Liminal Lovers

            Richard Rambuss’ piece “What It Feels Like for a Boy: Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis” explores the “liminal, beardless boy” that is Adonis. However, both Venus and Adonis in the poem both exhibit and experience certain liminal qualities, those that rest in a state of disorientation, ambiguity, or transition.  

            The poem begins with describing Adonis as “[r]ose-cheeked” (line 3) and Venus “like a bold-faced suitor [that] ’gins to woo him” (line 6). Not only does this indicate a sort of gender role reversal, but this also puts both Adonis and Venus in liminal positions regarding their identities, based on the narrator’s phrasing in the beginning of the poem. This disorients the two characters from their patriarchal-assigned gender roles, as it associates Adonis with an air of more physical beauty and Venus as a man attempting to gain Adonis’ favor. This is also evident when she references him as a “[s]tain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man” (line 9); then, later, the narrator of the poem compares Adonis’ blushing to that of a “maiden burning of…cheeks” (line 50). Venus seeks to disorient Adonis so he may question his identity, bringing him almost to a place of nonexistence, or a liminal space, in which he does not fit into being altogether masculine or feminine. She does this, however, by attempting to feminize him despite his identity as a cis male (or what is assumed from the poem). In this she hopes to bring him closer to her by making him liminal like her.

One depiction of Adonis being pursued by Venus.

            Venus is also liminal, seen as the masculine pursuer instead of the feminine figure being pursued. Not only is she referred to as having an “engine of her thoughts” (line 367), but Adonis’ hand caught in hers is like a “lily prisoned in a jail of snow” (line 362). These lines paint Venus as having male characteristics, of working like an engine and a snow bank that cannot be lifted. Despite depicting her more masculine, it feels more as though Venus is stuck in a liminal state of god and human rather than being hypermasculinized. As a god she is used to harnessing and applying the power she has to what- or whoever she wants, as “[h]er lips are conquerors, his lips obey” (line 549). Gods themselves, even the female, are masculine to the extent that they do whatever they please: “She wildly breaketh from their strict (restricting) embrace” (line 874). In this sense is Venus masculinized through her god status, and, more often than not, feels more commonly accepted. Furthermore, it feels as though Venus wishes to enter a transitioning state, as “[s]he’s love; she loves; and yet she is not loved” (line 610). As a goddess humans cannot fully satisfy her for eternity because she is immortal and her human lovers are not. Despite this, she pursues love, but Adonis “hate[s] not love, but [Venus’] device (tactics) in love” (line 789). Venus, being a goddess, would not be versed in the human tactics of love, which would include the girl shunted into the patriarchal system, never to speak and always to consent, the exact opposite of the pursuing and forceful Venus.

            “Venus and Adonis” addresses some complex situations of liminality in regards to what it means to be male or female and what it means to be human and love. Is Adonis truly androgynous, or is that how he is painted out to be? Even after Adonis’ death, would Venus ever be able to achieve human love, or is she forever stuck in a liminal space?