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There Affectation, with a sickly mien Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen, Practiced to lisp, and hang the head aside, Faints into airs, and languishes with pride; On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, Wrapped in a gown, for sickness, and for show. Meaning. As with the description of “Ill Nature,” the description of “Affectation” occurs when Umbriel descends to the subterranean Cave of Spleen. This journey is a comic version of the epic convention of the hero’s journey to the underworld (e.g. Aeneas’ descent to the Underworld in Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid), and so it includes mention of all kinds of fantastical creatures. In Pope’s Cave of Spleen, ruled over by the Queen of Spleen, Umbriel passes by bodies corrupted by spleen (which was, at Pope’s time, believed to be the cause of all kinds of bodily disfunction, particularly among women). The Cave of Spleen is thus often read as a kind of hell of female bodily dysfunction, the dark underside of Belinda’s glamorous court life in the world above. “Affectation” serves as a humorously grim portrait of a society belle like Belinda gone too far, which mocks the absurdity of fashionable female behavior at the time. Although she is youthful and attractive (she “Shows in her cheek the rose of eighteen”), unlike her counterpart “Ill Nature,” she is “sickly” with the excesses of ladylike behavior as she “Faints into airs,” “languishes with pride,” and “sinks with becoming woe.” Here Pope seems to be suggesting once again that the role of a society belle, like Belinda, is a difficult one to play, as it’s easy to spill over into absurd attempts to appear feminine, as “Affectation” is “Practiced to lisp” and “hang the head aside,” or even into “sickness.”