Narcissism and Misogyny in Shakespeare's Sonnets - Term Paper Example

Narcissism and Misogyny in Shakespeares Sonnets Dating back between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as the first-half of twentieth century, speculations regarding the possible autobiographical elements and themes within the Shakespeare’s sonnets were the most dominant features of poetic commentaries. A number of heated and controversial debates thereby arose as people endeavoured to contemplate and understand what the sonnets could be implying concerning Shakespeare’s morals and sexuality. Nonetheless, over the past four decades, poetic critics have been striving to avoid such conjuncture, affirming that there is no basis for reading or interpreting the sonnets as a personal allegory. These poetic scholars or critics have thereby emphasized the enigmatic, paradoxical, nature of the poems and the multifaceted perspectives upon which human experience is embedded within the sonnets. A number of recent commentators have thereby examined the effects of contradictions and uncertainties that are inherent within the Shakespeare’s sonnets. Shakespeare’s sonnets can be interpreted in diverse themes, topics, or broader moral sense; however, this dissertation only examines the Shakespeare’s poems with reference to narcissism, misogyny, as well as their depictions (Gray). While misogyny refers to the general feelings of hatred that a man have for women, narcissism denotes an extreme level of interest in one’s life, life events and problems, which prevents him/her from caring about other individuals. In other words, narcissism refers to an unhealthy focus on oneself or one’s activities in a way that affects other individuals negatively. Several recent commentators or critics have examined the effects of uncertainties and contradictions that are implicit in the sonnets, pointing out the poems as individually either centred or sequence, which are commonly resistant to the overall conclusions. For instance, Roberts argued that the majority of the poems present simultaneous oppositions that produce un-anticipated meanings while creating improbabilities which may baffle the readers who are trying to assess the sonnets’ moods (348). However, over the last two decades, judgments by several critics reveal that the lyrics therein formulate paradoxes, but definitely leaving them unresolved (Schiffer 33). It is thereby impossible to draw a conclusion that they claim to make certain statements regarding the poems, or establish a single and comprehensive sequence of perspectives. For example, Kay linked the paradoxical nature of sonnets and their lyrics to Shakespeare’s unusual mishmash of serious and fanciful modes (145). He affirms that the logical absurdities or uncertainties of the sonnets makes the readers or critics doubt their ultimate responses and finally put into question the validity of every effort to generalize anything concerning them (Greenblatt 47). Throughout the sequence, each attempt of resolving the contradictions or determining a fixed perspective is inevitably frustrated as every individual poem keeps shifting to different points of view, or suddenly succeeded by other sonnets which splinter that perspective. The sonnets simultaneously encourage and undermine the reader’s search for consistency or unity in the narrative, values, or characterizations (Stanley 44). The issues regarding sexuality and gender identity within the sonnets, but in the context of “early modern” view of the society by then have been examined by several critics. According to Kay, these poems reveal a misogynistic attitude towards women, bestowing them as threats to the bonds or links between men, which uphold male-controlled supremacy (147). In his judgment, he affirms that the sequence in these poems demonstrate or reveal that the lust for women will always deprive men their self-identity. Castro has also argued that in these Shakespeare’s sonnets, the presence of the female gender characterizes a disruptive force (Hall 96). He upholds that beginning by Sonnet 126 and throughout the remaining sequence, the poet’s desire and lust for a woman who on the other hand has other male lovers is portrayed as a menace to the order of power and property succession since it would be quite difficult or impossible to determine the paternity of children she bore (Pequigney 87). In the analysis by a number of critics, negative assumptions commonly refer to the “Dark Lady.” In several occasions, throughout the sequence, especially in the lyrics that are void of disputes about the addressee’s gender, the poet is often harsher on female gender than males (Hall 99). In the Young Man’s sequence, the speaker attempts to identify and idealize with “young man,” which can be understood or interpreted as an endeavour to recuperate the narcissistic ecstasy through the beloved. Gray suggests that humans often yearn for the juvenile sense of perfection, well-defined as primary narcissism within which they serve as their own ideals. It is thereby possible to affirm that the narcissistic