In his “Epistle: To a Lady on the Characteristics of Women,” he condemns the “miserable wise” of a woman who is not only too wise, but who has “too much wit ”, “too fast” and “too much thinking”. He bitterly exposes what “nature hides” (Pope ln 190) in women by deliberately selecting “the most exact features of the body or mind” (Pope ln 191) and finding faults in specimens such as Narcissa, Flavia, Atossa and Chloe only to highlight the high standards reached by his own model of perfection, the lady for whom he writes the epistle. And yet, even the Lady's reputation is falsely inflated, because it is only after listening to her tirade about women that she is honored by the Pope. The Lady states that “women have no character” (Pope ln 2) in an attempt to console him for being the “nothing so true” that a woman “once let down” (Pope ln 1). She convinces him that the rejection he has faced is unworthy of the discouragement he experiences, observable through his bitter and angry tone throughout the poem. His rejection is "too soft a matter, a lasting mark to bear" (Pope ln 3) and yet, in the first fifteen lines, he is not an emotional participant but a cold and jealous observer of the very setting he has created, a situation in which he aspires to exist. “I must paint it,” he said (Pope ln 16), voluntarily moving away from the scene. He lets his "madness become romantic" (Pope ln 16) by capturing an image of his ideal, and yet here, in the very first lines of the poem, he turns away from even any sort of fictional sexual assertion and instead puts himself in physical isolation. . When he calls for preparing the ground (in 17), he is metaphorically referring to the preparation of one's own "colored" emotions on the literal canvas that is the text of this poem. Pope does not care about what he considers to be good and bad characteristics in women, because in this poem there is an internal struggle for power within Pope between his own fears and insecurities and his generalized conception of the role of women. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Wanting to be contained by a woman, Pope fears this is impossible due to a woman's seemingly ever-changing emotions. "It is to the changes [of women] that he owes half of their charms", and yet this instability and this ephemeral character of feminine passions is what frightens him the most. It is the constantly changing Cynthias and the Papillias who fly beyond his reach that compel Pope to write a somewhat misogynistic work, because the reality of reaching a woman is in itself so impossible, that the possibility of finding a woman who is always accepting . , lasting love is beyond its scope of conception. He wants to be loved and yet he hides from the pain that he is certain will be inflicted on him more. A woman's lover “buys pain with all the joy [it] can give” (Pope ln 99) and yet he “will die of nothing other than the rage to live” (Pope ln 100). This is Pope's ultimate fear: not living fully, and yet, without a wife, he is not capable of living fully either. He is the “nothing” referred to here, as in the first line of the poem, because his goal is to do nothing other than live. His existence is entirely in the verbal entity of "nothing other than a rage to live" and yet it is from this force that Flavia's lover dies. The man kills himself while pursuing Flavia's love, as Pope literally dies from his agreement but instead blames Flavia's spirit as the culprit. Pope condemns female humor, but continues using Simo's companionas an example of vulgarity in humor. She “mocks hell” (Pope ln 107), he exclaims and compares her to a fool, and yet her own fear and jealousy in the face of the “charm of sin (Pope ln 15) are ignored. The Pope wants a woman to contain him in a way that she is a woman. who is “beautiful by default and delicately weak” (Pope ln 44) can never do it. He wants to be as desirable as "the good man" (Pope ln 9) above. which Fannia looks at, but he does not care "whether the charmer the sinner or the saint" (Pope ln 15), because he simply wants to be the one who charms. Parallels can be drawn here with Genesis, for like the serpent who entices Eve to eat the forbidden apple from the Tree of Knowledge, the charms of the sinner are at work. Likewise, the saint seduces by the allure of moral rectitude, God being an implied force here, and Zeus is also called the Swan who seduces Leda (footnote 2). Evil and good act in one and the same way, simply as a process to gain love and, more importantly, respect. Although Pope paints a scene of light with purity based on "naked Leda" (Pope ln 10) and "of simpering angels, palms and divine harps" (Pope ln 14), he ignores these two processes of conquest of the women and focuses instead on the physical aspect. achievement of women. In many stories, the Pope expresses how he is "afraid of offending" (Pope ln 29) women, and yet, by charming women under the false pretense of being either rebelliously wicked or supremely good, he is no longer at the mercy of women but gains power and therefore control through the seduction of the mind. However, this is only a reality in Pope's fantasy scene. In reality, it was women who gained power over men through the same methods of seduction mentioned by Pope and, unlike Pope, managed to control the opposite sex. Pope writes this poem in response to his failed attempt to love, but with his bitter realization that the reception of love is forever abandoned, "Love, if it makes her yield, must make her hate" (Pope ln 134), he recognizes that the power of love is itself feminine and therefore the power of love which he craves will always be under the control of a woman. With venomous jealousy, the Pope tells the story of Calypso who “without virtue, without beauty, charmed” (Pope ln 46) Odysseus and his men. Calypso “has touched the edge of all that we [men] hate” (Pope ln 52), and yet what is truly hated is simply the subordination of men to a woman. The Pope's insecurities are revealed when he exclaims that Philomedes, with "sweet passion and refined taste" (Pope ln 84), "prepares her copious meal on a dunce" (Pope ln 85). He is afraid of being ridiculed for love, because by loving a woman, he would submit to her. By submitting to her, he naturally resents her. This explains why Narcissa is immediately applauded for her "quite gentle" nature (Pope ln 53), and why many lines like these tend to glorify the domestic and submissive women in this poem. The Pope, like Papilla, is also “attached to [his] loving spark” (Pope ln 37) and yet he finds it easier to blame women for what can only be described as his own failure to flourish. personal, because he does not have power over women. women that women conversely have on him. Offend her, and she knows not to forgive; Oblige her, and she will hate you while you live: But die, and she will adore you – Then the bust and the temple will rise – then fall again. to dust. The pope can only gain love in death, and yet even that is only for a fleeting moment. As it falls into dust, it becomes nothing again, because it is the memory.