In Alexander Pope’s poem “The Rape of the Lock,” what object is cut from Belinda’s hair?

A lock of hair is cut from Belinda’s hair in Alexander Pope’s poem “The Rape of the Lock.”

Pope’s mock-epic poem was inspired by a real social dispute in which Robert Petre cut a lock of Arabella Fermor’s hair without permission. The incident caused tension between the two families. Pope turned the quarrel into comic verse, enlarging a fashionable disagreement through the elevated language and machinery of epic poetry.

The poem was first published in 1712 in two cantos and expanded to five cantos in 1714. Its supernatural beings include sylphs, who protect fashionable women, and gnomes, who embody darker passions. Their presence deliberately contrasts trivial social concerns with the grand style of classical epic.

The title uses “rape” in the older sense of seizure or taking away, not its modern meaning of sexual assault. That historical usage can cause confusion for modern readers, but the poem’s central event is the unauthorized cutting and removal of Belinda’s curl.