perfections can glamour everyone to seek for a better object of desire that poses to be supremely desirable. Right from his initial distress in the Dark Lady sequence to the pyrrhic triumph in the closing sonnets and to the young man, the speaker’s progression in the Shakespeare’s sonnets discloses a narcissistic tendency. As well, narcissism is blankly pointed at and admonished within the underlying sequence in the fundamental importance of narcissism for the purpose of understanding the speaker’s ideas in the Shakespeare’s sonnets. From the beginning, the introductory sonnets overview the overall problems traditional raised by studying the Shakespeare’s sonnets, putting emphasis on the necessity of reading them in their entirety (Greenblatt 53). Even though it is true that the concept of narcissism has been eminently plagued by the conceptual fuzziness, the discrepancy between the sexual ideals and ego ideals affords to discerningly portray the multifaceted forms of narcissism (Smith 176). From the Shakespeare’s 18th – 99th sonnets, the typical narcissistic processes, identification, and idealization play a very vital role in understanding the speaker in his ecstasies and frustrations. However, it emerges that these narcissistic movements encompasses the seeds of their own negation, and to dig deep into the negations, the “Young Man” turns out not to be the man to whom the speaker wishes him to be. There is a status barrier between the dark lady and the young man that makes their relationship to be hardly equal and mutual, contrary to the speaker’s hopes. The grief-stricken poet imagines of his own demise, and finds some elements of comfort in the thoughts that his sonnets will ultimately prove his worth. In the later sonnets, the speaker dealt appears a changed man. As perceived or witnessed before, poetry served as the central element in the relationship between the speaker and the dark lady, but now, he wishes to no longer write poems of praise (Chaney 325). Indeed, it is possible to establish that the encomiastic poetry is a sign of their inequality; hence the speaker scrutinizes the premises of their dealings, and prepares a farewell to “young man.” As well, the status discrepancy between them receives a penetrating analysis in some of the poems (Schiffer 39). Nonetheless, the speaker emerges the victor despite being gored in the subsequent self-justifications (Bate 215). It can thereby be drawn that the idealizing libido, which was formerly invested in the “Young Man” finally comes back to him, making him perceive or view himself as independent from the changing world. Positioned towards the end of the Shakespeare’s sonnets, the Dark Lady’s sonnets serve as the actual beginning of the entire sequence. In them, the speaker presents absolute hostility and distrust towards women. His anger and frustrations with the promiscuous and duplicitous woman might have triggered a pursuit of worth and constancy. This misogyny made the speaker to turn away from the debased object of love to the idealized male (who is none other than the Young Man). Finally, in deciding parts played by the speaker’s narcissism while seeking for a better love object, the speaker sought for a more worthy object of love in his amorous adventures, which was eventually to be found within him as an idealized self-image- weathering vicissitudes of time (Pequigney 92). One of the most critical and popular interpretations of narcissism and misogynist traits are centred on the Shakespeare’s sonnet number 130, which also serves as a mockery of the early Petrarchan sonnets (Hyland 14). In writing this poem, the poet (Shakespeare) claims his independent character from the standard vocabularies of self-praise. The interpretations herein leaves the implications of mockery be greatly overlooked. The “Dark Lady,” as she is commonly referred to, split down into sections as a misogynistic endeavour to objectify and refer to her as a possession. The lines one - all through to six depicts the dark lady as an object comprising of lips, breasts, eyes, cheeks, and head. In separation of his mistress into subdivisions, the poet deconstructs the dark lady’s ability to be perceived as an individual and as a person. However, as the poem progresses, the dark lady is deconstructed from head downwards. The whole picture appears as if the speaker (poet) is taking or recording a systematic inventory of the “dark lady.” Indeed, the speaker compares the dark lady, even though indirectly in a parodic way, to objects like the sun, snow, corals, roses, wires, perfumes and music (as revealed in line 1 to 10). Shakespeare’s mistress thereby emerges as a comparison and combination of elements or parts that have got nothing useful or reliable on one another, making the subject (persona) to seem disjointed, and her body parts unrelated to any specific or useful thing (Burrow 29). With the exemption of the “wires,” which represent the dark lady’s hairs, all other objects are not tangible or permanent insomuch that they are inaccessible to all the five human senses, thereby suggesting that