KAREN ALKALAY-GUTremarks, the "'grim web' conveys the sinister rapaciousness of Jenny's
greed; the dead insects, the dirty profits." 8 ) Yet, ultimately, the speaker's
studied distance from his subject carefully and consciously makes him feel
ashamed of his revulsion toward her body and releases him from any kind
of romantic fantasy. In the end, he remains unwilling to "mock" her "to the
last" (43), appreciating instead how and why she earns her living through
sexual labor.
This absence of intimacy between the male viewer and the female object
of desire is apparent in many of Swinburne's early poems. Since their
publication, the contents of Poems and Ballads have been considered
problematic because of their representation of perverse sexuality in proso-
dically assured forms that seem uninterested in any moral framework.
Swinburne's reputation has often rested on two seemingly negative quali-
ties: first, his incomparable ability to fashion mellifluous, if overextended,
poems whose mesmerizing sounds frequently override sense; and second,
his eagerness to voice shocking ideas about aspects of human behavior that
can still repulse readers. Jerome J. McGann writes that Swinburne became
"[n]otorious as a poet of frenzy and incoherence," not least because he was
"the most complete of the nineteenth-century hellenes," whose pagan
"revulsion from ordinary Christian standards was recognized and resented"
in an often hostile press. 9
These qualities are evident in "Dolores" (1866), a sacrilegious poem
addressed to "Our Lady of Pain." In his initial description of this female
figure, Swinburne's speaker paints a weirdly idealized portrait of an
estranging, indifferent, and unloving woman. Focusing on the heavy eyelids
that suggest self-absorption and world-weariness, the opening stanza
begins by itemizing Dolores's physical features, giving the impression of a
fragmented face, a series of details with no power. Thereafter, the concen-
tration shifts to the overall effect of eyes, lips, and mouth, all of which
express the suffering that Dolores imposes upon her subjects.
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
Red mouth like a venomous flower;
When these are gone by with their glories,
What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
O mystic and sombre Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain? (ACS I, 154)Swinburne represents Dolores's depths of pain and sorrow and her indiffer-
ence to her worshippers as an affront to the forms of compassion and
forgiveness associated with the Virgin Mary and reinforces this contrast in
232