The Female Archetypes in Swinburne's Early Work, 1857-1871.

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LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School
1981
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Betty Moss Duffy
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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Duffy, Betty Moss
THE FEMALE ARCHETYPES IN SWINBURNE’S EARLY WORK, 1857-1871
The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical CoL Ph.D. 1981
University
Microfilms
International
300 N. Zeeb Rood, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
THE FEMALE ARCHETYPES IN
SWINBURNE'S EARLY WORK,
1857-1871
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
The Department of English
by
Betty M. Duffy
B.A., University of Iowa, 1968
M.A., Arkansas State University, 1972
December 1981
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank Dr. Rebecca Crump and Dr. Fabian
Gudas for their careful reading and helpful suggestions.
In addition, I want to thank Dr. Robert Becker for serving
as my advisor in my minor field, history. I also want to
express my appreciation to Dr. Lawrence Sasek both for
serving on my committee and for his kindness during my
doctoral studies. Most important to this work, however,
are Dr. Thomas L. Watson, my dissertation director, and
John Duffy, Jr., my husband. Without either of them this
project would not exist. Every idea in the dissertation
derives from what Dr. Watson taught me in his seminar on
the Aesthetic Movement, and throughout the years he has
given me unstinting encouragement and help. My husband
John unselfishly provided me with the unbroken time and
emotional support that I needed in order to complete my
work. Finally, my friends made my work easier, especially
Nancy N. Tolbert and Robert Marley.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT..................................................iv
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ............................... 1
CHAPTER II. THE EARLIEST APPEARANCES
OF THE ARCHETYPES.................................52
CHAPTER III. A YEAR1S LETTERS AND
LESBIA BRANDON..................................122
CHAPTER IV. POEMS AND BALLADS, FIRST SERIES
AND ATALANTA IN CALYDON......................... 181
CHAPTER V. SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE ..................... 249
LIST OF NORKS CONSULTED................................287
VITA.....................................................294
H i
ABSTRACT
From "Queen Yseult," 1857, to "Bertha” of Songs before
Sunrise, 1871, three archetypes— the femme fatale, the Ter­
rible Mother, and the androgyne— dominate Swinburne1s poems,
dramas, and novels. These archetypes project the dominant
artistic conflict of the Victorian period, the controversy
over the function of art and the role of the artist, for
they symbolize the psychological and cultural conflict be­
tween the doctrine of art for art's sake and its antithesis,
art for morality's sake. The femme fatale becomes a symbol
of art and beauty, the goal of the artist-androgyne's aes­
thetic guest. Her masochistic lover strives to possess
beauty in the form of the fatal woman, just as the artist
pursues it in his art. Beyond conventional moral judgments,
the femme fatale is autonomous because of her beauty and,
frequently, her disdain for Philistine mores. Like the vam­
pire, she drains the vitality of her lovers; thus, the man's
erotic and aesthetic quest often becomes simultaneously a
pursuit of death. Moreover, the Terrible Mother, like Lady
Midhurst in A Year's Letters, frequently joins the femme
fatale and her lover, the artist-androgyne, in a dramatic
triangle. The Terrible Mother represents the restrictive
laws of society and conventional morality, forces which
deform the artist and warp his creation. She struggles
with the femme fatale to control the androgyne, who even­
tually dies psychically or physically.
This study traces the evolution of these figures in
Swinburne's early works and uses his criticism, particu­
larly his essay William Blake, as the foundation of his
aesthetic doctrine. Swinburne develops the triadic rela­
tionship among these three recurring archetypes most fully
in Atalanta in Calydon, where Meleager rejects duty. Al­
thaea, for beauty, Atalanta, and thereby chooses death.
In Poems and Ballads as the femme fatale becomes more
destructive, the Terrible Mother softens, becoming a desire
for oblivion and symbolized as the sea or as Proserpine.
In Songs before Sunrise Swinburne has a theme, Liberty,
and a vision— the Humanity of Positivism— wherein beauty
and duty coalesce. Therefore, he constellates a new arche­
type, the Great Mother, who dominates the volume and reaches
her most successful embodiment in "Hertha."
v
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
However one approaches Swinburne's works, understanding
his female figures becomes inescapable, for Swinburne's
greatest characters are women. Even a casual reading of
Swinburne reveals that from "Queen Yseult" (1857) through
Songs before Sunrise (1871) women dominate the works. They
vary from mythological to historical to biographical charac­
ters; at times a natural phenomenon (notably the sea), per­
sonified in feminine terms, appears. Or, as in the sonnets
entitled "Hermaphroditus," the female principle may be inex­
tricably mingled with the male so that an androgynous figure
results. Moreover, I believe that his females embody his
aesthetic theories and that they afford a symbolic objecti­
fication of the dominant artistic conflict of the Victorian
period, the controversy over the function of art and the role
of the artist.
That is, Swinburne's female figures represent a pro­
jection of both an internal, personal conflict and an exter­
nal, cultural one between the doctrine of art for art's sake
and its antithesis, art for morality's sake, called by some
"the heresy of the didactic." In the introduction to The
2
Alien Vision of Victorian Poetry, E. D. H. Johnson states
the problem succinctly: "This was a conflict, demonstrable
within the work of the writers themselves, between the pub­
lic conscience of the man of letters who comes forward as
the accredited literary spokesman of his work, and the pri­
vate conscience of the artist who conceives that his highest
allegiance must be to his own aesthetic sensibilities."1
Although Johnson refers specifically to Tennyson, Browning,
and Arnold, Swinburne too confronted the dilemma and felt
in his own life the pressure of the Horatian dictum that
poetry should be not only "dulce” but also "utile." Lionel
Stevenson, in his chapter on Swinburne in The Pre-Raphaelite
Poets, says that the classical scholar Jowett "scolded the
young man for wasting time in the unprofitable craft of
2
poetry." Nevertheless, under the influence of Gautier,
Baudelaire, and D. G. Rossetti, Swinburne took a firm stand
in his criticism for the autonomy of art and the right of
the artist to pursue his vision. His early poetry, novels,
and plays also reflect his aesthetic theories, embodied
largely through a triad of female archetypes: the femme
fatale, the Terrible Mother, and the androgyne.
I
With few exceptions Swinburne's females represent a