Specifically Feminine Desire of Louise Labe - Term Paper Example

Louise Labe: How the Poet Expresses Specifically Feminine Desire and Longing in her Poetry Introduction Louise Labe (1522-1566) is known as one of the most gifted and controversial women writers of early modern Europe. Her acclaimed volume of prose and poetry published in France in 1555 helped to establish her as an influential woman writer of the Continental Renaissance. Labe is best known for her exquisite collection of love sonnets in which she played off the Petrarchan male tradition with wit and irony. Her elegies, with lyrics skilfully composed, were an answer to predecessors such as Sappho and Ovid. She was revered, maligned, acclaimed as well as brushed aside all at once, both in her own time as well as in subsequent times. Through her poetry and prose, Labe strove for self-expression and selfhood. She also envisioned a powerful and emancipated role for women in both public and private life, and encouraged them to rise above the subjugative and repressive social norms of her times1. Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Louise Labe expresses specifically feminine desire and longing in her poetry. Discussion A Short Biography of Louise Labe Born in Lyon, Louise Labe was the daughter of a wealthy rope maker. Following the pattern of upwardly mobile and bourgeois citizens of Lyon, she was permitted a school education which included fencing and equestrian sports of the male domain, as well as the traditional feminine arts of music and needlework. The blurring of class distinctions enabled the talented woman who was not noble by birth or by marriage, “to write and publish works and participate in intellectual conversations with the male-dominated literary world”2. Labe’s star burned brightly, but was short-lived. She lived in relative obscurity after her husband’s death in the early 1560s, until her own death in 1566 when she was barely forty-five. For several centuries, Labe was remembered more for the legends related to her personal life including her taste for cross-dressing, participation in military exercises and liaisons, than her artistic production. Even so, her prose dialogue has inspired several writers, and her writings continue to draw scholarly interest, though with biographical speculation and debate3. The Poet’s Expression of Suffering in her Sonnets and Elegies Grouping Labe’s sonnets under various categories would only serve to indicate that taken as a group, the sonnets are contradictory and bewidering. Hence, “a more unified view of the sonnets is suggested by the description of them as primarily expressions of suffering”4. This concept is valid because several sonnets written by Louise Labe are indeed expressions of suffering, along with a refined outpouring of feminine desire and longing. Numerous critics believe that the “body which is the focus or site of this desire”5 is the key to understanding her poetry. Labe, more than any of her contemporary women poets assumes her body and her sex as the totality of her being, and comes through as a feminine being, in spite of her transgressions, uncommon in her time. Louise Labe’s acceptance of her own expressions of pain, sadness and her admission of being afire with hopeless longing, is supported by the fact that in sonnet 24 titled Do not blame me, Ladies, the speaker enjoins her audience of ladies not to be too critical, for they may themselves fall in love one day, and they should beware not to suffer greater unhappiness than she has6, through the following lines 7 and 8: “And don’t let fly your barbs.  But understand That love does appear in its own sweet time”7. The notion is further endorsed from the existence of sonnets specifically 6 and 18, which at first appear to express the joy of love, but on careful reading, are found to have ‘suffering’ as an important theme. Sonnet 6 seems to end on an optimistic note, but analysis of the poem should include differentiating between what the speaker seems to think or believe at the moment she is writing, from what the reader will think when he considers the evidence in the first ten lines8. The sonnet opens with references to the sun and moon which bring joy to the speaker, who is waiting for the return of her lover. In the lines 5 to 8 of Sonnet 6 Twice Blessed, the poet says: “O sister moon! I watch and wait for you, When twilight turns toward dark-blue skies above. It’s then I feel that all my ardent love Has come to bring me joy when you’re in view”9 The last line of the sonnet deepens the sense of the speaker continuing an endless wait, with “My lover’s smiles will match this bright new day”10, uttered with hopeful sadness. The poet was acknowledged as expressing suffering in its purest state, with the body appearing as though decanted and purified. Another peculiarity in Labe’s representation of the body, is her lack of a confident assumption of her own body. This is possibly an outcome of a social order that assigned women secondary status, partly from traditional mind-body dualism and partly from the difficulties in the literary representation of the body. In the preface of her book, Labe acknowledges that “for women the body defines both gender and subordination”11. Sonnet 14 As Long As Tears creates the touching image of a woman devoting her entire life to the memory of her love. The poem’s concludes that the speaker will pray for death unless she can retain some, even the most painful part of her great passion. Yet, the sonnet is not a lament, and Amour or love is seen to triumph over his victim. The poem contains no reference to the lover’s possible return. The speaker no longer hopes, but remains connected with life through thoughts of him, as in lines 5 to 812: “As long as I can pluck the lute, I try To sing about your charms in my refrain. As long as I can think, my fevered  brain Is burning with an ardent zeal.  