and women are to be found in Pride and Prejudice. The problem with the Bennet’s state, to be inherited by Mr Collins

rather than by the daughters, the incapacity of women to be more or less independent without a father or a husband, etc. As Mrs Bennet states at the beginning of the novel, it is impossible for her and her daughters to go visit Mr Bingley without Mr Bennet’s presence: “Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him, if Mrs Bennet’s obsession with marrying her five daughters, which is the main goal of her life, speaks for the necessity of young women to get married, especially if not from a high social class, to avoid being left with nothing after their father’s death.We can see Elizabeth’s own opinion on the matter of marriage after turning down 

Mr Collins’s proposal, even when really advantageous for her. She does not accept Mr.Collins’s proposal because she knows he would not make her happy (regardless of the convenience of the marriage for the family.

Comparison between both novels:-

Similarities in the treatment of women and feminine characters in Pride and Prejudice and Pamela:-

Some similarities can be found between the protagonists of Pamela and Pride and Prejudice. Pamela rebels against the oppressions of her abusive and tyrannical master and Elizabeth does it against social and gender oppression, she finds a way of stating her opinion on those matters affecting the inequality of women. As for the plot of the novels, there are also some similarities in the lives of our protagonists. They both end up falling in love and marrying the men that they hated at the beginning of the novel, men that are superior to them in social class and that consequently turn out to be really advantageous marriages for both of them. Obviously, their situation is very different too: Pamela is Mr B.’s servant and he actually tries and almost gets to abuse her, she is even abducted against her will by him, she is oppressed almost to the point of committing suicide. The situation between Darcy and Elizabeth is, by far, not similar to that. Taking into account this major difference, they both end up marrying for love, we see how their feelings towards the men change radically throughout the novel and how they both end up with very advantageous marriages. To get to that marriage, Pamela and Elizabeth both turn down a first proposal of marriage that was also very convenient for them. Pamela turns down the proposal of Mr Williams because of her parents, because she wants to go back to them, and because she considers herself too young to get married. As for Elizabeth we have already seen that she turns down Collins for the sake of her happiness. They have different reasons, but at the end they both turn down proposals made by men that they don’t love and that would be very convenient for them. They both have to confront a powerful, superior woman related to their present (in the case of Pamela) or future (in the case of Elizabeth) husband that is against the marriage. Lady Davers (Mr. B.’s sister) and Lady Catherine DeBourgh (Darcy’s aunt) both use their power to confront Pamela and Elizabeth. Lady Davers tries to make Pamela confess about her marriage with Mr B. and Lady Catherine DeBourgh tries to dissuade Elizabeth from marrying Mr Darcy. Neither Pamela nor Elizabeth are intimidated by the powerful women and they maintain their positions and opinions. Plenty of instances of class and gender inequality can be found in both novels. We have seen in both novels how some situations can be very different for men and for women: virtue and the importance to maintain it in Pamela and economic independence in Pride and Prejudice. 

Richardson and Austen both acknowledge the inequalities women suffered, mostly women of a low social class; and in different ways and perhaps for different purposes they make the readers notice these inequalities and oppressions.

Differences in the treatment of women and feminine characters in Pride and Prejudice and Pamela :-

The main difference that can be found between Pamela and Pride and Prejudice as for their portrayal of women is the way they are described and the attributes they are praised or criticised for. As we have seen, in Pamela women are praised for being virtuous, modest and innocent; and in Pride and Prejudice they are praised for being.intelligent, for their quickness or liveliness of mind. The attributes for which women are praised in Pamela are clearly passive attributes, related to the Christian doctrine, whereas the best characteristics attributed to women in Pride and Prejudice imply activity. As we have seen, Mr B. and Darcy fall in love with Pamela and Elizabeth precisely because of these attributes, virtue and intelligence respectively. What is particularly different in the situation of these two couples after their marriage is the way women behave to their husbands. Once married, Pamela becomes a submissive wife, accepts everything her husband says and does everything in her power to please him. On the other hand, Elizabeth’s character does not change after marriage, she keeps being challenging to Darcy.This statement of Mary actually comprises the thesis of Richardson’s Pamela: how important it is to preserve the virtue and how unequal it is to men and women. Even if Mary’s idea of virtue and its importance is equal to the one that Richardson exposes in Pamela, Elizabeth’s answer to Mary’s statement could say something about Austen’s real opinion on the subject: “Elizabeth lifted up her eyes in amazement, but was too much oppressed to make any reply. Mary, however, continued to console herself with such kind of moral extractions from the evil before them” (290). Elizabeth (and perhaps Austen herself) is “amazed” at Mary’s statement; this amazement could be due to the particular situation the family was suffering in that moment. However, we could also consider it as Austen’s own opinion on the subject of virtue in women. As we will see in the following section, it is known that Austen was a reader and admirer of Richardson and perhaps this opinion of Mary could be a direct reference to Pamela, because of how exactly it describes the main idea of Richardson’s novel. What could be established as the major difference between the two novels is the purpose that the authors had when writing them. They both seem to focus their novels on the situation of women, the oppression they suffered and the existing inequalities between men and women as well as between social classes. However, what was their purpose?The purpose behind Richardson’s Pamela clearly seems to be educational or instructive. This idea can be extracted from the subtitle of the novel itself: Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (my emphasis). Pamela seems to be a model of conduct for young girls to follow: if they remain virtuous and innocent against all temptations and dangers, they will be rewarded as Pamela is rewarded by marrying her reformed oppressor. Actually, Richardson himself makes clear his purpose in the title page of the novel: 

