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Whether the nymph shall break Diana’s law, Or some frail China jar receive a flaw, Or stain her honor, or her new brocade, Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade, Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball; Or whether Heaven has doomed that Shock must fall. Meaning. This passage forms part of the speech Ariel makes to the other sylphs, in which he explains that he has foreseen some disaster which will strike Belinda. At this point, he is enumerating various ideas of disasters which might occur, and in doing so he reveals much about the values of the world of the poem. The first disaster he envisages is that Belinda will lose her virginity in violation of “Diana’s law” (Diana was the name of a classical goddess who was famously chaste), which demonstrates that this is a world in which female sexuality is greatly restricted. But Pope also draws out the silliness of this world and its values as seen through Ariel’s eyes. He achieves this primarily by using a rhetorical figure called a zeugma, which ties together two different usages of a verb for comic effect. For example, the idea that Belinda might “stain her honor, or her new brocade” contrasts the metaphorical staining of a reputation with the literal staining of a new gown. Evidently the first sense is much more serious than the second, but by tying them together into one expression, Pope is able to create the impression of Ariel as a character who is humorously superficial and values the two equally. The same effect is achieved when he worries that she will “lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball.” And although it is not a zeugma, Ariel’s worry that Belinda will “Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade” conveys a similarly morally dubious idea, that in Ariel’s eyes Belinda’s moral and spiritual duties are important as attending lavish parties.