THE RAPE OF THE Would you consider Alexander Pope a misogynist after reading The Rape of the Lock?

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THE RAPE OF THE
Would you consider Alexander Pope a misogynist after reading The Rape of the Lock?

To make the claim that Alexander Pope was a misogynist based on The Rape of the Lock might not be unfounded, but you would have to take several things into consideration. First, during Pope's day, women had no rights. Feminism was a far-off idea. Pope's attitude toward women would have been considered within the norm. What Pope really detested was not so much women, though there was that undercurrent in his writing, but the pretentions of the idle rich. Pope was Catholic, which meant that he was at a disadvantage in England, both socially and financially. "The Rape of the Lock" really reflects his attitude toward upper-class young people more than just women, though he is rather unkind in his depiction of Belinda's mental acuity.  She is not a deep thinker. Pope was, after all, a satirist. If you look at his other work, particularly "The Dunciad," you can get a better idea of how he felt about people generally. Moreover,  ROTL is meant to be a mock-epic; it makes fun of the epic genre by using lofty words to tell a silly story, poking fun at both men and women.