Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Alžběta Komrsková Stereotypical Depiction of Female Characters in Robert Graves's novel I, Claudius Bachelor's Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc, M.A. 2021 / declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. Author's signature Acknowledgement: I would like to thank my supervisor prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A Table of Contents Introduction 5 1 Robert Von Ranke Graves 7 1.1 Graves and Feminism 8 1.2 Graves as Historian 10 1.3 Graves vs. Claudius 12 2 Historical Analysis 13 2.1 Women in Ancient Rome 13 2.2 Women in 1920s 16 3 Literary Analysis 19 3.1 Livia 19 3.2 Julia the Elder 28 3.3Livilla 32 Conclusion 40 Works Cited 42 Summary 45 Resume 46 Introduction Robert Graves is a well-known British author, and his novel /, Claudius is one of his most famous works, mainly due to the television adaptation. The novel and the TV series created a certain notion about the civilization of ancient Rome as a cruel society full of intrigues and murders among the members of the royal family, and especially among the royal women. This diploma thesis deals with Graves's strongly misogynistic and stereotypical depiction of female characters. The ancient Rome was certainly a cruel place for women. They did not have many rights; they were traditionally viewed as caretakers and mothers and especially as subordinates to their male relatives. But history reveals that many great women of that period were not content with these firmly appointed roles ascribed to them by their gender. Graves's novel offers many examples, such as Livia, the Empress of Rome and the wife of Augustus, the adoptive son of Julius Caesar. But even though we could retrospectively call Graves a feminist in his ideals, he views history and historical figures through the lenses of manhood and patriarchy. Not only is his novel narrated in first person by Claudius, the Emperor of Rome, but Graves also chooses historical sources written by men strongly misogynistic in their capturing of history, for example Tacitus or Suetonius. Women are often forgotten in their writings, and the documented fragments of their lives frequently falsely characterize them as heartless murderers, shameless adulteresses and scheming politicians. Many of these things did not change in the first half of the 20th century, the time when the novel was written. While women called for their right to vote and their right to actively participate in political life, many men viewed them as intruders in the natural order of things. Outspoken, determined women were still viewed as something negative and undesirable. The ancient image of "honourable matron" was still very alive and well. 5 At the beginning of the thesis, I briefly introduce the author of the novel, Robert Graves, and his work as a historian and a writer. I analyse his approach to feminism, that was on the rise during the process of the creation of the novel. In the historical analysis part, I focus on two periods that are crucial for this thesis, the ancient Rome and the 1920s, to briefly summarize the social status of women and to find parallels between these two periods of history. In the literary analysis part, I introduce the main female characters and then analyse them through the close reading method. The novel is compared to other historical sources to discover patterns of stereotypical characterization of female figures in the novel. 6 1 Robert Von Ranke Graves Robert von Ranke Graves was born in 1895 in Wimbledon to Alfred Perceval Graves, an Irish poet, and Amelie Elisabeth von Ranke, the niece of the historian Leopold von Ranke. "A strong streak of puritanism, which his love of women never entirely overwhelmed, was instilled at an early age. His mother was religious and high-minded ... from his mother, he gained a lifelong, if unorthodox, fascination with biblical history and a sense of women as pure beings, not to be associated with sexual thoughts or deeds" (Seymour 17). He grew up in the early 20th century, which was still a time of very strict perception of gender roles, in some sense further emphasized by the war. Graves fought on the front line, but he was wounded and removed from the front (Firla). Upon his return back home to England, he suffered from a shellshock and "remained deeply troubled by his war experiences for at least a decade" (Tikkanen). The war was an important influence not only because of the psychological trauma it caused - it also formed Graves's friendship with other war poets, which in the case of Siegfried Sassoon developed into some kind of romantic relationship. The question of Graves's sexuality is raised in his biography by Miranda Seymour. She describes his many platonic crushes on his schoolmates in the all-boys school he attended. On the other hand, in his autobiography Good-by to All That Graves himself does not identify as bisexual, as he called that part of his youth as "pseudo-homosexual" phase, caused by "the public school system" (45). Not only Graves's relationships with men, but also his relationships with women were very unconventional, especially for the first half of the twentieth century. After the war, he married Nancy Nicholson and had four children with her. She supported him during his studies, but their marriage ended in divorce. One of the causes of their split was his 7 complicated relationship with another poet, Laura Riding: "Graves and Nicholson then invited Riding to join them on their move to Egypt. Over time the three became very close, forming more of a relationship than friendship" (Shirley). Graves eventually left his wife for Riding. In 1929, Graves and Riding moved to Majorca, and it was exactly this Mediterranean island where (perhaps inspired by the atmosphere of the place) he wrote his novel /, Cladius, its sequel Claudius the God and his Wife Messalina, and also a few other novels inspired by the ancient Greco-Roman world, such as The White Goddess, Seven days on New Crete, and The Greek Myths (Hammer). In the end, Majorca proved to be Graves's greater love than Riding - while he spent much of his life there, the relationship with Riding soon ended. "Eventually Graves met his second wife Beryl, had a family and lived out a very happy life. Much of this time was focused on his poetry; it is believed these writings were influenced by events and people within his lifetime" (Shirley). 1.1 Graves and Feminism To understand Graves's approach to women and feminism in general, it is necessary to take a closer look at the women in his life. While his very religious, conservative mother had certainly great influence over Graves's perception of women (as mentioned in the previous subchapter), his love interests represent the very opposite of the way his mother viewed the world and women's place in it. Nancy Nicholson, Graves's first wife, was without doubts a feminist. She stood for ideals that his mother would probably not approve, especially her opinion on religion and woman's emancipation. Nicholson was certainly not a traditional, submissive wife - for example, she refused to take Graves's last name after their marriage - but Graves seemed to 8 be unbothered by her progressive opinions and ideals. In fact, he describes almost a relief upon his first encounter with the notion of equality between sexes: Of course I also accepted the whole patriarchal system of things. It is difficult now to recall how completely I believed in the natural supremacy of male over female. I never heard it even questioned until I met Nancy ... The surprising sense of ease that I got from her frank statement of equality between sexes was among my chief reasons for liking her. My mother had always taken the 'love, honour, and obey' contract literally; my sisters were brought up to wish themselves boys, to be shocked at the idea of woman's suffrage ... Nancy's crude summary, "God is a man, so it must be all rot,' took a load off my shoulders" (Good-by to All That 51). Laura Riding, for whom he eventually left Nicholson, was no less of a feminist. But she not only had very progressive opinions on the role of women in the modern society; she also lived them. On the intellectual level, she was Graves's equal, well-educated, determined, and already a successful poet when they met for the first time: Laura Riding could have been seen as a prototype of the emancipated woman. She had received two scholarships to Cornell University, had been admitted into an all-male fraternity of Southern writers ... had published nineteen books of poetry, criticism, and short stories ... As a woman who had achieved an extraordinary degree of success in a man's world, Riding was uniquely qualified to look at feminist ideas from a vantage point still denied most women (Friedman and Clark). From these two examples, it is clear that Graves surrounded himself with confident, emancipated women that strongly influenced his worldview and his writing. While Nicholson was the one to open his eyes to the possibility of the equality of sexes, Riding inspired one of his works about the ancient myths and matriarchal cultures, The White Goddess. Through this book, published in 1948, Graves "makes an essential appeal to the female as sovereign 9 remedy for the ills of an industrialised world, awry and foundering in its own destructiveness" (Quinn 229).