Femininty in "Don Juan"

In our last class we discussed in detail Byron's portrayal of his own wife and mother through Donna Inez and his general sexist outlook throughout the poem. Though I still believe the poem leaves a lot to be desired in terms of sexual equality and responsibility, Julia's letter "transcribed" in stanzas 192-97 adds layers to this general portrayal. In it, Julia hints that love is all woman are good for, with men on the other hand having the ability to pursue multitudinous opportunities through which to excel. And I have trouble deciding whether this is tongue-in-cheek or Byron's legitimate outlook.

It seems the strongest analysis provided by the text is a sexist one. Julia commits herself fully, and harmfully, to the traditional feminine role. Not only does she herself as the victim of their affair, "I have no further claim on your young heart,/ Mine is the victim, and would be again" (1531-32) but places herself permanently in that role in regards to Don Juan. But on top of being the constant submissive, she also blames herself for the affair "if I name my guilt, 'tis not a boast,/ None can deem harshlier of me than I deem," (1541-42), and thus paints herself as irredeemable in the eyes of society.

In addition to the final and destructive placement in the feminine role, as stated above, she states that the feminine and masculine rules of love are completely irreconcilable, "Man's love is of his life a thing apart,/ 'Tis woman's whole existence," (1545-6). Men can do things outside of love and women cannot, a very simplistic definition. Yet, this makes some sort of sense given Byron's history, the earlier portrayal of Donna Inez, and this section's basis that Julia is to blame for the affair. Women in Byron's pieces (at least in those we have read and excepting ethereal examples like Witch of the Alps) appear incredibly static and then become blamed and joked about due to this stagnation. He ultimately sets his feminine characters up for failure by allowing them no space to flourish.

So maybe the tongue-in-cheek reading was a bit hopeful.

The Meta-Narrator of "Don Juan"

            The poem “Don Juan” is notable for the characterization of its narrator.  The fact that “Don Juan” has such an active narrator is fitting because Byron had a conception of himself as a showman.  The telling of the narrative itself was created by the narrator’s own desire, for the narrator states, “I want a hero” (1).  Moreover, the narrator consistently interjects into the story itself.  “Don Juan” is therefore typical of Byron’s canon, because it is more a piece of performance than a sincere narrative.

            The narrator specifies how the poem is an art object, allowing the reader to understand his process in the creation of the narrative.  The narrator explains how he does not prefer to start his tale in medias res, instead expressing that, “My way is to begin with the beginning” (50).    The narrator states, “My poem’s epic, and is meant to be / Divided in twelve books” (1593-1594).  He feels the need to explain his preferences in writing, stating, “I’m fond of rhyme” (1605).  The narrator also ends the first Canto by saying “good-b’ye” (1764) to the reader.

            The poem functions as a meta-narrative, because it not only references the fact that it is a story, but also attempts to directly argue for its place in the canon.  The narrator puts himself in the context of other literary and historical figures, from Virgil to Milton to Coleridge.  Specifically, in the dedication Byron disparages his contemporaries in order to bolster his own work.  The narrator’s praise for himself is a running theme throughout the work.  He announces at the end of the poem, “I shall not try / Your patience further than by this short sample / ‘Twere well if others follow’d my example” (1766-1768).  This is one way in which Byron’s poem is a performance, for he is acting out a conflict with other poets in order to create interest for the reader.  Moreover, the implicit criticism of poets that is carried throughout the poem “Don Juan” is an example of a meta-narrative.  Finally, the narrator states “this story’s actually true” (1616), a blatant lie to the reader.  This represents part of Byron’s willingness to scandalize and acknowledge his performance, for the reader knows he or she is being manipulated but will accept it nonetheless.

