Supplemental Essay: "Gender Personas" in
Chapter 7 of Sexual Personae

[Note 1]

Paglia mainly describes Shakespeare as Dionysian, especially in contrast to his Apollonian predecessor Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queen) and the general Apollonian cast of the High Renaissance itself. At one point in Chapter 7 Paglia suggests that Shakespeare is "inwardly" a mercurial androgyne. (p. 208). But for the most part she categorizes him as Dionysian; at the beginning of the chapter she says, "Shakespeare is a metamorphosist and therefore closer to Dionysus than to Apollo." (p. 195)

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[Note 2]

Paglia says that As You Like It and Twelfth Night are Shakespeare's "transvestite plays," and all the main characters in them are Androgynes: Rosalind, Viola, Olivia, Orsino, and Orlando. The men are effeminate or incompetent, and the women are masculine; this allows for gender-swapping and character confusion for comic effect. Speaking of a scene between Viola, Olivia, and Orsino in Twelfth Night, Paglia says "Viola is an androgyne bearing a hermaphroditic message from one androgyne to another. [...] The principal characters become androgynous echoes of one another." (pp. 201-202) Paglia notes some differences in their styles as Androgynes: Rosalind is raucous and trolling; Viola is more feminine and reserved; and Olivia is haughty and self-contained. (pp. 200-202)

 

[Note 3]

Cleopatra is an Androgyne by virtue of having both a strong Dionysian side and a strong Apollonian side. Her Dionysian qualities include theatricality and quick mood swings; her Apollonian qualities include cross-dressing, "an intemperate flair for masculine violence" (p. 217), and an ability to be coldly calculating when it suits her purposes. Paglia puts a lot of emphasis on Cleopatra's Dionysian side: She calls Cleopatra a "Dionysian androgyne" a couple times, and even an "archetypal femme fatale" at one point (pp. 216-217); a lot of that springs from Cleopatra's nature as a barbarian queen in exotic Egypt, far away from Apollonian Rome. But Cleopatra is also quick to display her Apollonian side. Paglia says, "Cleopatra appropriates the powers and prerogatives of both sexes more lavishly than any other character in literature" (p. 216), "In Cleopatra violence is constantly present as a potential male persona. It is the raging warfare of her hermaphrodite character" (p. 217), "Cleopatra vaults from one sexual extreme to the other, barely taking breath. The delicate Lady of the Camellias switch-hits with burly Ajax. The genders so indiscriminately mingle in Cleopatra that she makes transsexual word errors under stress" (p. 219), etc.

 

[Note 4]

Concerning Caesar in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra: Paglia plays off the contrast between Caesar living in Apollonian Rome and the two lovers living in Dionysian Egypt. Caesar's focus on order and structure is clearly Apollonian, and Paglia identifies it as such repeatedly. But she finds it to be a very superficial and one-dimensional form of Apollonianism; she labels it "static and brittle ... inflexible ... desiccated or devivified ... merely officiousness, the spite and banality of small minds." (pp. 214-215) Ultimately Paglia sees Caesar as androgynous rather than Apollonian in the heroic Greek style: She says, "Caesar, a bland managerial type, is sexually neuter. He is an Apollonian androgyne." (p. 215) So I'm putting Caesar in the Androgyne category.

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Note the contrast between Cleopatra and Caesar: Cleopatra is an Androgyne because she has both Apollonian and Dionysian features in abundance. By comparison, Caesar is an Androgyne because he has the features of neither; Caesar is an Androgyne because he is one-dimensional and "sexually neuter." Elsewhere, Paglia says something similar about the religious art of the Middle Ages: It is flat and severe and one-dimensional, drained of either Apollonian or Dionysian features; it takes Donatello and Botticelli and the re-introduction of the pagan element in the Renaissance to give life to art and restore it to its pre-Christian glory. That is why Paglia simply skips over the art of the Middle Ages; there isn't much to be said about it by way of art criticism. (Although she does include a chapter on Byzantine church icons in her book Glittering Images.)

 

[Note 5]

Antony was Apollonian when he lived in Rome, but his stay in Dionysian Egypt with the barbarian queen Cleopatra feminizes him to the point of becoming a hermaphrodite Androgyne: "Cleopatra has dissolved and naturalized him. [...] Antony is alchemized by Cleopatra, queen of Dionysian nature. He is hermaphroditized by his dissolution in watery Egypt. Mars drowns in Venus." (p. 226) The idea of Mars drowning in Venus recalls something Paglia said earlier in the book: Speaking of the Great Mother, Paglia says, "[Man] must transform himself into an independent being, that is, a being free of her. If he does not, he will simply fall back into her." (pp. 9-10) Elsewhere Paglia adds, "Masculinity must fight off effeminacy day by day. Woman and nature stand ever ready to reduce the male to boy and infant." (p. 27)

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Link: Return to Notes on Sexual Personae

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~Posted July 19, 2024