Belinda and Alexander Pope's Representation of Hysteria in The Rape of the Lock

Abstract

This paper examines the concept of Hysteria and its representation through the character of Belinda, the fashionable coquette, in "The Rape of the Lock." In this poem Pope represents fashion and the fashionable objects as tools that can induce hysteria. To achieve this, Pope represents Belinda as an imaginative, hysterical woman consistently following fashion and the fashionable commodities which contribute greatly to her feminine subjectivity. In the character of Belinda, Pope manages to represent hysteria as a case closely connected with fashion, commerce and femininity.