Lord Byron's Heroines

Byron as a poet, aristocrat, and Romantic, began as all the other poets of his time, in a traditional fashion. But unlike the other poets, Byron began to develop a heroine who would become a voice for the realities of society. Despite the fact that Byron had many love affairs, he also respected women, believing in their right of autonomy within society. He considered them his equal, relishing lively debates with them on many topics. Byron's heroines embodied sentimentalism, integrity, morality and intelligence, which in turn subtlety influenced society to respect a woman's desire to openly express her emotions. What Byron promoted was the respect men would eventually have for women. He helped society to realize that women were people. Through the sentimentalism portrayed in his heroine, Byron also contributed to women's ability to integrate intellectual development into their traditional domestic roles and to "develop a literary expression of their own" through authorship (Rogers 144).