“Published in order to cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the 

youth of both sexes.”According to Blanchard “Richardson intended his work to be an engaging source of education and edification, and the enthusiastic response that he received indicates thathe achieved his goal” (2011, 93). Richardson accomplishes the function of entertaining as well as of instructing. Pamela could be compared to a conduct book or to devotional literature because of its main purpose, to defend the values of Christianity and provide a model of conduct that acts according to it: “Pamela permits readers to enjoy the attractions both of fiction and of devotional literature at the same time and in the same work” (Watt 1967, 152). The

ultimate goal in Richardson is, then, religious, devotional and instructive. 

Conclusion:-

Although some similarities can be established between Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in the way they put forward and emphasize gender and class inequalities and the oppression suffered by women, their way of portraying women is very different. 

Richardson characterizes and praises women for being virtuous, modest and innocent. For being, to sum up, passive and submissive and he only defends rebellious behaviours when told by God’s law. Richardson’s women don’t rebel to prove inequalities but to remain virtuous, they only rebel for religious purposes, and these same religious, doctrinal and instructive purposes are the ones that guided Richardson when writing his novel and his portrayal of women. On the other hand, Austen portrays her heroines as intelligent, able to observe and question their reality and the situation of injustice and inequality suffered by women. Austen’s women rebel to defend their own values and to protest against inequality, neither because of religious motives nor to be a model of conduct. 

We could conclude that Richardson’s and Austen’s purposes when writing their novels and portraying women were very different. Richardson writes Pamela as a model of conduct, with the purpose of instructing young men and women. Austen, on the other hand, puts forward social and gender inequalities with the only purpose of making her readers aware of the situation. The main difference between both authors (besides the way they describe women, as we have already mentioned) is their purpose when writing their novels. 

References:-

Austen, Jane (1993). Pride and Prejudice. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited. ISBN 9781853260001.

2)Richardson, Samuel (1740). Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1st ed.). London: Messrs Rivington & Osborn.

3)“Speech Creatures’: New Men in ‘Pamela’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice.’” Bowlby Rachel, 2009, www.jstor.org/stable/43151922.

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paper_2_Assignments_Sneha_Agravat

Name::- Sneha Agravat

Batch:- 2020-22(MA sem 1)

Paper 2:-The literature of Neo-classical period

Topic:- Rape of the lock - as a darker mirror

Roll no.:-17

Enrollment no.:-3069206420200001

 

E-mail Id :- snehaagravat2000@gmail.com

Submitted to:- S.B.Gardi Department Of English Maharaja krishnkumarsinhji Bhavngar University

Rape of the lock - as a darker mirror

Introduction:-

Perhaps no other great poet in English Literature has been so differently judged at different times as Alexander Pope. Accepted almost on his first appearance as one of the leading poets of the day, he rapidly became recognized as the foremost man of letters of his age. He held this position throughout his life, and for over half a century after his death his works were considered not only as masterpieces, but as the finest models of poetry. With the change of poetic temper that occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth century Pope's fame was overshadowed. The romantic poets and critics even raised the question whether Pope was a poet at all. And as his poetical fame diminished, the harsh judgments of his personal character increased. It is almost incredible with what exulting bitterness critics and editors of Pope have tracked out and exposed his petty intrigues, exaggerated his delinquencies, misrepresented his actions, attempted in short to blast his character as a man.

About Alexander Pope:-

Alexander Pope is seen as one of the greatest English poets and the foremost poet of the early 18th century. He is best known for satirical and discursive poetry, including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translation of Homer. 

BORN:-May 21, 1688

Died:-May 30, 1744 (aged 56)

His best known for his poems An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712–14), The Dunciad (1728), and An Essay on Man (1733–34). He is one of the most epigrammatic of all English authors.

Here we will talk about his Notable work Rape of The lock.

Brief summary of poem:-

The poem is a mock-epic that satirizes the upper-class in London at the time. The story focuses on the central character, Belinda, whose lock of hair is cut off at a social gathering. Although trivial to most, Belinda is outraged that her lock of hair has been cut by the Baron.

