Lavinia

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a representação no cinema de duas cenas da peça Tito Andrônico, de William Shakespeare, quais sejam: o estupro de Lavínia, por Quíron e por Demétrio, e sua morte pelo próprio pai, Tito. Ao comparar o texto do dramaturgo inglês à versão cinematográfica da peça – o filme Titus, de Julie Taymor –,  destacaremos que, se por um lado, a renomada diretora mostrou bastante cuidado com a construção da cena do estupro, de tal maneira que o público não sentisse nenhuma sensação de deleite no ato, por outro, não pôde, na cena do assassinato de Lavínia, fugir ao modelo da bela morte sacrifical da figura feminina em nome da honra familiar.

In Vergil’s Aeneid, Lavinia is the only child of King Latinus and the future mother of Rome. The narrative of Vergil’s epic poem turns on whether she will marry Turnus or Aeneas. She is the subject of prophecy, a symbol of virginal eroticism and national identity, an object of desire, the cause of a war and jealous rage. But never once, in Vergil’s epic poem, do we hear her speak.

In Lavinia (2008), Ursula le Guin over-reads Vergil’s representation of Lavinia in two similes from book twelve of The Aeneid in order to give voice to Lavinia as the female author of her own epic. In The Aeneid, the narrator describes Lavinia’s blush as: ‘Indum sanguine veluti violaaverit ostro si quis ebour, aut mixta rubent ubi lilia multa alba rosa/ As when one stains Indian ivory with crimson dye or as when white lilies blush with many a blended rose’ These similes place emphasis on Lavinia’s silent chastity and obedience but give us no insight into the reasons or emotional response behind her physical reaction.

Le Guin reads this as indicative of the patriarchal repression of female experience in the textual field. Through the transformative appropriation of The Aeneid, Le Guin gives voice to a silenced female character. However, through her criticism of, what she calls, ‘feminine voice,’ Le Guin deliberately problematises her novel as a feminist project of rewriting and recovery. Furthermore, through the characterisation of Vergil as a male precursor to Lavinia, who nonetheless happily engages in a dialogue of influence with Lavinia as a new female author, Le Guin contests the theory of a female ‘Anxiety of Influence.’ In this paper, I will explore Le Guin’s complex and often seemingly contradictory representation of female authorship and its anxieties in Lavinia.

Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad was first published in 2005 as part of the Cannongate Myth Series which commissioned authors to retell a myth in ‘a contemporary and memorable way.’ In an introduction to the project, myths are defined as ‘universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives – they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human.’ In the fractured, multiple narratives of The Penelopiad, Atwood collapses, what she perceives to be the culturally constructed gendered tension between written and oral texts. Here, Penelope and her twelve hanged maids are constructed as female authors who, in their alternate myths, present wildly different accounts of female lived experience in ancient Greece. These, in turn, are allowed to play out with the canonical version of patriarchal myth represented in the source text of The Odyssey. Atwood’s construction of female authorship enacts a transformation and manipulation of The Odyssey that contests the myth of The Penelopiad’s commission and the gendered hierarchy of the cultural text itself. Myths are presented as narratives that are especially open to manipulation and the imposition of new and often ideologically motivated meanings and values that are not ‘timeless’ and ‘universal’ but contingent on the new socio-historical context into which they are transposed.

In contrast, Ursula le Guin’s Lavinia, does not deconstruct the gendered tensions she perceives as present in her source text from the outset, rather she utilises this perceived tension to produce an over-reading of The Aeneid. Here, Lavinia is constructed as a frustrated female author who feels trapped by the limitations of her representation in a patriarchally dominant text. Through the use of temporally fractured narratives and slippages of focalization, Le Guin transforms Lavinia into a female storytelling figure that is an equal to her male creator and is shown to surpass, contest and transgress the confines of her patriarchal construction as a silent caricature of femininity. Le Guin utilizes the myth of Lavinia to represent the canonical text, and its interpretation, as a product of chance survivals and accidents of history. In doing so she suggests that it is the value that we place on the process of canonisation itself that should be questioned.

In this paper I will compare these two techniques of narrative fracture and their function in the transformation of classical myth. I will argue that both authors use techniques of narrative fracture to contest the ‘universal’ cultural values placed on canonical texts in an attempt to bring the representation of female characters to equal status with their male counterparts within the texts in question.

Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad was first published in 2005 as part of the Cannongate Myth Series which commissioned authors to retell a myth in ‘a contemporary and memorable way.’ In an introduction to the project, myths are defined as ‘universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives – they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human.’

In the fractured, multiple narratives of The Penelopiad, Atwood employs the techniques of genre change and slippage to enact a transformation and manipulation of The Odyssey in order to contest the myth of her novel’s commission. Myths are presented as narratives that are especially open to manipulation and the imposition of new and often ideologically motivated meanings and values that are not ‘timeless’ and ‘universal’ but contingent on the new socio-historical context into which they are transposed. In doing so Atwood questions the constructed ‘universality’ of canonical texts.

In contrast, Ursula le Guin’s Lavinia presents an over-reading of The Aeneid that employs a temporally fractured narrative and slippages of focalization to transform the Lavinia myth. Le Guin utilizes this myth to represent the canonical text as a product of chance survivals and accidents of history. In doing so she suggests that it is the value that we place on the process of canonisation itself that should be questioned.

In this paper I will compare these two techniques of narrative fracture and their function in the transformation of classical myth. I will argue that both authors use techniques of narrative fracture to contest the ‘universal’ cultural values placed on canonical texts in an attempt to ‘salt the bones’ or prevent the gendered cycle of ‘burial and return’ of repressed elements of the cultural text by bringing the myths associated with female characters to equal status with their male counterparts within the texts in question.