#ask byron

[bogusbyron]

Valjean kissing Javert on his bald head for les mis requests? :3

more surface area for kisses, clearly ...

[therogerclarkfanclub]

The cast of Red Dead Redemption 2

🌞 Tahiti Edition 🌞

[pynkhues]

omg that analysis was everything!! thank you sm! really was a palette cleanser. would love the continuation with the parts you didn't get to - his relationship with jonah and the dynamic within the rue royal household. the housewife insult from claudia really did a number on the fandom's reading of louis. (still not over people seriously considering him the embodiment of "edwardian housewife" archetype while lestat is a classic patriarch. dunno if i wanna laugh or cry).

(x)

Thank you! And yeah, I think I've mentioned it before, but it's interesting to me that so many people take both Claudia's housewife insult and Grace's white daddy insult as effectively one-to-one attributes instead of as weapons of emasculation to not only try and hurt Louis, but to goad him into action.

The dynamic of the Rue Royale household is probably it's own entire answer, and one that might be best answered after I've finished my re-watch, but yes! Let's talk about Jonah. Or, well, about sex, haha.

Virtue and the gothic heroine

One of the key attributes of a gothic heroine is her virtue, because Gothicism as a genre is rooted intrinsically in the loss of that virtue. What that means or looks like exactly changes – in the earliest stories within the genre, that loss of virtue was a result of perversion or corruption and usually spelled doom for the heroine, and in later stories it marked a point of transformation or metamorphosis where the loss of that virtue often came to symbolise a transition from girlhood to adulthood.

Virtue was, and still is, often depicted in the genre through virginity as excellently stated in the paper Female Virtue in Gothic Literature 1780-1810 “female morality was irrevocably intertwined with a sexual code of conduct. Daughters…were reminded that their most important attribute was intact virginity and wives were constantly retold their worth relied upon their chastity and therefore their ability to bear legitimate children.”

This came to define gothic literature, and her loss of virginity became pretty vital as a character beat as it would mark this loss of agency which I talked about a bit in the last post. Significantly too though, the gothic heroine usually has men after her virtue. Which, well, - -

As put in this paper Haunted Heroines: An Examination of the Complication of the Gothic Heroine: “She is the object of the perverted sexual desire of older men, above all representing the innocence and purity that the men are themselves negations of.”

Typically, when she did lose her virginity, she’d end up with three options: she could marry the man who took her virginity, she could “give up the idea of marriage and take holy orders” (aka become a nun), or she could die. Regardless of the decision she makes, the actual choice is a really marked moment for the gothic heroine, as it’s often the only actual moment of agency she gets in a story which is invested in her disempowerment. She has to give herself away – to a husband, to God, or to death – because the gothic, particularly the female gothic, understands that once her body has been taken by a man, it can never be her own again for better and for worse.

Claudia loses her virginity way back in season 1, but she’s robbed even of that momentary agency, because her body itself stays virginal. She does not get to make a choice. The monstrosity of Claudia’s making is that she will never not be an innocent, the virtuousness that men seek to take from her can never be taken, and thus she is never allowed transformation, she is never allowed her moment of agency, and she can never belong to another. It re-emphasises her arrested development, but it also keeps her trapped as the gothic heroine in Louis and Lestat’s house forever. There is no getting out for Claudia, she dies without transformation, she dies so that she can be mourned by the monsters in the house.

The Byronic Hero and the Past

On the flip side of that, the Byronic Hero is, inherently, a romantic, both physically and poetically, or as Jean Ann Bates put in her excellent 1949 essay “The Byronic hero is distinguished by the clearly defined existence of sensuousness and its antithesis, sensitiveness.” After all, as an archetype, he’s based on Lord Byron who fucked his way through Venice while producing some of the most romantic poetry ever, in history.

Bates continues:

“The Byronic hero is almost always a man with a mysterious past. This past is usually surmised to be of wickedness and sin, and our hero is periodically haunted by feelings of remorse concerning it…the mood of the Byronic hero is one of intense melancholy and pessimism; yet we feel underlying this apparently static exterior, the beat of throbbing life energy. Like the Corsair, the Byronic hero is ‘warp’d by the world of disappointment. He seems to loathe himself and all mankind, and is always one apart from his fellow creatures…The Byronic hero’s  character is amoral rather than immoral…The Byronic hero is all that is characteristic of the somewhat jaded cosmopolitan man of the world.”

The whole essay’s a great read, and I think again, really encapsulates Louis’ character, but I wanted to talk a little bit about this sense of a mysterious past and one surmised to be of wickedness and sin, because I think it’s an overlooked part of Louis’ arc.

