Masculinity In The Post-Romantic Era

Chivalry is Dead:

The Influence of the Byronic Hero on Masculinity in the Post-Romantic Era

Maisey Phillips

Mr. Wheeler

English 10 CP, Class 6

11 May 2015

Abstract

The character type of the Byronic hero which became highly popular during the Romantic movement reshaped the conventions of the ideal man in Western culture. It was through this that defining characteristics of the Byronic hero became integrated into the ideals and standards associated with masculinity in the Western world thereafter. This paper illustrates the changes in the expectations of masculinity and determines the causes of the Byronic hero’s integration into post-Romantic masculinity.

Romanticism, arguably the largest artistic and literary movement of

its time, swept through Europe and the Western world from the last days of the 18th century to the middle of the next. The Romantic movement was formed out of a rebellion against the droll rational and materialistic world of the 18th century, and once the people got a taste in the 1790s, Romanticism became a phenomenon. One of the many great authors to find success in the newly lucrative business of poetry was an Englishman known as Lord Byron. After writing his first highly popular poem, Byron remarked, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." And it was through this fame that Byron’s signature character, “the Byronic hero,” became a literary sensation. This character type, now mostly thought of as the cool, manly loner outcast became a staple of Western culture, seen reincarnated countless times in poems, books, films, and practically all other artistic and cultural outlets from its conception to the modern day, more than two centuries later. This cultural icon has become part of Western culture in more ways than one, and this is reflected in its integration into the standards of masculinity our society has shaped. It is through its popularization in the Romantic era, that the Byronic hero has impacted the ideals and features that we now associate with masculinity in post-Romantic Western culture.
The Byronic hero has been so ingrained into our culture that if one looks, examples in popular media since the age of the Romantic movement seem endless (Stein, "Immortals and Vampires and Ghosts, Oh My!: Byronic Heroes in Popular Culture").

In her analysis of the origins and legacy of the Byronic hero, Heiða Pálsdótti wrote, “The Byronic hero appears again and again in contemporary culture and has been a widely popular subject ever since Byronism became popular [...]. The character has been used so often and diversely that we feel it is familiar" (18). With post-Romantic Western media being so saturated with the Byronic hero type, it is no wonder its influence has spread into our culture-specific definitions of masculinity. But to comprehend this phenomenon, one must understand which attributes are characteristic of this character type. The Byronic hero is a mysterious outlaw, who sets his own moral code. These characters are known for their independence, self-sufficiency, passion, and assertiveness. Though such characters were being created by other Romantic authors at the time, the author most known for using this type is the poet Lord Byron, after whom the type was named. His character Manfred from the dramatic poem of the same name is often hailed as the original Byronic hero, whose traits can now be seen reflected in the ideals and in innumerable popular characters of our modern culture. “From the Western hero to the science fiction hero to the action-adventure hero,

we can find any number of heroes who seem to be descendents of Byron's Manfred” (Stein, 14). It is through this saturation of the Byronic hero into popular culture that it was able to become a part of the standards and ideals associated with masculinity thereafter. To be able to recognize these effects, you must first be familiar with the masculine standards of the pre-Romantic era, masculinity before the invention of the Byronic hero.
To illustrate the differences between pre- and post-Romantic masculinity, it must be made clear what masculinity means in the context of this paper.

Masculinity in this paper is used in a historical context, as a constantly changing collection of meanings that are constructed in each culture through relationships with ourselves, each other, and the world (Kimmel and Aronson XXIII). This usage of the concept of masculinity cannot be separated from the social and historical contexts that shape and reshape the ever-changing cultural definitions of what it means to be a man (Williams XII). In other words, in this context masculinity does not mean "manly," as the specific set of qualities we have assigned to masculinity in our current culture, it means what was thought of as manly or masculine in the particular time and culture being

