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Brinda Bhargava

Professor Jonathan Gil Harris

Forms of Literature

6th May, 2016

Forms of Literature Final Essay-Title

Thou shalt free thyself from convention, from everyday morality.

-Karen Horney

The concept of gender has been in constant flux throughout the timeline of History, often

demanding recognition and analytical independence, for a spirited debate. The classic notion of

gender centres around the premise that the perception of a male and female are nothing more

than sociocultural transformations of biological categories. Since time immemorial, social groups

have conceptualized the sexes in particular ways that are culturally meaningful and specific,

which often cater to strictly patriarchal values. But, gender in no way is a stable identity, or locus

of agency from which various processes are undergone, it is an identity dubiously constituted in

time, and above all, always constructed socially. Popularly associated with the stylisation and

appearance of the body, it is understood in mundane ways in which bodily gestures or

enactments constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. Various forms of literature have

also created different images of a woman and man that at first glance may seem rigid and

embedded deeply in some social norm of society. However, they have underlying implications

and are constantly shifting or fluid, which forces us to rethink our beliefs about gender. In my

essay, I will attempt to explore the idea of gender and conventions, through the literary forms of

drama and lyric using Aristophanes Lysistrata, and Shakespeare’s Dark Lady sonnets. I will be
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using these texts to show how forms of literature can both reinstate and disassemble conventions,

pertaining to the notions of Gender.

Lyric and drama as forms of literature have been in conversation with gender and the idea of

convention both explicit, and implicitly. The lyric is about ‘I and you’ or ‘you and me’, with an

intimate personality and emotions, being a form that is entirely convention bound. It has an

impersonal regimented rhyme and rhythm, along with a structure appropriate for a song. The

lyric upholds a mixture of personal expression that is portable in a regimented form. The

demarcation between personal and impersonal can be a hazy line to draw, for tensions between

two are prevalent in lyric. Drama, on the other hand, is all about ‘us and we’, a form that by

definition changes every time it is performed. Theatre nowadays may work with a niche, but

drama insists on not being contained or labelled within any convention. It rebels against the idea

of the basis of body being the truth, displaying works that re-establish the split between the actor

and their character, as well as their performances. Lyric is love of the present, drama is a

portrayal of the fact that there is no truth in the present, no fixed identity. Everything is an act.

As someone who had only vaguely explored the lyric and drama, my beliefs revolved around

how the former remains intricately linked to convention and cliché, and how the latter shatters

our constructs of reality and makes one believe that everything is an illusion, where there is no

convention to abide by. However, as a reader where I saw myself as the ‘other’ existing in the

text, Lysistrata and The Dark Youth sonnets gave me an insight on how the opposite of my

beliefs being true is a possibility too. The issues with gender tackled in both the texts were a

clear indicator of this. A lyric has the agency to embrace conventions yet explode them

simultaneously, while drama can falsely harbour the role of breaking conventions, yet be

reinstating them all along.

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Shakespeare’s Dark Lady sonnets deals with the narrator's irresistible attraction to a dark skinned

and beautiful woman. The allure here is not of love but of lust, and the narrator is torn between

his desire for the woman and disgust at the sinfulness of carnal desire. Despite this, he

acknowledges the lady for who she is - freely promiscuous, an epitome of lustful endeavour,

when he says “For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as

dark as night.” (Shakespeare 147) He chooses to see light in her blackness, drawn by and at the

same time also repelled by its darkness. He accepts that she may not be conventionally beautiful,

but unperturbed, he has a continued distraction and insatiable hunger for her. Francesco Petrarch,

an Italian scholar, wrote 365 sonnets dedicated to a lady called Laura with whom he was head

over heels in love with. He wrote about one true love, “When I was caught, and I put up no

Fight, my lady, for your lovely eyes had Bound me.” (Petrarch 4) These sonnets were written

about beauty but also about the effects of time and mortality.

