Rape of the Lock
ay, why are Beauties prais'd and honour'd most, / The wise Man's Passion, and the vain Man's Toast?" Clarissa's speech in Canto Five of Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" touches on one of the main themes of the poem: vanity. For instance, she states, "How vain are all these Glories, all our Pains, / Unless good Sense preserve what Beauty gains." Clarissa notes that looks mean nothing without a keen mind, and that "Locks will turn to gray," but "good Humour," on the other hand, "can prevail." Because of Pope's clever use of poetic devises, Clarissa's speech also points to Pope's critique of high society's overall vanity and shallowness. Clarissa's moralizing therefore addresses universal human issues that Pope deftly examines throughout "The Rape of the Lock." Pope's compellingly rhythmic heroic couplets underscore the satirical bent of Clarissa's speech, through such elements as repetition, parallelism, homonym, and irony. In spite of Clarissa's complicity in the Baron's cutting of Belinda's hair, the speaker delivers a lengthy and well-constructed speech regarding the futility of vanity, the impermanence of physical beauty, and the need to appreciate and acknowledge the more lasting virtues of womankind: wisdom and "good sense."
Clarissa begins the speech by noting that beauty is the most honored and valued attribute in a woman, and she poses the rhetorical question to her audience:...
" Society is so obsessed with beauty, claims Clarissa, that appearances are even the "wise man's Passion." In fact, women are so valued for their physical beauty that they are likened to celestial beings: they are "Angels called," and "Angel-like adored." Clarissa further states that men are so taken by women's looks that they will crane their necks, going out of their way to admire feminine physical charms.
Clarissa continues to claim that the effort poured into preserving and maintaining one's looks is all literally in vain without reason and sensibility: "How vain are all these Glories, all our Pains, / Unless good Sense preserve what Beauty gains." If men were to admire a woman's mind and morals as much as her face and body, then he would be indeed admiring a more lasting form of virtue than mere physical appearances. Therefore, Clarissa comments on the futility of vanity in the first portion of her speech in Canto Five.
The remainder of the speech pertains to the impermanence of physical beauty. Clarissa states, "alas! frail Beauty must decay, / Curl'd or uncurl'd, since Locks will turn to grey, / Since paint'd, or not paint'd, all shall fade." Here, Clarissa builds upon her preliminary assertion that vanity is futile by showing that obsession with looks is meaningless because of the natural ravages of time. A woman who paints her…
