Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1995 Attraction vs. Repulsion: The aN rrative Ambivalence of Gender in Byron's "Don Juan". Melinda A. Piontek Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Piontek, Melinda A., "Attraction vs. Repulsion: The aN rrative Ambivalence of Gender in Byron's "Don Juan"." (1995). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 6044. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/6044 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. 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Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 ATTRACTION VS. REPULSION: THE NARRATIVE AMBIVALENCE OF GENDER IN BYRON’S D O N TUAN A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Melinda A. Piontek B.A., University of Kansas, 1991 M.A. Louisiana State University, 1995 August 1995 UMI Number: 9609118 Copyright 1995 by Piomtek, Melinda A. All rights reserved. UMI Microform 9609118 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 c Copyright 1995 Melinda Ann Piontek All rights reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are several people without whose help this disseration would not have been possible. I would like to thank my committee members: Dr. Jim Borck, Dr. Michael Dietz, Dr. Anna Nardo, and Dr. Rebecca Crump. 1 would also like to thank Dr. Elsie Michie for her invaluable assistance on chapters two and three. For introducing me to Romantic poetry and Don luan in particular, I am indebted to Dr. Bernard Hirsch of the University of Kansas. 1 am grateful to Catherine Williamson, Rob Hale, Nancy Dixon, and Steve Price for their friendship and support. 1 would also like to thank my parents Richard and Barbara Meek; my sister, Sheri, and her family, Mark and Robert Lee; along with Ron and Mary Piontek. I also owe many thanks to Alexander for his unwavering support. Above all, 1 would like to thank Luke Piontek for his patience, his kindness, his respect, and his love. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................. iii ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 Introduction.................................................................................................................... 1 2 The Language of Paradise: Feminine Speech in Byron’s Don luan ........ 11 3 The Lure of the Petticoat: Feminine Masquerade in Don luan .............. 68 4 The Emasculating Threat of the Feminine in Don luan ..........................112 WORKS CITED...............................................................................................•................159 VITA.....................................................................................................................................162 ABSTRACT Previous studies of gender in Byron’s Don luan. such as those by Susan Wolfson and Louis Crompton, have concentrated primarily on identifying gender ambivalence and attributing that ambivalence to factors outside the text, such as Byron's ambivalence toward his personal homoeroticism as well as to the social attitudes of Regency England toward questions of gender ambiguity. In this dissertation, I propose to turn the critical gaze back to the text in order to go beyond identifying gender ambivalence to track how that ambivalence works within Don luan. In order to bring into focus the serial and episodic nature of Byron’s narrative and the consequences that nature has for the presentation of gender, femininity in particular, I look to the theories of Freud and Lacan regarding the oedipus complex and language acquisition. The various episodes of the poem circle around key concerns with the attraction to and the threats from the feminine. In the course of this study, I will look to the narrator’s presentation of femininity in the text and give special attention to the simultaneous attraction to and repulsion from the feminine which characterizes its appearance throughout Don luan. In chapter 2 I look to the narrator’s presentation of feminine language in Don luan to develop an understanding of the narrator’s presentation of the feminine through the language of women. In chapter 3 I analyze the different modes of masquerade that the narrator uses both to mask Juan and to control femininity in the text. In chapter 4 I evaluate the undercurrent of violence to masculinity which has appeared in the narrator’s presentation of femininity through feminine language and masquerading appearance. While feminine appearance and feminine language can be life affirming and filled with communion and joyful play, the same qualities, by virtue of their attractiveness, can turn in a moment to threaten the men of the narrative with emasculation and annihilation. Chapter 1 Introduction In Don Tuan.1 gender representation is complicated by Byron’s satirical position with respect to the text, the shifting identity of the narrator,2 the patriarchal biases that appear in almost all Romantic texts, and the tension created by Byron’s own homoeroticism. In recent years, several critics such as Susan Wolfson and Louis Crompton have addressed the ambiguous and even ambivalent depiction of gender in Don luan by paving specific attention to the influence Byron’s homoeroticism had on iAll quotations of Don luan are from volume 5 of Jerome J. McGann. Lord Bvron: The Complete Poetical Works (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). For quotations from other poems, I have used the same edition of Byron’s works. 2The problem of the narrator’s identity in Don luan is a difficult one which involves a degree of tension between the voice of Byron and the voice of the narrator as a character, and is one that 1 will be unable to address in this dissertation. I believe that George Ridenour, in The Style of Don Juan, comes close to a coherent formulation of the narrator by referring to “public” and “private” Byronian voices within the text. When, in the course of my discussion, I refer to the narrator of the poem, I mean to indicate the character, in whom are combined public and private voices, who performs the role of narrator in Don luan. Accordingly, I consider the narrator the voice of the poem, except when it is very clear that the narrator is ventriloquizing Byron by voicing thoughts which are implicitly Byron’s and which conflict with the expressed opinion of the narrating character. When such a conflict occurs, I refer to Byron as the voice of the poem. 1 that depiction.3 Although studies such as these have illustrated some of the ways that gender ambivalence operates within the text, they have primarily done so by arguing that Byron blurs gender categories, thus confusing the distinctions between masculine and feminine. Wolfson in particular argues that when such blurring of gender occurs within the text, i.e. when Juan cross-dresses in the Oda scenes, Byron sets in motion certain normalizing forces that sort out the blurred distinctions. 1 agree with Wolfson’s assessment, that gender ambivalence often appears when Byron blurs the distinctions between gender categories. I would also assert, however, that the very gestures of normalization to which Wolfson points suggest that there are impulses to conserve categories of gender as distinct within the text. This conservation of gender categories illustrates Byron’s own patriarchal and aristocratic biases. That there are dual impulses within the