Mental Illness and Sylphs

Sylphs and Mental Illness

         Imagination during childhood is malleable with fairy tales, but lucrative in with influence and education in adulthood. Developmental stories like Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella are popular with their happy endings encouraging the child to act out imaginary scenarios with friends. Kid’s bedrooms with decorations, toys, and furniture also mimic childhood stories, but law or literature for the choice of life puts food on the table. The sense of time and place acquired from fairy tales, however, isn’t always appropriate. Reality is anything but a fairy tale with more difficult milestones playing-out in adulthood. Everyday life kills any sense of a fairy tale, and questions the reasons for them. Bringing into question mental illness is Alexander Pope in The Rape of the Lock. Both Belinda and the Baron show The Rape of the Lock to question the legitimacy of psychiatry, but also the source and the grounds for it through narration.
         Damsels in distress, super-heroes, and evil-doers make childhood pass by fast. Elementary school can increase curiosity, following with high school urging the teenager that he should question the world around him. Also persuasive are college professors when they challenge, refute, or contradict the established conventions of their students’ previous schooling. Less open for discussion is the learning environment for Belinda and the Baron in The Rape of the Lock, especially with sylphs and gnomes calling the shots. Imagination becomes paranoia/fear in lines 30 and 31 with “[…] all the Nurse[‘s] and all the Priest[‘s] […] [teachings]; / Of airy Elves by moonlight shadows seen” (Pope 30-31). The nurses and the priests Pope refers to aren’t necessarily religious, virtuous, or nurturing in this context. “Puffed-up” capitalization of the handles contradicts the concern appropriate for child-rearing. Instead of vanity and self-indulgence, nurses and priests are supposed to be selfless and giving. Yet, the welfare of middle childhood is hazarded when cliques become the new religion. The in-group deems “whoever fair and chaste / Rejects mankind, is by some Sylph embrac'd” (Pope 67-68). The young Belinda and the Baron forgo their respective autonomy, well-being, and independence for the sake of being part of the crowd.
         Speaking of influence, “Fate urg[ing] the sheers, and cut[ting] the Sylph in twain, / (But airy substance soon unites again)” (Pope 441-442) is like the happy-days of quartering assumed deviants via the power-to-be. Psychological landscapes are needed throughout The Rape of the Lock for showing the contradicting views from competing parties in the 18th century. A specific era’s lack of geniality can make a person feel “cut in half” living in it, yet the guillotine takes care of that. The indifferent but formal fronts of Belinda and the Baron scream attention, similar to their knickknacks of “love alters” and “French Romances” (Pope 185-186) compensating for it. Opulence in The Rape of the Lock resembles the background of fairy tales, although Belinda and the Baron can become mythical if forgiveness is involved. Yet the excess serves to bring into fruition the imagined atmosphere from the real but elaborate environment, partially because inanimate objects don’t feel pain, kind of like the in-group. Therefore, madness invigorates “Tea-pots [to] stand” (Pope 517) and “Homer's Tripod [to] walk[…]” (Pope 519). The sickening idealism in Pope’s poem mocks sickness because too much immersion in fairy land is usually due to a depressing reality of denial. The Baron’s numerous ”trophies of his former loves” (Pope 188) and Belinda’s cracked “silver Vases” (Pope 122) are hardly a substitute for much needed emotional bonding among snobbery. Embellished environments are evidently custom for 18th century subsistence, be it fairy tales or excessive bling-bling. But the lords and ladies of the realm aren’t all that endearing with their atrocities coming neatly “Wrap[ed] in a gown, for sickness, and for show. / [because] The fair-ones feel such maladies as these, / When each new night-dress gives a new disease” (Pope 504-506). The Rape of the Lock reads like a classified ad for an insane asylum, like the one managed by Nurse Ratchet in One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
         War Gods and Love Goddesses disclose more than the state of health for two egomaniacs from the 18th century, because the revival of myth suggests an increasing separation or emotional distance from one another. Faith in man becomes non-existent with growing distrusts from both sides. Further compromising health are those illusive fairy tails because they are less grounded in reality than the actions of myths. When Belinda and the Baron’s fabrications come to life, humanity becomes a myth with self-motivated actions speaking louder than the well-to-do environment. Virtue as a resource is manipulated by the imagined “powers-to-be.” Yet Pope’s use of myth also gives integrity to Belinda and the Baron’s character via honorable actions, unlike the surface appearance of goodness inherent in fairy tales. Even Red-Riding Hood saw through the “mystic mazes” (Pope 92) on the way to grandma’s house.
         When the human condition is “puffed-up” with unrealistic standards or expectations via fairy tales, man and his laws appears minute like the sylphs and gnomes in The Rape of the Lock. The imagined wrongs in fairyland are incomparable to the real human limitations of mental illness and physical handicaps. Pope’s poem mocks the confrontation between Belinda and the Baron to suggest the ridiculousness of all the infighting during the Restoration. Since very little is solved with words alone, the power-struggle attempts between Belinda and the Baron suggest a move to action via “deadly bodkin[s]” (Pope 732) and “Forfex[es]” (Pope 437). Even the cosmic powers of the universe shift back into alignment, “[…] [with] Rome's great founder to the heav'ns withdr[awing], / To Proculus alone confess[ing] in view (Pope 769-770). Action is needed to strengthen myth as folk move towards progression and away from the enchanting lands of temptation with the influence of the fairy tale fades. Relying on the “[…] narrow views of things below” (Pope 36) halts evolution of all kinds.
         The Rape of the Lock concerns instabilities ranging from mental illness to the reasons for it during the 18th century. The Restoration’s affects on folk in the 18th century come alive in the various cantos Pope describes with competing vistas of the landscape. Yet the cantos seem to suggest the inaction of the era to motivate a different course of action, while the dogfight between Belinda and the Baron suggest life still runs its course. This in turn influences outlook with armies of sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and sprites dictating the risks of movement in either direction. Psychiatry of the era doesn’t help with manipulations of differences “[…] set[ting] the head” (Pope 146) to “Hang o'er the Box, and [H]over round the Ring” (Pope 44). The boxing ring includes the various politics of the Restoration that directly and indirectly affected the lives of people [duke-ing] it out, because social stratification and competing politics didn’t help to ease the infighting on the home-front or among the Tories and the Whigs. Very little was solved reinvigorating myths from the past like Homer (not the Simpsons) or Zeus, because people during that era were still stuck in the fairy tale of their monarchy’s day. The Rape of the Lock describes a step back instead of forward with people returning to their corner of the ring. As the fairy tale hunkered down on the monarchy’s teacher’s pets like Belinda and the Baron, belief in myths became more important when reality with a guillotine suggests otherwise. The Rape of the Lock suggests movement forward is begot with action, and not illusions of fairyland argued by psychologists.