All the young tarts.

There but for the Grace of God...

Jonnie Comet

17 July 2000

  So you’ve got yourself to middle school now, and you’re unlucky enough to go to a coeducational school, where the guys are.  And you’d hoped to find that they all really like you, because it’d make your life easier, since you’d love to know that at least one of them likes you in particular, because after all that’s what we’re all supposed to want, right?  But so far here’s how they’ve been treating you:

  Your shoe’s untied and you stop and bend over to tie it and some guys walk by and one of them says something about your tush or the angle you’re on or how the level of your head is ‘just right’.  Or you’re reaching up to shove the books into your locker and one of the guys says something about how high your top rides up or what size you must be now or what a ‘nice handful’ one or two things might make.  Or maybe you hit the jackpot and get an actual one-to-one with one of them, and after a few minor words he says something about ‘getting together’ and starts asking you about your dating experience, and what you’ve done and what you haven’t, and whether you’d try this or that if only you had the right guy– indicating himself of course– and you feel profoundly embarrassed because you haven’t the faintest clue about what he’s saying except that you know other people are talking about it too and, after all, you’re smart enough to figure it out, but you’re not sure you need to know about it like he’s suggesting you should, and you feel like an idiot until he really starts driving at you with the questions and you get the urge to just run away like a scared rabbit, punch him or at least hurl one good solid verbal insult back at him, and all those other guys too, something with a wonderfully nasty-looking wince on your face and one or two choice obscenities thrown in to let him know you don’t indulge in his kind of slime, the miserable scumball that he is, but you know that when you do he’ll just seem to like it more and keep at it and, worse, he’ll tell everyone else too, so you can get known like that.

  Have I got any of this right so far?

