Lord Byrons The Corsair - Essay Example

Lord Byron’s “The Corsair” Although the Romantic Period would seem to be so d because of an unusualfascination with stories of love and what we consider ‘romance’ today, the actual literary movement was characterized by a complete ideology that focused on the natural, picturesque and the fantastic as they might have been understood in an idealized Golden Age of society. As a literary movement, it is recognized to have begun sometime during the 1770s and extended into the mid-1800s, a bit longer in America (“Introduction”, 2001). Nature was esteemed not only because of the creative element inherent in it, but also because of the manifestation of the imagination that could be found within it in the sense that we create what we see, beginning to recognize how the representation of social issues might help to bring about change in these same social issues. The world was full of symbols and signs that would portend future events and actions which were knowable through their relationship to the myths and legends of antiquity. Many of the concepts that emerged as a part of Romanticism were reactions to the social upheaval that was taking place at this time coupled with a shifting economic structure. During the ‘Romantic Period’, the poets took part in a movement against the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, where they protested (with their poetry) the ideals of those Europeans who sought to bring reason and ‘Enlightenment’ to the world. The Romantics expressed their defiance of the so-called ‘reason’ that both the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment brought to society. Throughout this period, women’s appearances in literature are characterized as dependent upon men for any outward action. Most of the principle female characters are white and invariably subservient to men. While this is often understood as a male-dominated and defined society in which women had no voice at all, the degree of truth in this idea is largely dependent upon the author and his background. It has been said of Romantic literature that ‘The tendency to portray women as binary opposites suggests a misogynistic perception of the inadequacy of female character’. While this may be true of much Romantic literature, Lord Byron’s poetry, such as his most famous work ‘The Corsair’, illustrates a more even-handed approach. The three cantos of “The Corsair” tell the story of a pirate chief named Conrad. The poem opens with Conrad on his pirate island, described in terms that convey the sort of haunted, lonely and powerfully attractive man that typifies Byron’s writing. “That man of loneliness and mystery / Scarce seen to smile, and seldom heard to sigh; / Whose name appals the fiercest of his crew, / And tints each swarthy cheek with sallower hue” (I, viii, 5-8). This type of character is often used in Byron’s stories as a type that both mimicked Byron’s true-life character as well as made him the mysterious villainous and popular man he was. “Byron created a ‘cult of personality’ based on the ‘Byronic hero’, defiant, melancholy, brooding upon some mysterious past” (Kinyon, 2003). This is significant because the actions undertaken by such a man are different from the typical actions of men in previous works, characterized primarily by action rather than the sort of pensive thought that seems to dominate Conrad’s personality. This type of personality is compared in the second half of the first canto and through the rest of the poem to the contemporary conceptions of the feminine as Conrad’s wife Medora is introduced and as he becomes rescued by a woman of the harem named Gulnare. The pirate’s attitude toward and responses to the English female example of Medora and the widely assumed ultimate example of female submissiveness in the Oriental Gulnare illustrate both how the woman has traditionally been established as an inadequate binary opposite from man and how she realistically manages to blur the boundaries of this opposition. Still within the first canto, the reader is introduced to Medora, Conrad’s wife. Based upon the information provided in the poem, she lives very alone in a small house built on the top of a hill, well separated from the rest of the pirates and their women who presumably live down toward the harbor. When Conrad walks in, he expects and does find her at home, a direct contrast to the wandering, restless activities of men like Conrad himself. In addition, the song Medora is singing when he enters the house is exceedingly sad and, when questioned about it, she says, “In Conrad’s absence wouldst thou have it glad? / Without thine ear to listen to my lay, / Still must my song my thoughts, my soul betray: / Still must each action to my bosom suit, / My heart unhush’d, although my lips were mute!” (I, xiv, 26-30). In her response to the news that Conrad must leave again in a very short period of time, it can be seen that Medora possesses all of the appropriate traits Barbara Welter later identified as belonging to the concept of the True Woman. “The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society, could be divided into four cardinal virtues – piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (Welter, 1966: 152). She determines to enjoy her time with him, attempting to entice him to remain at home by plying him with all the domestic comforts she can conceive yet allows him to leave with appropriate submissiveness to his wishes. As he leaves, she turns to remain faithfully and trustingly in their house on the hill. Yet, this role she plays is portrayed as weakness, as she finds herself unable to watch him leave, allowing her tears to finally spill, as opposed to his