“Don Juan Canto-I” is a Social Satire. -Discuss. 

Answer

“Don Juan Canto-I” is a social satire. -Discuss. 

Or, discuss Byron’s treatment of love and marriage. 

Or, Discuss the romantic and satirical elements in Byron to evaluate it as a social satire.

Or comment on the poetic style of Don Juan.

A revolutionary attitude towards love and marriage has been picked up by the second-generation romantic poet Lord Byron (1788 – 1824). Don Juan Canto-1 (1819) reflects on several aspects of society. His treatment of love and marriage bears a certain psychological significance of how to be happy in marital life. Again, he exposes the hypocrisy and corruption of upper-class society. 

Byron’s Concept of Love: Byron’s view of love clashes with that of G. B. Shaw, who criticizes the romantic notion of love. We can see a different type of love in “Don Juan.” Here, the poet shows the necessity of romantic and physical love since the hero seduces women. The hero does not hesitate even to establish a physical relationship with an almost mother-like woman named Julia. Juan’s relationship with Julia matches Byron’s relationship with his nurse, Mary Gray.

Byron’s Personal Experience of Life and Womanhood: Byron’s personal experience of life is not a happy one. His shameful relationship with his half-sister and his marriage with and separation from Anna Isabella Milbanke are significant incidents in his life. The sexual attention of his nurse when he was only nine years old made a permanent impression on him. The marriage and separation of his parents also influenced him to a great extent. On the other hand, his attractive personality and his love affairs with several women helped him make keen observations on womanhood.

Byron’s Attitude to First and Passionate Love: Byron’s attitude to love is the direct outcome of his personal bitter experience in marital life. According to him, first love is light and thoughtless. It begets only sentimental and sensual aspects. To highlight the superiority of first and passionate love, he has given a long description of various sweet things to focus on the emotion of love. To Byron, first and passionate love is sweeter than all other things. He says:

But sweeter still than this, than these, than all

Is first and passionate love.

Jealous Hypocrisy of Females: According to Byron, women are more aggressive than men. Donna Inez intentionally does not separate Juan and Julia because she finds her happiness in destroying Julia’s reputation and even her marriage. Using Juan as a tool, she succeeds in separating Julia from Alfonso through divorce and getting her locked up in a convent. 

Satire on Loveless Conjugal Life: Dissatisfaction in conjugal life because of the triangle notion has been criticized through the suffering of the husband and wife.

• Juan’s Parents:  Donna Inez and Don Jose, represent an unhappy marriage. They cannot adjust mentally to each other. There is gossip among the relatives around that Don Jose has a mistress or two. The illicit love of her husband contaminates her. That is why she engages herself with her former lover, Don Alfonso. Byron says,

That Inez had, ere Don Alfonso’s marriage,

Forgot with him her very prudent carriage;

Here, Byron likes to say that if Inez and Alfonso had been united earlier, there would have been a possibility of happiness as they loved each other.

• Unmatched Alfonso and Julia: Another unhappy marriage is also criticized by Byron. Don Alfonso and Donna Julia’s relationship is also poisonous because of their unequal age. Alfonso is a man of fifty, and Julia is only twenty-three. He cannot satisfy Julia. Julia is also unhappy with Alfonso. So, she decides to surrender herself to Juan, who is only sixteen. They fall for each other so passionately that one night, Juan is discovered in Julia’s bed chamber by her husband, Alfonso. However, Byron criticizes the social bondage of marriage, which cannot bring peace without the proper combination of age and mentality.
• Prolonged Attraction of Satisfactory Love: The attraction of satisfactory love can be broken into several levels. Byron has appreciated Julia in several ways. Julia has invested her heart with a sincere love for Juan. Her caressing of Juan in his childhood is praiseworthy. Moreover, the long letter written by Julia to Juan from the convent draws our sympathetic attention. In this letter, she has proved her sincere love for Juan. Despite losing everything, she could not forget that sweet memory. She says:

I love, I love you, for this love have lost

State, station, heaven, mankind’s my own esteem,

And yet cannot regret what it hath cost,

So dear is still the memory of that dream

According to Bernard Beatty, a famous critic, Julia produces a famous aphorism for passionate and satisfactory love that has never been quoted before;

Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,

‘Tis woman’s whole existence,

Byron has been able to create an accepted satirical treatment of the most fundamental issue of human life and society, namely love and marriage. To him, a loveless marriage is nothing but a heart of fire that burns the couple forever. He also advocates that marriage without love cannot last long.