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The Lock
Belinda’s locks of hair symbolize her beauty, her feminine power, and her sexuality. Belinda’s beauty is bound up in her elegant ringlets. Notably, the narrator doesn’t say that the Baron finds Belinda beautiful or is bewitched by her, but that he “the bright locks admired,” using the locks as a metonym, or shortened metaphor, for Belinda herself. Belinda’s hair is beautiful, and so Belinda is beautiful. This beauty also grants Belinda a certain amount of power. She prepares her hair in the morning like a soldier arming herself for battle (“Now awful Beauty puts on all its arms”). The narrator describes her locks as a weapon that Belinda cultivates for “the destruction of mankind.” He compares Belinda’s curls to the types of snares hunters use to capture birds, a trap capable of toppling men against their better reason. This misogynistic logic underlies much of the action of the poem. On the battlefield of Hampton Court, Belinda’s hair is her primary weapon, and with it, she implicitly goads men to behave in ways they otherwise wouldn’t.
However, the lock is also a weak spot for Belinda. Locks of hair were common love tokens in Georgian England. The Baron having Belinda’s curl insinuates an intimacy between them. While in the title of the poem, the word “rape” refers to defilement in a more general sense, the violent sexual connotation nevertheless also applies. As Thalestris warns Belinda, the Baron’s display of the lock could damage Belinda’s reputation by implying that she may have had sex with the Baron or somehow invited the Baron’s inappropriate behavior. The Baron even describes the lock as an object of conquest, a term that has a sexual charge. All this pressure causes Belinda to lament that she displayed her hair at all, as lords clearly cannot behave themselves. In this sense, the lock demonstrates the bind women like Belinda find themselves in. For social capital and their future happiness, they must be beautiful, but too much beauty is also considered dangerous to their reputation.
The Scissors
The scissors the Baron uses are transformed into a weapon. When Clarissa offers the scissors to the Baron, the narrator compares her action to a lady assisting her knight in Chivalric Romances, emphasizing that the scissors fulfill the role of a sword or lance. The narrator further describes the scissors as a “fatal engine.” The Baron makes this metaphor even more explicit in his speech of triumph. There he explains how even what time cannot touch, mankind can bring to ruin, just as the Achaean army assailed the walls of Troy. He concludes, “What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel, / The conqu'ring force of unresisted steel?” In other words, Belinda’s hair is a monument fated to be toppled by mankind. Because the Baron positions the scissors as a weapon that men in particular wield, the scissors can also take on a sexual or even phallic undertone. The narrator uses the word “ravished” to describe Belinda’s hair after the attack, and Thalestris calls the Baron a “ravisher,” descriptions which carry a sexual charge. Furthermore, one of Belinda’s worries after the attack is her reputation, emphasizing the sexual connotation of the attack.
The Card Game
Pope humorously transforms the card table at Court into a battlefield where fates are decided. Belinda sits down against two opponents to “decide their doom,” and Ariel and other sylphs perch on Belinda’s cards much as the gods in Classical epic poetry intervene on behalf of their favorite mortals during battle. Card hands are described as literal armies, led by various kings and queens. These face cards in turn are personified into real royalty with different personalities. The suits as well are treated as different kingdoms. For example, when Belinda’s “manly” king of spades bests an opponent’s jack of spades, the jack is described as a rebel against his own king. When the Baron’s hand has cards from multiple suits, making it a weak hand, the narrator compares them to separate armies getting mixed up in retreat. Belinda’s winning card, the king of hearts, mourns Belinda’s loss of the queen of hearts to the Baron before springing triumphantly into battle. This extended metaphor emphasizes the ridiculousness of this social set, who imbue a mere card game with solemn seriousness despite it having no lasting stakes or consequences.