it is senseless to let the heart rule the body or relationship. Therefore, the love for a woman emerges to be an undesirable trait, showing the speaker’s lack of concern for the subject (dark lady) as a person. Moreover, the dark lady is only addressed, referred to, or spoken to in a generic manner. For example, “my love” and “my mistress” are generic terms, which strip the subject off her personality or individuality. Similarly, the same portrays her as an object being in the speaker’s possession (evident in lines one, eight, and thirteen of sonnet 130). Here, the term “my” denotes that the speaker is in possession of the dark lady, and the terms “love” and “mistress” portray absence of specificity as to whom the speaker could be addressing. The love reference commonly refers to a “sexual relationship” (Wells 295). In sonnet 130, the speaker loves to ‘hear her speak,’ meaning he has a sexual attraction or relation with her, and reveals the dark lady’s outcries of passion; the dark lady has no outstanding voice of sexual relations (Johnson). Additionally, her voice lacks the ability to create or form meaningful words- she is only downgraded to the involuntary sounds or voices of intercourse. The speaker only wants to hear from her a sound of passion that is made “at his instance.” As well, the speaker proclaims his total powers of control, objectifications, and possession of the dark lady (Hyland 12). The speaker thereafter makes some ridiculous comparisons about his lady, which contradict the comedic aspects. By poking and making fun of the dark lady, the speaker does not only ridicule his lady, but also exposes her in a way that she can never be presumed seriously. It is thereby apparent that through the incorporation of such languages or terms that Shakespeare’s sonnet number 130 makes misogynistic attempts to objectify and take a woman in men’s possession (Cheney 24). Even though the sonnet is dubiously treated as a parody of the early Petrarchan sonnets, the misogynistic subject matter outweighs the sonnet forms. Apparently, the speaker’s calm assurance in sonnet 130 contradicts his violent emotions in the preceding sonnets. His image of the dark lady likewise contradicts his obliquely damning references he gave to her in sonnet 129. The two sonnets interact in a way that reminds the reader on how particular poems regarding the young man interrelate to each other. Therefore, in the later sonnets, there is something analogous to the oscillation, as well as to the wavering, which can be drawn in their predecessors’ focus on the youth. However, in the subsequent sonnets, even though controversies and equivocations serve as strategies used by the speaker, and he continues to manipulate the conflicting fictions of beauty, lots of interests seem to develop from his utilization of those fictions and strategies (Burrow 26). Elaborately, there is a portrayal of himself as being torn between the forces of desire or lust for the dark lady and desires for the young man. Moreover, since the speaker continuously devalues the dark lady; graduating from depicting her as a “truly ugly beauty” to depreciating her at the expense of the ambivalently idealized young man, his strong desires powerfully bring together the discourses of friendship and misogyny. He begins the evaluation of her by referring again to the Petrarchan convention (Bate 232). For instance, in sonnet 131, the speaker Refers to the Petrarchan convention of the proudly beautiful and tyrannical mistress, thus he identifies the “dark lady” only by using the figure in order to distinguish her from herself Vender (Vender 25). Once more, he evokes the conflicting fictions of beauty, as well as the notion of power opinions in order to precisely and clearly suggest what was indicated or portrayed in sonnet 127; that the dark lady does not possess the true beauty; she is double the truly beautiful woman, especially to Laura (Burrow 32). In so doing, he reveals his “cunning doubleness.” He duplicitously asserts the beauty of his mistress by pronouncing that he thinks of her to be pre-eminently attractive; “fairest” being one of his key-words, while also implying his perception of her personal appearance as unreliable. In addition, while at the end of sonnet 127 he portrayed the authority of allegedly popular opinion just to affirm his mistress’ exceptional beauty, in sonnet 131 above, he cites “some” others’ opinions in order to refute the fact that she is indeed beautiful. With flamboyant humility, he pronounces that although he dares not publicly dispute those other, he maintains his personal opinions against theirs in private, opposing the evidence of his groans to their expression of disbeliefs. In the sonnet’s closing lines, he somehow becomes more brutally and more cunningly duplicitous, having complemented his mistress that her “black is fairest” in his judgment place. Thus, having suggested that her black beauty transcend a fair beauty, on the other hand he says that her “black is white” in his estimate (Bate 214). He thereby proceeds to relate blackness, not only