  This seems to happen all the time, with every guy that’s even remotely interesting.  And the only thing you can think by now is that you must really be a total tart.  You didn’t used to be; but everything about your life is totally different than it was three years ago.  Well, first, you’ve got a body now– you didn’t have that three years ago.  Everyone seems to be paying attention to you– men and women both.  You’ve got a shape other women love to hate you for, and you dress like you don’t care– or worse, like you do, and they hate you for it either way.  The men– well, you know what the men are thinking, and if you don’t you will in another year or so.  Every guy from 12 to 100 stares at you; and the awful part is, there’s a good-sized bit of you that actually likes it, and, even worse, there’s a little bit of you that actually wouldn’t mind doing whatever it is they’ve got in mind.  Oh, Lord! –what a tart you must be.
  Now the Darwinists will say that all of this is perfectly natural, that the strange attraction you feel towards that kind of scumball is normal and you ought to be brave enough, or intelligent enough, to just admit it and accept it.  But there’s a problem with believing this.  It suggests our basest feelings represent our true selves, that we are nothing higher than naked apes and it’s the way of all flesh.  That’s a pretty sad way to think.  If we were put on this earth with all the marvellous faculties and abilities we have for no other reason than to do as all other warm-blooded creatures do, then what’s the point of being here?  All our logic and faith tells us this can’t be the case.  Man, as an animal, is an admirable piece of work... ‘how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.’  It’s a crying shame to simply toss all that out and deny that we are ever called towards more than birth, sex, nursing a few infants, and death.
  But people who accept the Darwin argument are never going to be truly valuable in society– they only think they are because there’s so many of them; and the reason there are so many of them is because it’s an intellectually lazy way to think.  And men in particular are particularly lazy intellectually.  When a guy comes on to you with the attitude that ‘You’re a girl; I’m a guy– hey, let’s get together’, remind yourself that he probably follows an ideology suggesting he is directly descended from smelly apes who poop on each other, and the resemblance at the time ought to be crystal-clear to you.
  The truth is that there are only two things keeping you from being the tart you have been dreading you’ve already become.  The first is the love of God.  I’m not saying the will of God– no, not His will, powerful as that may be.  No, I mean the love of God– that true love, unconditional, unchanging, never-ending.  This is the love of a good father, who cares for you and teaches you and protects you from hazardous situations, and then takes you back in with open arms and repairs the damage when you’ve gone wrong anyway.  So you always have somewhere to turn whenever you are in doubt of what to do or how to act.  No child of God will ever be unwelcome in His house, because He chooses to love us all.  So you are never lost, bad as you think your situation might be.
  The other thing is your will.  God grant you a will like His own, so that you would have the ability to choose between His way and any other way.  Certainly God is not interested in seeing you become a tart.  But all His efforts at trying to prove to you that He exists and that you ought to follow Him will amount to nothing if you choose to turn your pretty head and ignore what He’s trying to say.  You have to remember that at any given time, you can say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.  You can decide what you will be– tart or virtuous woman, the choice is all yours and you can’t blame anyone but yourself.
  Only those who choose to believe in God and accept His love and His rules for good living ever realise this.  They are saved even before they have doubts, because they know there is always an alternative to sin, and that is to follow God, live under His roof, abide by His house rules, have His protection, receive His love.  God is your best friend and your most powerful ally.  He can bear any confidence and intercede in any problem you have.  –‘If God is with us, who can be against us?’
  Now the next time some guy makes a lewd comment, it would be unchristian to reduce yourself to his level and respond in kind.  Don’t play his game at all.  When he looks at you with sinful thoughts on his mind you play right into his hand by replying sinfully.  No; the correct thing to do is to smother him with virtue.  Act as though you don’t understand what he said– never mind that it makes you blush.  Say, ‘Pardon me?’  First of all, just saying that in a respectful tone will throw him off.  Guys don’t know how to deal with a young lady using real manners.  Oh; he’ll try again in some other way, if he’s really persistent.  But you’ll respond again like before. –‘I’m sorry; do I know you?’ –or, ‘I’m sorry; did you want to talk with me?’ –or something to indicate you were not aware you were supposed to value what he’s just said, as though you’re too nice to have got it at all.
  The main thing is to do it with absolutely the best manners and most ladylike– let’s even call it ‘prissy’ –tone that you can.  A scumball can’t handle that.  He’ll immediately brand you a prude and go off in search of someone who gives him less trouble; and what should you care if he calls you a prude? –for the opinion of a scumball isn’t worth anything and sooner or later everyone figures that out.
 You may wonder now why simply insulting him isn’t easier to be rid of him faster.  Well, you’re thinking; and at least you do want to be rid of him.  The reason insults won’t work is because deep down inside this kind of guy believes that he really is a scumball.  See; it’s the Darwin idea at work.  When you insult him, it meshes with that– he doesn’t even know it well enough to admit it, but you’ve just validated his deepest beliefs.  It’s easy for him then.  He doesn’t have to try to be anything more than a scumball, because the woman he’s attracted to already accepts him that way.  He’ll continue to insult and degrade you until he’s certain he’s brought you down to his level, where he feels most secure– where he is in charge, in his scumball world.  The single worst thing a woman can ever do is to allow a man to believe that being nothing more than a scumball is acceptable.

 Ultimately, countering with politeness will do exactly the opposite.  It doesn’t change the fact that the guy is interested in girls.  It won’t change the fact that he still may believe some of them are available tarts.  What’s different is how he will change after attempting to insult you.  You let him know that acting like a scumball is unacceptable, that if he wants your attention he’s going to have to earn it, and that he’ll have to try being more gentlemanly and polite to do it.