I cry...”13 In this sonnet, the feminine form is of great importance. The speaker is now concerned about her private self, with the threatened destruction of her ability to express her existence as a lover rather than with the destruction of her love affair, which had already occurred. The quatrains or four-line verses describe the undoubtedly real pain caused by the end of the association, but it is the tercets which describe truly unbearable pain. The loss depicted, is not of a lover so much as the ability to manifest love, and consequently self-hood14. Louise Labe’s ability to communicate the forceful compulsions, hopes and contradictions of desperate love is evident in her poetry. She mingles Petrarchan conventions, sometimes opposing them, together with graphic evocations of sexual desire. The outcome is a beautiful union of the delicate and the libidinous. Labe’s collection of sonnets is universally acclaimed as a small masterpiece15. Transgressions by Louise Labe Contemporary poets of Labe’s time, such as Ronsard enthusiastically supported the usefulness and significance of the distaff or instrument used for spinning, by women “to engage in sheltered, sanctioned activity”16. However, Louise Labe pointedly calls for women to rise above the distaff in order to write, revealing the extent of the woman poet’s transgression from the expected feminine norm. Moreover, Labe declares a clear hierarchy between writing which was discouraged for women but desirable, and traditionally female work encouraged but undesirable17. In the bold preface of her book, the poet is ready to take on charges of arrogance by challenging the most cherished icon of female subjugation in early modern Europe18. Petrarchan poets such as Sceve transform the totality of the woman’s body into scattered, fetishistic parts, and specific parts are described while the speaker’s sentiments dominate. On the other hand, Louise Labe’s sonnet gives a unified form to the beloved, “re-assembling his fragmented parts in the pronoun toy” (Baker, 1996: 161), producing a linguistic equality between speaker and addressee, proposing reciprocity as the basis of the relationship. Practising transgression in a second sense of the term, that of disobeying rules, the poet deviates significantly from established poetic norms in her use of the blason or unification of the body parts into a whole. Labe’s literary transgression or departure from the Petrarchan lyric model has also been investigated by a number of critics including Gillian Jondorf (1976) who found that Louise Labe is a poet of immense control and resourcefulness, and the way in which she exploits the petrarchistic convention for her own bold and subtle purposes is unique. The poet’s sonnets indicate the extent to which the interaction between tradition and individual talent can be rewarding19. In Sonnet 23 Alas! You Used To Pour Out Lavish Praise, Labe is opposed to the methods of the blasonneur20. She questions the sincerity of the blasonneur’s appreciating the lover’s quintessential body parts which allegedly caused his suffering: “Alas! What good does it do me That long ago you praised my golden braid And the beauty of my eyes compared To two suns, from which Cupid Deftly shot his arrows, source of your torment?”21 The speaker further challenges the motives behind the blazoning poet’s praise: “So the goal of your malice Was to subjugate me under the guise of service?”22 Speaking out against the blasonneur’s rhetorical method filled with potential abuses, Labe’s response is one of reciprocity, in the concluding lines: But I am assured that wherever you are, Your suffering and pain are as great as mine”23. Through these lines the speaker expresses her conviction that the addressee will suffer equal pain. Here the concept of equivalency between lovers is an example of Louise Labe’s overcoming of “the ontological disorientation of the Petrarchan lover”24. Deborah Lesko Baker argues that Louise Labe transforms the position of woman in Renaissance poetry from an object to a subject of erotic and artistic desire. However, rather than turn the tables and reduce her addressee to the status of an objectified blasonne, the poet accords him both affective and grammatical equality25. Similarly, in Sonnet 21 That Solemn Grandeur Labe expresses that describing individual body parts is problematic both for the addressee and the speaker. There is difficulty in attempting to craft “an idealized description of the ideal male lover”26: “What height makes man worthy of adoration? What size? What hair? What