7 May 2003

Don Juan’s Human-Inspired Morality

 

By Jason Preu

 

    In Don Juan, Lord Byron takes a hypercritical stance of contemporary British moral codes.  He often writes of situations where the old English morality doesn’t quite live up to his standards of a viable moral code and society attacked him for it (at the same time buying his work as fast as it could be printed).  To the general population’s credit, Byron does present a rather radical take on moral issues.  But what Don Juan does, in addition to shocking moral majorities, is advocate a more sophisticated, situational, human-inspired morality.  I dub Byron’s posited morality “situational” and “human-inspired” because it comes about not as a strict set of immutable laws claiming “Thou must” or “Thou shalt”, but rather from a recognition that humans, being what they are, necessarily run into situations where a proscribed moral code does more harm to their persons than good.  In ways both positive and negative, Byron plays with the idea of a moral code that takes into account what humans are like, eventually positing a situational ethic based upon those observations.

    In Canto I, the narrator presents a rather sticky situation for the epic’s hero, Juan.  This Canto contains one of many jabs at the failure of contemporary moral strictures to account for the human condition.  To begin with, the narrator amusingly portrays Juan’s mother, Donna Inez, as “a learned lady, famed / For every branch of every science known, / In every Christian language ever named, / With virtues equalled by her wit alone” (I, 10).  The narrator’s sarcasm regarding Inez’s position evinces itself in the oft repeated “every”, setting the stanza’s tongue in cheek tone.  Inez desires to educate her son in a strictly “moral” sense (I, 29).  To that end, she censors everything that she teaches Juan.  Inez provides her son with a broad foundation in math, science, philosophy, and the arts yet fails to teach him “a page of anything that’s loose / Or hints continuation of the species” (I, 40).  This insistence on repressing the sexual impulse as a requirement for upholding the moral good comes up over and over again in the first two Cantos (and probably the latter Cantos as well, although this paper does not extend to them).  In stanza 115, for example, the narrator sets a beautiful and sexy scene between Julia and Juan only to interrupt it in stanza 116 with ruminations on Plato.  This must be how Juan felt during many of his mother’s lessons when the talk would lead to matters sensual then subsequently misdirected by Inez.  At any rate, Byron’s critique of Juan’s censored education is subtly arrived at in stanza 66, Canto I, with the revelation of a tryst that once took place between Inez and Alfonso (himself a married man).  It seems one might extrapolate from Inez’s hypocrisy the hypocrisy of a society at large that establishes a moral sense by burying natural instincts under the label “not open for discussion.”

    Though Byron may seem a libertine in his views of contemporary sexual mores I think the case is that he recognizes that there is an undeniable sexual side to human beings that the contemporary British moral codes do not take as legitimate.  Byron doesn’t attempt to debase or undermine that part of our humanity but instead tries to incorporate it into his moral view.  This is not to say that Byron is offering a morality wherein one may do whatever one sees fit. The shipwreck sequence provides a fine example to the contrary. 

    During the shipwreck, Juan and several crewmembers survive the sinking of their main vessel by having the good fortune to stay afloat aboard the side boats.  Several survivors showcase a “free-for-all” ethic by gorging themselves on their limited food supply “Instead of hoarding it with due precision” (II, 68).  Inevitably, the crew’s ship is becalmed and as fate (or the author) would have it, their wish for wind goes unfulfilled, suggesting the static nature of an egoistic ethic. 

    Days pass, the crew’s hunger grows extreme, and ultimately, everyone (save Juan) throws their conventional moral code to the fishes.  The crew begins to eat one another in a most inefficient manner (II, 77), appeasing their hunger by consuming their shipmates.  It might be argued that the real ethic on display here is the survival ethic.  These crewmen do whatever it takes to ensure they’ll live.  Who wouldn’t do the same?  But even if one takes this to be the ethic on display, our hero, Juan, doesn’t succumb to the impulse.  He is restrained from acting out the will to survive or any solipsistic desires, suggesting that is room move around a bit when one makes a moral decision.

    What’s interesting about the cannibalism scene, and similar moral dilemmas that Byron portrays throughout this epic, is that the narrator doesn’t seem to impose any label of “bad” or “good” upon his characters’ actions.  The narrator reports and comments:

     ‘Twas better that he [Juan] did not [partake in cannibalism], for in fact

          The consequence was awful in the extreme.

     For they who were most ravenous in the act

          Went raging mad.  Lord! how they did blaspheme

     And foam and roll, with strange convulsions racked,

          Drinking salt water like a mountain stream,

     Tearing and grinning, howling, screeching, swearing,

     And with hyena laughter died despairing. (II, 79)

    The narrator recognizes that in order to act as judge over a situation that might require a person to resort to cannibalism, one must have been involved in that situation.  Because of this, the best the narrator can do is tell us that it was better that Juan choose to stick to his guns and not that what Juan did was good and the rest of the crew bad.  If it can be said that there is a judgment, that judgment seems to come in the form of results of actions, and not from the failure to meet some sort of pre-established moral standards.  Even though the cannibals thought it necessary to eat each other in order to survive, one man refrained and he is the one who survives the entire ordeal to wash up on the shores of paradise.