  Now there are two kinds of guys who’ll insult you and they’ll each handle this differently.  The true scumball doesn’t want to change from being a scumball; and, since you obviously want him to change, he’s not going to go there.  He’s lazy.  He’ll decide that you’re not worth his effort and just go after a real tart who doesn’t ask him to be anything but a scumball.  The sooner he realises this, the sooner he’ll give up on you.  You don’t need this guy anyway; so my advice is to be quick about it and spare both yourself and him a lot of aggravation.
  The other guy is the one who acts like a scumball because he thinks it’s expected of him because so many other guys seem to be scumballs; but he has a great potential for being a gentleman.  This guy will at least try to rise to the challenge you give him.  He’ll immediately apologise and possibly go away and approach you later with a better comment.  Be wary– but sound him and see how well he does.  It might be amusing.  It might even lead to something good.  After all, by trying to look like less of a scumball he’s making an effort to earn you.  But don’t let your guard down.  Don’t even meet him halfway.  Let him know in no uncertain terms that it’s going to take everything he’s got.  If he’s worth it, he’ll meet the challenge.  If he’s really just a scumball after all, he’ll give up and you won’t have lost anything anyway.
  Of course a guy who’s already a gentleman would not have made the lewd comment in the first place.  He’s probably been gazing at you from afar and, I assure you, though he is not stupid his thoughts are anything but lewd.  One day you will meet eyes with him, and he will say shyly, ‘Hi.’  It might take another few weeks for him to say more than that.  This is the way he sounds you out.  The best way to encourage him is by keeping your guard up and keeping your standards high, because that’s what’s attracting him to you.  Don’t worry about losing him– if he’s really good enough he’ll pass every test, and you won’t end up with a scumball.  This is how confident girls with less than goddess-like looks are able to get attention.  They attract it by sheer force of goodness.  Lesser people can’t handle that.  You see, it’s got nothing to do with your looks.  It’s got everything to do with your virtue.
 The deep-down secret which every guy will ultimately confess is that he just wants a nice, sweet, innocent, virtuous girl to fall head-over-heels in love with no-one but him.  Note, I said every guy.  Most of them know what’s required.  The best of them already try to do it.  The scumballs are just either stupid or lazy– probably both.  There’s simply no reason to accept a scumball; and you should never give up as so many modern women do and say, ‘All guys are scumballs’.  If that appears true it’s only because there are so many lazy or stupid women out there who accept them that way.  Most guys are essentially lazy– they won’t change if they don’t have to.  The best ones are hard workers and they’ll accept any challenge if the reward is appropriate.
  This is where you come in.  You see, you are the reward.  We all know you don’t get something for nothing– everything has its price.  And... ‘the price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies.’

* * *

A delicate affair.

Jonnie Comet

15 July 2000


’Tis an old maxim in the Schools,

That Flattery’s the food of Fools;

Yet now and then your men of wit

Will condescend to take a bit.

  In block-heeled shoes too heavy for her frame she traipses up to the house, having slyly bade her mother leave her at the kerb.  Ringing the bell she is greeted by the housemaid who comments on how lovely she looks.  It’s an oft-heard comment and fairly given; yet she blushes more today that ordinarily.  She’s attired herself most presentably this afternoon in the maturest of her party-going wardrobe, though it is hardly the first time she’s made the effort.  In fact this is hardly the first time she’s been here. Familiarity doth breed contempt in all but the most virtuous of maidens; in their case it doth breed quite the opposite.

  When the housemaid conveys to her that the girls are off on a hike and not likely to be back before dinner, she responds, ‘Oh!’ –only shallowly feigning disappointment.  For she had suspected, or hoped, that her own sister and the motherless young mistress of the house who are close friends would be busy in girlish pursuits elsewhere.  Asking after the master of the house she is shown below stairs to where he is mixing some passage of digital video in the studio.

  He is surprised but obviously not displeased to see her, for the moment withholding the comments that might have been appropriate about her pretty dress and the tinge of makeup which her sweet young face scarcely wants.  ‘I brought the paper you said you would help me with,’ she says carefully, tentatively lowering the school bag to the floor.  ‘If... you have time.’

  He nods.  ‘This may take a while.’  He thinks better of that.  ‘How long are you able to stay?’

  That question! –she gathers her composure and remembers her station, saying carefully, ‘As long as my sister can.’

  It is agreed without words: she is staying for dinner.  Demurely she sits beside him at the console, studying the screen intently, and, as usual, they are at once teacher-and-student and co-learners together.  She listens to his side comments about piano tuning and visits to Europe and the origin of some Shakespeare quote, fascinated, amused, receptive.  Her eager mind and willingness to demonstrate its fruits make her an efficient co-worker; and over the next hour the video is satisfactorily mixed down onto tape for later broadcast in the sitting room.  She receives a credit in the end-title sequence as ‘Assistant to the Producer’, which she regards much less whimsically than does the one who dared call himself ‘Producer’ on the homemade basement production of his child’s acting.  It is an accolade for her, a memory of the afternoon she spent in company one-to-one with him, working not merely as coworkers but as friends, even– and she dares only carefully to contemplate the word– as peers.

