Since the beginning of time there has been a universal thought that man are superior to woman and such is the universal theme in Alexander Pope's, The Rape of the Lock. Although Pope ridicules women's actions and presents woman in a negative manner, he does it in such a humorous way that it may not be obvious and offensive to all readers. This possesses a problem for the fact that maybe the initial meaning of the poem would not be attained by all of the readers. .
Pope goes on to describe from societies perspective that order to have one quality you must posses another attribute prior to successful achieving the other quality. For example Belinda, one of the main female characters must first be recognized by society as being beautiful before she can obtain self-importance. This then leads to the significance of the title of the poem The Rape of the Lock, because Belinda becomes a victim to humiliation in society because a lock of her hair had been cut off after losing in a game of cards, causing her beauty to be lessened therefore making it harder for her to obtain pride and social status. .
This makes it hard for me to relate or learn from the poem because I feel that Pope is comparing small superficial qualities like beauty to bigger more meaningful things such as self-pride and intelligence. This demeanors woman in a sense that only the beautiful eye appealing women can obtain a dignifying stature within society. With this idea being presented I don't think it allows very much room for character development in neither the male or female characters. From which I was faced with another problem in reading this poem because with so little character development I wasn't sure to which character I can closely relate to and I often found myself going back and rereading certain parts trying to put myself into a certain characters shoes. Being able to relate to the issues in the poem yet not being able to relate to the characters makes for a lengthy and tedious story line.