Questions Juvenal Asks Today
Using Laronia
Laronia is a character created by the speaker in Juvenal's Satire 2. He created her to co-opt her words in his attack on fake moralists. Laronia is primarily defending women against the charge of adultery. Her defensive position becomes clearer when she is read alongside Juvenal's Satire 6. However, Juvenal brings her on stage to use her words puts against the hypocritical moralist. The speaker in Juvenal's satires lumps women and effeminate men into the same category - an "other". The fake moralists' determination to rid Rome of adulterous women can be seen as an effort to extricate himself from that category. The speaker's attack on women in Satire 6 clearly shows his view and attitude toward women. Hence, Laronia is a product of the speaker's misogynistic tendency. S.H.Braund has brilliantly argued these points in A woman’s voice?—Laronia’s role in Juvenal Satire 2.
According to Braund, Laronia owes her voice, her attack and her response to the speaker. She is not a real woman. Having played her part on his stage she is immediately sent off to be attacked by the speaker in Satire 6. Laronia, Braund draws two conclusions. Laronia is not a real woman and
satire, ancient and probably modern too, is a male, or rather a masculine, mode of discourse.
For clarity's sake, I will give an inexhaustive account of the speaker's attack on women in Juvenal 6 and Laronia's speech in Satire 2 in a series of charge and counter charge. Then I will draw attention to the questions Juvenal poses to us today.
CHARGE: In 6.311-13, the speaker accuses Roman women of being lesbians. Their immorality, he wants his audience to believe, knows no bounds. It reaches an unprecedented height during the Bona Dea rites. Then they will sleep with anyone - a lover, his brother, a slave, a water carrier. If men are in short supply, he says
They’re ready and willing to go down on all fours and cock their dish for a donkey. (6.334 - 35)
COUNTER CHARGE: Laronia says men are worse. According to her, they overturn sexual roles by being the passive partner in homosexual intercourse.
Besides, you will never find our sex indulging in such detestable perversions – we’re not in the habit of giving tongue to each other’s parts! But Hispo pleasures youths both ways...(2.48-51)
CHARGE: Juvenal berates women for their obsession with beauty. This obsession, he claims, can morph into viciousness if the makeup or hairstyle goes wrong. And who suffers for it? The slaves who did the makeup and styled the hair.
‘Why is this curl out of place?’ the lady screams, and her rawhide
lash inflicts chastisement for the offending ringlet. (6.493-94)
She has salaried floggers who beat these slaves if her husband doesn't respond to her sexual advances in bed. (6.476-82)
The speaker also denies her a conscience because of her emerald choker, weighty earrings and pendants.
her conscience is nil, once she’s adorned her neck with that emerald choker, once she’s weighted down her ear-lobes with vast pearl pendants. (6.458-60)
Her perfumes, he states, are purchased to facilitate adultery.
It’s with her lover in mind that she purchases all those imported Indian scents and lotions. (6.466-67)
COUNTER CHARGE: Laronia, having caught a whiff of perfume, moves closer to the fake moralist and asks,
But tell me, just where did you buy that heavenly perfume I can smell on your bristly neck? Don’t blush to name the boutique! (2.41-43)
And who is he wearing it for?
CHARGE: The speaker accuses women of being the sources of litigations. They are either the plaintiff or the defendant. They are, he says,
full of advice to counsel on opening his case, or presenting special points. (6.245-45)
Women, he thinks, are getting the courtrooms they have no business in.
COUNTER CHARGE: Laronia, by way of question, declares that women don't
take briefs, set ourselves up as experts in civil law, or deafen the courts with (their) pleading (2.52-53)
CHARGE: The speaker also has it in for female wrestlers and athletes. Watching them, he claims, provokes laughter.
see the big coarse puttees wrapped round her ample hams – then wait for the laugh, when she lays her weapons aside and squats on the potty! (6.263-65)
The sports arena, he says, prepares them for the real arena (the marriage bed) and the real opponents (their male partners). (6.246–67)
COUNTER CHARGE: Laronia's response is weaker.
Few women wrestle in Rome… (2.54)
CHARGE: Having questioned the utility of marriage given the male servitude the husband enters into after marriage, Juvenal warns those who insist on marrying "one woman and one only":
But you must include two or three of her lovers amongst your legatees. (6.218-19)
COUNTER CHARGE: Laronia sees men's infidelity as a chance for some women to acquire financial benefits.
It pays well to sleep third in the marriage bed. Get wed, keep mum: discretion spells diamond ear-bobs.(2.61-62)
Juvenal the satirist who created both the speaker and Laronia has given a stage for truth despite the speaker's manipulation of Laronia. For those who choose to allow no separation between Juvenal and the speaker, this conclusion is not a move to absolve Juvenal the author from the charge of misogyny. It is to question if Satire, ancient and modern (in whatever form the second shows itself), can be a platform for truths and lies. Even ugly truths and beautiful lies.
Braund's conclusion - that
Satire, ancient and probably modern too, is a male, or rather a masculine, mode of discourse
-brings up interesting questions. Should men speak for women? And should women speak for men? What is lost and what is gained if one speaks for the other? If Laronia had shared a stage with a speaker who wasn't a misogynist, would Juvenal have given us a satire from which we can draw a conclusion different from Braund's? Can we have a satire that allows free speech?