  Up in the house the children return and find this twosome sitting at the library table, he pouring earnestly over her writing assignment whilst she poises herself as close beside him as her decorously crossed knees in the skirt will allow.  Of course he has criticisms for her, and she will bear them well; but he pronounces it a solid piece of work ‘for a first draught’ –and then, with the audacity only a former schoolteacher can muster, directs her to sit there at the table and rewrite the whole thing.  He even provides her with the proper lined paper from a drawer.  And then she is alone, but only in the room; his comments scribbled in the margins and the knowledge of his genuine interest in her achievements, however sophomoric they truly are, abide genially in her head and her heart.

  Anyone else who heard, ‘Nice effort– now change all of this and rewrite it,’ might have balked at once, cursed the accuser, and tossed the only draught upon the fire.  Perhaps if anyone else had told her so, she herself might have done the same.  But now, in the intimate, greying light of the library, she scrawls away, striving to include all his suggestions in the context intended whilst deliberately maintaining her most delicate, feminine hand, beautiful in its adolescent elegance, the odd misspelling and misplaced modifier notwithstanding.  It is the handwriting she would use for a love letter; though she has never written one– that is, before now.

  Dinner, typically sedate for father and daughter alone, becomes something to anticipate tonight with two young guests to table.  Still there is a solemnity to entering the candlelit dining room, deep red and bright white, with the expanse of mahogany table spread out before them, its islands of white lace and bone china seeming leagues apart.  The young mistress of the house takes her place three metres from her father and her confidante to her right, so that the place of honour is left to the second eldest of the party, across from her sister and at the right hand of the host.  As he seats her in the way he might have seated any other guest she blushes, knowing no boy in her class would ever have made the effort.

  Indeed she must scavenge up every scrap of etiquette learnt from her mother and grandmother from the depths of a will too often diluted by what passes for protocol among teenagers.  But she knows the occasion calls for it; and having been so genteelly treated today she will not disappoint.  The linen napkin is spread open in her lap, draping over her legs farther than is covered by her own skirts.  She breaks her bread to butter it, sips from the spoon with nary a sound, and compliments the soup.  Her host initiates a lively discussion of the video and she cheerfully participates, true to her age in owning a little too much of the production credit for herself.  But in the next quiet moment she effects a more elegant air, much too transparent to everyone but herself, and remarks sincerely that dinner by candlelight is so charmingly old-fashioned.  Her host smiles, pleased that any young person in this day and age would admit such an anachronistic sensibility.  ‘I could eat like this every night,’ she says offhandedly; and, whilst genuine, it is also a thinly-veiled invitation to be invited back.  For those at the table there is no doubt that she will be.

  The big television set makes a rare appearance, switched on solely for the purpose of airing the video mixed down this afternoon.  The two younger girls cheer and gloat over their own performances, teasing each other and begging to have parts played back again and again.  The best friend’s sister is reluctantly caught up in their humour; she is drawn out by the host’s jokes and participation in the fun but only guardedly. For this evening she is a young lady in a short skirt and makeup who will not compromise her dignity for childish antics.

  Her essay, ostensively her reason for coming today, is read again and pronounced a success.  It will never be perfect; yet both principal players have different reasons for believing why not.  One is too much a perfectionist about writing; the other too passionate about making personal positions known.  Neither has entirely succeeded in the self-assigned missions of the day; yet neither will pronounce it a failure.

  At eight her mother comes to collect them; and her sister makes some foolishly immature attempt to hide and prolong the visit by such means as she can, abetted of course by the mistress of the house herself.  But the senior dinner guest levels her chin and rises to her full height in the block-heeled shoes, extending her hand to her host and complimenting him on the hospitality.  ‘Thank you for inviting me,’ she says graciously.  They both know she had more invited herself; but both too are convinced she always be welcome in future.

  Her mother waves from the car, grateful for a family friend who will gladly deign to entertain and chaperon her children on the long summer days of school vacation.  He says it is no bother; he enjoys their company.  How much of an understatement this is may be anyone’s guess– he surely will never confess it aloud.