            Byron’s narrator also functions as a performed version of Byron himself.  This is one way in which Byron imbues “Don Juan” with drama.  For example, the narrator asks, “What is the end of Fame?” (1737) and states with melancholy that “Ambition was my idol, which was broken” (1729).  This is clearly a question that many at the time assumed Byron was asking himself, given that he was one of the most popular poets of the time.  Byron continues to play on the audience’s perception of himself.  The narrator relates to the reader, “now all thirty years my hair is grey” (1697), which furthers the perception of Byron-as-narrator because Byron himself did not live past 36.  Overall, the poem “Don Juan” attempts to add to Byron’s mystique, conjuring a vision of a tortured artist.  This may be merely a guise that Byron adopts, but regardless it is a stylistic choice that is meant to advance the celebrity of Byron.

            Byron creates a narrator who almost overshadows his subject.  This is evidence of Byron’s focus on style over substance, for he considers the story to be less important than the way in which it is presented.  Of all the poets we have read, Byron is the most eager to entertain.  He is so eager that he drags his own persona into poems to create more drama than the story itself produces.

Looking back on Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos

The comic tone and elements of "Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos" became much more pronounced to me after reading the Dedication to "Don Juan." The first thing I noticed was rhyme of "plague you" with" ague", which was pointed out in class by Professor Oerlemans but which I understood much better after reading the Dedication. Immediately the Dedication makes use of this in lines 1 and three, rhyming "laureate" with "Tory at," and continues to employ very pronounced rhyme to comedic effect. The entirety of the Dedication was to me reminiscent of the nursery rhyme 'Sing a song of Six-pence" referenced throughout with lines about "four and twenty blackbirds in a pye." Taking this understanding and returning to read "Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos" once again, I saw more of a comic tone than before. While not as comic as the Dedication, The line "To woo, -and-lord knows what beside" especially fit better in my new understanding of the poem, which had been influenced by reading lines like "Fair Venus! How I pity both!" and "Sad mortals! Thus the Gods still plague you!" as more sincere than was probably appropriate. The Dedication and Don Juan as a whole gave me a better sense of Byron, helping me learn how to read him as compared to the other poets, and as a result I think i developed a better sense of the works we read for Tuesday.

Don Juan as a vehicle for Byron's superiority

I was really interested in Donna Inez's role in the poem compared to Don Jose. I thought it odd that Byron goes on and on about her virtues, but then we realize that he's actually making fun of her. The virtues that he lists, even though they seem a complimentary because he appears to be building her up, are actually really underhanded and making her out to be a really difficult woman. His compliments about her intelligence and wit are actually meant in a really rude, condescending way. After reading the dedication, I felt that Donna Inez was meant to be anyone in Byron's life that had tried to insist on their own superiority over Byron.
Based on the introduction to Byron in Norton, I think he was a character who wanted to prove he was influential and important. Obviously, to a certain extent, he was as he was able to succeed both politically, socially, and in the poetic world. Although his success had its ups and downs, such as a likely incestuous affair with his sister, Byron comes across as someone who really wanted to be on top. I think his teasing, condescending tone towards Donna Inez and the tone that comes across in the dedication, are targeted towards some of his critics. Donna Inez may include Lady Byron, as well as his contemporaries who disliked him. Byron could've seen their negativity towards him as jealousy, and even though some of it was related to that, Byron also seems like he was easy to dislike. The tone that came across to me, in any case, while he was describing Donna Inez, proved him to be a man with a superiority complex who felt the need to deny people who challenged him and his intellectual ability.
He even references Donna Inez keeping a journal that lists the faults of Don Jose. This could definitely by Byron playing up his relationship with his wife and how difficult she was, but I think Donna Inez represents more than just his wife, and she becomes the embodiment of all the people who oppose Byron.

Narrative Confusion Concerning Don Juan

While reading Don Juan I found myself confused with the placement of the narrator within his subject. By this, I mean whether he is part of or separated from his subject via time; whether he is looking to the past to tell his story, or whether he is part of it himself.

