virgins & temptresses

            “…traditional mythology divides woman into two images – the spotless maiden and the degraded whore – separated forever by sexual experience” (Spatz 110)

Women in literature often fall under two categories: the virgin and the temptress. These clichés are utilized by writers to create female characters that further the plot, but fail to do much else in terms of development. The virgin is often utilized as they typical “damsel in distress.” She is innocent, sweet, and often physically weak. The virgin is rewarded with a happy ending. The temptress, however, is determined to bring men down, to cause their fall from grace. She is deceptive, sexualized, and not to be trusted. She is usually punished for her ways. These tropes were not just utilized in fiction, but they furthered social repression of women in real life as well.

Innocence and obedience are seen as some of the most valuable female virtues in the works of this time. The women of “The Castle of Otranto” fulfill these roles; all are subservient to the men and the story. Each of them struggles with the concept of right and wrong, and none of the women receive a happy ending. Hippolita remains under her husband’s power as he tries to divorce her, and values his happiness over her own. Matilda, of course, ends up dead, which is perhaps a consequence of disobeying her father’s rules. Isabella, who seems to be a piece of property, and nothing more than an object of male desire, receives the only variation of a ‘happy’ ending, and even then, she is Theodore’s second choice for marriage.

Adeline, in Radcliffe’s “Romance of the Forest,” is a fairly typical example of the virgin characterization. She incites pity from both LaMotte and the reader, and her first appearance in the novel is when she is rescued after being held captive. Adeline’s characteristics are not those of a well developed character, instead, she is largely a cliché. Physically, she is young, beautiful, and sickly, essentially weak. She is innocent, trusting, and entirely dependent on men. She exists largely as a plot device for the actions and decisions of the male characters; “La Motte makes Adeline into a pawn” is his attempts to escape his own mistakes (Durant 522). Her development is “defined in terms of her evolving relationships with a series of explicitly labeled parental figures” (Durant 520). However, she receives a happy ending, a marriage and enjoyable life.

Christabel, in Coleridge’s “Christabel,” is similarly pure in her description. She dreams of her “betrothed knight,” and prays for his well-being; she is frequently referred to as a sweet, “gentle maid.” Christabel spends much of the poem praying, and is frequently praised for it. The contrast of the temptress appears with Geraldine, who puts on the persona of innocence, but is in reality a much darker character. It can be suggested that Geraldine is a projection of Christabel’s sexuality, “with its desire, fear, shame, and pleasure” (Spatz 111). Geraldine is obviously a more manipulative character. She is described with snake imagery, such as each of her eyes shrinking to a “serpent’s eye” (587). This heavily implies that Geraldine is a creature of evil, representing Satan. Her undressing is a sexualized passage in the play. Clearly, there are supernatural elements at work in Geraldine’s characterization that remain unknown due to the unfinished nature of the poem. The representation of light and dark, and the juxtaposition of purity and sexuality, in these two women are blatant, although their endings are unknown.

Even in William Wordsworth’s The Thorn, there is a version of the temptress. Martha Ray, who gave her “company” with a “maiden’s true good-will,” is abandoned at the altar (10.7-8). Stephen Hill, her lover, weds another maid (which is indicative of virginity). Martha Ray is left pregnant, later her baby dies, and she spends the rest of her years at the infant’s grave, crying “oh misery!” (6.11). Yet again, a woman is punished for sexual “deviancy.”

The blatant sexism in Don Juan provides further commentary on female sexual desire. Clare writes that “a wife is just the prototype to hate,” implying that women within marriage are the beginning, maybe even the source, of hate (299). Female sexuality is threatening to the patriarchy because it “trespasses upon the rights of masculinity to define borders” (Kovesi 191). This explains why the temptress, the one who is more sexually active, is punished in fiction. She is a direct threat to the idea of male control.

Mary Wollstonecraft, by John Opie

In a transition to more feminist literature, Wollstonecraft’s perspective leads us away from these misogynistic, tired tropes. Maria is a character whose history is more complex; she does not fit into either of the categories, and her “punishment” is not a result of her actions, but a result of the patriarchal values and rules. As noted in the presentation on Wollstonecraft, women were imprisoned by the lack of freedoms they were allowed in society. Wollstonecraft herself had a child out of wedlock and was publicly criticized for it, and in her own way of fighting the assumptions made about women, she became the “mother of feminism” through her fictional and non-fictional works.

These clichéd perspectives of women are prevalent throughout Romantic literature, as well as works written before and after that time period. The frequent reduction of women to two contrasting types perpetuates those negative stereotypes, and promotes them not only in fiction, but also in the real world. Even today we have the concepts of “prudes” and “sluts,” each of which define a woman by her sexual behavior, and each of which is a term constructed by the patriarchy as a method of control.


Works Cited

Black, Joseph. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 4: The Age of Romanticism. 4th ed. London. Broadview Press, 2006. Print.

Durant, David. "Ann Radcliffe and the Conservative Gothic." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 22.3 (1982): 518-30. JSTOR. Web. 06 May 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/450245>.

Kovesi, Simon. "Masculinity, Misogyny, and the Marketplace: John Clare's 'Don Juan A Poem'" JohnClare.info. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 May 2013. <http://www.johnclare.info/donjuan.pdf>.

Spatz, Jonas. "The Mystery of Eros: Sexual Initiation in Coleridge's "Christabel"" PMLA 90.1 (1975): 107-16. JSTOR. Web. 6 May 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/461353>.