    Let me briefly add to this point by referring back to Donna Inez.  The narrator doesn’t once label anything Inez does as morally wrong.  He obviously delights in poking considerable fun at her:

     Morality’s prim personification,

          In which not Envy’s self a flaw discovers.

     To others share let ‘female errors fall,

     For she had not even one – the worst of all. (I, 16)

But not once does the narrator condemn Inez the person, other than to point out her hypocrisy.  The narrator isn’t a judge and Byron writes of human beings acting in human situations.

    It seems that what Byron is critical of is the varying frameworks from within which his characters make their decisions and not the characters themselves.  Inez, Alfonso, and Julia are all influenced by a moral code that condemns behavior Byron sees as inescapably human.  Conversely, the ship’s crew, when faced with disaster, abandons any moral sense and succumbs to survival instincts, which is also an all too human response.  The narrator, however, doesn’t judge this as wrong behavior (in one sense he asks the reader what he or she would do in such a situation) but neither does he forget to remind us that every action has a consequence; some of which we desire more than others.

    It can’t be said that Byron tears down contemporary morality without offering an alternative in its place.  His corrective to all the hypocrisy and repression that he sees in contemporary British morality is given to the reader in the relationship that develops between Juan and Haidée.  Speaking on the manner in which the couple relate to one another, the narrator tells us that “They feared no eyes nor ears on that lone beach, / They felt no terrors from the night, they were / All in all to each other” (II, 189).  In this relationship a love blooms between two humans without being subjected to any type of societal scrutiny or overreaching dogma.

    In reading of this relationship, one might realize it is lovely and romantic but highly unlikely.  Of course it is.  Yet, even though Byron puts young Haidée upon a pedestal, he insists that his readers recognize that she is human and better off for it:

     And down the cliff the island virgin came,

          And near the cave her quick light footsteps drew,

     While the sun smiled on her with his first flame,

          And young Aurora kissed her lips with dew,

     Taking her for a sister.  Just the same

          Mistake you have made on seeing the two,

     Although the mortal, quite as fresh and fair,

     Had all the advantage too of not being air. (II, 142)

    This is an important point because in this stanza the narrator sets up side by side the ideal and the real, then declares that the real, the here and now, the human – is in a position better than a goddess’s.  The focus is on the situation and the two humans as they interact with one another.  The two lovers have the advantage of being alive – free to explore, nurture, and learn from each other physically and emotionally. 

    Juan and Haidée’s relationship grows by leaps and bounds.  Eventually, the two marry each other in Earth’s cathedral (II, 204) with bits of Nature standing in for the roles typically filled by one or another manmade ritual symbol.  This scene yet again takes a jab at contemporary institutions and their accompanying rituals by showing that for all intents and purposes a ritual holds meaning wherever the participants imbibe it with such.  Might the same hold true for an ethical system?  For Juan and Haidée, this shifting of meaning allows them to wed each other solely on the strength of their love for one another.  There is no need for an intermediary or pomp.  And this perceived lack is no moral dilemma, at least for the narrator.  These two people came together by following a natural, mutually agreeable path.  For Byron, this makes their union an incredible moral good.

    What Byron appears to be driving at by writing on each of these situations is not a morality supported by a self-gratifying impulse.  The point isn’t to reform ethical standards in such a way so as to allow for people to act upon any whim or fancy.  The point is to develop a system of ethics that admits “Man’s a phenomenon, one knows not what, / And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure” (I, 133) then allows for a more accurate representation of as many human emotions, desires, and needs as possible.  An important part of Byron’s morality is the premise that human nature does have a sexual aspect that shouldn’t be so repressed as contemporary British morals would have it.  Juan and Haidée’s relationship shows us what might be possible for love and human interaction once a morality built upon denial is usurped by a morality that, at heart, tries to understand and support benevolent human behavior. 

    This human-inspired morality is dynamic and evolving.  It keeps pace with human cultures as they change, grow, and at times regress.  This morality is not a rigid code that tries to answer every possible question of human situations from a single, elevated vantagepoint.  What Byron does, in part, throughout Don Juan is to show his readers that, not only is a morality speaking from above the human condition mere folly in practice, it is also lends itself to hypocritical actions and increases the likelihood of hurting other human beings.

 

 

Works Cited

Byron. Don Juan. Eds. T. G. Steffan, E. Steffan, W. W. Pratt. London: Penguin Books Ltd.,

1986.  All quotations from Bryon’s work taken from this edition.