to her appearance, but also to her behaviour. In the final lines, he claims that the dark lady is only “black” in her “deeds.” This may thereby explain why some individuals may not think of her beauty. The speaker might simply be holding a conventional remark concerning her behaviour, indicating the hypothetical cruelty of a disdainful mistress while gesturing towards something yonder (Krueger 46). The speaker thereby finalizes by indicating that the Dark Lady’s blackness comes from within and is rather concerned about whom she is that she seems to be. He duplicitously blackens her, and castigates her soon after for doubleness, thereby intensifying the misogynistic traits revealed even earlier in sonnet 20 and several other subsequent sonnets (Stanley 49). Shakespeare castigates the dark lady as being a multipart object, alongside other several negative traits as mentioned earlier above. The speaker affirms that the lady can only arouse and experience concupiscence, and accuses her of being “sexually insatiable” (Wells 291). He thus characterizes her to faults that are often assigned to women in misogyny literatures, as denoted in duplicity (Smith 174). For instance, in sonnet 20, he also suggests that the dark lady is worse than several other women. Perhaps being a type of the loathly lady set implicitly against the other type of the lovely lady- Laura, the dark lady becomes a parodic falsification (Booth 118). However, certain instances of truly-ugly beauty set in some aspects of opposition to the young man, and distantly implied as Laura’s outrageous counterpart. Moreover, caricaturing the dark lady, the speaker caricatures himself, implying with disgust that his concupiscence virtually reduces him to a distorted image of what he would later become, supposing it did not dominate him upon being aroused by her. In order to illustrate the speaker’s castigating trait upon the dark lady for duplicity, one could cite or mention the first lines of sonnet 138. “When my love swears that she is made of truth, I tend to believe her, though I know she lies.” As well, there is this later remark made by the speaker, that “I simply credit her false-speaking tongue.” Moreover, in sonnet 142, the speaker addresses the dark lady, referring to “those lips of thine,”/ “That have profaned their scarlet ornaments, / And sealed false bonds of love as soft as mine, / Robbed others’ bed’s revenues of their rents.” To illustrate the poet’s view of the desire experienced and aroused by the dark lady, you would hardly fail to mention sonnet 135 (Vender 28). There, the insistent use the word “will,” probably referring to Shakespeare’s given name, but certainly to the speaker’s genitals, as well as his mistress’, suggesting the concupiscence stimulated by the dark lady, and her great interest in not any other form of desire (Castro). Here, there are fourteen instances of “will” within the poem, at least one for each line, even though the actual word does not occur in every line. The speaker’s phallic boldness linked to self-disgust in sonnets such as 129 and 141, has got other connections here. His representation of desire in the sonnet implies his lust for the dark lady who is concupiscence alone, and her desires are insatiable (Castro). In particular instances, the speaker portrays himself as the disempowered devotee of his mistress; a devotee who is eager and ready to sacrifice himself for someone who is even more devoted than him. Identifying the speaker’s fiction of separated desire as narcissistic thereby appears to be justifiable owing to his idealized self-portrayal. However, in the other sonnets, the speaker at various instances denounces his wish to sacrifice himself for his friend, hence revealing the display of his friendly concern (Kay 297). After all, sacrificing himself for a friend in the proposed manner would perceptibly allow him to incontestably be in possession of both his friend and mistress. The poet’s fiction of undirected desire is a stylish fantasy of fulfilled desire. One of the aspects of elegance remaining to be the speaker fantastically denying his fantasy at last, and turning his jokes upon himself. More widely admired than considered, sonnet 144 set heterosexuals against homo-social desires, but interplays the two themes with emphasis interestingly dissimilar from those given in the earlier sonnets (Smith 173). By using a religious basis to describe the relationship between the dark lady and the young man, between them, and himself, the speaker produces those differences of emphasis to remind the reader of one of the things indicated in the early sonnets; those that call Narcissus to account, and those showing how the world of sonnets are. However, more directly, the speaker’s carnally religious discourse can be shown to incorporate the fiction of black and of fair beauty, but at the same time to heighten the Petrarch-related imaging of the dark lady and young man implied or presented elsewhere in sonnets 127 to 152. The young man is thus pictured not merely as a “man right fair,” but as the speaker’s “better