Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes,
And screams of horror rend the affrighted skills.
Answer: These remarkable and conspicuous lines have been taken from the Canto-III of “The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope, the great 18th-century poet, Here, the poet ridicules the follies and frivolities of the fashionable ladies of his society. This is really. The reaction of the mock-heroine Belinda after the dire offense of shipping her hair by the Baron, Lord Peter.
Belinda is a very fashionable lady and she had her beautiful lock of hair. She was ‘shocked when Lord Peter cut off her lock of hair. Here Belinda is compared to one who loses her husband and lap dogs. Pope refers to cutting off the lock of hair as a ‘dire offense’. Belinda’s eyes flashed like lightning and her scream seemed to ‘rend or bifurcate the sky itself which seemed to be frightened at Belinda’s cry. By these lines, Pope mocks the fashionable ladies who measured their husbands’ and ‘lap dogs’ on the same scale and whose reaction to the death of their husbands was the same as to the death of their lap dogs. Her piteous appeal to heaven to make good her irreparable loss or to punish the evil-doer was in a thunderous and shrieking manner. Husbands of such ladies did not have any particular corner in their hearts.
To sum up, we may say that Pope has exposed some features of Belinda.
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