Inferences
on the Absence of Cupid in Venus and
Adonis
Shakespeare
broke Gender norms in the epic poem, Venus
and Adonis, although the omnipotent, androgynous narrator of the epic love
poem introduces what the reader expects to be a male fantasy. Adonis faces a Goddess who’s extroverted
sexually and wants him. Although Venus
embodies the ideal female corporeal, she does not fit the typical feminine
personality. Venus can be perceived as an
“aggressive” or assertive woman in light of traditional gender roles. Venus,
who portrays herself as a sexual object does not overturn the common gender
roles that society expects of women assuming that Venus would not have complete
control over her chosen love object. She
also just desires instant sexual gratification.
In this epic poem, she does: “…sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him, /
And like a bold-faced suitor ‘gins to woo [Adonis]” (Shakespeare 635,
5-6). Typically, women are expected to
desire more than just sexual gratification.
They are expected to desire friendship, companionship, something more
than erotic love (altruistic, fatherly, or motherly).
Adonis,
likewise, fits the ideal physique for his gender. He loves to hunt, and he would seem like he
embodies the perfect heterosexual male. However, he is weak in the field of battle:
“Upon this promise did he raise his chin, / Like a divedapper peering through a
wave / Who, being looked on, ducks as quickly in” (Shakespeare 637, 85-88). So the typical hero archetype attributed to
him goes contrary to heroic form. In
other English epics such as Beowulf and
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the
hero has substantial strength and overcomes difficult tasks. This is not so in Venus and Adonis or in The
Tragedy of Coriolanus, where the soldier-hero is murdered.
In
Shakespeares’s day, relationships were traditionally initiated by the male. Adonis does not, however, pursue Venus. After he did not kiss her, Venus is unhappy. “’O
puty,’ ‘gan she cry, ‘flint-hearted boy! / ‘Tis but a kiss I beg-why art thou
coy?’” (Shakespeare 637, 95-96). But
Adonis desires mainly to hang out with his friends within the homosocial
environment: in the end, Adonis appears to be a weak, uninterested,
uncharismatic man who dies an unmanly death.
And despite being weak, he insists that, “I have been wooed as I entreat
thee now / Even by the stern and direful god of war, / Whose sinewy neck in
battle ne’er did bow / Who conquers where he comes in every jar” (Shakespeare
637, 97-99); the God of War, Mars, has influence over him. Adonis claims to “favor reason” over “lust”
(Shakespeare 653, 792). Although,
Adonis’ obssesion about his reputation with the God of War seems the most
irrational of either Venus or himself despite his preference for reason in
terms of normative gender roles.
Shakespeare,
exceptionally, does not overturn gender roles when it comes to male interest in
war. This results in tragedy because Venus’
aggression fails to protect Adonis, which flips the female role on its head. The absence of Cupid can be said to lead to
this tragedy, because if he had been present, he would have shot an arrow into
Adonis, and Adonis would have fallen in love with Venus. Then Adonis might have heeded her warnings
from her premonition:
“…I thy death should fear;
And more than so, presenteth to mine
eye
The picture of an angry chafing boar,
Under whose sharp fangs on his back
doth lie
An image like thyself, all stained
with gore,
Whose blood upon the fresh flowers
being shed
Doth make them droop with grief, and
hang the head” (Shakespeare 650, 660-6)
In
this premonition it shows the weakness of Adonis: that he is incapable of
killing a measly, smallish creature. A
stereotype of men, and expectation, really, of contemporary society (because of
Nationalism) can be devolved as follows: men go to war or hunt and women do not
(until recently). This separation of
spheres that Shakespeare breaks indicates that men are weak, also, and do not
fare well all the time as expected. The
poem makes a subtle plea to the audience: are all men who cannot go to war, let
alone hunt successfully, and succeed, undesirable? Yet, Shakespeare says this is not so, because
Venus claims she loves Adonis.
Regardless, he does not believe that she truly loves him—that her “love”
for him is in fact an infatuation of some kind:
“If
love have lent you twenty thousand tongues,
And
every tongue more moving than your own,
Bewitching
like the wanton mermaid’s song,
Yet
from mine ear the tempting tune is blown;
For
know, my heart stands armed in mine ear,
And
will not let a false sound enter there” (Shakespeare 652, 775-80)
Venus plays dead in order
to kindle some kind of love from within Adonis: “And at his look she flatly
falleth down, / For looks kills love, and love by looks reviveth…” (Shakespeare
646, 463-4). Venus’ playing-dead
trickery also sets up the reader for the real death of Adonis later on in the
narrative. In a way, Shakespeare uses this
binary opposition—that of make-believe and that of real life. The reader takes away this belief about love
from the epic poem. For a female lover,
Venus, who is unrequited, she must evoke fantasies and delusions in Adonis if she
will take him to bed. In terms of gender
reversal in terms of roles, typically the male dies instead of the female both
in an earlier point in life (women live longer), and also, men sacrifice
themselves in war for their significant other (as well as country). The moral message of the epic poem, as
indicated by the following stanza, suggests that idealized love can only be
realized through death. Only through the
violent, physical touch can one snap the deluded Venus back into life:
“He wrings her nose, he strikers her on the cheeks,
He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard;
He chafes her lips a thousand ways he seeks
To mend the hurt that his unkindness marred”
(Shakespeare 646, 475-8).
