Byron, Catholicism, and Don Juan XVII

Renascence, Spring 1997 by David E Goldweber

Beatty (152ff.) associates Aurora with authentic religious understanding and with an ideal spiritual life that includes sexuality as well as thoughtfulness, strength, and purity. He notes that Aurora is the true heir to Norman Abbey since she is the only Catholic within it, the only person associated with its original monastic purposes; its windows are as "seraph's wings" (XIII.62) while her eyes are as "seraphs' shine" (XV.45). Aurora alone can restore prelapsarian ideals and "connect Juan and the poem trustingly to their existence" (Beatty 198-99). I agree with Beatty, but I think Aurora idealizes not only spirituality in general but Catholicism in particular; the specificity of her religion is not accessory but essential. As Byron informs us:

She was a Catholic too, sincere, austere,

As far as her own gentle heart allow'd,

And deem'd that fallen worship far more dear

Perhaps because `twas fallen: her sires were proud

Of deeds and days when they had fill'd the ear

Of nations, and had never bent or bow'd

To novel power; and as she was the last,

She held their old faith and old feelings fast.

Her spirit seem'd as seated on a throne

Apart from the surrounding world, and strong

In its own strength-most strange in one so young!

(XV.46-7)

Catholicism is "fallen" in Protestant England, where Aurora resides. England seems the worse for this, since Aurora, even at her young age, shines far above both the foolish people and foolish practices of her "surrounding world" as a beacon of principle and forbearance. Thus, Norman Abbey's other lady-visitors are caricatured as "Miss Raw, Miss Flaw, Miss Showman, and Miss Knowman [and] Miss Audacia Shoestring" (XV.40-42); their society is like a "masquerade" in which "The guests were placed according to their roll" (XV.74). Aurora is "purer than the rest" (XV.SS), maintaining "self-possession" amidst the fakery of the dinner's hot "tumult of fish, flesh, and fowl" (XV.74).

Lady Adeline, the matchmaker-matron of Norman Abbey, might have encouraged Juan to speak with Aurora, but Adeline sees the young woman as "prim, silent, cold" (XV.49) due to what the narrator tells us is an inappropriate and inexplicable "prejudice . . . against a creature / As pure as sanctity itself from vice" (XV.52). Aurora is in fact silent, but, as Byron tells us, this silence is "Shakespearian" in that "There was a depth of feeling to embrace / Thoughts, boundless, deep, but silent too as Space" (XVI.48). Happily, Juan sees a richness in Aurora's quiet propriety. To him, Aurora is "a Catholic, / And therefore fittest [to be his wife]" (XV.50). He senses this fittingness when he realizes that Aurora is the opposite of Haidee, the primitive pagan island-girl whom Juan once loved (see cantos II-IV). As we learn, "the difference" between Haidee and Aurora "Was such as lies between a flower and a gem" (XV.59). Aurora is thus "High" in birth, unlike "lost Haidee . . . Nature's all" (XV.58). Aurora is like a work of art rather than nature, and this is, says Byron, a "sublime comparison" (XV.59). Aurora does not spring quickly up from the ground only to perish in one season; her essence endures, admired through ages.