  But why should our wearied old friend not claim some satisfaction from the attentions of such a delightful young companion?  To be sure, she is everything lovely, beyond merely young; she is affable, intelligent, fair, generous, virtuous, eager to learn, and respectful and admiring of his experience and opinions.  She might draw many kinds of attention from many kinds of males– and surely does– yet she chooses to dwell on him alone, considering what he is to be worthy of her time and efforts to impress.  It is impossible to overlook– in all her efforts to appear casual, she is gravely serious; in trying to appear artless, she is shamelessly cunning; in her ladylike aloofness she is single-minded even to the point of entertaining implausible fantasies.  To be the object of this is high favour indeed; and our friend must tread a tightrope between the healthiest limits of encouragement, to keep her in his care, and restraint, to keep her at a safe distance.

  On one hand his young admirer is fragile– the wrong sort of response would ruin her, his child’s friendship with her sister, his friendship with her parents.  The love innate in all these relationships is what has earned the unwavering trust.  But on the other hand she is more than just a friend, a child’s friend, a friend’s child.  Her brave attention to him is validation of everything he means to be for all young people to behold– a kind of model for them all of what ought to be a man in this world.  She is all teenaged girls everywhere, who are precious in what they are and stand for, at once both engagingly nubile and yet blithely naïve.

  This is what young people are about; and their emotional or physical desecration at the hands of one who knows better is itself the demise of a Christian society.  The mission of every adult must be to nurture them towards responsible, virtuous, Godly adulthood, demonstrating what appropriate relationships are in all their stages and guises.  If she, tabla rasa, has invested in him her impressionable innocence, it is his moral duty to uphold that trust, taking care to impart to her those lessons which only an honourable man who is not her father can ever teach her without ever going past the demarcation of propriety.

  It is a delicate balance; but as she honours him he must in turn honour her by being the very best he can be, demanding of himself attributes which only the most carefully cultured, educated, ethical man can put into proper perspective.  Fortunately, this is our friend’s God-given forte.  His affinity for the company of young people is well known.  His reputation for being appropriate and more fatherly than friendly with them is above reproach.  His faith that the closest of his friends know this is unwavering.  His sense of obligation to them is sacrosanct.  The trust they place in him so often for the best welfare of their children is his greatest honour.  To acknowledge some small degree of satisfaction from an afternoon and evening so innocently and respectably passed is therefore to him the height of ecstasy.  After all she is by now a dear friend of his own; he welcomes, entertains, teases, teaches, values her in the ways that he ought to.  They will never be lovers; but she shall be cherished in his heart forever.

  His young admirer may not understand the half of it.  What her innocent heart knows is that he is a man, one of the best of the species, entertaining, warm, caring, noble and virtuous.  He is a safe object for her interest– he seeks to educate and entertain, not debase her nor demand anything onerous from her.  What she does not know is that for her this is only a practice before the real thing, that, one day when this all seems like silly schoolgirl stuff, she will have seen enough of the world to regard him as a role model by which she might gauge adult men in general, to help her determine the one she will wish to spend her eternity with.  No fourteen-year-old boy will ever be able to fill that role for her.  One can only hope that some day, inspired by the standards of a young lady sure of what she wants and resolute about what she is willing to do for it, some former fourteen-year-old shall.

  It can be considered an admission of either the basest pride or the sublimest satisfaction for a mentor to delight in the success of a pupil.  Our friend will readily acknowledge that he has taught only what was always good, and that his young charge has chosen to follow the good path and done well in it only of her own volition.  That she has become so universally charming is only proof of her own predisposition towards virtue; and he is only the more honourable to acknowledge it without shame.  After all it is natural that a young lady should investigate men, and the more she seeks him, the more good he can do for her.  Through her burgeoning interest she tests her own identity and, receiving the right sort of attention, learns what she is and what a man ought to be as well.  In the hands of the right sort of idol she will be respected, valued, taught and bettered for it and, in due time, come to value herself more for having known him– and that is the greatest joy he can derive from having known her.

