Don Juan free essay sample

The women in Don Juan are seen as pretty, submissive women whom are sexually attractive even sexually responsive. The men in Don Juan appear to be charming and unaccountable for their irresponsible love affairs based on the rationale that falling in love and lust is their default. Thus the men in Don Juan have no need for brute force or seductive tactics to obtain the women they desire. In 1818 when Don Juan was written it was unheard of for women to be liberated and unconventional. Byron pushed the envelope by transforming the female characters in Don Juan from passive, submissive, gentle women to rebellious, explicit, sexually aggressive women. In† Don Juan†, Donna Inez, Donna Julia, and Haidee are examples of attractive, gentle, dutiful, self sacrificing women who are accepting of their fate to the point of victimization. In Cantos I of Don Juan, Donna Inez the rigidly virtuous woman is tortured and tormented by her obligation to surrender and remain in an unhappy existence. Donna Inez is a learned woman of the arts and has a keen memory. Although Donna Inez is an educated and sophisticated woman, her husband Don Jose’ has no interest in her or her accomplishments. Don Jose’ possesses a wondering eye to which Donna Inez takes notice. Their marriage became a stagnant burden on the both of them that, Chatman 2 For some time an unhappy sort of life, Wishing each other, not divorced, but dead; They lived respectably as man and wife†( Byron I. 202-204. 1694). Don Jose’ takes Donna Inez for granted and is continuously getting into altercations which in turn instigate quarrels between him and Donna. â€Å"She kept a journal, where his faults were noted† (Byron. I. 217. 1694), Donna Inez tries to prove that her husband is mad, maintaining a journal outlying her findings while foraging through his personal belongings as to obtain evidence to use against him in hopes of a divorce. In Don Juan Byron amends Donna Inez’s burden from discontented wife to over bearing, smothering, and sheltering mother. Donna Inez is seen as a cold and harsh type of woman, although there is evidence that she has not always been so. Don Jose’ died before him and Donna Inez were able to obtain a divorce, â€Å"An only son left with an only mother† (Byron. I. 295. 1695). Donna Inez felt as though Don Juan’s â€Å"breeding should be strictly moral† (Byron. I. 308. 1696). Byron employs the â€Å"natural† role of women based on chastity, marriage, and political power (Franklin, p. 17-19). Because Donna Inez takes on the burden of sole provider for her son and shelters him from the worldly views, â€Å"Byron undermines the concept of reforming society through endowing women with the role of guardian of morals by suggesting the unalterable dynamics of human sexuality† (Franklin, p. 117). As Don Juan, the son of Donna Inez matured into manhood women noticed his transformation, Donna Inez’s refusal to notice the boy’s modification is due to her fear of him becoming unmoral. Due to Juan’s distorted education and upbringing he partakes in a scandalous affair with one of his mother’s companions, Donna Julia. The affair embarrasses his mother and to avoid a scandal Donna Inez ships Jun off to travel to reset Chatman 3 His moral compass. Donna Inez looses individuality first in her obligated duties as a wife and then as a domineering mother falling victim social norms denying he own self discovery. Donna Julia a shy, inert woman breaks out of her role as submissive wife to not so innocent seductress. Byron’s satiric poem portrays Naive idealism, self repression, and the outright hypocrisy representing three stages in an Englishwoman’s life (Franklin, p. 117). Donna Julia is an unhappy wife married to Don Alfonso, a middle-aged man incapable of engaging in her affections. Donna Julia is desperately seeking an escape from her dreadful everyday life. Donna Julia begins to find Don Juan attractive none-the-less attempting to contain her lust for the young boy, Byron indicates that woman by nature have as much a creature or more of a sexual appetite as a man (Franklin, p. 117), thus explain Donna Julia’s surrendering to the flesh; â€Å"And Julia sate with Juan, half embraced And half retiring from the glowing arm† (Byron. I. 913-914. 1704). Juan and Donna Julia affair becomes apparent and he is shipped off to sea by his mother and she to a convent by her husband, â€Å"the episode is forever closed for him on shipboard, when, reading Julia’s farewell letter and vowing never to forget her† (Boyd, 66). Donna Julia fell victim to the flesh and sacrifices her freedom for internal happiness. One midsummer evening the two declare their love for each other without the notion of possible consequences. November of that year Don Alfonso enters Donna Julia’s room accompanied by his servants and makes a frantic search, but finds nothing. Dismissing the others, he returns to apologize for his jealousy, all the while spotting a pair of men’s shoes in the bed, â€Å"When lo! He stumbled o’er a pair of shoes† (Byron. I. 1440. 1710). The scandal Chatman 4 Of the affair has put Donna Julia’s life in a compromising state. â€Å"Julia was sent to a nunnery† (Byon. I. 1526. 