A sonnet, like Petrarch’s, are conventionally about love, often written about beauty but also

about the effects of time and mortality. Shakespeare seems to be mocking Petrarch's sonnets

about Laura. He's poking holes at conventions of the 'generic' lyric style, how they portray

gender, revelling in the worship of the female. In Sonnet 130, he writes voicing the narrator, "My

mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; ...I have seen roses

demask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks". The lady muse that the narrator

is besotted by has none of the conventional markers of beauty. By doing so, Shakespeare talk

about beauty and its relation to gender in a more specific manner, one which may not be

accepted by all of society, one that is anything but conventional. The Dark Lady is criticised and

her flaws are constantly highlighted. It is in these flaws that Shakespeare seem to find beauty. A

female, the fairer sex considered weak, asserts unconditional control and power over the narrator.
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The kind of control she has over him is also dark, since she makes him "sin" both in action, as

well as in his lustful feelings for her. Unlike Petrarch, and general convention, the idea of beauty

and gender is not associated with long flowing golden locks, red lips, rosy cheeks, or big eyes

but raw sexuality and magnetism. The woman is a brunette with dark hair, far from the

Renaissance ideal of a blonde.

There is a direct contradiction compared to The Fair Youth sonnets where the youth is portrayed

as the epitome of perfection, which seems to be generic in the way he is praised. Shakespeare

refers to the narrator’s love for the dark lady as a carnal desire, an impure sort of lust, knowing

that she is unattainable as exclusively his, but comforted by her mere acknowledgment. The

nature of their romance is dark and unorthodox, with flaws that are consciously overlooked by

both, and also because there is no pure love, they have multiple partners, lying in a bed of lies.

Another instance where Shakespeare’s ideal about gender in a sonnet shatters conventionality is

the fact that The Dark Lady who inspired these sonnets may have had a rather unladylike

profession. There has been speculation that she may have been a notorious prostitute called 'Lucy

Negro' or 'Black Luce' who ran a brothel in Clerkenwell, London. In particular, these sonnets

embody the defining paradoxes of lyric, simultaneously personal yet conventional, innovative

yet derivative. They speak the truth yet revel in artificiality, birthing a façade where

conventionality is deep set. But, the definition of gender roles unmask just how convention is

taken apart one praise and longing for ‘love’/ lust at a time.

Shifting focus to drama, Aristophane’s Lysistrata, originally performed in classical Athens in

411 BC, is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian

War. Lysistrata implicates society as a whole in being involved in gross sexism and patriarchy,

where all men are worthy and off to wage war and defend their land, while women are expected
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to wait and be obedient home-makers. Establishing that, Aristophanes writes, in the rebellious

voice of Lysistrata, “Their stirring love will rise up furiously, They'll beg our arms to open.

That's our time! We'll disregard their knocking, beat them off-- And they will soon be rabid for a

Peace. I'm sure of it.” (line 130) The women here are given agency and freedom. They are

portrayed as bold enough to have meetings, discuss power and order, seize the citadel, and

essentially take on the responsibility to restore peace. They are portrayed as strong enough to

defy their expected social roles to do what they believe will end the wars. A refreshing change,

where women play the central role, exert control of their sexuality. If this isn’t shattering ever

convention in the book, what is? Yet, underlying in this power is a condescension of sorts. The

idea that women honestly believe that the war can be stopped by withholding sex is as absurd as

it is naive. As if to further mock the power of women, this is conveyed in an absurd yet serious

tone in the play. Moreover, even as they decide to take action, the women constantly plague

themselves with doubt and doubt their own capability and capacity for instigating change. This is

evident when Cleonice, one of the women voices her concern saying "By the women! Why, its

salvation hangs on a poor thread then!" The effect of such a plot could have been completely

humorous but somehow it comes off as more shocking, and debilitating towards women and

their gender.

Sexual politics and gender power of the play, initially perceived as a relevant discourse,

transformed into a joke. Given a male dominated performance and audience, the accuracy and

importance given to women diminishes, as they are not at all considered in the conceptualisation

and execution of the narrative. Given the facts that the only males were allowed to perform and

attend the drama, the idea of empowering females and recognising their flair seems to be a cruel

ironical joke. Lysistrata is a woman, but otherwise in all other aspect she is a man, in terms of
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how the Greeks understood manhood. The actor would have been a man in a woman's clothes,

just like Lysistrata seems to be a man hidden as a woman. There exists an unfamiliar irony in

watching men play all these female characters who are chastising and beating them, making

endless sexual comments, and spouting oaths of abstinence. The objectification of women that

works to bind them is used as the key to overturn this objective gaze towards those that impose

it.

