David Lurie: A Failed Byronic Hero

In his novel Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee presents readers with a protagonist who is deeply and, at first, seemingly irreparably flawed. David Lurie exhibits the sort of hubristic, antisocial, and antiauthoritarian traits that are traditionally attributed to the Byronic heroes in the literature that he loves. He is portrayed, similar to Milton’s Satan, as being an extremely intelligent individualist whose stoic resistance to conformity leads to his persecution and exile. Unlike Milton’s Satan, however, Lurie’s prideful self-deception is not hopelessly ingrained in his character; as the novel progresses, his daughter’s rape and the events that follow it force Lurie to confront himself and act in ways that are clearly contrary to the ethos of the Byronic hero. Lurie’s attempt to disguise himself as a Byronic hero fails, and he is shown to the reader, and to himself, to be all too human.

Perhaps the most obvious way that Lurie manifests the characteristics of the Byronic hero is the ethical solipsism that informs his actions and decisions at the outset of the novel. Though he is explicitly referring to Satan as a literary figure, Melanie’s boyfriend implicitly describes Lurie when he states, “He does what he feels like. He doesn't care if it's good or bad. He just does it” (Coetzee 33). Simply put, while he is in Cape Town, Lurie lives a detached and socially isolated life in which his only real anchor to humanity are his weekly visits to sleep with a prostitute names Soroya. While Lurie’s predatory behavior toward Soroya after she refuses to see him anymore may indicate that she does, in fact, have some significance to him, their relationship is fundamentally a business transaction and therefore utilitarian in nature. Since then, Lurie has no one whose preferences or well-being that he needs to take into account except for himself. He acts according to his own appetites and desires. This is perhaps most apparent when, in attempting to seduce Melanie, Lurie tells her that, “a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it” (Coetzee 16). Clearly, Lurie does not consider Melanie as an autonomous human being, but as an object through which he can satisfy himself. To his mind, Melanie is obligated to sleep with him, and he therefore implies that he has a right to sleep with her. However, whether he realizes it or not, Lurie’s utilitarian conception of others is turned on its head when Lucy is violently assaulted. Though the men who rape Lucy utterly disregard her personhood just as Lurie ignores Melanie’s, Lurie becomes outraged at the attack, and this anger rouses his desire for justice. Ironically, following the rape, Lurie finds himself in Mr. Isaac’s shoes, having to similarly somehow cope with the abuse and violation of his own daughter.

A second way in which Lurie may be seen as a Byronic hero toward the beginning of the novel is his aversion to authority and his refusal to submit to the status quo. As Atara Stein points out, speaking of Byron’s own work, “In their utter misanthropy, his Childe Harold, his Manfred, and his Lucifer provide images of complete independence from any considerations, social, lawful, institutional, or religious” (Stein 4). In keeping with this, particularly during the events surrounding his exploitative relationship with Melanie, the reader sees Lurie as an unbending contrarian. For example, his pursuit of Melanie is itself well outside the parameters of social and professional norms; a professor in his fifties should not be trying to seduce one of his college students. Furthermore, Lurie’s defiant behavior toward his colleagues at his hearing also underscores this point, particularly as the hearing is led by a professor of religious studies. Marina Susan Kok points out that “Ironically, regardless of the protagonist’s stoic refusal to confess and his insistence that repentance belongs to another discourse, it is exactly that repentance that could have saved him from his ‘disgrace’” (96). Although the fate of his career and his social standing are contingent upon the outcome of this hearing, Lurie confesses that he is guilty, though he refuses to admit that he has done anything wrong. In other words, Lurie is prepared to accept responsibility for his actions, but he is not willing to accept culpability. As he says, “I make no confession. I put forward a plea. As is my right. Guilty as charged. That is my plea. That is as far as I am willing to go” (Coetzee 51). This refusal to evaluate himself with respect to moral and social norms and expectations highlights Lurie’s disdain for society and morality; they are beneath him and are secondary to the fulfilment of his desires. After his daughter’s rape, however, the reader sees a change in Lurie’s attitude toward social and moral principles. His hope that the rapists be found and his inquiry to Petrus show the reader that, at least subconsciously, Lurie takes moral principles seriously. He is angry at Pollux and the other rapists because, in attacking Lucy, they have acted immorally, illegally, and antisocially. Once again, real, personal tragedy painfully strips away another layer of Lurie’s façade of Byronism.

Lurie’s extreme mental isolation is a third characteristic of the Byronic hero. In describing Lurie, the narrator presents the reader with a protagonist who is highly intelligent, though also extremely aloof and detached from others around him. Lurie’s thoughts, fixating on literature and opera, are continually focused on abstractions rather than the world around him. Though his actions take place in reality, Lurie’s mind is elsewhere, and this is partly what informs his staunch idealism and ultimate failure to see that the world of ideas and reality often do not overlap. When attempting to comfort Lucy after she has been raped, Lurie encourages her to understand the attack in abstract terms, “It was history speaking through them...A history of wrong. Think of it that way if it helps. It may have seemed personal, but it wasn't. It came down from the ancestors” (Coetzee 160). While it is certainly possible to frame Lucy’s rape in the abstract terminology of race relations after Mandela in post-apartheid South Africa, it is ridiculous for Lurie to think that it would be possible for a rape victim to do so, particularly so soon after the attack. Lucy recognizes her father’s aloofness and the hindrance that it is to their communication, telling him, “You keep misreading me. Guilt and salvation are abstractions. I don't act in terms of abstractions. Until you make the effort to see that, I can't help you” (Coetzee 112). Lurie’s intellectualism is useless outside of his classroom, and it is not until he concentrates on the work to be done around the farm and in the animal shelter that he is able to begin to meaningfully address the concrete problems in his life. This is perhaps best illustrated when Lurie asks Mr. Isaacs for forgiveness for taking advantage of his daughter, an act of contrition which would have been unthinkable for Lurie at the outset of the novel.

Lurie begins the novel as an egoistic, defiant, and solipsistic, each being traits that are typical of the Byronic hero, and he acts accordingly. However, as Thorslev notes, Byronic heroes “always have the quality of aspiring, or at least never remaining in place” (Thorslev 16). In line with this, after working on the farm and witnessing the after-effects of genuine disregard for moral and social authority in his daughter’s rape, Lurie is, whether it is apparent to him or not, significantly altered. Lucy’s rape and the events that follow it force Lurie to shed his façade of heroism. He is certainly no hero at the close of the novel, nor is he an anti-hero or any other prototype; rather, he is a person who has become at least partly self-aware and is able to take stock of his shortcomings and flaws. David Lurie is, in other words, a person who is finally aware of his need for, and perhaps is finally capable of achieving, redemption.

Works Cited

Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace. Viking, 1999..

Kok, Marina S. An Investigation of Masculinity in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace. Diss. Nelson Mandella Metropolitan University, 1999. An Investigation of Masculinity in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace. Nelson Mandella Metropolitan University.

Stein, Atara. The Byronic Hero in Film, Fiction, and Television. Southern Illinois UP, 2004.

Thorslev, Peter Larsen. The Byronic Hero: Types and Prototypes. University of Minnesota, 1965.