  So, cynics, call him a flattered fool who condescends to delusions that he might be striking enough to be sought by a young charge.  Question his pride, that he might think himself worthy of her heart’s attention and responsible for her mind’s education.  Accuse him of indulging his own special fantasies; suspect that they might be improper.  Yet the irreproachable will accept the truth, that as an Idealist, humble and honourable, his most earnest fancy will always be that the whole world might be as innocent of guile as his young admirer’s interest and as true to virtue as his response to it has been.  For the fact shall ever remain– that only a true gentleman deserves to inspire a true lady.

* * *

epigram  - ’Tis an old...  take a bit  - Swift; Cadenus & Vanessa; 1713

The Widower.

Jonnie Comet
from Pamela; or: Virtue Reclaimed.

Man’s not meant to live alone

To till his Soil devoid of Mate;

To know no Charms affectionate

While Life’s long river courses on.

 

For all Life’s fleeting Comedy,

In all its temp’ral Stimuli,

Not one remaining Joy have I;

Not one, save precious Memory.

 

Would thee, O Mem’ry, grant me Peace!

Deliv’rance full to repeal Gloom,

From which that Sleep of dreams may come

From which the Soul might know release.

 

I am no good alone, you see:

My lover’s for Elysian fields

To taste what Fruit that Prospect yields

Across the endless crystal Sea.

- 16 March 1999 

 

* * *

Resolution. (The repentant Husband.)

Jonnie Comet

Remiss have I been, darling Wife, 

Neglectful of our wedded life;

Resolv’d, like Chloe, you cried, ‘Have done!

‘Tis all but naught!’ –‘ere race was run.

 

Now I, returned, repented, grieved,

Reformed, redressed, yet not reprieved,

Requite thee but my heart, best shift,
All vows restored, one humble gift:

 

May all the joy of this wee flower

Remind thee of our wedding bower.

- 27 May 1997

* * *

l. 3 - like Chloe - Evoking ‘Chloe Resolved’, broadside ballad of John Hoadley, c.1743; in which Chloe gives up on her long-neglectful lover and casts his flowers into the stream

Resurgam.

Jonnie Comet

 

By love subsists

All lasting grandeur, by pervading love;

That gone, we are as dust. –WW.

What make a Marriage?  True, a union blessed

By God, ‘fore friends, in Love, with vows addressed;

A vestal Beauty, ‘trothed in blushing bloom;

A golden Band; –oh yes, a nervous Groom;

A blissful joy in seeds of Future sowing;

Then challenges ‘mid hopes of offspring growing;

Then gentle ease at home when labours rest,

Both e’er abiding, one another’s Best.

Now you, regard not graves with sad Despair;

Nor rue a widowed life with greying hair:

‘Tis all but temp’ral.  Time cannot decay

Love joined by God and never led astray.

 

 For all that love, the best years doth begin

 As gates of Heav’n enclose their Souls within.

- 16 November 1996 

* * *

title - resurgam  - that which is resurrected (ref. Jane Eyre, Book One)

epigram  - By love... as dust  - Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book The Fourteenth, ll. 168-170

l. 13  - For all that love  - originally ‘Louise and Walt’s’, as the poem was published on the church bulletins on the occasion of the burial office for Louise Bailey Staton, the Author’s grandmother, widowed two years and ten months, who passed away 16 November 1996

The wise Clarissa of ‘The Rape of the Lock’.

Pope’s view of human beings...

Jonnie Comet

29 April 1996


  Alexander Pope's mock epic The Rape of the Lock portrays the suffering and humiliation of Belinda, the fair protagonist, at the hands of her would-be suitor.  But the real heroine of the poem is Clarissa, Belinda’s friend and accomplice in her misfortunes.  In divulging something of her rationale, through her actions and most especially in her profound soliloquy, Pope makes the point that this character of the poem most represents his own ideal of a salient being balanced between the ‘Thought and Passion’ depicted as extremes in his ‘Essay on Man’.

  When the reader first encounters Clarissa by name, she is slipping the fateful scissors to the baron, enabling him to commit his atrocity against Belinda.  Clarissa is malicious; she is motivated by her own attraction to the baron and hopes to exploit his attraction for her friend to compromise Belinda’s composure.  She is certain that a violent fit will be the inevitable response, and expects to rise in the baron’s esteem as Belinda falls.