analyzed.
In Western culture beginning around a century before the Romantic movement, the ideal male was "based on the ideals for pre-Christian warriors and rulers" (Stuber 9). The qualities expected of men were "very similar to characteristics expected of a knight: prowess and skill in competition, courage, and loyalty: first and foremost to the leader" (Stuber 9). The lawful, chivalrous male was the standard to which men were compared.
The ideal man of the post-Romantic age, the mid-19th century through today, contains a different variety of characteristics. Though the gender roles for men have remained basically the same, the revolutionary ideas and new concepts of the Romantic era changed much of what was thought of as masculine for hundreds of years before. Specifically through the popularization of the Byronic hero. During the Romantic period, the law-abiding chivalrous man gives way to the self-sufficient, fiercely independent, impassioned man of the new era. In reference to the early Romantic period, the time in which Romantic ideas had begun to spread across the Western world, Anthony Retundo states the following: “‘Male’ passions were now given freer rein. Ambition, rivalry, and aggression drove the new system of individual interests, and a man defined his manhood not by his ability to moderate the passions but by his ability to channel them effectively” (3). The ideals of absolute loyalty to one's leader and chivalrous honor were changed into the self-sufficient independence and passion of the Byronic hero. The hero's signature vigor and assertiveness became the radical new standard for ideal masculine traits. For such a notable change in what had been an almost stagnant set of masculine standards and ideals for centuries, there were several contributing causes.
Even now that parallels between the Byronic hero of the Romantic era and the masculine ideals thereafter have been established, it may seem unlikely that a concept as common as a character type in fiction can have an effect on a culture to the degree that I claim. To understand this transition, the conditions under which it occurred must be detailed. Firstly, the extent to which the Byronic hero was popularized during the Romantic era must be understood. Lord Byron became a highly well-known poet in his time, becoming even more famous in the years following his death in 1824. His poetic works became distributed throughout the Western world with a pace greater than most authors before him could even imagine through the efficiency of mass production of books and literature in a newly industrial age. Literature became more affordable and accessible to the people of Western societies, making the Romantic movement one of the most widespread and revolutionary, and introducing the previously lofty or aristocratic tradition of poetry and literature into popular culture. Any work deemed popular in the Romantic era would have been much more widely read than a work considered popular in the Western world before the development of efficient industrial printing techniques, and in the Romantic era Byron’s works and signature character of the Byronic hero were considered very popular. The Byronic hero then became even more thoroughly integrated into popular Western culture by being popularized by other authors and artists in different forms of media. The “Byronic hero quickly moved from Byron's already popular poetry into the most popular forms of nineteenth-century culture, and countless novels and operas wove the figure into the fabric of European and American consciousness” (Mosse 133). Even having established the high saturation of the Byronic hero in popular media, the assertion that something as trivial as a character type could end up changing something as integral to a society’s culture as masculinity may still cause skepticism. To assuage this skepticism, the noted and almost direct link between ideals established in literature and societal expectations during this period must also be demonstrated.
At this time, the literary text, the poem, and the play became the dominant medium by which models of masculinity were presented to society and negotiated. As a result of their wide circulation and popularity, they provided society with models or types of masculine self-fashioning which became a foundation of the cultural dialogue, especially during the latter half of the seventeenth century, concerning what it meant to be a man. (Williams XIII)
As brought up previously, the concept of masculinity or manhood does not stem from inside the self, but is created in our culture (Kimmel 5). The cultural medium from which notions of masculinity were contrived during this era in Western history was primarily that of literature, and throughout the millennia of recorded history masculine ideals for expected male behavior have been based off of socially constructed images of the “ideal man” (Williams XII). The popular stereotype of ideal male behavior in the Romantic movement was that of the Byronic hero, presented to the populus primarily through literature but also through a wide variety of other media. It was through these means that the Byronic hero became a part of the Western standards of masculinity.
The Byronic hero has inarguably made an impact on popular Western culture, but when examined more closely, it can be found that the Byronic hero has actually impacted the views of manhood and masculinity held within this culture. Though the social construct of masculinity is complex to say the least, the Romantic era was an ideal time to infuse the movement’s specific ideals into Western culture in a lasting way. Perhaps this is only one aspect of many to change and shape our cultural perceptions of masculinity, but the popularization of the Byronic hero character type in the Romantic era resulted noticeable changes on the ideals associated with masculinity in post-Romantic Western culture as a whole.