Appearing Holy in a Superficial Society Anonymous College

The gorgeous and charming protagonist Belinda of “Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope goes to great lengths to beautify her outer appearance. Pope’s description of her elaborate beauty ritual is a clear sign of this- her primping process is detailed in a flurry of seemingly superficial trinkets, and amidst all of it are Bibles, grouped with the “Puffs, powders, [and] patches” (138). The wedging of the Bibles between baubles and beauty items has been interpreted to represent the divide between Pope’s Catholic and Protestant England, which is a contextual and symbolic understanding of the religious symbol. An article by Alex Hernandez explains this point, “The Bible, to some extent, came to absorb and encompass these tensions…” While I agree with this point, but believe it is overindulged in his essay. I argue that the Bible’s placement amid the beauty items bears a stronger usage, which is actually Belinda’s method of appearing moral among her superficiality. Although Hernandez’s essay effectively explicates the importance of the Bible among Belinda’s superficial trinkets to be the contradiction of Catholicism and Protestantism in his society, nevertheless I dissent that the Bible is actually not as imaginative as it is...