Gender norms are explicitly reinstated throughout in the play. The seemingly purpose of this

could be to allow the audience to understand their gender despite their appearance, or to

exaggerate and mock these gender identifiers, which is the case with the huge phallic object that

actors who played men wore. This bizarre approach towards displaying gender identities to me

seemed an obvious effort to establish the existence of socially constructed links between sex and

gender which are not natural but put on, they are constructed and manipulated. Further into the

play, a dialogue by the Magistrate is "I say a man's got to act like a man!" (line 555) This single

line serves to the reader a plateful of gender conventions that are no so subtle and deeply sexist.

It is constantly made clear that men are such sexual beings who are primitive, incapable of

thinking beyond sex and governed by their id, without the power to reflect. At the same time,

even though it is shown that women desire sex in a somewhat liberal sense, their agency is also

rooted in the fact that they can deprive men of what they want, implying that they don’t care as

much about sexual gratification. There are far too many implicit assumptions about the "natural"

role of men and women.

One could believe that an attempt to tear apart conventions could still be salvaged, with

Lysistrata saying, “I believe all Greece will one day call us Disbanders of Battles." (line 559)

Indeed, women were successful in the end, stopping war, having their men back home, enjoying
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a lot of consensual sex. But, at what cost? At the concept of women’s autonomy being so

comedic? By presenting readers with a strong central female character, Aristophanes is showing

both sides of women—the influential and the subservient. However, his interpretation of women

seems to be cleaved. He sometimes applauds their authority, but by separating Lysistrata, making

her almost too masculine and removed from the world of the other women she encounters, he

reinstates the idea that masculinity and anything associated with control is tied to being a male or

acting like one. Portraying a female lead, women’s social redefinition still remains short-lived

for their contributions as wives and mothers are represented as more valuable. There is a

concealed inherent gender and power dichotomy equation, often visible, yet fuzzy. In the end,

drama does show how Gender can be both fluid and unchanging in different forms, but in

Lysistrata it manages to establish and provide legitimacy to a lot of conventions, rather than

proving them redundant despite conscious attempts.

T. S. Eliot in Tradition and the Individual Talent states, “Yet if the only form of tradition, of

handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind

or timid adherence to its successes, “tradition” should positively be discouraged.” Not exactly a

feminist, but the point that Eliot makes links to the idea of convention flowing within a person.

As individuals, we grapple with our biases and conform to conventions to adapt and fit into

society’s framework. However, we have rational capacity that makes us aware of our belief

systems which gives us the sole agency to break free from the same conventions that we may be

forced to promote. “The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction

of personality.” Genders and any convention surrounding it calls for exploration with a duty to

reflect both the changes in modern understanding and the unchanged or timeless aspects of a
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cultural collective. In adopting such a perspective, the artist can identify not only with tradition

but chose to embrace or disassociate themselves from these conventions.

Gender is inevitably tied to an array of material foundations as well, be it social, economic or

political. In social light, it can be seen in the sonnets, where forbidden love is put on a pedestal,

be it for a dark skinned woman, or a man confessing his infatuation for another man. Politically,

power play and a patriarchal mind-set, revolving around conventions is relevant in Lysistrata.

Karl Marx write in Grundrisse, “Is Achilles possible with powder and lead?” According to him,

the foundation for all forms of art and literature is the societies and social contexts from which

they arise. However, he also says that their charm comes from the fact that they cannot be

reproduced, since social life is constantly evolving. So much so that a drama from Greece cannot

exist in today’s world with the similar audience, worldview or with the same interpretation. Marx

is right when he claims that a form of literature is shaped by the belief systems and the social

forms of the time and culture in which it is produced. But, is there more to these socio-economic

contexts within which we limit literature? Like Professor Harris said, “"old" forms can speak to

us in the present, and in ways that aren't just nostalgic.” (personal communication)

No form of literature is pure, it straddles a line, always a dialogue between various forms, where

there is no thing as ‘purity’. The forms bend on themselves, a no man or no woman’s zone.

Gender conventions explored through the lens of various such forms seem to be more of a

phantasmal disposition to me now. Can one really argue or pin down a clear perception of gender

or even the conventions that revolve around it? They are constantly flitting between ambiguity

and paradoxes. Gender and its nature is complex, often displaying a complicated dualism,

questioning our sense of normality, dealing with conventions in different ways. The idea is to

raise questions in an attempt to attain clarity but never really achieve it, isn’t it? To end, I’d like
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to quote Heraclitus, a pre- Socratic Greek philosopher- “There is nothing permanent, except

change.”