The Reception of Virgil’s Lavinia in The Hunger Games and Downton Abbey
This piece is an adapted excerpt of an essay I recently submitted for my MA at UCL.
Lavinia, the silent, blushing virgin, is one of Virgil’s Aeneid’s most mysterious characters. As the ideal daughter and proto-Roman virgo, Lavinia is silent and passive in the pages of the Aeneid, and thus, in classical scholarship, has often been deemed “weak and shadowy”, “senza vita” (“without life”), “insubstantial” and “colourless.”[1] Nonetheless, this ‘mute cipher’ has a strong presence in the reception of the classical world. Characters named Lavinia — a name made prominent in the classical tradition by Virgil– have appeared in English fiction as early as Shakespeare and as recently as Julian Fellowes’ period drama Downton Abbey. A common thread which underlies all these Lavinias is their characterisation — they are all depicted, to a certain extent, as helpless, suffering victims. There is, thus, a shared “aesthetic response” to Virgil’s Lavinia as a sufferer. The theory of “aesthetic response” itself was proposed by Wolfgang Iser, a reception theorist, who saw both a text’s author and receiver as playing a role in “unfolding” the text’s potential. [2] His aesthetic response theory “focuses on how a piece of literature impacts on its implied reader and elicits a response”, and thus takes into consideration both the artistic pole, “the text created by an author”, and the aesthetic pole, the “realization accomplished by the reader.” [3] This approach to classical texts, which lends great focus to a response to a text, is particularly fruitful for an analysis of Virgil’s Lavinia, who is silent and predominantly inactive in the original text. Looking at the aesthetic responses to Lavinia, as well as the trend that arises in the depiction of Lavinias in modern fiction, can help to shed light upon the original, Virgilian Lavinia, and to “unfold (her) potential.”[4] In my full essay, I discuss Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Ursula Le Guin’s Lavinia, yet for this piece, I decided to present my thoughts on two Lavinias from modern pop culture — the Lavinia of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games and Julian Fellowe’s Downton Abbey.
Shakespeare’s Lavinia, as many may know, has a severed tongue (much like Ovid’s Philomela, she was raped and then mutilated by her attackers). In the case of the Hunger Games, Shakespeare thus serves as an ‘intermediary intertext’, as Collins’ Lavinia is an avox (literally “away from a voice”), who has had her tongue removed as punishment for defying the oppressive ruling government.[5] Collins is, however, aware of the classical tradition. In her interview with Scholastic, she revealed that she formed the premise of the Hunger Games from classical mythology: “a significant influence would have to be the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.”[6] In her trilogy, children from the twelve districts of Panem must compete in a fight to the death to atone for the transgressions of their ancestors, much like king Minos sacrifices the children of Athens to the Minotaur. The Games themselves are even based on Roman gladiatorial games — in the same interview, Collins states, “then in keeping with the Classical background, I decided that the nature of the Hunger Games would be very much based on Roman gladiator games.”[7] So many characters in her trilogy, too, have classical names — Cato, Caesar, Castor, Pollux and Plutarch, just to name a few. Such an awareness of the classical tradition — Collins even calls herself a “fanatic about mythology” — makes it plausible to presume that she was likely aware of the Aeneid as well, and hence the original, Virgilian Lavinia.[8]
A trait which particularly defines the avox Lavinia, within the mind of Katniss who does not know her name, is her red hair. Katniss repeatedly refers to her as “the red-headed Avox girl” before discovering her true name in Mockingjay.[9] Indeed, in the Aeneid, one of Lavinia’s most significant moments is when her fame is prophesied and her hair catches fire:
visa (nefas) longis comprendere crinibus ignem
atque omnem ornatum flamma crepitante cremari,
regalisque accensa comas…[10]
The blazing, firey hair of Virgil’s Lavinia is thus, to a certain extent, manifest upon Collins’ Lavinia, whom the protagonist frequently dubs the “redheaded Avox girl.” Thus, I would argue that it is feasible to suggest that Collins, with an awareness of the classical tradition, is in her Hunger Games offering an aesthetic response to the Lavinia of the Aeneid, but is nonetheless, inevitably, influenced by the prominent reception before her — the Lavinia of Titus Andronicus. Once again, we return to Iser, and the two poles which must be considered to unfold a classical work’s potential — the artistic and the aesthetic.[11] The works of both Shakespeare and Collins demonstrate a similar aesthetic response to Virgil’s Lavinia as a silent, suffering character, and thus these two aesthetic poles lead to an ‘unfolding’ of the artistic pole’s potential — Lavinia, in all her silence, is suffering too.