Because he tells us in such soaring, and romantic detail, this large portion of his life, it can be easy to think we know all of it, when really, there’s a lot we don’t know about Louis as a young man. We meet him when he’s 33-years-old, we know that his father is dead, that the sugar plantation his father owned went broke, that he and his brother had a chapter of their shared life where they shuffled for pennies, but we lack a lot of context beyond these glimmers of what Louis tells us.

In particular, we don’t really know that much about his sexual history before Lestat, which is actually pretty typical of the Byronic Hero. Think the reveal of Rochester’s wife in Jane Eyre or Heathcliff’s three year absence where he mysteriously returns wealthy in Wuthering Heights and soon marries Isabella, the Byronic Hero has chapters that remain unrevealed to us, and part of that is often soaked in sexual or romantic undertones.

In the first episode, Louis talks about the fact that he didn’t consider himself a homosexual, which I think can become a focus, but I’m more interested in the earlier exchange with Daniel where Louis articulates using Lily as cover for his sexuality.

If you take this scene at face value, and look at it on its own, Louis’ saying yes, he had urges towards men, but his faith was keeping him in check, only if you look at it with the scene before it, we see him refuse to enter the church confessional after joking with Paul that Paul is wasting people's time as he has nothing to confess. An implication, perhaps, that Louis knows that he does.  

My reading of that has always been that Louis was sleeping with men in New Orleans long before Lestat came into the picture, and probably a fair few, but the show plays with Louis’ unreliable narration and the mystery of his sexual history to shroud that really until Jonah’s introduction. Jonah, after all, not only confirms that Louis had been with other men prior to Lestat, (as does Louis’ familiarity with the bayou as a gay hook up site), and that he wasn’t keeping much of anything at bay through the threat of absolution, but that he was sleeping with boys.

Louis’ 33 when he’s turned in 1910, and we know from the notice in this episode that we’re now in 1917, so Louis should be 40. We don’t know how old Jonah is, but given they look like contemporaries now, I think you could pretty safely gauge that if Louis was hooking up with him when Jonah was 16, he was probably in his mid-twenties. The context of the era is, of course, important, and there are a million reasons why Louis might have taken the opportunity with a teenager (although I think given Louis’ relationship with power, particularly in the NOLA era, we can assume that plays a role) but the narrative choice of the show to make Jonah a teenager when they hooked up – just like the choice to have Madeleine sleep with a Nazi teenager – is a deliberate ethical muddying of the waters to show that these elements of the monstrousness and the predator existed in him prior to his turning.

Louis is not, and has never been virtuous. He is not chaste when Lestat first has sex with him, and he is not an innocent when Lestat turns him. He can’t be corrupted, because, like a true Byronic hero, he is corrupt.

I could talk more here about the Paris park hook-ups, or the 128 boys in San Francisco (literally the most Byron thing imaginable to fuck your way through the city and then try and write a book about your ex lmao), but I think it’s worth leaving it at the New Orleans era, because I think what Jonah represents is not just Louis’ tendency to paint himself in the best light, but the mystery of his past and his inherent sexual agency which is vital to a Byronic hero. Louis is deeply feeling, and he’s capable of being in love with Lestat and having his heart dance with another man, he’s allowed sexual agency and sexual freedom even if it does lead to a bitter fight with Lestat because he's not under the thumb of the patriarch, he is one of the patriarchs. Lestat might follow after all, he might watch, but he doesn’t interrupt, he doesn’t exert control, in fact he fills the house with other men to offer Louis the deepening of depravity even through his own jealousy and, notably, empties the house when Louis tells him to.

Again, this goes back to what I was saying in the last post, but Louis doesn’t lack agency. The townhouse is not a prison to him, Lestat’s patriarchal, yes, but so’s Louis, he’s just more emotionally manipulative about how he keeps Claudia close to him. Louis' sexuality is a huge part of him, but it also doesn't define him in the way Claudia's virginity does. After all, for Claudia her sexuality is symbolic of her eternal chastity and girlhood, a gothic heroine locked in a prison of her own innocence, whereas for Louis, it gets to be so much more, because as a Byronic Hero, he gets to be so much more.

[enlitment]

Top 5 underappreciated historical figures!

Thanks for the ask! This one was super fun, but also super difficult to answer. I've purposefully avoided mentioning the ladies of the French Revolution, since I have another question specifically about them lined up.

With that being said, in no particular order:

Fulvia

Anyone in the classics circle likely knows much more about her than I do, but I'm so glad I've discovered her through Tumblr! All of the things I've learned about her so far have been so interesting. It's incredible to see how much political (and military) power a Roman woman was able to yield despite living in a deeply patriarchal society.

