Supplemental Essay: "Gender Personas" in
Chapter 13 of Sexual Personae

Notes

[Note 1] 

Byron's early poems (Manfred, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, etc.): Paglia appears to divide Lord Byron's work into two periods: Byron's early poems (Manfred, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, etc.) feature strong, brooding, vindictive brigand-adventurers with a dark sense of overhanging evil and obsessive guilt; while the later epic poem Don Juan is lighter, breezier, and picaresque.

Byron's early poems were influenced by the first generation of Romantic poets (p. 347) and tend to fall into the same category: Dionysian. Paglia compares Byron's Manfred to Goethe and Wordsworth (pp. 347-348), and she compares the repeated theme of incest to Sade (p. 349). Paglia's analysis of Byron's early work focuses on a couple main themes:

1) Effeminacy via Dionysianism: In my notes on previous chapters, I have mentioned the repeated Romantic theme of passive males in thrall to the Great Mother (who is portrayed as the murderous fertility goddess of the ancients, the daemonic side of nature, motherhood, and femaleness). In Byron's case, Paglia says that "Romanticism's feminization of the male persona becomes effeminacy in Byron." (p. 349) It reaches a peak in Byron's poem Sardanapalus, which Paglia describes as "an experiment in personae: how far can a male protagonist be shifted toward the female extreme without total loss of masculinity? [...] Byron nullifies Sardanapalus' manhood with feminine narcissism." (p. 351)

In Byron's early poems effeminacy equates Dionysianism but not to androgyny. Paglia mentions transvestism and homosexuality in reference to the early poems, but she doesn't mention androgyny or hermaphroditism. In fact, in the case of the poem Sardanapalus she explicitly rules out androgyny. Instead, the character Sardanapalus is a study in "sexual degeneracy" (p. 350): Paglia says, "As a program for androgyny, Sardanapalus is unconvincing. [...] The effeminacy of Byron's hero is perverse, not ideal." (pp. 351-352)

2) Solipsism via incest: Incest is a repeated theme in Byron's early poems. Paglia says, "Lord Byron makes Romantic incest stunningly explicit." (p. 347) Part of the attraction of this theme is the criminality of the subject matter, reminiscent of the Marquis de Sade: "Byron relishes sexual criminality. Forbidden love makes his characters superhuman." (p. 347) Paglia goes on: "Byron says, 'Great is their love who love in sin and fear' ('Heaven and Earth'). Incest is sexual dissent. Its value is in impurity. Byron would spurn Blakean innocence. He takes the Sadean approach to sex and Psyche: make a line, so I can cross it." (p. 349)

Another part of the attraction of incest is self-containment. Family members are seen as part of oneself. By keeping one's love "all in the family," one can enjoy the privacy and comfort of pure solipsism. Paglia says of the character Manfred, "Rejecting all social relationships, Manfred seeks only himself in sexually transmuted form." (pp. 347-9) Paglia says that "Byron wants to reinforce the boundaries of self. In incest, libido moves out and back, making a uroboros-circle of regression and dynastic exclusiveness." (p. 349) In incest, you never move beyond "self."

However, sexual solipsism isn't a recipe for contentment. Incest is sex, and in the Sadean world sex is daemonic. Paglia says, "Manfred merges too fiercely with his sister. He assimilates her. How else explain the disappearance of her body? Manfred's union with his sister is a solipsistic sex-experiment that fails. His restlessness and remorse are symptoms of his engorgement by her. Like Thyestes, Manfred has eaten his own flesh; like Kronos, he must vomit it out." (p. 348) In the Romantic world view, effeminacy is achieved by consuming the Great Mother and incorporating her into oneself. But in the Sadean school of Romanticism, the Great Mother and sex turn daemonic and the merger is an uncomfortable one.

[Note 2]

Byron's later epic poem Don Juan: Paglia sees a shift in tone from Byron's earlier poems to the later epic poem Don Juan: "His early poems of brooding defiance, like Cain and Manfred, conform to the popular image of Byronism, but Don Juan actually captures the poet's essential spirit. Don Juan is emotionally various and comprehensive." (p. 354) Comparing Byron to Elvis Presley, Paglia says, "Byron and Presley had early and late styles: brooding then urbane magnanimity." (p. 361)

This shift primarily shows up as a new androgyny of the hero. In other words, the early poems were Dionysian but not androgyne; whereas the later epic poem Don Juan flips the script by emphasizing androgyny and downplaying pure Dionysianism. In her analysis of Don Juan Paglia repeatedly speaks of "the androgynous hero" (p. 354) and the "hermaphroditic" tone of the poem (p. 356); Byron as the narrator of the poem is described as "a Mercurius of multiple personae." (p. 354) In the context of his later period Paglia says, "Byron belongs to the category of androgyne I invented for Michelangelo's Giuliano de' Medici: Epicoene, or the man of beauty..." (p. 360) Therefore the two themes that I mentioned previously get reworked as follows:

