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Excerpt
Excerpt from The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01, by William Cowper Brann
Love is a dangerous game to play, and oft begun in wanton
mischief ends in woeful madness. In the first flush of
shame and rage Mrs. Potiphar was eager to punish the
slave's presumption, even though herself o'erwhelmed in
his ruin; but hate, though fierce, is a fickle flame in the
female heart, and seldom survives a single flood of tears.
Already Joseph's handsome face is haunting her--already
she is dreaming o'er the happy hours by Nilus' bank, where
first he praised her wondrous beauty--beneath the
nodding palms when the fireflies blazed and the bulbul
poured its song. The love that has lain latent within her
bosom, or burned with friendship's unconsuming flame,
awakes like smoldering embers fanned by desert winds and
fed with camphor wood, enveloping all her world. She
longs to leave the loveless life with her sullen lord; to cast
from her as things accursed the gaudy robes and glittering
gems; to fly with the shepherd lad to the deep cool forests
of the far east and dream her life away in some black tent
or vine-embowered cot--to take his hand in hers and
wander on to the world's extreme verge, listening to the
music of his voice. The great house, once her pride, has
become a grewsome prison, the jailer a grizzly gorgon who
conjured her with the baleful gleam of gold to cast her
beauty on Mammon's brutish shrine. She hardens her
heart against him and pities herself, as wives are wont to
do who have dragged the dear honor of their husbands in
the dust--she persuades herself that love has cast radiant
glory about her guilt and sanctified her shame. Oh woman,
what a paradox thou art! When the descending sun
touched the horizon's rim Mrs. Potiphar could have plunged
a poisoned dagger through the heart of her paramour and
mocked his dying moan; the great globe of fire has not bid
the world good night, yet she is weeping because of the
bitter words with which she drove him forth.
"Love is strong as death."
She repeats the line again and again. Oh my Israel, is the
grave the limit of thy love? Wert thou dead, fair boy, Egypt
would inclose thy sacred ashes in a golden urn and wear it
ever between her breasts--would make for thee a living
sepulcher and thou shouldst sleep in the vale of Love,
between the rosy mountains of Desire. Wert thou dead--
Explanation
This excerpt from The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast (Volume 1) by William Cowper Brann (1855–1898) is a vivid, emotionally charged passage that reimagines the biblical story of Potiphar’s wife and Joseph (from Genesis 39). Brann, a fiery and controversial 19th-century journalist known for his sharp wit and uncompromising critiques of religion, morality, and society, often used biblical narratives to explore human psychology, hypocrisy, and the contradictions of love and desire. This passage is a prime example of his iconoclastic style—challenging traditional moral interpretations while indulging in rich, poetic prose.
Context & Source
The story of Potiphar’s wife (unnamed in the Bible) is a brief but morally loaded episode in Genesis 39: Joseph, a Hebrew slave in Egypt, is falsely accused of attempted seduction by his master’s wife after he rejects her advances. She uses his discarded garment as "proof," leading to his imprisonment. Brann’s retelling subverts the biblical moralizing by delving into the psychological and emotional turmoil of Potiphar’s wife, portraying her not as a one-dimensional villain but as a complex, conflicted woman ensnared by passion, societal constraints, and self-justification.
Brann’s work often criticized Victorian morality, and this passage reflects his fascination with female desire, marital dissatisfaction, and the hypocrisy of societal norms. His prose is sensual, melodramatic, and laced with irony, blending biblical allusion with Romantic and Decadent imagery.
Themes
The Paradox of Love and Hate
- The passage opens with love as a "dangerous game" that begins in "wanton mischief" but ends in "woeful madness." This sets up the volatility of emotion, particularly in the female heart, which Brann describes as fickle yet fierce.
- Potiphar’s wife oscillates between rage ("plunged a poisoned dagger through the heart of her paramour") and longing ("weeping because of the bitter words with which she drove him forth"). Love and hate are intertwined, reflecting the psychological realism of obsession.
Female Desire and Societal Constraint
- Brann sympathizes with Potiphar’s wife, framing her as a victim of her loveless marriage and the oppressive expectations of wealth. Her husband is a "sullen lord" and a "grizzly gorgon" who has reduced her to a commodity ("cast her beauty on Mammon’s brutish shrine").
