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.

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