The first inkling of the narrator's relation to the tale comes in the very first stanza of the piece and sets Don Juan in the past. In line six, the narrator describes his protagonist as "our ancient friend Don Juan," which seems paradoxical. "[A]ncient" suggests that Don Juan existed long in the past, before the modern era, and thus separates the narrator from him, yet the second descriptor "friend" relays some sort of intimacy between narrator and subject which could not exist over the grand scope of time denoted by "ancient." Thus from the outset, the narrator leaves us on unstable ground.

Where I became most aware of my confusion, was when the narrator placed himself in the story itself in stanzas 23 and 24. Not only does this choice seem unnecessary in terms of the narrative (the narrator seems to be able to infer and describe plenty without being inside the story) but also confuses the timing of the occurrence further. We can now as readers redeem the term "friend" from the first stanza, but "ancient" feels like a misnomer if the actual reality of the story happened in the direct past of the narrator. On top of this, Byron as author makes no attempt to remedy this discrepancy. How can something be ancient and contemporary? What is gained from the narrator being placed in the narrative itself, and not at the outset might I add? All of these questions seem pertinent not to the resonance of the piece, but to its consistency and coherence.

She Walks in Beauty

Lord Byron's poem "She Walks in Beauty" is a beautiful poem about the admiration of a woman
figure. I think it is important to note that although the title makes the poem sound like a love poem, I would argue that it is not. No where in the poem does the speaker say that they are in love with the woman. Instead the speaker discusses her physical and mental beauty through several natural images. For example, Byron compares the woman to the starry night skies, cloudless climes, raven tress, and tender light.

After reading the poem I thought it was interesting that Byron used nature imagery in order to describe a figure because the entire poem is simply about an observance of a woman. Instead of relying on setting as the main purpose of the poem, Byron focused on the woman and related nature to her in his poem. I thought this was a very different approach from Wordsworth, who would devote almost all of a poem to explaining a natural setting that the poem takes place in rather than the characters in his poetry.

The Narrator in Don Juan

The narrator in Lord Byron's "Don Juan" is rather hysterical. As the Norton introduction to the work suggests, "The controlling element of Don Juan is not the narrative but the narrator" because the narrator helps to further engage the poem with history (673). The editors go so far as to say that the narrator "is one of the greatest comic inventions in English literature" (673). Because I began reading the poem under this impression, I tried to suss out exactly what makes the narrator funny.

I think that at least part of the reason why the narrator is so funny is his rather paradoxical voice: he uses both hyperbole and affected casualness to inject his own voice into the events that he narrates and the result is pretty hilarious. Clench Brooks, a notable contributor to the school of New Literary Criticism, argued for the centrality of paradox and irony in understanding poetry. He believed that poetry ought to be examined in a vacuum and the primary concern with criticism is the problem of unity (according to Wikipedia: "the kind of whole which the literary work forms or fails to form, and the relation of the various parts to each other in building up this whole"). In other words, seemingly contradictory poetic elements, images, techniques, etc. could actually cohere to form a more united whole. I think of this as an almost 1+1=3 situation. To the extent that I have studied Brooks in my other classes, Brooks applies this strategy or literary criticism to poems that are much more visual than an epic-type poem like Don Juan, but I think the theory in its basic form applies here as well.

The narrator in Jon Duan fluctuates between moments of utter hyperbole and an extremely blasé tone. For example, when he depicts Don Juan's parents' relationship he narrates, "Don José and the Donna Inez led/ For some time an unhappy sort of life,/ Wishing each other, not divorced, but dead" (201). In one line, the narrator takes on a blasé tone by describing the type of life the couple led as "an unhappy sort," which is a qualifier that one could use to describe something rather meaningless (i.e. the apple of a mealy sort). In the very next line, he transitions to pretty extreme exaggeration and even emphasizes the extremity of wishing one's spouse dead even more because he uses a "not.... but...." construction. Because of this construction, the more extreme option comes second, so it hits the reader right over the head. The effect is comic in its seeming contradictions yet somehow wholly united tone of voice.