브라우닝의 「안드레아 델 사르토」 : 빅토리안 성 이데올로기에 대한 비평

Abstract

This essay argues that “Andrea del Sarto,” probably Robert Browning’s greatest short dramatic monologue, shows that the poet takes up the gender issue and deals with (un)manliness, gender roles, and female sexuality, and that the poem demonstrates Victorian men are weakened by their dependency on the power they have over women. The male character’s enervation derives from the Victorian concept of masculinity, which held that power and autonomy were a privilege reserved for men, not women. “Andrea del Sarto” might be read as a study in unmanly and unwomanly conduct. It is Lucrezia who plays the “dominant” role-reserved in Victorian gender dynamics for men, while Andrea is in the “passive” position-believed by Victorians to be the role of women. Lucrezia displays clear features which are atypical of the popular ideal woman image of Victorian society-“the angel in the house,” like submissiveness, self-sacrifice, passiveness, and gentleness. Browning’s poem is, in certain respects at least, an astonishingly strong anti-patriarchal polemic. This essay tries to show Browning’s resistance and criticism against the Victorian patriarchal gender politics, which is oppressive for women and undesirable for men at the same time. Reading “Andrea del Sarto” as Browning’s dramatic monologue with a critique of patriarchal Victorian gender ideology, this paper confirms Browning as a progressive social critic who questioned the Victorian traditional separate spheres ideology.