angel,” and his “saint.” The Dark Lady is a “woman coloured ill” and a “worse spirit,” “devil” and “fiend.” Furthermore, if misogyny appears latent within the intensified “domino petrosa” motif in sonnet 133, it becomes more virulent and explicit in sonnet 144 as the speaker’s demonizing tropes for his “mistress” unmistakably suggest his traits, likewise his phrase “my female evil” portrays a lot. The interplay between homo-social and heterosexual desires is thereby distinctly diverse in its prominences from that fashioned in sonnet 133. Therefore, one could suggest in a way of summary that it is the most different since the speaker crudely falsifies the dark lady and duplicitously caricatures the young man (Roberts 351). The dark lady thereby becomes a type of “truly ugly beauty.” In effect, the speaker vaunts the wilfulness of his religious analogies as a form of expressing his divided desires. No account of narcissism, misogyny, friendship and self-division as portrayed in the later sonnets could end up without considering sonnet 137. The complaint against the powers of physical desire to set the speaker’s heart and eyes at odds their multifaceted capacities to feel and visualize truly; at odds with themselves. The poem thereby intermingle misogyny, fear, Petrarchism, narcissism, self-disgust, and various desires (Booth 98). Evidently, the poet in sonnet 137 acknowledges the strange and irresistible power of the “god” of love and referring to the hooks with which he ensnares his victims. The speaker uses the familiarly Petrarchan tropes to induce a state that is recurrently voiced by the speaker of the “rimes,”- a powerless insight into being self-alienated and self-divided. Even though it is not unusual for the subject of the rime to express self-disgust at his desire domination, so too does the Shakespeare’s speaker in this sonnet. The latter’s disgust within himself is unlike that articulated by his Petrarchan precursor since it is linked to with fear and misogyny- the misogynic articulated fear of unwinnable and uncontrollable female sexuality. Evidently, the speaker portrays his mistress’ genitals as “the bay where all men ride,” and further asserts that in between her legs lie not “several plot,” but the “wide worlds’ common place.” Perhaps the speaker’s misogyny, fear and disgust with himself gestures a fashion back to Petrarchism. The 2nd and 12th lines of the sonnet, especially the 12th line with its opposing “foul face” to “fair truth,” repudiate the Dark Lady. The speaker’s implication of repudiation, particularly when his doing so is in conjunction with his fear, misogyny and self-disgust, would appear to be an elevation of the youth (Booth 112). In conclusion, narcissism and misogyny in the Shakespeare’s sonnets are clearly revealed in a number of sonnets. Through an explicit analysis, the reader is thereby able to understand and conclude what the sonnets could be implying concerning Shakespeare’s morals and sexuality. The speaker in the Shakespeare’s sonnets is thereby alluded as a misogynist due to the duplicity of descriptions he gives to the Dark Lady. For instance, he portrays his mistress (the dark lady) as a “woman coloured ill” and a “worse spirit,” “devil” and “fiend.” Furthermore, misogyny appears latent within the intensified motif in sonnet 133, it becomes more virulent and explicit in sonnet 144 as the speaker’s demonizing tropes for his “mistress” unmistakably suggest his traits, likewise his phrase “my female evil” portrays a lot (Chaney 320). On the other hand, narcissism is evident as the speaker seeks for a better love object and sought for a more worthy object of love in his amorous adventures, which was eventually to be found within himself as an idealized self-image- weathering vicissitudes of time. The speaker attempts to identify and idealize with “young man,” which can be understood or interpreted as an endeavour to recuperate the narcissistic ecstasy through the beloved. Right from his maiden distress in the Dark Lady sequence to the pyrrhic triumph in the closing sonnets and to the young man, the speaker’s progression in the Shakespeare’s sonnets discloses a narcissistic tendency. Works Cited Bate, Jonathan. The genius of Shakespeare. London: Macmillan-Picador, 1997. Print Booth, Stephen. An essay on Shakespeare’s sonnets. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. Print Burrow, Collin. Shakespeare William: The complete sonnets and poems. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print Castro, Colton. Authoring the self in seventeenth century brit lit: Interpretation of sonnet 135 and “will.” (2012). Web. 8th Feb, 2015. www.authoringtheself.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/interpretation-of-sonnet-135-and-will/ Chaney, Patrick. Shakespeare: National poet-Playwright. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print Cheney, Patrick and Crystal, Ben. Shakespeare’s words: A glossary and language companion. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2002. Print Gray, Robert. 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