Pope started something that resulted in a piece of literature that has remained to this day a leading example of the mock epic satire. John Caryll, a good friend to Pope, asked him to write a little poem about the affair in order to help heal the wounds of the two families. The poem became a trivial story of the stolen lock of hair as a vehicle for making some thoroughly mature and sophisticated comments on society and humankind. Pope draws on his own experience in the classics in combining epic literary conventions with his own wit and sense of values. The entire poem is written in five cantos, making use of the popular rhymed iambic pentameter verse, along with balance, antithesis, bathos, and paranomasia.

The poem is a mock epic because it uses the epic form, a genre meant for serious subjects, such as the Trojan war in Homer's Iliad, and applies it to such a trivial issue as the loss of a lock of hair. The humor comes in the grandiose and overblown way this hair theft is described, complete with lamentations, exclamations, and the lock of hair ascending to the moon at the end of the poem. Pope populated his mock-epic world with sylphs and made as much of Belinda's petticoat as Homer did of Achilles's shield.

Pope wanted to use humor to heal an argument but also to show that the aristocrats and leaders of his day lacked the heroism of figures from classical literature. By poking gentle fun at them, he hoped to inspire them to worry about more important subjects than card-playing, hair, and flirtations.

Let's see this poem as a darker mirror:-

One of famous author Andrew Macdonald-Brown shows how Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock progresses from satirising the foolishness of wealthy young women to exposing the violence that results from unequal power relations, whether between men and women, rich and poor or imperial powers and colonised nations. He describe Rape of the lock as a darker mirror.

He used themes to evaluate his article:-

1)Gender and sexuality:-

Examine representations of gender and sexuality in Restoration and 18th-century literature including Paradise Lost and The Rape of the Lock, and explore the works of early women writers such as Aphra Behn, Frances Burney and Margaret Cavendish.

2)Satire and humour

Discover how writers of the 17th and 18th centuries used satire and humour to address issues around politics and power, inequality and class, gender and marriage – as well as to entertain readers and audiences. 

Alexander Pope very significantly represent the 18th century through this poem. This poem also represents darker mirror theme. Let's see in deeply.

A few young Ladies:-

In his dedicatory letter to Arabella Fermor, prefacing the 1714 edition of The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope claims that his poem ‘was intended only to divert a few young Ladies, who have good sense and good humour enough to laugh not only at their sex’s little unguarded follies, but at their own’.

Most of Pope’s mockery in the poem is indeed directed at women, or, more specifically, at ‘Belles’: privileged young women of Augustan high society. Through Belinda, the poem’s beautiful heroine-victim, Pope relentlessly satirises an array of stereotypical ‘Female Errors’, most obviously triviality and vanity. Whether his text presents these as uniquely ‘female’, or even makes the Belles particularly culpable for them, is another matter.

Belinda resembles you in nothing but in Beauty:-

Later in his preface, Pope plays on the vanity of his dedicatee, Miss Arabella Fermor, admitting that he must have ‘some regard for this piece, since I dedicate it to You’, and assuring her that ‘the character of Belinda resembles you in nothing but in Beauty’.

Pope’s tiptoeing is understandable, for Arabella was the victim of the real-life ‘rape’ which had inspired the poem’s first, two-canto version (1712): at a party, one Lord Petre had snipped a lock of hair from her unsuspecting head. In turning Arabella’s ‘trivial’ misfortune into ‘heroi-comical’ verse, the risk of adding insult to the lady’s injury was high.

Slight is the subject, but not so the praise:-

Female triviality and vanity soon make their appearance in the poem. While Belinda sleeps in her bed at noon, Ariel, her guardian sylph, addresses her in a dream as ‘Fairest of mortals’ (Canto 1, l. 26), and urges: ‘thy own importance know’ (l. 34). Ariel’s flattery reflects the adoring gaze of Belinda’s social circle (‘ev’ry Eye was fix’d on her alone.

Pope’s elaborate description of Belinda’s dressing table ritual is part mock-religious (her maid Betty, ‘th’inferior Priestess’ (l. 135), performs ‘the sacred rites of Pride’ (l.136)) and part close parody of Achilles’s arming scene in Homer’s Iliad: ‘Now awful Beauty puts on all its arms’ (l. 147). The mock-epic feature, by inviting comparison between vain, trivial Belinda and the mighty epic hero, makes her ridiculous.

What guards the purity of melting maids?

But there is more to the arming scene than Homeric parody and mockery of Belinda’s vanity. For one thing, Pope’s text is itself so in thrall to her beauty that our eyes too ‘are fix’d on her alone’. The poem repeatedly celebrates and enacts beauty’s ‘awful’ power.