(also, the part of me that loves drama really appreciates the story about her stabbing Cicero's tongue with hairpins after the proscriptions and Octavian's atrocious poem about her)

2. Émilie du Châtelet

Also hardly a surprise for anyone who's been following me for a while. Again, the fact that I've only relatively recently found out that there was a female mathematician and physicist in the fist half of the 18th century with such significant contributions to the field makes me almost feel as if I've been lied to.

She is special to me both because she was incredibly smart (she was able to understand Newton like few other people in her time and she spoke so many languages!) but there's also something about her writing that makes her feel deeply human and relatable. I've read some of her texts, and not only are they written in a beautiful prose but they're also incredibly moving. Her view on how to achieve happiness in life is one of the best I've ever came across, and her arguments for the education of women always make me feel so emotional...

...when she says that it was only after she realised that the circle of (male) French intellectuals accepted her among themselves and treated her as equal that she realised she too "might be a thinking creature"... I don't know, there's something about it that always gets to me.

Okay, time to introduce some male historical figures as well! This one is a residue from the time when I was really into the American Revolution.

3. Peter Stephen Du Ponceau

He was probably the only one in Baron von Steuben's original group that was able to speak decent English when they first arrived in the US to join the revolutionary war, which a) makes him quite important b) is kind of funny to think about.

But what I especially like about him is that he was a talented linguist who seemed to have genuine respect for other cultures, which let's face it, was quite rare in his times. While taking part in the American Revolutionary War, he recorded and studied the languages of Native American People. How cool is that?

(He was also potentially queer and I do have a soft spot for queer history)

Okay, guess should bring up someone interesting from Czech history as well. I fully confess that my own country's history is not necessarily my favourite area of study, but for her, I'll always make an exception:

4. Milena Jesenská

Probably most well known as Kafka's (kind of?) girlfriend/pen pal, but there is so much more to her story!

She was a writer and a journalist during the first half of the 20th century. She was really talented and soon made a reputation for herself, which let's face it, wasn't an easy thing to do for women in her time.

After Czechia became occupied by Nazi Germany, she joined the resistance movement and helped Jewish families to escape. She was later transported to a concentration camp, where she worked as a nurse and was said to have been "a moral support for other prisoners". She unfortunately died there when she was only 47. Still, what a life!

5. John Polidori

He's not necessarily my number one favourite person but I'd argue he is one of the most unappreciated figures. Vampires in fiction are massively popular but he rarely gets credited as one of its first authors. (Also the theory that Lord Ruthven, the charismatic, immoral aristocrat featured in The Vampyre is heavily based off on Lord Byron is not only entirely plausible but also quite funny).

Whenever I read something about the Geneva Squad, I always end up feeling kind of bad for him. As a foreigner, someone who was of a lower social status and - since he technically came along as Byron's personal physician - a paid employee, it just seems to me like he was never actually fully part of the group. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me, he felt kind of like a perpetual outsider. Lord Byron also got the credit for writing The Vampyre that should have gone to Polidori.

He was of course far from a perfect saint, with his drug and gambling addiction, but I still can't help but feel that he deserved better.

[barmy-demon]

you should draw marius being a silly guy

Not the best time to be silly but that’s not gonna stop him

[is-the-19thcentury-man-okay]

I was very pleased with my English 1820s man. I made sure he had enrichment of a scholarly nature, to balance out the Romantic tendencies they have. He took to studying classical history and language, and I confess I was proud to have such an intelligent 19th century man. More recently he took an interest in current affairs but, as he is quite young, I assumed this was a sign of maturing. Then, just like that, he ran away! I went out searching and a neighbour informed me that he'd gone to Greece to fight against the Ottomans! I was horrified and went straight there, but I found him with a pack of Greek 1820s men and he adamantly refused to come home. What should I do? I worry that he will get hurt fighting, or that his constitution will not survive rough living in the Greek mountains. But he's having such a good time. He is learning the modern iteration of Greek (such a clever man), enjoys the local cuisine, and even wants to dress like his new friends. Is he in great danger if I let him stay, and how could I take him home without breaking his heart? (I don't want to risk any of those Greek 1820s men getting angry either, if I take their lucky mascot away.) Many thanks for your advice!

Romanticism and nationalism make for a very potent combination, as you have learned by now, and for many 19th century men of a certain social class and level of education, the attraction of the Classical world adds another layer of mythical folklore; not to mention the allure of pagan ceremony and skimpy neoclassical clothes.

For 1820s-1830s men, the Byronic appeal of exotic "Eastern" nations can be irresistible, and in general you will find a lot of national myth-making and interest in folk costumes.

Lord Byron in Albanian dress, 1813. This man is not Albanian!

You also have to be aware of your 19th century man's possibly very different ideas of national and imperial boundaries. He learns the polka in Bohemia, he wants to fight the Ottomans, he wants to fight in the Miguelite war—he might support Romantic German nationalism! It's not always the national and cultural understandings of the 21st century.