Lavinia Swire — portrayed by Zoe Boyle in Downton Abbey — is shown, up to her untimely death, to suffer just as much as other characters who share her name. The character, who enters the show in season 2, is a meek individual, who is disliked by the majority of the other characters because she — the new fiancée of heir-intended Matthew — now stands in the way of the coveted marriage between Matthew and Mary Crawley. Whilst she is not silenced in the same, physical way as Shakespeare’s and Collins’ Lavinias, she is nonetheless an inherently powerless character, much like the Lavinia of the Aeneid. Being a woman in the early 20th century, she has little control over her life, and when she does gain some autonomy — deciding to remain with Matthew even after his is left seemingly crippled by his service in WWI — it is ultimately taken away from her by a conveniently-timed bout of Spanish Flu. Indeed, the convenience of Lavinia’s death — and the fact that she, a young woman, perishes instead of the much older Cora Crawley — lead reviewer Amanda Dobbins to deem Lavinia’s death as “almost pre-ordained” and considers her character “a plot device to be gotten rid of, with the historical excuse (of the Spanish Flu epidemic) sitting in plain sight.”[12] And indeed, Lavinia Swire most certainly is a plot device, inserted into the narrative of the second season to further draw out the ‘will-they-won’t-they’ narrative of Matthew and Mary. She provides, thus, the “six hours of suspense” which Dobbins argues “the basic structure of television requires”, before being conveniently dying, so that everyone can “finally get their way.”[13]
There is, subsequently, a sense that Lavinia is ‘killed-off’ for the sake of the plot — so that Matthew and Mary may be together and to make sure that Matthew remains the honourable, principled man the show has set him up to be — a characterisation he could not continue to embody had he abandoned Lavinia for Mary after regaining the use of his legs. Lavinia herself, on her deathbed, asks Matthew, “isn’t this better, really? You won’t have to make a hard decision.”[14] Certainly, it is ‘better’ for Matthew, who is now free to pursue a relationship with Mary, morally unencumbered. Lavinia serves her role as plot device and is then swiftly removed to allow the show to return “to the characters we care about.”[15] Lavinia Swire is ultimately a pawn — much like Virgil’s Lavinia is a pawn in the masculine plot of Roman history.[16] Yet was Julian Fellowes aware of Virgil’s Lavinia — or even Shakespeare’s — or is the character’s name nothing more than that — a name? The name Lavinia was, indeed, popular amongst the upper classes in the 1890s-1910s, the time when Lavinia Swire lived.[17] It would make sense, thus, for a character living in early 20th century England to be named Lavinia, much like Lavinia Herbert of F.H. Burnett’s 1905 novel, A Little Princess — whose name is, in fact, little more than a name.[18] Yet there is evidence, in the show, that scriptwriter and director Fellowes is aware of the classical tradition. He has Robert Crawley accuse his family of trying to “sacrifice Lavinia like some latter-day Iphigenia” by having her marry the now crippled Matthew.[19] The sacrifice of Iphigenia would be a fairly niche reference to be made by someone unaware of classical literature. Fellowes thus could have had some awareness of Virgil’s Lavinia when crafting his own, and at least, most plausibly, of Shakespeare’s, as he studied English Literature and Magdalen College, Cambridge. It is thus plausible to view Fellowes as presenting an artistic pole — like Shakespeare and Collins — which is indicative of an aesthetic pole — reception of Lavinia as a silenced sufferer. He subsequently adds his Lavinia to the history of silenced, suffering Lavinias by crafting his own in a similar way.[20]
Ultimately, Virgil’s Lavinia is a fascinating character — and I would urge anyone that has never read much scholarship on her to do so as soon as possible. Classical reception brings Lavinia into prominence, and she is given a voice and an importance that she was so long, and so cruelly, denied in the pages of the Aeneid.
Endnotes
[1] Woodworth 1930, 176; LaPenna 1967 in Formicula 2006, 83; Cairns 2009, 151; Johnson 1976, 55; Syed 2005, 141. Highet (1972) and Williams (1973) also have similar views.
[2] Iser 2006, 36.
[3] Iser 2006, 31; ibid, 36.
[4] Ibid.
[5] The Greek prefix α (“without”) or the Latin preposition (“from, away from”) + Latin vox (“voice”).
[6] Collins, 2008.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Collins, 2013.
[9] Collins. The Hunger Games. 114; 119; 138; 142; 162; 343. Collins, Mockingjay. Chapter 19.
[10] Verg. Aen. 7.73–5.
[11] Iser 2006, 36
[12] Dobbins 2012.
[13] It is not just Matthew and Mary who “get their way.” None of the characters ever wanted Lavinia there. When Matthew announces his intent to go ahead with his marriage to Lavinia after regaining use of his legs, Robert Crawley and butler Carson send her disapproving glares whilst Cora shares a disappointed look with daughter Mary. (Downton Abbey. S2.e7).
[14] S2.e8.
[15] Dobbins notes that after Lavinia’s death, “the show is finally back to the characters we care about.” (Dobbins 2012).
[16] Virgil’s Lavinia has often been dubbed a plot device. Williams calls her “merely part of the plot.” (Williams 1973, 171); Woodworth 1932, 176–7, 186; Smith 2005, 121.
[17] Information taken from name database: https://nameberry.com/babyname/Lavinia.
[18] For Lavinia Herbert in no way resembles other Lavinias.
[19] Downton Abbey. S2e6.
[20] Lavinia Swire does echo Virgil and Shakespeare’s Lavinias. She is a pawn, like Virgil’s to the plot of Roman history and Shakespeare’s to Tamora, who uses her to get revenge upon Titus. She is noticeably red-headed, reviewer Viv Goskop explicitly calls her “Ginger Lavinia” — recalling the firey hair of Lavinia echoes also in Collins’ red-headed Avox. (Goskop, 2011).
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