Question: How does Byron satirize the idea of conventional love and marriage in “Don Juan”?
Or, discuss Byron’s treatment of love and marriage.
Or, discuss Byron’s attitude towards women.
Or, discuss and compare various women characters in “Don Juan, Canto-1”.
Or, discuss Byron as a satirist.
Introduction
Revolutionary attitude towards love and marriage has been picked up by the second-generation romantic poet Lord Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824). His treatment of love and marriage bears a certain psychological significance of how to be happy in conjugal life and to expose the hypocrisy and corruption of the upper-class society.
Byron as a satirist
Click here: For all notes of poetry
Byron’s concept of love
Unlike Plato, Byron does not give emphasis on spiritual love. Plato always gives emphasis on spiritual love where there is little emphasis on physical contact. Byron’s view of love is incompatible with that of G. B. Shaw who castigates the romantic notion of love. We can see a different type of love in “Don Juan”.
Here the poet has shown the necessity of romantic and physical love since the hero seduces women and makes advances indiscriminately. The hero does not hesitate even to establish a physical relationship with an almost mother-like woman, named Julia. Juan’s relationship with Julia matches with Byron’s relation with his nurse, Mary Gray.
Byron’s personal experience of life and womanhood
Byron’s personal experience of life is not a happy one. His scandalous relationship with his half-sister and his marriage with and separation from Anna Isabella Milbanke are significant incidents in his life. His wife was prim, spoilt, mathematical, and wealthy. The sexual attention of his nurse, when he was only nine years old, made a permanent impression on him. The marriage and separation of his parents also influenced him to a great extent. On the other hand, his attractive and mysterious personality and his love affairs with several women helped him make keen observations on womanhood.
Byron’s attitude to first and passionate love
Byron’s attitude to love is the direct outcome of his personal bitter experience in conjugal life. According to him, first love is light and thoughtless. It begets only sentimental and sensual aspects. To highlight the superiority of first and passionate love, he has given a long description of various sweet things to focus on the emotion of love. Glittering gold is sweet to the misers, firstborn child is sweet in the father. But to Byron, first and passionate love is sweeter than all other things. He says:
“But sweeter still than this, than these, than all
Is first and passionate love.”
Jealous hypocrisy of female
According to Byron, women are more aggressive than men. Donna Inez intentionally does not separate Juan and Julia because she finds her own happiness in destroying Julia’s reputation and even her marriage. Using Juan as a tool, she succeeds in separating Julia from Alfonso through a divorce and getting her locked up in a convent. In Canto X, we learn from Inez’s letter to Juan that Inez is married and Juan has already a little brother. The suggestion is that she married Don Alfonso. The jealous hypocrisy of Inez and Alfonso is clearly sketched here.
Castigation on loveless conjugal life
Dissatisfaction in conjugal life because of the triangle notion has been rebuked through the suffering of the husband and wife.
Juan’s parents
Donna Inez and Don Jose represent an unhappy marriage where the wife and husband cannot adjust mentally with each other. There is a whisper among the relatives around that Don Jose has a mistress or two. The illicit love of her husband contaminates her. That is why she engages herself with her former lover, Don Alfonso. Here Byron likes to say that if Inez and Alfonso were united earlier, there would have been a possibility of happiness as they loved each other.
Unmatched Alfonso and Juli
Another unhappy marriage is also criticized by Byron. Don Alfonso and Donna Julia’s relationship is also poisonous because of their unequal age. Alfonso is a man of fifty and Julia is only twenty-three. He cannot satisfy Julia. Julia is also unhappy with Alfonso. So, she decides to surrender herself to Juan who is only sixteen. They fall for each other so passionately that one-night Juan is discovered in the bed-chamber of Julia by her husband Alfonso. However, Byron criticizes the social bondage of marriage which cannot bring peace without the proper combination of age and mentality.
Prolonged Attraction of satisfactory love
The attraction of satisfactory love can be broken into several levels. Byron has appreciated Julia in several ways. Julia has invested her heart with a sincere love for Juan. Her caressing of Juan in his childhood is praiseworthy.
Moreover, the long letter written by Julia to Juan from the convent draws our sympathetic attention. In this letter, she has proved her sincere love for Juan. She has lost all for the sake of her love for Juan. Despite losing everything she could not forget that sweet memory. She says:
“I love, I love you, for this love have lost
State, station, heaven, mankind’s my own esteem,
And yet cannot regret what it hath cost,
So dear is still the memory of that dream”
According to Bernard Beatty, a famous critic
Julia produces a famous aphorism for passionate and satisfactory love that is never quoted before;
“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
‘Tis woman’s whole existence,”
Click Here: For all notes of Don Juan, Canto-1
Conclusion
Byron has been able to create an accepted satirical treatment on the most fundamental issue of human life and society namely love and marriage like holy institutions through his keen and accurate observation of men and women. To him, loveless marriage is nothing but a hearth of fire that burns the couple forever. He also advocates that marriage without love cannot last long. The so-called socially-sanctioned marriage cannot bring peace into conjugal life.
