Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.

Text Content or SSML code:

“Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.” So spoke the dame, but no applause ensued; Belinda frowned, Thalestris called her prude. Meaning. This passage occurs towards the end of Clarissa’s speech in Canto V, in which she chastises the assembled company of lords and ladies for behaving so foolishly. She reminds them that, while the loss of the lock seems dramatic, it is ultimately not very important since beauty is not as valuable as virtue. Beauty might attract the eyes, but virtue attracts the soul, so it is pointless to quarrel over such a trivial thing as a ruined hairdo. The clear-headedness of this speech is emphasized by the fact that Clarissa’s name literally means “clarity,” suggesting she is a wise character who illuminates the issues she’s confronted with. The comic effect Pope creates, however, comes from the fact that no one seems to much care, as demonstrated by Belinda and Thalestris’ unimpressed reactions. But there is also a more serious point about gender at work here. In Pope’s day, women were considered the intellectual and moral inferiors of men, celebrated most for their beauty. Here Clarissa neatly subverts this idea, demonstrating to the reader, if not to those listening, that her intellectual and moral perceptiveness surpasses those of the rest of the assembled company, men included.