Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Don Juan, Casanova and the Seducers

The myth of the seducer was probably conceived in the late middle ages, during the Age of Chivalry when, under the code, "only a virgin or another man's wife could be the object of chivalrous love"
However, chivalrous love very quickly degenerated into promiscuity and adultery; it is not difficult to see how knights could pledge eternal love (platonic) to his "Lady" and then dream of ways to seduce her. The lady herself probably longed impatiently for adventure and that was the beginning of the myth.

It was not until the time of Casanova that the myth became flesh and blood. Although men had been making love to other men's wives since marriage was first created (probably by the devil himself), seduction as an art form and a mythical adventure only came into its own in the seventeenth century, when Galileo proclaimed the sun the center of the universe and shook the Catholic church and every man's conception of the universe to their very foundations.
"If the earth is round and it revolves around the sun then why can't I make love to my friend's wife?' might seem like a non sequitur to some but it was a good excuse anyway.

Later, we see Don Juan ( a rather clumsy seducer) and much later still, Rudolph Valentino, Clark Gable and many famous and not so famous seducers and "womanizers". The Seducer never "took advantage" of women in the true sense of the phrase he was more of a facilitator- helping women to achieve freedom and satisfaction through sex. The fact that the seducer did not hold himself to a "code of honor" was simply an expression of his disregard for bourgeois conventions.

Who are the Casanovas of today, the mythical reincarnation of our old heroes? Have we abandoned the myth or has feminism made it meaningless?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Seduction is a lost art and as a woman it hurts me to say the feminism has killed it.

There is nothing more pleasurable than being seduced and I think women have no idea of how much power they can have. In my life, I am the seducer and I have yet to name a man I have wanted and not gotten. It gives me a sense of freedom and I know how to use my sex to get what I want. Some women want to be "equals" but we are not. Man and woman are opposites and we need to realize that that is what compliments us.

I have loved and lost and loved again. I choose to love whom I want and as many as I want....and a few are still around, just waiting for one more encounter...