Female beauty in poetry, to what end?
Literature has demonstrated its fascination with the female form with plays, novels, and poetry that explore the female form. There are still works of art that demonstrate the female form, but they are now very different from those of the past. The rise of feminism in modern times has made it more difficult to justify the presence of women as symbols in poems composed by men. In this essay, three poems by Garcilaso de la Vega, Luis de Góngora, and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer are analyzed to determine if the poems have sexist aspects that diminish the value of their poetry through objectification, or if the message of the poem can be elucidated with an understanding of the historical context and other aspects of poetry.
The historical backgrounds of the poems’ authors are distinct because of the different centuries in which they lived. Garcilaso de la Vega was born in Spain and was also descended from a noble family, and thus received an education that culminated in his status as a contino by King Charles I of Spain. Garcilaso de la Vega’s style was important for its focus on the tragedy of love during the 16th century (Dise, La Página de Garcilaso en Internet ). His style has a balance between the rigorous structure of the sonnets and the imagination that changed the use of the form (Badía 126). Similarly, Luís Góngora was born in Spain and was a poet during the 17th century during the Baroque, a historical period in which ideas of escaping reality dominated literature. His style of “Gongorism” became very popular for its originality, and its emphasis on the idea of using metaphors and vivid images to create a literary refuge (Romanos). Góngora's family was aristocratic, his father was a judge so he received a good education because of the privilege of being upper class (my translation, The Editors of New World Encyclopedia). Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer had similar circumstances to Góngora and de la Vega. He was born in the 19th century in Spain to a wealthy family, but he had many financial difficulties (Guardiola and DeGrado). His style was very different from Garcilaso de la Vega, and he is known for his simplicity and poems about love (Solanas 1). In trying to understand the historical context of these poets, it is also important to consider the effect of their circumstances on their narrative voice. The social status of the poets is important because all of the poets had privileged positions in society because of their wealth, nationality, and race. As white-skinned men of high social status, their works have the aspect of privilege that was predominant in the world during these centuries. Therefore, it is important for a modern reader to understand the privileges of these poets when reading their poetry.
Before analyzing the authors’ poems, it is necessary to establish a feminist outline of what will be used to critique the poems. Martha Nussbaum is a philosopher who is well known for her feminist work. In her essay “Objectification,” she describes seven characteristics of objectification. The characteristics are: instrumentality , denial of autonomy , inertness, fungibility , violability , ownership , and denial of subjectivity (Nussbaum 257). The characteristics listed serve as indicators of objectification. Not all of them need to be present to signal objectification, nor does the presence of one need to indicate objectification; it all depends on the context of the situation at hand. The characteristics are clear, but in the most general terms, to prove objectification, one needs to have evidence that someone becomes something (Nussbaum 268). So, in the process of analyzing poems, it is important to take into account these characteristics and the contexts in which the authors display them.
To begin the analysis of the poems, one can criticize a poem by Garcilaso de la Vega, in which women are superficial objects that have no value beyond their beauty. In “Soneto XXIII” by Garcilaso de la Vega, the poetic voice occupies the first three stanzas to describe a beautiful woman in the step of emphasizing his theme, the passage of time. The use of three stanzas to do so is rare, because the format of a sonnet is very strict, and therefore authors cannot spend much time on descriptions, but this is not the case in “Soneto XXIII.” The author spends most of the poem describing a woman, but he does not refer to the woman directly, instead he refers to the favorite parts of a woman, such as her “gesture” (line 2), “hair” (line 5), and her “neck” (line 7) in comparison to objects, the “rose” of her gesture, the “gold” in her hair, and the “white” of her neck. In the process of worship, the poet reduces the woman to her body parts, deprived of humanity. This is a striking example of the objectification of women, the use of a woman’s body without understanding her personhood. Here, de la Vega engages the characteristic of denial of status as a person, one of the seven characteristics of objectification summarized by Nussbaum. Objectification is most visible in the first line of the fourth stanza when the poetic voice says “The cold wind will wither the rose, / the light age will change everything” (lines 12-13). As before, de la Vega uses the comparison with the rose, an object that has value because of its beauty. In this comparison, the connotation is negative, that the value of women is equal to that of a rose, beautiful, but after its brief time of beauty, there is no value. This comparison to a rose, an object whose sole purpose is to be beautiful and then thrown away, shows that beauty, which is superficial in definition, is all that matters in the eyes of society. Here, de la Vega invokes another characteristic of objectification, treatment as something interchangeable, because the woman and her characteristics here are interchangeable with a rose. So women are used as objects to marvel at in Garcilaso de la Vega's poem, but in this way he reduces the value of women to beauty alone.