manly strength that pushes him on down the hill and away from her, stoutly managing to prevent ‘womanly’ grief from remaining true to his intentions. That womanly is associated with cowardly or weakness is further illustrated when Medora is again mentioned in the story. At this point, found in Canto Three, she is anxiously awaiting Conrad’s return, now three days late with no storm or message to explain his delay. Not able to move forward with her life, she haunts the shoreline until a ragged band of sailors returns to the island with unclear accounts of what happened to her love causing her to faint with conflicting emotions whether to hope or to despair. From what is presented in the story, it was a faint from which she never fully recovered as Conrad returns home to find her cold and dead of a broken heart, having believed him dead to her and having no other reason for living. The second canto describes the actions of Conrad and his men upon their arrival at the Sultan’s gates, emphasizing the knightly aspect of the pirate as he rushes to the aid of women in the harem and introducing the other woman to play a large role in the story, Gulnare, who is vital to the third canto. After having been saved by the pirate, Gulnare is given the opportunity to compare the ways she was treated, first by Seyd as his harem queen and then by the pirate, the ruthless beast. “The Corsair vow’d protection, soothed affright / As if his homage were a woman’s right / ‘The wish is wrong – nay, worse for female – vain: / Yet much I long to view that chief again” (II, vii, 15-18). In this statement, the audience is treated to the concepts of what a woman should expect, but also to the concept that a woman is more than capable of discerning when she is being treated well and then acting upon this knowledge. While she was content enough to live as a slave to the Pasha, Gulnare realizes that she has never loved him nor has she ever felt anything other than the constrictions of her bondage. “Even though Gulnare is surrounded by splendor, she understands that she is only a slave and has no claims on the luxury by which she is surrounded. To outsiders it appears that she is very lucky, but Gulnare has paid for the borrowed splendor with her freedom and her youth” (Sevaried, 2005). Having determined that she is in love with this brooding pirate, Gulnare then develops several schemes to free him from the Pasha’s prison. This behavior brings Seyd’s suspicion upon herself but does not spur Conrad into any action on his own. It is Gulnare, not Conrad, who effects their escape and kills Seyd. Through the portrayal of this character, Byron’s approach to the treatment of women is seen to be significantly different from the approach taken by many other authors of his time. “The figurative language Byron uses to present heroes like the Corsair, Sardanapalus and Don Juan is subject to telling confusions about gender and putatively masculine agency as Romantic heroes grow introspective and inactive, and female characters act, often to the distress of their male creators. Like Beatrice in The Cenci, such female characters disturb existing structures of masculine power (critical and dramatic) by acting them out” (Nisbet, 1989: 330). In initiating violent action and behaving the hero, Gulnare illustrates that women are just as capable of men, despite any type of prison they are ensconced in, to take part in masculine activities. In developing several different means by which she tries to secure Conrad’s freedom, Byron illustrates through this character that women were not necessarily the brainless dolls they were frequently made out to be, but were instead equally capable of developing numerous viable means of solving a dilemma. In comparison with Medora, Conrad emerges as undeniably male and strong, the unquestioned positive as compared to the much weaker negative of the traditional feminine ideal. Medora is passive, static and lives only for her man despite her own inclinations toward society and culture while Conrad is assertive, active and carries out his own wishes with little or no consideration for the desires of others. This typical Romantic conception of the male/female dichotomy is brought into question, though, when Byron begins to compare Conrad to Gulnare. In this comparison, Conrad is seen to be passive, static and lives only for his woman, tacitly acceding to Gulnare’s wishes regardless of his own inclinations. Gulnare, on the other hand, emerges as aggressive, active and acting out of consideration for her own desires rather than having much consideration for the desires of others. By flipping the coin in this way, Byron begins to suggest that perhaps the reason women are often seen in such negative light are not necessarily the result of who or what they are, but might instead be the result of the actions of others upon her person. References Byron, George Gordon. (1814). The Corsair. Available January 2, 2008 from “Introduction to Romanticism.” (2001). A Guide to the Study of Literature: A Companion Text for Core Studies 6, Landmarks of Literature. New York: Brooklyn College. Available January 1, 2008 from Kinyon, Lezlie. (1 December 2003). “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know’: Le Vampyre, the Gothic Novel, and George Gordon, Lord Byron.” Strange Horizons. Available January 2, 2008 from Nisbet, Hugh Barr. (1989). The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sevareid, Karen. (2005). “The CorsEyre: Lord Byron and ‘The Corsair’ in Jane Eyre.” Michigan: University of Michigan. Available January 2, 2008 from Welter, Barbara. (1966). “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly. Vol. 18, N. 2.1: pp. 151-74. Read More