Cave of Spleen Intro and notes

Why the name? Spleen was the Augustan name which Elizabethans described as melancholy. It is less of a disease than a fashionable affectation. Fashionable ladies, poets, and playwrights pretend to suffer from it so as to give an impression that the victims are serious thinkers and creative writers.

Cave of Spleen Pope exalts (speaks very highly or elevates) Spleen to the level of Goddess and cave of Spleen to the level of underworld and personifies her as the Queen of underworld. This suits his scheme to mock the epic conventions systematically because the serious epics like “Illiad” and “Aenied” show heroes taking a voyage to the underworld. In travesty of this convention, however, Pope packs a lot of social criticism, especially the criticism of fashionable vanities and affectations (display of real or pretended feeling) of the fashionable women.

Belinda’s journey to the Cave of Spleen Sylphs were in attendance to Belinda when she plays Ombre. They hover around her when she sips coffee. They withdraw when Ariel sees “an earthly lover lurking at her heart”. A gnome, called ‘Umbriel’ holds the place of Ariel. After the rape of the lock of Belinda, Umbriel wanted to inflict her with Spleen. So he took a journey to the underworld to the cave of spleen.

Queen of Spleen It is reported that the Queen of Spleen as a capricious (unpredictable) and eccentric goddess holds full control over the fashionable ladies ranging from fifteen to fifty. She, the Goddess of Spleen, is the aspiration behind the affectation of melancholy as well as the pretension (Snobbery or hypocrisy) to the poetry by the female sex.

Pope’s Description While speaking of the cave of Spleen, Pope gives a vivid picture of the fantastic vision to which the men and women plagued with spleen are exposed to. At the moment we see flaming devils and snakes erected on their coils, lustrous (radiant) ghosts, opening sepulchres (a small room or monument, cut in rock or built of stone, in which a dead person is laid or buried) and red fires and the other moment he visualizes the lakes of liquid gold, scenes of paradise, transparent places and angles coming to solve the difficulties in human life. Thus the description of the cave of Spleen is highly symbolic and conveys the accurate picture of the people suffering from Spleen.

Conclusion To sum up, the visit to the Cave of Spleen is introduced for the sake of mock-heroic effect, which gives an opportunity to the poet to satirise the evil nature and the affectations of ladies and gentlemen of his society. It is a synonym for ill-tempered behaviour. Furthermore, it also serves the action of the poem.

Characters in the Cave of Spleen Thalestris - Belinda’s friend, named for the Queen of the Amazons and representing the historical Gertrude Morley, a friend of Pope’s and the wife of Sir George Browne (rendered as her “beau,” Sir Plume, in the poem). She eggs Belinda on in her anger and demands that the lock be returned. Sir Plume - Thalestris’s “beau,” who makes an ineffectual challenge to the Baron. He represents the historical Sir George Browne, a member of Pope’s social circle. Umbriel - The chief gnome, who travels to the Cave of Spleen and returns with bundles of sighs and tears to aggravate Belinda’s vexation