1) Effeminacy of the Androgyne: The hero, Don Juan, is still effeminate and passive. Byron's Don Juan is small, shy, and feminine. He is sold into slavery in Constantinople, forced into female clothing and made up to look like a woman, and then sold to the sultana Gulbeyaz for lesbian pleasures. Paglia says, "Juan's tenuous manhood is near-obliterated by female drag." (p. 352) Paglia goes on to imply that true androgyny is achieved not via the perversity or degeneracy of Sardanapalus but rather via a natural, easy balance of femininity and masculinity in one's personality. Paglia illustrates this by comparing Byron to the music of the Beach Boys: "Don Juan and the Beach Boys combine youth, androgyny, aeration, and speed. [...] The Beach Boys use a falsetto lead voice set against a boyish chorale; their sound is effeminate and yet enthusiastically heterosexual, as in the immortal 'California Girls.' We find the same odd combination in Byron. Byron may have been partly or even primarily homosexual, but his poetry affects a distinctive eroticism of effeminate heterosexuality." (p. 359)

2) Solipsism via "skimming": Incest seems to disappear from Byron's later poems. Byron appears to have learned the lesson that trying to incorporate the Great Mother and her daemonism is too uncomfortable. If anything, the theme now becomes that of disengagement, motion, and flight. Sexuality becomes both temptation and torment. Imprisoned in a harem, Don Juan finds himself sexually frustrated: "Juan becomes the object of desire not because he is male but because he is thought female. [...] How does one defeat the virility of a man at happy liberty in a harem? The Romantic poem, with cross-sexual virtuosity, blithely replies: why, by turning him into a transvestite and making him the object of lesbian lust!" (p. 353)

Paglia notes that Byron himself "courts femininity but flees femaleness." She says that femininity is "social and aesthetic," whereas femaleness is "primitive and archaic." (p. 359) Thus "skimming," motion, and speed become a means of avoiding entrapment by either excessive maleness or femaleness. Paglia says, "The dance of Byron's poetry is neither Apollonian nor chthonian. Byron is attuned neither to sky nor to earth's bowels. He skims earth's surface, midway between realms." (p. 357)

Paglia seems to suggest that this fear of "entrapment by either excessive maleness or femaleness" goes back to the natural self-sufficiency and self-containment of the Androgyne persona. Paglia says elsewhere that the androgyne is a closed circle, self-contained. Androgynes have no need to seek their other half in marriage or in society at large; they are their own "other half." "Egoism is the androgyne's raison d'être. Self-complete beings need no one and nothing." (p. 441) Solipsism remains the end goal, but in Don Juan Byron is no longer trying to incorporate the Great Mother. In other words, Byron's early poems achieved solipsism via incest, criminality, and incorporation of the daemonic Great Mother; but the late-period Don Juan achieves solipsism via androgyny and flight.

Byron still likes the social and aesthetic aspects of femininity, but his energy and motion now come from inside, from self-sufficiency: "Byron's speed is self-motivating. All self-motivating speed is hermaphroditic. (p. 356) "Don Juan's skimming is a defense mechanism, a compromise between earth's primitive chthonianism and sky's repressive Apollonianism. Byron keeps moving, reclaiming space from mother nature. [...] Byron fears the femme fatale and female stasis. [...] Byron's restless animal motion defeats his female vegetable flesh." (p. 359)

In Don Juan, the Dionysian Great Mother is a trap to be avoided. For Byron, the "urbane magnanimity" of his later period arises from self-contained androgyny.

[Note 3]

Paglia identifies the persona of Gulbeyaz in Don Juan as an Androgyne: "The sultana Gulbeyaz is one of Romanticism's most potent women. [...] Now Byron shoves [Don Juan] next to an Amazon dominatrix. Juan in petticoats is a trembling pawn upon whom the raging queen bears down. [...] She is the androgyne as virago, luxuriously female in body but harshly male in spirit." (p. 352)

Androgyny operates differently in men and women. Male androgynes appear passive and effeminate. But in women, masculine focus and drive gives female androgynes added energy; female androgynes often benefit in the public eye, where they are seen as beautiful, imperious, volatile women. 

As a result, the ferocity of the female androgyne Gulbeyaz becomes a good match for the submissiveness of the male androgyne Don Juan. The later-period Byron fears too much maleness or femaleness of character and thus shies away from extremes of either; but the focus and energy of the female androgyne complements the passivity of the male androgyne, making them engaging literary protagonists.

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For more on the nature of the Androgyne, see my supplemental essay on that subject which I wrote for the main blog in the chapter on Sensing:

Link to supplemental essay: The Androgyne

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Link: Return to Notes on Sexual Personae

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~Posted December 16, 2024