I wouldn’t usually post something about a convention I attended in Pittsburgh for Sigma Tau Delta on my traveling blog, but there were just too many interesting parallels between a paper I presented, current events, and where I am in my life. I left the convention feeling truly inspired, and I’m excited to begin a new chapter in my life. That still counts as a journey, don’t you think? 🙂
It all started in the SeaTac airport on our way to Pittsburgh. I checked my facebook on my phone (like I do every hour…at least), and saw the news about Elizabeth Taylor’s death from heart failure. I was going to Pittsburgh to present my literary criticism on Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, and our modern day Cleopatra was gone?! All the news got me thinking about the relationship between Taylor to Shakespeare’s character, as well as the kind of woman that I am trying to become.
Elizabeth Taylor was an icon of old and new Hollywood. She defined the modern celebrity, and America couldn’t take their eyes off her. Maria Puente of USA TODAY says that she has always “belonged to the ages,” much like the famous Egyptian queen. My essay thesis states that Cleopatra has both feminine (motherly, natural love, sensuality) and masculine (passion for war and status), traits that were separate in first century AD, and many would argue have not changed much.
The same descriptions that my sources give for Cleopatra could be used to describe Taylor. Spencer states, “She defies the withering process of age; she makes her victims hungrier even as she satisfies their appetites,” and Verma states, “She is the quintessential woman.” Taylor, like Cleopatra, was timeless. She left all of us, especially men, wanting more, and she had just as beauty and poise on the day of her death that she did at the height of her career.
And who can deny Taylor’s Cleopatra-like passion for men? With eight marriages to seven husbands, one thinks of Cleopatra’s power, and how she would never give her status up to a man. Taylor was much the same way. She would be inferior to no one. However, like Cleopatra, she loved with all of her heart, and didn’t hold back: “She had a great lust for life–when she fell in love, she fell in love hard.”
Puente goes on to describe Taylor as “immortal, and the most notorious, most tempestuous, and most bejeweled tragic screen star.” No wonder she played such a great Cleopatra.
So, you can see my connection. Needless to say I dedicated my essay to Elizabeth Taylor prior to reading it at my panel (I think I may be the first ever to dedicate a critical essay). The reading went great, and in a panel titled, “16th/17th Century Literature: The Women,” alongside papers about Gertrude, Ophelia, and Eve, everyone seemed to take a special interest in the exotic queen.
My favorite question was from a professor who quoted my favorite line in the play. One reason for Cleopatra’s suicide is so she will die a noble death and not be captivated and taken through the streets of Rome in Caesar’s victory march. She explains to her ladies:
The quick comedians
Extemporally will stage us and present
Our Alexandrian revels: Antony
Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness
I’th’posture of a whore” (V.ii.256-261).
Cleopatra wanted to keep her status after her death, and was afraid that if she was to be captured by Caesar, she would be later imitated by young boys that could do no justice to both her masculine power as a ruler and her feminine beauty as they would portray her as a prostitute. The professor asked about the idea of young boys portraying women on the stage during Shakespeare’s time and my thoughts on what I thought was Shakespeare’s purpose of the line. My response was that I believe Shakespeare recognized that no boy, or man for that matter, could do justice to such a powerful and immortal queen. I related her power to the power that Elizabeth I (ironic names) had during Shakespeare’s time. No boy could do justice to either queen. Today, no one can do justice to the queen of Hollywood. Actresses today just don’t compare (and what actresses Cleopatra, Elizabeth, and Taylor all were!).
So, after a good presentation, another ironic coincidence happened. During some window shopping through some gift shops near the Pittsburgh inclines, we came across a soap store, carrying a “bath blaster” (whatever that is) titled “Cleopatra’s Desire.” Obviously I had to get it. It was a sign. Now all I need is a bath, and hopefully a little bit of that Cleopatra/Liz Taylor confidence, attitude, and power will rub off on me. God knows I need a little of those right now.
Most know that I am going through a difficult time at the moment, as are most college students who are coming to the end of their college careers and getting ready to take the next step into what for most of us is the unknown. I have had many things come to an end at once, and I am feeling a bit lost. However, I get up every morning, look at myself in the mirror, and tell myself that I am my own version of Cleopatra/Liz Taylor.
Eloisa James, author of When Beauty Tamed the Beast, said that Taylor loved “fiercely, blithely and sometimes rashly–but we should all be lucky enough to come to the end of our lives knowing that when love was offered, we leapt at it.” Though the queens needed no man to complete them and make them the immortal women they were, they still loved the men in their life with everything they had. Like the queens, I know I don’t need a man to complete me, but I still want to love ferociously when the time is right and when somebody worth it comes along–even if it means that in the end, it is my heart that brings me to my demise, just as it did Cleopatra and Elizabeth Taylor.
http://khawk34.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/cleopatra%E2%80%99s-androgynous-nature-the-combination-of-feminine-natural-love-and-masculine-passion/