Pope also shows how Belinda’s vanity is the product of a society which obsessively prized, flattered and fetishised female beauty – of young women of Belinda’s class, in particular. 

Jolly though that all sounds, Ariel portrays the Belle’s position as perilous: constantly on display, she must both attract and repel the attentions of competing, predatory ‘Beaux’; to encourage suitors, with blushing and eye-rolling and fluttering of her fan, but never to lose her ‘purity’. On the other hand, rejecting suitors too proudly could see her branded a ‘Prude’. And as Belinda’s friend Clarissa, warns later in the poem: ‘She who scorns a Man, must die a Maid’ (Canto 5, l. 28).

But however well a Belle behaves, her ‘Honour’ is still vulnerable in a society where ‘At ev’ry Word a Reputation dies’ (Canto 3, 16). In this context, the ‘arming’ metaphor of Belinda’s dressing table ritual seems rather apt: to win a husband and preserve her honour, a Belle had to be a kind of warrior.

Or some frail China Jar receive a Flaw

Equally apt, given their commodification in the marriage market, is the parallel Pope repeatedly draws between women and precious ornaments. Aware that ‘some dire Disaster’ (Canto 2, l. 103) has been foretold for Belinda, Ariel wonders ‘Whether the Nymph shall break Diana’s Law, / Or some frail China Jar receive a Flaw. / Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade…’ (ll. 105–107).

The juxtaposing of serious and trivial disasters suggests a society which has lost its sense of perspective. But how exactly? ‘break Diana’s Law’ is a self-consciously pompous euphemism for ‘lose her virginity’. Is Pope mocking his society’s obsessive prizing of (female) virginity? 

‘The various off’rings of the world appear’

In juxtaposing virginity and honour with china jars and brocade, Pope may also be commenting on the rampant materialism of his age. Luxury items crowd the text’s glittering social world: the ladies’ silk dresses, fans and jewellery; the gentlemen’s canes, snuff boxes and crystal rings. Carriages are ‘gilded’, and the Baron’s ‘French Romances’, which he burns on Love’s altar, are ‘neatly gilt’. The serving of coffee at Hampton Court is described in fetishistic detail.

Such conspicuous consumption was enjoying a spectacular boom in 18th-century Britain. Encouraged by the government’s mercantile imperialist policy, the East India Company and other traders poured exotic cargo into London, where it was eagerly bought up by the nation’s wealthy elite. 

The Cave of Spleen:-

That darker mirror comes to the surface in the Cave of Spleen.

Here the gnome Umbriel seeks remedy for Belinda’s loss from the subterranean Queen of Spleen. the word spleen, in Pope’s time, was a catch-all term for many mysterious ailments, including anxiety, depression and hysteria. Fainting, headaches, nausea – all could be attributed to the ‘vapours’ supposedly sent up to the brain by spleen. It could afflict either sex, but was predominantly associated with women.

Fans clap, Silks russle, and tough Whalebones crack:-

So Belinda, her rage unsalved by the balm of sweet reason, flies to arms against the rapacious Baron and the whole tribe of men. Female ‘good Sense’ and ‘good Humour’ are buried in the decorum-trashing glee of riot: 

 crack’ (Canto 5, l. 40.). (Hear the damage done there to the gentle iambic pentameter: sound perfectly echoing sense.)

In the climactic battle of the sexes (Canto 5), the ladies win. Belinda looms over the vanquished Baron: ‘Restore the Lock! she cries; and all around / Restore the Lock! the vaulted Roofs rebound’. One could read the moment as one more mock-epic joke at women’s expense. But Pope’s purpose has consistently been more complex and generous than that. Enjoy instead Belinda in all her hard-won glory; not enfeebled by spleen or diminished by mockery or set straight by moralising, but righteous and triumphant. For all her triviality, Belinda transcends objectification. She alone in the poem has an inner-life, harbouring ‘secret passions’ (secret even from herself, perhaps). And she alone suffers and acts heroically. 

Conclusion:-

The crux of the above discussion is that Alexander Pope has portrayed a complete picture of the aristocratic society of the eighteen century. “The Rape of the Lock” is just not a mock epic but is a historical poem; it reveals the attitude of a young generation of the eighteenth century. Pope has also demonstrated the attitude of judges and government officials towards their duties. The easy flow of money made the life of many people easier. The primary purpose of the poem may have something else but its secondary purpose is to deal with London life. “The Rape of The Lock” is a mirror to the eighteenth century aristocratic society as it brings to light the idiosyncrasies of a class of aristocrats in the Eighteenth-century aristocratic English society.

References:-

1) Brown-MacDonald Andrew, 2018, www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/the-rape-of-the-lock-a-darker-mirror.

2)Butt Everett John, 1995, www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-Pope-English-author

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3)Pope, Alexander. "The Rape of the Lock" – via Wikisource.

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