Also, the idea of “enjoying” beauty is interesting, because this idea is not present for men. In Góngora’s “Sonnet CLXVI”, he says “not only in silver or truncated viola/ you and it become more together” (verses 12-13) which uses silver and viola to demonstrate brevity. It is interesting that silver and viola are feminine objects (with the article “la”) that symbolize elegance that will not be remembered for the brevity of beauty. It is interesting because it would be very strange if the author had described this phenomenon with a man. And why? Men do care about their appearance, but their value in the eyes of society is not derived entirely from their physical appearance like that of women. There is an assumption that when men age, it is a natural phenomenon that does not affect their character, but when women age, they become less feminine. This phenomenon has been studied by Clay et al. al, and explains the idea that women are socialized to base their self-worth on their appearance more than men (Clay 2005). Thus, a line towards the end of the poem, “goza cuello, pelo, labio, y frente” (line 9) is striking, because it represents that women’s worth is determined by the parts of their bodies, parts preferred by men like the neck and forehead, which lose their beauty over time in the eyes of the men who see them. Here, the denial of personhood, one of the characteristics of objectification as Nussbaum describes, is clear, because there is no consideration of women’s autonomy, is a way to illustrate her idea of the brevity of time (Nussbaum). So, although Góngora’s poem has a more universal message of carpe diem, the command to enjoy a woman’s beauty reflects an older attitude of perception of women.
The objectification of women’s feminine beauty is also present in Bécquer’s “Rhyme XI.” In Bécquer’s poem, the narrative voice describes the desirable characteristics of two women to make a comparison to the unproductive pursuit of perfection in humans. Bécquer describes two women in flattering ways. At the beginning of the poem, “I am dark-skinned,” “the symbol of passion” (line 2), and “my soul is full of longing for joy” (line 4) are some of the characteristics of the first woman. The sexist aspect here is found in the description of the woman as a servant to please the master, the man. The description of the second woman has a similar formula; there is a description of her physical appearance – “my forehead is pale, my braids of gold” (line 6) and also a description of her “use” to the man, “I can provide you with endless joy” (line 7). The poem goes on to describe the “impossible” woman (line 11), something that does not exist, but the use of women here contributes something disturbing to the poem. There is an assumption that other women, with one-dimensional personalities only for the use of men, do exist, and more of them want to serve men as their purpose. The narrative voice dismisses women as if they are objects of purchase, saying “No, it is not you” (line 5) when the women ask “Do you call me?” (line 9). Yes, women are symbols of other ideas of fame and glory, but the women’s narrative illustrates a larger problem in society: that women’s autonomy is to serve men. Here women’s value is equal to their utility and beauty, and even this is not enough for the narrator. It is a violation of two features of Nussbaum’s objectification, ownership, by describing desirable characteristics of women so that a man can obtain them, and denial of autonomy, by the way women have no desire other than their “responsibility” to give pleasure to a man. So Bécquer’s “Rhyme XI” also has sexist aspects and evidence of objectification.
Although the authors have sexist aspects in their poems, their poems are the products of their historical context. In the times of Garcilaso de la Vega, Góngora, and Bécquer (16th, 17th, and 19th centuries respectively), women did not have many rights, so their value was subtracted from their luck of being from rich families or being beautiful to marry a rich man. A woman's worth depended on her "feminine" abilities to be a good wife and bear children. So the idea that women have no value beyond their beauty was not far from reality at that time (Cubero 68-76). Despite the presence of female authors such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the recognition of the value of literary works written by women did not come to full fruition until the appearance of Rosalía de Castro and Emilia Pardo Bazán during the Galician rexurdimento (McNerney 68-79). Because of that, the majority of the poems’ audience were upper-class men, men who had an education so they could read and write (Kirkpatrick 7-43). Because of that, the authors used women to attract men. They described a woman’s beauty because men liked to read that description. From this perspective, modern readers can detect the misogynistic aspects present in these poems. However, in the times of Garcilaso de la Vega, Góngora, and Bécquer, there was no influence of feminism to classify it as such, so the authors wrote poems for their audience: men with education and therefore money, and with the power to choose who they would marry as a status symbol.
Thus, the ideologies and symbols of the three poems by Garcilaso de la Vega, Góngora, and Bécquer all have sexist aspects with the objectification of women in the poems, as Nussbaum describes in her essay “Objectification.” Although the works have evidence of objectification, the poems are not destroyed by the sexist aspects. The responsibility of a modern reader is to look at all aspects of the poem and also understand the message that the authors were trying to express. Garcilaso de la Vega’s commentary on the brevity of time, Góngora’s command of “carpe diem,” and Bécquer’s description of the eternal mission of perfection are unforgettable contributions to the movements of literature and inspirations for authors of all backgrounds. By using a modern perspective and an understanding of the perception of society in the past, one can search for the most universal messages and understand their insinuations about society. The heart of literature is in the themes that apply to everyone, so although poets of the past used sexist aspects in their poems, what is also important is to identify the universal themes with an understanding of the context.
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