Abstract
When the poet of Don Juan Canto XIV exhorts abolitionist William Wilberforce to teach all tyrants ‘that “sauce for goose is sauce for gander”, / And ask them how they like to be in thrall’ (83), the adage hints at a sexual politics, too, in the apposition of tyrant with the gander-gender. But it is male thraldom that proves the warmer concern — no less so for Byron, especially in the arena in which this was most likely, the domestic affections. ‘Indeed I do love Lord [Holland],’ he assured Lady Blessington in 1823, the year Canto XIV saw print, in prelude to this sigh:
though the pity I feel for his domestic thraldom has something in it akin to contempt. Poor dear man! he is sadly bullied by Milady; and, what is worst of all, half her tyranny is used on the plea of kindness and taking care of his health. Hang such kindness! say I. She is certainly the most imperious, dictatorial person I know—is always en reine.1
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Wolfson, S.J. (2007). Don Juan and the Shiftings of Gender. In: Stabler, J. (eds) Palgrave Advances in Byron Studies. Palgrave Advances. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230206106_13
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