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Supplemental Essay: "Gender Personas" in
Chapter 6 of Sexual Personae


List of "Gender Personas" Appearing in Chapter 6

See my main essay on Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae for an explanation of the presentation of the following material. Page numbers reflect the paperback edition of Sexual Personae.[1]

Link to main essay: Notes on Sexual Personae

Male

  • ExDion: (none)

  • Dion: (none)

  • Andr: Artegall as "devirilized male" in The Faerie Queene [note 3] (p. 183-184)

  • Apol: Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene [note 1] (p. 170-171)

  • ExApol: Busyrane (and other rapists) in The Faerie Queene [note 5] (p. 186)

 

Female

  • ExDion: Florimell, Amoret, Serena, Pastorella, and Una as "damsels in distress" in The Faerie Queene [note 4] (p. 186-187)

  • Dion: (none)

  • Andr: Belphoebe, Britomart, and Radigund as female knights in The Faerie Queene [notes 2 & 3] (p. 175-183)

  • Apol: (none)

  • ExApol: Duessa, Acrasia, Phaedria, Malecasta, and Hellenore as femmes fatales in The Faerie Queene (p. 187-188)

Notes

[Note 1]

Paglia says that The Faerie Queene is strongly Apollonian: "The Faerie Queene has an Apollonian brilliance" (p. 171). The epic poem is intended as a moralizing poem that teaches its readers to be good courtiers: "Spenser's letter to Sir Walter Raleigh says of Prince Arthur that the poem will 'fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.'" (p. 183). Paglia says, "The psyche, like society, must be disciplined by good government." (p. 188) The Faerie Queene teaches people to channel their sexual instincts into marriage and socially beneficial outlets: "Marriage is the social regulation and placement of sexual energies, which for Spenser otherwise fall back into the anarchy of nature [...] Sex in Spenser must always have a social goal" (p. 189). But in the process of differentiating between good and evil, Spenser describes evil acts as gory, freakish, and extravagant to the point that Paglia detects voyeurism on the part of both Spenser and the readers of his poem. Paglia says, "the presence of moral law or taboo intensifies the pleasure of sexual transgression and the luxury of evil" (p. 190). She says that the poem's aesthetics are "decadent" (p. 191). This becomes one of Paglia's themes throughout Sexual Personae: The more conscious we are of good, the more conscious we become of evil (and its attendant temptations). It's the result of one-sidedness and movement out toward the extremes of either Dionysianism or Apollonianism: The more we strive toward one extreme, the more we are haunted by the opposite extreme in "daemonic" form (as a fear or temptation).

[Note 2]

Paglia repeatedly describes Britomart and Belphoebe as Androgynes and Amazons. (See page 77-78 where Paglia defines Amazons as a type of Androgyne.) Britomart is a cross-sexual Androgyne in that she undergoes a transformation: "She begins as the adolescent Apollonian androgyne and ends as the primeval mother goddess" (p. 176). "This sex change [...] is Britomart's life pattern. She traverses the vast landscape of sexual personae, progressing from solitary knightly quester to obedient wife and mother." (p. 182-183) Belphoebe, on the other hand, is the self-contained Androgyne, remote and reserved and self-sufficient. "Cold and self-complete, the Apollonian androgyne is isolated behind a wall of silence or muteness." (p. 179) By making Britomart and Belphoebe strongly Apollonian (thus turning them from Dionysian women into Androgynes), Spenser turns them into avenging angels who go to war against evil: "Spenser removes the usual archetypal basis of female force, the daemonic, and imagines his heroines as Apollonian angels." (p. 175)

 

[Note 3]

Artegall is fated to become Britomart's husband. But Artegall starts out as excessively brutal and masculine and must be made more androgynous. The Faerie Queene is a moralizing poem that teaches its readers to be good courtiers: "The accomplished gentleman has a feminine sensitivity to the social moment. Good manners are tentative and accommodating. The man passing from battlefield to court must be devirilized." (p. 183) So Artegall is enslaved by Radigund (a female Androgyne) and forced to wear a dress and do women's work. Britomart eventually rescues him from Radigund. (p. 183-184) I have put him in the "Androgyne" category because Paglia compares Artegall's "devirilization" to Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, which she categorized as Androgyne (p. 141-142)

 

[Note 4]

Paglia points out that rapes abound in The Faerie Queene. Florimell is "a caricature of hysterical vulnerability" (p. 184) and "a professional victim" (p. 186). "Feminine and unarmed, Florimell and Amoret are flagrant targets for attack." (p. 186) Paglia suggests that the male rapist and the female "damsel in distress" are engaged in some kind of mutually destructive relationship in an enantiodromia-like sense (see above): "Vulnerability generates its own entrapments, creating a maelstrom of voracity around itself. Nature abhors a vacuum. Into the spiritual emptiness of pure femininity in Spenser rush a storm of masculine forces. [...] Sadism and masochism engender one another in dizzy oscillation. Caught on the swing of the sexual dialectic, the rapist vainly strives to obliterate his opposite." (p. 186) Later on in the book there will be similar enantiodromia-like relationships between Decadent males and female Femmes fatales.

 

[Note 5]

Paglia highlights the sorcerer Busyrane as chief among the various rapists in The Faerie Queene. Paglia describes rapists as suffering from an excess of masculinity: "The Spenserian rapist is a savage, churl, or knight who is not 'curteous' or 'gentle,' who has not, in other words, undergone the feminizing refinement of social life." (p. 186)

Link: Return to Notes on Sexual Personae

~Posted July 14, 2024

References

[1] Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae, Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (First Vintage Books Edition, 1991).

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