Pope needs Dulness to establish himself at the opposite side
of the Grub Street carnivalesque.
His “self-perceived feminization caused him to use his textual production to
compensate for his fears of social and sexual inadequacy and to fulfill (if only
discursively) his culture’s construction of masculinity.”27
However, he becomes entrapped in emasculating womanhood since he describes
authors as Dulness’ dependant dunces, being himself unable to escape from his
text. It is Pope who “spawns dunces, genres, and texts that [he] can mold in
[his] image.”28 Like the “Mighty Mother” (l. 1) he
desires to produce and control his world. As Samuel
Johnson writes Pope is “always investigating, always aspiring; in its
widest searches still longing to go forward, in its highest flights still
wishing to be higher. . . .”29
Therefore, the poet resembles an ever-reproducing womb. Through his texts he
makes the narrative he wants to destroy ever-continuous. He does not realize
that the dangers of female reproduction increase with the rising number of his
attacks. Through his productions he becomes himself a dangerous force able to
duplicate the productivity of Grub Street with the publication of all his
editions. In this way he implicates women in the process of production. Thus, it
seems that the reproductive feminization of textuality and Pope’s text
together form a symbiotic relationship.