SOURCE: “Modern Ladies and Ancient Poets: The Rape of the Lock,” in The Sacred Weapon: An Introduction to Pope's Satire. The Book Guild, 1993, pp. 33-59.

In the following essay, Blocksidge outlines the satiric principles and general themes of The Rape of the Lock.

Relatively little is known about the ‘real life’ situation which gave rise to The Rape of the Lock.¹ What we do know though is that Robert, Lord Petre had cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair, causing considerable concern to her family, and a feud between it and Lord Petre's. It was Pope's friend John Caryll who suggested that the poet might like to write a poem which would ‘laugh them together again.’ From such fragmentary evidence as there is, it would appear that the poem was, at first at any rate, successful in its aim. Pope reported that the poem was ‘well...