- Her fantasies of escape—flying with Joseph to "deep cool forests" or a "vine-embowered cot"—contrast sharply with her gilded prison (the "great house" that has become a "grewsome [gruesome] prison"). This critiques marital and economic oppression, a recurring theme in Brann’s work.
Self-Deception and Moral Justification
- Potiphar’s wife rationalizes her guilt, convincing herself that "love has cast radiant glory about her guilt and sanctified her shame." This is a scathing indictment of hypocrisy—she uses romantic idealism to excuse her transgression, a behavior Brann attributes to "wives who have dragged the dear honor of their husbands in the dust."
- The line "Oh woman, what a paradox thou art!" underscores Brann’s cynical view of female morality, which he sees as shifting with emotion rather than fixed principle.
Love as an Overpowering, Destructive Force
- The passage culminates in the biblical allusion "Love is strong as death" (Song of Solomon 8:6), but Brann twists it into something darker. Potiphar’s wife imagines Joseph’s death as a romantic martyrdom, where Egypt would enshrine his ashes in gold and she would worship him in a "vale of Love."
- This morbid fantasy suggests that love, when thwarted, curdles into obsession and destruction. The imagery of "rosy mountains of Desire" and a "living sepulcher" blends eroticism with death, a hallmark of Decadent literature.
Exoticism and Orientalism
- Brann’s description of Egypt is lush and sensual—"Nilus’ bank," "nodding palms," "fireflies," "the bulbul’s song"—evoking a romanticized, exotic East. This Orientalist framing (common in 19th-century literature) contrasts the civilized but stifling Egyptian court with the primitive, passionate fantasy of escape.
- The desert winds and camphor wood metaphor for her awakening desire reinforces the untamed, consuming nature of her passion.
Literary Devices
Imagery & Sensory Language
- Visual: "nodding palms," "fireflies blazed," "golden urn," "rosy mountains of Desire"
- Auditory: "the bulbul poured its song," "music of his voice"
- Tactile: "gaudy robes and glittering gems" (which she now finds accursed)
- This sensual overload immerses the reader in her emotional and physical longing.
Metaphor & Simile
- "Hate, though fierce, is a fickle flame in the female heart" → Compares emotion to fire, emphasizing its unstable, consuming nature.
- "Love that has lain latent... awakes like smoldering embers fanned by desert winds" → Extends the fire metaphor, suggesting dormant passion ignited by external forces.
- "The great house... has become a grewsome prison" → The home as a jail reflects her psychological entrapment.
Allusion
- Biblical: The story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39), "Love is strong as death" (Song of Solomon 8:6).
- Mythological: "Grizzly gorgon" (Medusa-like figure, symbolizing her husband’s monstrous, petrifying influence).
- Classical: "Mammon’s brutish shrine" (Mammon = wealth personified, critiquing materialism’s corruption of love).
Irony & Paradox
- "She hardens her heart against him and pities herself" → She blames Joseph while portraying herself as the victim.
- "Love has... sanctified her shame" → Oxymoron: Love is both pure and sinful in her mind.
- "Oh woman, what a paradox thou art!" → Directly mocking female inconsistency, a common trope in Brann’s misogynistic yet fascinated portrayals of women.
Repetition & Refrain
- "Wert thou dead, fair boy..." → The hypothetical mourning becomes a haunting refrain, emphasizing her obsession with loss and martyrdom.
Personification
- "The great globe of fire [the sun] has not bid the world good night" → The sun as a witness to her shifting emotions.
Significance & Brann’s Style
- Subversion of Biblical Morality: Brann rejects the black-and-white morality of the Genesis story, instead exploring the psychology of desire and guilt. Potiphar’s wife is neither purely evil nor innocent—she is a product of her circumstances, trapped between passion and societal expectations.
- Critique of Marriage & Wealth: The passage condemns loveless, transactional marriages (symbolized by "gaudy robes and glittering gems") and the corrupting influence of wealth ("Mammon’s brutish shrine").
- Decadent & Romantic Influences: The melodramatic, sensual prose aligns with Decadent literature (e.g., Oscar Wilde, Swinburne), which glorified excess, emotion, and moral ambiguity. The eroticization of death ("sleep in the vale of Love") is particularly Decadent.
- Misogyny & Sympathy: Brann’s view of women is complex—he mockingly calls them paradoxes yet grants Potiphar’s wife depth and pathos. This ambivalence reflects his broader cynicism toward human nature.
