Lord Byron’s Don Juan Essay

Lord Byron’s Don Juan is a satirical poem that offers a seemingly comical and serious outlook of sexuality. In three different sexual relations in three different places, the events that surround Don Juan are both laughable and questionable. From an early affair with Donna Julia, to an innocently, beautiful engagement with Haidee and finally an unfulfilled and avoided relation with the Sultana Gulbeyaz, Don Juan escapes through the clutches of love with shattered innocence, a broken heart and near fatal eroticism. â€Å"As Byron’s satiric genius developed, it tended to employ less and less of the traditional axe-swinging of the neoclassic satirists and to approach more and more the mocking and ironic manner of the Italian burlesque poets†¦Finally, when his satiric genius had fully ripened, Byron found complete expression in serious and social satire† (Trueblood, 19). From an early age, Don Juan was destined to wander through a maze of sexuality. One can see this unfolding by merely looking at his parent’s marriage. Let us first look at Don Juan’s parents, Don Jose and Donna Inez. Byron presents the couple ironically and comically. Donna Inez, â€Å"morality’s prim personification †¦perfect past all parallel† (Byron, I, 16-17), still is not good enough for Don Jose. A man with a greater concern for women than knowledge, Don Jose is not a particularly admirable father figure. He lacks respect for his wife, and â€Å"like a lineal son of Eve, /Went plucking various fruits without her leave† (Byron, I, 18). This allusion to Don Jose being a son of Eve is somewhat accurate and satirical. Like Eve, he is careless and unaware of the consequences of his actions. However, as Eve’s son, the offspring of God’s beautiful creation, Don Jose is given holy qualities. He cannot be blamed for his actions, and for a long time, Donna Inez blinds herself from his wrongdoings and maintains their marital status. Their relationship is practically pointless; a mother and father that wished each other dead, not divorced. The unification of Don Jose and Donna Inez is a comical union. â€Å"What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, / Is much more common where the climate’s sultry† (Byron, I, 63). The two reach a point where they canno t stand each other, yet for some reason, they stay together. At the same time, marital disputes and infidelity make for no laughing matter. They were, and continue to be, problems for couples all around the world. Byron depicts Don Jose and Donna Inez at each other’s throats, but still sleeping side by side. To further solidify ironic humour, when their divorce inevitably approaches, Don Jose falls ill and dies. His death right before getting divorced symbolizes the death of marriage. Byron might be poking fun at the fact that more and more marriages end in divorce, and that the fire shared by ‘soul mates’ typically burns out. Despite being an unfaithful and uncaring father, the narrator paradoxically calls Don Jose an honourable man. The death of the father creates increased duties for the mother. Donna Inez decides to enlighten Don Juan with the teachings of art and sciences, but in doing so, neglects teaching him the basic facts of life. Someone uniformed about basic life necessities is at risk of not knowing how to act and react to certain situations. Though Don Juan does not attempt to manipulate those around him, his lack of direction leads him to being a victim of a harsh, unforgiving world. â€Å"Ladies even of the most uneasy virtue / Prefer a spouse whose age is short of thirty† (Byron, I, 61). This is a bold statement from the narrator, but it is certainly the case for Donna Julia, Donna Inez’s friend. She falls for the young and handsome Don Juan when he turns sixteen, though her affection started before then. Donna Julia is seven years older than Don Juan. Her love for the young lad is both comic and paedophilic. Donna Julia unsuccessfully resists temptation, and eventually takes Juan’s innocence and sends him along a path of sexual confusion. As the narrator states: â€Å"Even innocence itself has many a wile / And will not dare to trust itself with truth, / And love is taught hypocrisy from youth† (Byron, I, 72). Her inability to resist Don Juan is satirical for he is sexually inexperienced. Being sexually unsatisfied, one would think Donna Julia would pursue a lover with sexual experience. Her longing for such a young man is bizarre a nd questionable. â€Å"Byron seems to the think temptation integral to creation, and fall the inevitable consequence of temptation† (Ridenour, 29). For Don Juan, an impending relationship with Donna Julia is most appealing, but in turn, it is the start of spiralling, sexual journey. â€Å"Oh pleasure, you’re indeed a pleasant thing, / Although one must be damned for you no doubt† (Byron, I, 119). Unfortunate consequences of plentiful pleasure tend to follow Don Juan around. His romance with Donna Julia is of short lived passion. One November night, Don Alfonso’s suspicions reach a new height and he confronts Donna Julia in her suite. The season is significant; November represents the conclusion of fall and an approaching winter. The trees lose their leaves, plants and shrubs dwindle and the days get shorter and colder. These events can be compared to Don Juan and Donna Julia’s relationship, as its fire is extinguished by an upset Don Alfonso. â€Å"Man is chained to cold earth and is able to alleviate his sufferings only by his own efforts – by love and glory and, as we learn in the second sta nza, by poetry. This very poem is presented as an attempt to give color, form, warmth to a world naturally colorless, indefinite and chill† (Ridenour, 33). This thought can also be applied to Donna Julia, who was brightening her world with the young Don Juan. Though she promised Don Alfonso to never disgrace the ring she wore, she falls victim to the fact that â€Å"pleasure’s a sin and sometimes sin’s a pleasure† (Byron, I, 133). Donna Julia acts like a double-edged sword when confronted by Don Alfonso. She gets upsets by his unfaithful accusations, while the whole time, Don Juan is hidden beneath a pile of clothes. â€Å"Satire was Byron’s natural and habitual response to censure and injury† (Trueblood, 