  But Belinda’s emotional lament surprises them all.  She is all vanity and passion, devoid of reason except to justify, or presume to justify, what she says and does.  She decries the loss of her virgin curl (–I like to assume she has never had a haircut; vis., c. 2; ll. 19-28), without realising why she dolls herself up so exquisitely.  Clarissa, in contrast, is mostly reason.  To her, though she may well be comely, any methods by which a maiden might secure the attention and affection of a man are fair play.

  A close reading of Clarissa’s speech in Canto 5 shows her to be the poem’s best-balanced of the characters, in spire of her cruel behaviour and selfish motives.  From her initial rhetorical question, ‘(W)hy are Beauties prais’d and honour’d most’ to her closing argument, she implores the use of saneness above all.  The beautifully bedecked Belinda has missed the point of all her outward appeal.  Clarissa reminds her:

  ‘How vain are all these Glories, all our Pains,

  Unless good Sense preserve what Beauty gains’.

  To Clarissa, a man is a fool to desire a woman for beauty alone, and a woman is a fool to demonstrate nothing but beauty in order to attract him.  This is the balance which Pope is so eager to idealise.  After all, as Clarissa so richly points out, beauty alone is no virtue, for it is fleeting.  Beauty, therefore, cannot be an end in itself, but may be a means to meet one’s ultimate responsibility to society: to marry well and nurture heirs, not hairs.  As Clarissa so soberly reminds, ‘…she who scorns a Man, must die a Maid’.

  Poor vain Belinda does not realise she has already got what she sought.  Clarissa, like Eloisa, or Swift’s Vanessa, has something of a masculine sensibility, in that she knows an enlightened beauty possessed of reason represents the best balance of character, appealing to both the passions and the mind.  Though her behaviour may seem cruel, even abhorrent, she is at least sensible enough to call a spade a spade.  All beauty will decay, and thus vanity is a losing battle; and so the smart woman– the one of true virtue– will maintain good humour through all.  Clarissa concludes: ‘Charms strike the Sight, but Merit wins the Soul’.

  No-one applauds.  Her point is utterly lost on the other characters, and a wild four-way melee ensues amidst bass and treble cries.  Pope’s most obvious message is probably illustrated here: that people in general are too predisposed to chaotic passion to heed calm reason.  Sane Clarissa’s foregone involvement in the fray demonstrates that even she is subject to a weakness for irrational action, though Pope has her free herself as if to indicate on whose side lie his own sentiments.  At the end of the epic struggle, no-one really wins, giving credence to the image of man ‘Created half to rise, and half to fall’.  The reader will note that as the baron and Belinda fall to the carpet, grappling madly in furious passion, the lock of hair ascends into the sky.  The very item of their contention, both the instrument of their union in passion and the reminder of their abandonment of reason, is lost in the consummation of its ultimate purpose.

  Clarissa was right, after all.

* * * 


p.1  - Pope makes... ‘Essay on Man’  - Pope; Essay On Man,E. 2; l. 13
p. 4  - (W)hy are... honour’d most  - Pope; The Rape of The Lock, c. 5; l. 9 
p. 4  - How vain... gains  - Ibid, c. 5; ll. 15-16 
p. 5  - she who... a Maid  - Ibid, c. 5; l. 28 
p. 6  - Eloisa, or Swift’s Vanessa  - Eloisa, of Pope’s mediæval epic Eloisa to Abelard (1717), is a strong-willed female who bears the brunt of a forced separation from her lover by vowing chastity in a convent; Vanessa, of Swift’s ‘Cadenus and Vanessa’ (1713), is educated without regard to her sex by the poem’s narrator and declares her love for him by way of scholarly admiration 
p. 6  - Charms strike the Sight, but Merit wins the Soul  -- Pope; The Rape of The Lock, c. 5; l. 34
p. 7 -   Created half to rise, and half to fall  - Ibid, e. 2; l. 13.  Most people think this is a naughty double-entendre; but I prefer its more intellectual meaning, implied here. --JC