Prompt 3: An Examination of the Male-Female Relationship using Dido and Aeneas

So Dido pleads, and her poor sister carries

these lamentations, and she brings them back

for lamentation cannot move Aeneas;

his graciousness toward any plea is gone.

Fate is opposed, the god makes deaf

the hero’s kind ears.

Book IV, Lines 602-608, p. 94

These lines describe Dido’s final attempts to delay Aeneas’ departure, calling upon her sister to appeal to Aeneas’ senses of decency and propriety. Of many themes suggested by this passage, including the conflicting roles of duty against desire, fate against free will, past and future against the present, one of the most prevalent is the opposition of male and female. Specifically, the male-female antagonistic relationship represented in this passage is that of Aeneas and Dido. Although much of the story would seem to suggest the strictly polarized opposition of the rational, civilized male against irrational, anarchist female, this passage demonstrates the ability of each partner of the relationship to exercise their own free will in choosing the sake of self or the sake of the city. In the first book, Juno demonstrates the ability of the female to corrupt and alter the judgment of male, Aeolus. This evidence contributes to the idea of the corrupting nature of women over normally reasonable man. Within the fourth book, Aeneas appears to wander off course as he succumbs to his basic human desires in his relationship with Dido. Although demonstrating human nature would not appear particularly harmful, human nature suggests his individualism, which runs contrary to the idea of sacrificing the sense of self for the sake of the city. Individualism suggests free will and an ability to alter fate, both of which contradict the idea of the inevitable founding of Rome by the ancestors of Trojan hero, Aeneas. In this passage, Aeneas demonstrates the ability to exercise restraint. Similarly, within the story Dido reveals her ability to maintain control over Carthage, thus exhibiting herrational, civilized nature. Ultimately, Dido makes the choice to pursue her personal passions. The argument could easily be made that the female characters in The Aeneid always act in an irrational, overemotional fashion, but with a deeper look at Dido, the nuances of this male-female antagonism are revealed. Succumbing to individualism does, in a sense, demonstrate disregard the sake of the city, but neither gender suggests a sense of utter conviction to either choosing the sake of the individual or choosing the sake of the city. This passage highlights Aeneas’ ability, as much as Dido’s ability, to exercise that choice. Once Aeneas makes that choice, his humanity is stripped away, as his “kind ears” are “ma[d]e deaf”. Once Dido makes her choice, she pursues, in a way, the most selfish decision imaginable by killing herself, in another sense abandoning her role as leader. In a similar manner, Antigone, can be construed as incredibly strict in its delineation of the male-female relationship as a confrontation of the concepts of personal desire and the sake of the city. But both Creon and Antigone demonstrate nuances in character until their respective choices to support city and personal desires eventually provoke the stagnation of each character. This passage helps validate the nuanced nature of the male-female relationships in The Aeneid, as Dido chooses to pursue her individual desires and Aeneas reject his for the sake of the city.