20). In the end, Donna Julia is left emotionally hurt and displaced, while Don Juan barely escapes from a physical punishment. Don Alfonso is left betrayed, deceived and not knowing where to turn. The first canto ends with the same disheartened feeling: â€Å"All things that have been born were born to die, / And flesh (which Death mows down to hay) is grass† (Byron, I, 220). The allusion of De ath mowing the grass of life is comic and serious. Humans age from year to year and their health eventually deteriorates. The same can be said of Don Juan’s sexual relations. â€Å"In Don Juan, Byron uses almost every possible variation of epic tone, from the frivolous to the almost entirely serious† (Clancy, 63). The tone takes a turn for the worse when Juan is involved in a shipwreck. He manages to get aboard a longboat and escape the capsizing ship. Juan’s luck only lasts so long for his tutor, who boards the longboat only to be eaten several days later. Just when Juan appears on the brink of death, he floats to safety clutching an oar. The oar can be seen as an obvious phallic symbol, and in turn, it leads Juan to his first true love, Haidee. â€Å"Amidst the barren sand and rocks so rude / She and her wave-worn love had made their bower† (Byron, II, 198). The setting of their relationship is perfect, for it is both beautiful and dangerous. â€Å"As Byron is careful to point out, it is here, on a coast whose perils have been repeatedly emphasized, that the peculiarly harmonious and ideal love of Juan and Haidee is consummatedâ₠¬  (Ridenour, 44). The love of Juan and Haidee has a quality of magnificence which Don Juan and Donna Julia lacked. The two are portrayed as soul mates that happened upon each other. They were brought together in a stroke of luck and when their union is denied â€Å"the power of love sours to lust, sex hatred and leering prudishness. What is true love is equally true of the other passions†¦The attempt to contain the passions and stop the flow of life always defeats itself in some manner. This is the particular form which the standard satiric plot takes in Don Juan† (Kernan, 93). Though Haidee and Juan were meant for each other, Lambro interferes and puts an end to their relationship. He ruins the purity of love, which had ironically been washed up on a beach. Lambro puts Juan into slavery, and furthermore, causes his daughter’s coma and eventual death. Had he accepted the unification of Juan and Haidee, life in general would have been happier, gayer. Violence and disorder lurk behind tranquility and harmony, and the tranquil and harmonious are fated inevitably to dissolve again in the violent and chaotic. This is an immutable law of Byron’s world. Haidee was, â€Å"Nature’s bride† (Byron, II, 202), and the love she shared with Juan is contrasted in its naturalness with the unnatural situation of woman in society. Their union is almost an act of natural religion. (Ridenour). Mary Grant places Don Juan â€Å"among the different kinds of humor, the mild and pervasive type of Socratic irony, subtle in its half-laughter and half-earnestness, harmonized best with the ease of affability of the sermo, its change of tone from grave to gay, its arts in the absence of art† (Ridenour,10). Don Juan is brought to a slave market in Constantinople and bought by a eunuch for the Sultana, Gulbeyaz. The eunuch, Baba, can be seen as a sinister and dangerous character. â€Å"The technique of associating the subject to be ridiculed with sexual impotence is, of course, a traditional one; but the connection between impotence and lust for power exists on a much deeper level than that of mere invective† (Ridenour, 12). Baba’s sexual life has been obliterated, and his condition foreshadows a drastic change to Don Juan. This is fulfilled when he is brought to the palace and immediately dressed in woman’s clothing. Juan’s gender rearrangement is ironic, and turns bizarre when Gulbeyaz demands him to make love to her. As he is still in mourning for losing Haidee, Juan refuses and bursts into tears. â€Å"In the accounts of his [Juan’s] relations with women, he is not made to appear heroic or even dignified; and these impress us as having an ingredien t of the genuine as well as of the make-believe† (Eliot, 97). His actions at first infuriate the Sultana, then she feels compassion, and eventually she cries. Juan is displaced from a man to a weeping woman, while Gulbeyaz turns from a demanding woman to an apathetic female. Communication between the two is short lived as the sultan approaches the castle. Upon seeing Juan, the sultan states: â€Å"I see you’ve bought another girl; ‘tis pity / That a mere Christian should be half so pretty† (Byron, V, 155). The sultan, who has four wives and undoubtedly several mistresses, comes off as a fool for not noticing that Juan is a male. We can laugh at his blindness, but at the same time, one can only wonder what else he does not see. In Canto I we have the amusing account of the genealogy of Don Juan. Then there is a description of the first of Juan’s amours, the Julia episode. Canto II continues Juan’s adventures, including his shipwreck and subsequent love affair with Haidee. In Cantos III and IV the passionate roma nce of Haidee and Juan comes to its tragic end and Juan is soon embroiled in the ludicrous seraglio escapade which occupies the whole of Canto V and is concluded in Canto VI (Trueblood, 5). Through these episodes, Byron uses satire to portray sexuality in a comical and serious manner. â€Å"The poem is a satire on the romantic cult of passion and on the natural man whose passions are his only guide from his proper woes† (Clancy, 53). Don Juan is sent on a rollercoaster of sexuality: paedophilic love, true love ending in a broken heart and then a confusing, uncertain relation. Through hardships and endeavours, Don Juan comes out a stronger man. From the first six cantos, one can conclude that â€Å"love, which should be a means of overcoming self, of living in and for another person, is itself egotistic. The remedy merely aggravates the disorder. It is the same paradox which, in other terms, we have met so often before† (Ridenour, 75). The comedic yet serious portrayal of sexuality makes Don Juan one of the greatest satires even written.