In the Aeneid, Virgil presents many different people that play roles in the life of Aeneas. From gods and goddesses to mortal men and women, every character has some specific part to play in Aeneas’ impersonal fate. Of these different characters, several are women. In fact, after reading the Aeneid it becomes clear that women play a particularly large role in Aeneas’ life. From Juno to Venus, and Penelope to Lavinia, women seem to directly affect Aeneas’ destiny for good or for worse. However, one can also see that despite exactly how the women affect the hero, they are consistently portrayed in a negative light. Indeed, the women in the poem, whether mortal or immortal, seem doomed to the same fate of being characters who are negatively portrayed as irrational, motivated by selfish desires, and entirely ruled by their emotions.
This negative portrayal shows itself first in the mortal women. Actually we see an example of this “irrationality” of women in one of the very first scenes. In the beginning of the poem as Troy is burning down and being attacked, Aeneas sees Penelope and has the opportunity to kill her. Was it not Penelope who had caused all this trouble as Aeneas reasons? She was the one who had come with Paris to Troy in the name of love not of duty. She had chosen to shirk her responsibilities and duties and left Greece for Troy, thereby causing this whole war between Troy and the Greeks. He does not end up killing her, but the more important thing here is that it introduces the major theme of women and irrationality into the story.
This theme is then picked up on and propagated through the other female characters for the rest of the poem. For example, the next obvious human female character to examine is Dido. Granted Dido is at first portrayed as a strong leader, but as soon as Aeneas shows up, she immediately starts downhill toward being just like all the other female characters in the poem. The main way Virgil seems to portray her is as a young girl in love who does all the wrong things. From the beginning she allows Aeneas to oversee all of her city building projects, which seems like an irrational decision, since she has only known him for a short while. Further, then, it Virgil constantly seems to reemphasize the way in which Dido, who had done so well for her people before, begins to shirk her responsibilities as ruler of her people. There are constant references to the way in which she and Aeneas seem all wrapped up in themselves, so much so, in fact, that it is said Dido is no longer performing as a ruler to her people any longer: “chanting that Aeneas, / one born of Trojan blood, had come, that lovely/ Dido has deigned to join herself to him, / that now, in lust, forgetful of their kingdom, / they take long pleasure, fondling through the winter, / the slaves of squalid craving” (Book IV, lines 254-257). This clearly spells doom for Dido. As soon as she and Aeneas become “forgetful of their kingdom” and instead “take long pleasure,” it is obvious that nothing good will come of this relationship. Indeed, nothing good does come of it, only more occurrences of Dido’s irrationality and shirking of responsibility finish out the scene. Dido learns that Aeneas will leave to fulfill his destiny, and tries to make him stay, but at this point it is far too late. So Aeneas leaves, and Virgil finishes his negative portrayal of Dido, showing her as “maddened by the fates,” and “call[ing] out at last for death” (Book IV, lines 620-621). So she then proceeds to shirk all of her responsibilities to her people and kill herself. As Virgil describes, “When she had gripped this madness in her mind/ and, beaten by her grief, resolved to die, / she plotted with herself the means, the moment” (Book IV, lines 654-656). With such a mind full of madness and irrationality Dido commits suicide and again propagates the negative portrayal of women already in the story.
The next and final mortal female to examine is Queen Amata. She is the queen who is upset about Lavinia, her daughter, is going to marry Aeneas instead of Turnus. Juno knows this and capitalizes on it by sending Allecto to both Queen Amata and Turnus to try to get them to start a war. Allecto is sent to Amata “who is kindled by a woman’s/ anxieties and anger” (Book VII, lines 455-456) and “Then from her blue-gray hair the goddess cast/ a snake deep in Amata’s secret breast, / that, maddened by the monster, she might set/ at odds all of her household” (Book VII, lines 458-461). The plan works and Amata “when/ the serpent’s maddening mischief has slid deep/ within her bowels and traveled all her body, / exciting her with monstrous fantasies, / the wretched queen, indeed hysterical, / rages throughout the city” (Book VII, lines 497-502). From this point on, Amata is portrayed in a wholly negative light and Virgil plays out the descriptions of her as “wretched” and “hysterical,” giving us again another example of the way women are portrayed as hysterical and irrational. Further, Amata is shown as another woman easily overcome by emotion when she hastily commits suicide as she sees the Trojans enter the town during the battle. Had she waited it out, she would have seen that the battle was not yet over, but instead she completely loses hope and chooses death. As Virgil portrays it, she is “dismayed by sudden sorrow” and “mad, she utters many/ wild things in moaning frenzy; she is ready/ to die” (Book XII, lines 805-809). Thus we have another woman, who “suddenly” commits suicide and ends her life irrationally.
However, the negative portrayal of women is not confined to mortals, even in the realm of immortals, both Venus and Juno are portrayed in a very negative light. Actually, Juno may be portrayed as the mot irrational of both mortals and goddesses. Actually, almost all of Aeneas’ problems and trials throughout his whole quest have been due to a grudge that Juno holds against Troy. This is hardly a rational thing to do, but Juno is anything but rational. Her grudge against Aeneas then ends up involving Venus, Aeneas’ mother, who comes to his aid and thus begins a sort of catfight between the two goddesses. Realistically, the goddesses are acting like children, and Virgil portrays them that way. After all, both goddesses know Aeneas’ fate and know that they cannot stop it whether they want to or not. However, this does not stop Juno from delaying Aeneas’ fate just out of spite. This, in fact, is precisely where she goes wrong. She irrationally tries to stop fate even though she knows it cannot be done. All throughout she has been making life difficult for Aeneas for no real reason, because it has no effect on the ends, only the means. Up until the very end she fights in vain against fate. For one, she and Venus conspire together to make Aeneas and Dido fall in love, although they know Aeneas cannot stay with Dido. Further, Juno sends Allecto to stir up war between the Latins and Trojans, again only delaying an unavoidable outcome. And finally, she even interferes with battle, leading Turnus away in an effort to save his life, but ultimately only to delay his necessary death. It is not until the very end that Juno finally gives up her incredibly irrational war against fate, but even so, she still insists on her own terms, those terms being that the Trojans take the Latin language and name and leave Troy in the past. Jupiter, the god most closely aligned with fate, grants her this wish in an effort to stop all of the madness and putting off of fate saying, “Surely, you are sister/ to Jove…for/ deep in your breast there surge such tides of anger. / But come, give up this useless madness: I/ now grant your wish…the body of the Teucrians will merge/ with Latins, and their name will fall away” (Book XII, lines 1102-1110). And so with that the irrationality of Juno finally ends and Aeneas can finally fulfill his fate.
Thus, by the end of Aeneas’ quest, it becomes clear that whether mortal women or goddesses, the women in the poem are constantly associated with irrationality and several other negative character aspects such as the shirking of responsibility and the inclination towards emotional “hysteria.” All affect Aeneas in different ways and all end up with different fates; however, most all fulfill the negative stereotype of the irrational woman. On the other hand, Virgil does leave some doubts about stereotyping women. The most telling example being when he says Aeneas stated, “Enough delays. An ever/ uncertain and inconstant thing is woman,” which is a clear stereotype, and then immediately follows it with this description: “This said, he was at one with the black night” (Book IV, lines 786-788). If that doesn’t make someone question the irony of his seemingly stereotypical female characters, nothing will. So, perhaps they are not portrayed in an entirely negative light, but the negative aspects of irrationality are, nonetheless, clearly there.