colour? Who has the sweetest eyes? Who is the first to inflict an incurable wound?”27 It is evident that the poet resists casting a flattering portrait of her lover, emphatically rejecting the creation of an idealized model, both male and female, not only because she asserts that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but also because she insists that stylized rhetorical ploys would be incapable of intensifying her desire28. In Sonnet 21, the speaker never actually says that her lover is a paragon of all virtues and grace, but states that her private bliss is as complete as if he were. The verses devoted to the lover are questions not declarations, and the speaker asserts that she is unable to answer such questions, revealing whether her lover is actually handsome and charming. The questions are primarily a poetic device designed to avoid the common use of direct praise. The novel approach focuses attention only on the speaker, “denying the lover any existence beyond her attitude to him”29. The Role Played by the Body in Labe’s Poetry In Louise Labe’s eligies, unlike her sonnets, her perception of the body is influenced by Petrarchan tradition. The first elegy All-Conquering Love exemplifies the Petrarchan concept of the body from within as a site of conflict between pain and pleasure, frustration and desire, as seen in lines 1 - 4: “At first when Love – whose power can make gods grow tame brought down inside my heart a burning flame, embracing with his cruel and furious rage my blood, my bones, my spirit, and my courage...”30 With rhetorical dexterity and metaphors, the body of the beloved is showcased as fragmented and fetishized. It is important to note that in the elegies representation of the body consists of a series of metaphors that express alienation, continuing the feelings expressed in the prologue of the book, with its focus on a female inner self versus an adorned body, and also mind versus body. In each text, the female body, in accordance with the Petrarchan convention, is vulnerable to the power of love. The distinctive nature of Labe’s works is that this vulnerability needs to overcome determined resistance, and this resistance can symbolize a feminist desire for independence rather than mere acceptance of circumstances, which is a part of the Petrarchan tradition31. Sonnet 18 O Kiss Me is a description of erotic fantasy, concluding with the tercet: “I am always unhappy, living discreetly, And I can find no contentment Unless I make some sally out of myself”32 It is clear from the above lines that satisfaction is not located in the body, but in the required effort towards self-expression and moving beyond oneself. Labe often conceptualizes the body as a problem, an outer self not often in alignment with the inner perception of self, object of the other’s gaze, the nucleus of desire and and a source of frustration. It is however, a “potential link with an enlightened sisterhood, and an even broader community that can provide the glory she is seeking”33. Hence, Labe embodies herself as a combination of body and verbal expression that transcends mere body. Conclusion This paper has highlighted how the Renaissance poet Louise Labe expresses specifically feminine desire and longing in her poetry. The distinctive elements in her poetry include her expressions of suffering and yearning for the lover. Among the transgressions committed by the poet are her departure from the Petrarchan lyric model in her sonnets, and her call to all women to overcome repression, to express themselves through writing and participation in public life. Further, the role played by the body is a distinctive feature of Labe’s poetry and is portrayed with a new significance, helping the poet to express her novel perspectives. These characteristic features of her poetry help in Labe’s expression of feminine desire, at the same time pioneering new frontiers of freedom for all women, encouraging self-expression and individuality. Bibliography Baker, D.L. (1996). The subject of desire: Petrarchan poetics and the female voice in Louise Labe. Purdue: Purdue University Press. Baker, D.L. & Finch A. (Eds.). (2006). Complete poetry and prose by Louise Labe: a bilingual edition. London: The University of Chicago Press Limited. Baker, M.J. (1976). The sonnets of Louise Labé a reappraisal. Neophilologus, 60 (1): 20-30. Harvey, L.E. (1962). The aesthetics of the Renaissance love sonnet: an essay on the poetry of Louise Labe. Geneva: Droz Publications. Jondorf, G. (1976). Petrarchan variations in Pernette du Guillet and Louise Labe. The Modern Language Review, 71 (4): 766-778. Jones, A.R. (1990). The currency of Eros: women’s love lyric in Europe, 1540-1620. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Larsen, A.R. & Winn, C.H. (1994). Renaissance women writers. The United States of America: Wayne State University Press. Long, K.P. (2002). High anxiety: masculinity in crisis in early modern France. Missouri: Truman State University Press. Petrey, S. (1970). The character of the speaker in the poetry of Louise Labe. The French Review, 43 (4): 588-597. Yandell, C.M. (2000). Carpe corpus: time and gender in early modern France. England: Associated University Presses. Read More