Here, violence is shown
to have a place in love, which is actually reflective of heteronormative
sexuality; however, this is one of the few instances in which gender roles are
not reversed.
Cupid’s
absence from the epic poem symbolizes the importance of true love rather than
the necessity of a mythological figure, Cupid, to initiate it. The “true love” described in the poem is
initiated by Venus, the female, herself, in such a way that she is said to
“conquer” Adonis: “Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey, / And
glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth. / Her lips are conquerors, his lips
obey” (Shakespeare 647, 547-8). There
they proceed to have sexual intercourse:
“And having felt the sweetness of the spoils, with blindfold
fury she begins to forage.
Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil,
And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage,
Planting oblivion, beating reason back,
Forgetting shame’s pure blush and honour’s wrack” (Shakespeare
648, 553-58).
Were
Cupid in the poem, Adonis would without a choice love Venus ‘till he dies at an
old age, as wished for by Venus earlier on in the poem. Shakespeare’s convenient omission of Cupid
suggests a loss of power on behalf of Venus, who typically commands Cupid. In terms of gender roles, this loss of power,
according to the moral message of the play, suggests that women should not expect
men to lay before them at an instant. This may or not be a gender role reversal as
it highly depends on the woman in question and her personality.
In
terms of breaking gender norms, nature’s preference for either sex with
egalitarianism in mind, and nature’s preference of humans over other animals in
monotheism, nature prefers Venus. Venus’
uncanny ability to communicate with animals and understand things that Adonis
cannot, either in the form of promonitions, (which is a common motif in
Shakespeare’s plays such as Julius
Caesar, where Caesar’s wife has a vision that he will be murdered),
compensates for her “natural” weakness as a female. This power over nature for it to grant her
clues has many symbolic meanings. The
grasping of her leg by the plant can indicate nature’s sensitivity to her;
nature does not want her to grieve; or nature does not want her to prevent the
death of Adonis, which is predestined:
“And as she runs, the
bushes in the way
Some catch her by the
neck, some kiss her face,
Some twine about her
thigh to make her stay.
She wildly breaketh from
their strict embrace,
Like a milch doe whose
swelling dugs do ache,
Hasting to feed her fawn
hid in some brake” (Shakespeare 655, 871-6).
Also, in that quote, the
narrator calls Adonis a fawn, which is notably an animal: so Shakespeare’s
diction makes use of the opposite of personification, or dehumanization.
Adonis’ death reinforces the theme of gender reversal and
another moral message: gender role reversals can lead to tragedy when a man
ignores a loving woman’s advice. Since
Adonis has faulty reasoning, he goes to hunt the boar and then Venus finds him
dead in a delusion: “If he be dead—O no, it cannot be,” (Shakespeare 656, 937). The moral appears to be this: although the
female lover may appear to have delusions, be weak, or seem stupid, she
rightfully has them. This, even though
society seems to put pressure on the male, who stereotypically desires a sane,
stable woman. Venus later finds out that
she had a delusion, not a vision of the future that proved correct, so events
can prove that the delusional are not in fact delusional:
“O Jove,” quoth she, ‘how much a fool was I
To be of such a weak and silly mind
To wail his death who lives, and must not die
Till mutual overthrow of mortal kind!” (Shakespeare
658,1015-8).
But in Venus’ delusion,
it later proves that she was correct; also, Venus believes she can woo Adonis
and does. Again, likewise, Venus speaks
with animals and they respond. Adonis,
though, in actuality, died, as she had feared:
“And in her haste unfortunately spies
The foul boar’s conquest on her fair delight;
Which seen, her eyes, as murdered with the view,
Like stars ashamed of day, themselves withdrew” (Shakespeare
658, 1029-32).
In the last line above,
note that the narrator alludes to stars, entities that refer to destiny or fate,
a common theme throughout with respect to the gender reversal between men and
women: Adonis and Venus rejected heavenly-sanctioned gender roles, and the
result was therefore fated to be tragic.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William.
“Venus and Adonis." The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford
Edition.
Ed. Greenblatt, Stephen. New York:
Norton and Company, 2008, 635-662. Print.
