Deceit and Sexual Womens Sexual Sins in Dantes Inferno

Deceit and Sexual Women’s Sexual Sins in Dante’s Inferno Dante’s representations of women and feminine sexuality in the Inferno show contrasts within the various natures of women and their sexuality. His era’s vision of the perfect woman one that idealized beauty, passiveness and purity is represented by his life long love Beatrice. This ideal and its representation in Beatrice are contrasted with the dark depictions of women, their sexual sins, devious devices, and evil act, which Dante encounters in hell. This paper will argue that the severity of condemnation in hell for women’s sexual sins is related to the increasing degrees of deceit. Dante’s perspective of the evil side of femininity becomes apparent from the opening†¦show more content†¦She was a victim of the salacious flattery she offered her lovers the while among the living. More sinful than her exploitation of men through sex without love was the overwhelming and ridiculously insincere compliments that she gave men; those lies are now represented by the feces in which she exists. In one of the deepest pits of the underworld, as Dante moves through the eighth circle of hell and the tenth malebolige, he moves through the pit of falsifiers and the evil impersonators. There, he encounters Myrrha, the mother of Adonis. She is running about, much like an insane, vampiric beast, pale, naked and unclean, snapping her teeth as she runs by. Virgil tells him that â€Å"that ancient shade in time above Was Myrrha, vicious daughter of Cinyras Who loved her father with more than rightful love. he falsified another’s form and came Disguised to sin with him just as that other Who runs with her in order that he might claim The fabulous lead-mare† Canto 30 lines 37-43[xiii] Myrrha is dammed in one of the deepest pits of hell for her incestuous relationship with her father, King Cinyras. Her intentional betrayal of her father the king, through her disguise as another lover to seduce her father, is a premeditated act of sexual treachery. This disturbingly lustful act of deceit leaves her pursuing