Characteristics of the Byronic Hero


The Byronic hero–so named because it evolved primarily due to Lord Byron’s writing in the

nineteenth century—is, according to Peter Thorslev, one of the most prominent literary

character types of the Romantic period:

Romantic heroes represent an important tradition in our literature . . .. In England we

have a reinterpreted Paradise Lost, a number of Gothic novels and dramas . . . the

heroic romances of the younger Scott, some of the poetry of Shelley, and the works of

Byron. In all of these works the Byronic Hero is the one protagonist who in stature and

in temperament best represents the [heroic] tradition in England. (Thorslev 189)

A Byronic hero exhibits several characteristic traits, and in many ways he can be considered a

rebel. The Byronic hero does not possess «heroic virtue» in the usual sense; instead, he has

many dark qualities. With regard to his intellectual capacity, self-respect, and hypersensitivity,

the Byronic hero is «larger than life,» and «with the loss of his titanic passions, his pride, and his

certainty of self-identity, he loses also his status as [a traditional] hero» (Thorslev 187).

He is usually isolated from society as a wanderer or is in exile of some kind. It does not matter

whether this social separation is imposed upon him by some external force or is self-imposed.

Byron’s Manfred, a character who wandered desolate mountaintops, was physically isolated

from society, whereas Childe Harold chose to «exile» himself and wander throughout Europe.

Although Harold remained physically present in society and among people, he was not by any

means «social.»

Often the Byronic hero is moody by nature or passionate about a particular issue. He also has

emotional and intellectual capacities, which are superior to the average man. These

heightened abilities force the Byronic hero to be arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive, and

extremely conscious of himself. Sometimes, this is to the point of nihilism resulting in his

rebellion against life itself (Thorslev 197). In one form or another, he rejects the values and

moral codes of society and because of this he is often unrepentant by society’s standards.

Often the Byronic hero is characterized by a guilty memory of some unnamed sexual crime.

Due to these characteristics, the Byronic hero is often a figure of repulsion, as well as

fascination.

Harold Bloom notes that «[b]etween them, the Brontes can be said to have invented a relatively

new genre, a kind of northern romance, deeply influenced both by Byron’s poetry and to the Elizabethan

drama» (1). When Byron died at the age of thirty-six in 1824, Bronte was but eight years old.

Bronte’s youthful age, however, did not preclude Byron and his works from having a profound

effect on her and her writing; indeed, the «cult» of Lord Byron flourished shortly after his death

«dominating [the Brontes’] girlhood and their young womanhood» (Bloom 2). Of the Bronte

sisters’background, Tom Winnifrith comments that a «study of the Brontes’juvenilia provides

confirmatory evidence of the sisters’preoccupation with the aristocracy, their emancipation

from Victorian prudery, and the attraction of the Byronic hero, beautiful but damned» (4)

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