Being British is also not a guarantee of sensible behaviour. You might think that your British naval officer is going to rest on his laurels after the Napoleonic Wars, and the next thing you know, he's leading a fleet in the Chilean Independence movement!

Thomas Cochrane, naval officer for hire.

19th century men are not for the faint of heart. It can be challenging to balance their Romantic desires with a sensible course of action. Since your man has already spent so much time with his new Greek friends and has embraced their lifestyle, you could suggest that it's important that he document his experiences in a travel narrative that will also champion their cause.

As much as possible, you want to convince him that he's very valuable as a writer and/or visual artist giving voice to a cause—too valuable to foolishly risk his life or ruin his health abroad.

[daradiostarzz]

So I'm still thinking about this AU's name but I will tell u (it's mostly a rewrite of HNAS and uh Buried Secrets)

[askthebrawlers]

Hey Edgar, psst- have a cookie for your hard work at the gift shop 🍪🍪🍪 hope you get to keep your tips today :'D

Ed: Thanks, but if Colette doesn't pocket any of the tips before Griff gets to them, we won't be getting much.

[violent138]

what does em byronic hero mean

I could've sworn I've answered this before but Tumblr's being mean and hiding it. I was a mediocre student of English so apologies to anyone who thinks I'm flattening them, but a Byronic hero is an archetype named for Lord Byron (who made them famous). They tend to be closer to anti-heroes and are usually innately opposed to mainstream society. Key traits include being intelligent, self-destructive, deeply flawed, tragic past, broody, possibly violent, and a massive hit with the ladies.

As I am a little behind on my hero's journey to fully becoming this devastating loner with unbeatable charisma, I am an em-byronic hero ;)

[bogusbyron]

request for @alilsakurablossom :-)

[burningvelvet]

When you mentioned The strange thread between James Dean and lord byrion I remembered this fanart that I saw a while ago and though "how strange it is to compare between these two, they are very far away from each other" such a coincidence

AHHHHHH!!!! whoever made that must have been a james dean fan who knew his middle name was byron and also made the connection themselves i'm guessing. but yeah that's still crazy

[pynkhues]

I don't dislike Grace because none of the characters are perfect and this is probably asking a lot of a woman in 1910, but I really hated how she let her mom blame Louis for Paul's death, and treat him horribly, with very little pushback. Telling Louis "Don't let it inside" doesn't help much. But that's looking at things from a 21st century lens, for one.

I mean, they're not a family who communicates well at the best of times, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a small part of her that blames him too. It was interesting to re-watch the ep last night and see how much the family just doesn't know what to do with Paul, but that there's really no shortage of love for him. He was institutionalised in Jaccksonville until their father died, and it's implied that Louis and their mother made the decision together to bring him home given the two-hander between them at breakfast, and are now effectively paying off the church to care for him.

It's a really interesting thread here, because in many ways Louis' both father and son for Florence in a way I don't think I picked up on the first time watching. He's patriarch of the family, but ultimately deferrent to Florence's matriarch, and this makes him both father and brother to Grace in the way that he'll later be both father and brother to Claudia.

And look, I do think Louis deep down knows it's not enough, but Grace is the only character to try and reconcile that in a scene I find super interesting, because Louis shifts directly between those roles - concerned and equal brother at first, and then shutting her down in a way that I would describe as quite paternalistic.

Paul's Grace's brother too, and what gets me about this scene is that it's like she can see it. She is worried, she is exploring their options, she's not ignoring the problem in the way that both Louis and their mother are, and it's a pattern that ultimately Louis repeats with Claudia. That paternalistic thread in him dismisses and diminishes the voices of women - including the women that he loves - in order to protect his own feelings, his own interests, his own priorities, under the guise of looking after those who can't look after themselves. The fact that immediately after this he tries to soften the harshness with the extravagant wedding gift too - again, Grace is a prized and spoilt daughter.

Paul's death is nobody's fault, he is so well-loved, but Grace, like Claudia, is voiceless and disempowered in her own family, and Louis offers her brotherhood with one hand and slams a hand on the table as her father with the other.

[randomartblogowo]

NASCAR, buddy uhm, what happened here 😭

[thatthingilovewith]

second question (annoying) who is bobbins favorite nascar driver

William Byron, I'm gonna be real I know nothing about NASCAR I just looked up the racers and this guy looks like he likes to start shit!! So I picked him.

[salon-maiden-anabel]

If I may, follow up to Roark as a Lati: Byron as a Lati?

SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG TO RESPOND TO but hands you an old man

[chiropteracupola]

fall is here again... you can tell this by the fact that my fingers are all cold and too stiff to knit because I was infodumping outdoors for hours once again