1712). Juan has now experienced, â€Å"the Promethean self; the irrepressible energy of the rebel’s desire, demanding liberty and power, bursting constraints of any sort, political, aesthetic, physical, and moral† (Tolliver, 395) and can no longer return to the confined way of life he once knew. Due to Donna Julia’s â€Å"sexual domination† which was deemed as a threat and immoral in that time frame, she is punished in such a way of seclusion that ultimately secures her chastity and denies her romantic and femininity freedoms. Haidee forms the ultimate romantic bond with Juan which is victimized by her father and triggers her demise. Juan becomes ship wrecked and the innocent Haidee discovers him washed ashore and aides him back to health. Haidee and Juan fall into a whirlwind of love despite the language barrier and Donna Julia appears to be distant fond memory of a short lived fling. Juan finds real romance for the first time and last time. He and Haidee love not like the children of nature, as in the feigning of the pretty romances Byron deplored† (Tolliver, 66). Haidee’s father Lambro disapproves of Juan and ultimately sells him off into slavery and Haidee pregnant, dies of a broken heart. Lambro illustrates a spirit of competitiveness and self -assertion (Greer, 475) with Juan and is disturbing because Haidee is his daughter not one of his concubines. Juan’s and Haidee’s exotic passions expressed in a natural state of innocence, but unfortunately collide with the cruel intentions of Lambro, who exemplifies envy of the lover’s happiness. â€Å"Women have traditionally been the medium of exchange that secures peace between men† (Greer, 476), Chatman 5 In Don Juan women are the contrary; women are forces that drive men apart and eventually create their destruction. Byron is far more interested in the female protagonists of Don Juan rather than the typical egotistic jealous husband. Neither portrait of Donna Inez nor Donna Julia is flattering. Byron characterizes Donna Inez as malicious, in which others assumed Byron was personally attacking his estranged wife. Donna Inez is an intolerant and reserved wife; where as Donna Julia is a portrait of women as naive and deceiving. â€Å"Don Juan’s character logical decline is chronologically† (Utterback, 629) characterized by his doomed romantic relationships. Unlike earlier figures, Byron’s hero is so irresistibly attractive to women that they seduce him rather than vice versa (Utterback, 629). ‘Juan nearly died’ (Byron. I. 68) from affairs with Julia and Haidee: the passionate Julia is sentenced to life-in-death in a convent; Haidees nurturing of Juan is coupled with shadows of death, and she herself dies. Despite these women being a driven force in their own liberation, they were also a force to their downfall. †Byron more than hints that the reason Donna Inez was prompt to se parate Juan and Julia, when the fact that they were falling in love became obvious, was that Inez, now a widow, had once been courted by Julia’s husband, Don Alfonso, and that she was consequently jealous of Julia and wanted to destroy her reputation and even her marriage† (Boyd, 65). Inez has internalized the feminine ideal of morality and obedience where as she then transforms into the moralizing mother, a tool for institutional authority. The role that women play in this male struggle for dominance is not completely verbalized; rather the power is implied by charming juxtapositions. â€Å"Don Juan reveals to us a dying order† (Johnson, 140), an order in which men are dominant and the aggressor to a Chatman 6 Patriarchal society. It appears as though Byron wants a heroine, for the presence of a woman seems necessary for Juan’s self-completion. Morality does not play a significant role in Don Juan, â€Å"Byron’s view in contrast, is realistic, ironic, and tolerant, aware of human vices and still more of human weaknesses, but accepting them with amused resignation as simply what one must except from such a creature as man† (Lauber, 614). The clear message of the poem for women, is individualism, how to not lose one self in the passions and the lust of the flesh. Although Don Juan’s individuality is not the focus of the poem, he is able to navigate his way in the world through the influence of women. All the male characters of the poem have lost their masculine competence to overpower women. Women are viewed as feminists whom took control of their life with no regrets, even if the sacrifice was their freedom and happiness. The masculine code of chivalry is masked with female independence and free thinking. The roles of women became central in reforming the archaic way of thinking in society. The doors of sexual rebellion of traditional sexual morality were thrown open in Don Juan by Donna Julia. Throughout Don Juan, â€Å"sexual politics† is the matter at hand, how women with hold affection, seduce, and manipulate men to satisfy their own self fish needs. All marriages depicted in the poem are unhealthy and end in tragedy, thus depicting marriage as destructive. â€Å"Byron’s Canto I take on sentimental heroines in its portraits of Inez and Julia† (Franklin, 123). The women in Don Juan are seen as opportunists, taking advantage of every possible prospect to obtain some type of tranquility. The female appetite was said to not exist and ignored due to Chatman 7 Contemporary times, Don Juan irrevocably unlocks the restricted dialogue that has for so many years been silenced.