- Iconoclasm: As an iconoclast, Brann challenges religious dogma by humanizing a biblical villainess and questioning the sanctity of marriage.
Line-by-Line Breakdown of Key Moments
"Love is a dangerous game to play..."
- Sets the tone of warning—love is not innocent but a gamble with high stakes.
"In the first flush of shame and rage..."
- Her initial anger at Joseph’s rejection is short-lived, showing how quickly her emotions shift.
"Already Joseph's handsome face is haunting her..."
- The past intrudes on the present—her memory is selective, focusing on romanticized moments ("happy hours by Nilus’ bank").
"The love that has lain latent... awakes like smoldering embers..."
- Metaphor of fire suggests uncontrollable, destructive passion.
- "Fed with camphor wood" (a resinous, flammable wood) implies intoxicating, all-consuming desire.
"She longs to leave the loveless life with her sullen lord..."
- Her marriage is a cage, and Joseph represents freedom and passion.
"The great house... has become a grewsome prison..."
- Irony: What was once her pride is now her torment.
"She hardens her heart against him and pities herself..."
- Self-victimization: She blames Joseph while excusing her own actions.
"Oh woman, what a paradox thou art!"
- Direct address to the reader, generalizing female nature as contradictory.
"When the descending sun touched the horizon’s rim..."
- Time as a marker of emotional change—her rage turns to regret in mere hours.
"Love is strong as death."
- Biblical allusion twisted—love is not just powerful but destructive, leading to obsession and fantasy.
"Wert thou dead, fair boy..."
- Her morbid romanticism—she prefers him dead and idealized to alive and unattainable.
- "Golden urn between her breasts" → Fetishization of his remains, blending lust and mourning.
Conclusion: Why This Passage Matters
Brann’s excerpt is a masterclass in psychological realism within a biblical framework. He takes a minor, vilified female character and gives her depth, conflict, and tragic grandeur. The passage is rich in irony, sensory detail, and moral ambiguity, reflecting Brann’s iconoclastic worldview—one that questions religious dogma, marital hypocrisy, and the nature of love itself.
His prose is both beautiful and brutal, romantic and cynical, making this not just a retelling of a biblical story but a meditation on the dangers of passion, the prisons of society, and the self-deceptions of the human heart. In typical Brann fashion, it leaves the reader unsettled, forced to confront the messy, contradictory nature of desire.
Questions
Question 1
The passage’s portrayal of Potiphar’s wife’s emotional shift—from vengeful rage to tearful longing—primarily serves to:
A. illustrate the capriciousness of female morality as a universal flaw
B. expose the psychological mechanisms by which desire distorts self-perception
C. condemn the hypocrisy of Victorian marital expectations through allegory
D. emphasize the corrupting influence of material wealth on human relationships
E. contrast the purity of spiritual love with the baseness of physical passion
Question 2
The "grizzly gorgon" metaphor for Potiphar functions most effectively as:
A. a mythological inversion that recasts the husband as the true monster of the narrative
B. a classical allusion underscoring the wife’s Medusa-like power to petrify men with beauty
C. a grotesque caricature meant to elicit pity for the wife’s plight as a victim of patriarchy
D. a Decadent trope linking marital oppression to the primal terror of female autonomy
E. an ironic juxtaposition of Egyptian and Greek symbolism to critique cross-cultural hypocrisy
Question 3
The repeated hypothetical ("Wert thou dead, fair boy...") reveals that the wife’s love is fundamentally:
A. a performative grief meant to manipulate societal perceptions of her virtue
B. an idealization of martyrdom that thrives on the impossibility of fulfillment
C. a subconscious death drive masking her resentment toward Joseph’s rejection
D. a literary device to evoke pathos by aligning her suffering with biblical lamentations
E. a Decadent fantasy where eroticism and mortality merge as twin obsessions
Question 4
Which of the following best describes the narrative function of the "fire" imagery (e.g., "fickle flame," "smoldering embers")?
A. To symbolize the divine wrath awaiting those who transgress moral law
B. To foreshadow the literal destruction of Potiphar’s household by the wife’s actions
C. To contrast the cold rationality of Joseph with the wife’s irrational passion
D. To evoke the purifying potential of love when channelled toward sacred ends
E. To embody the volatile, self-consuming nature of unchecked emotional extremes
Question 5
Brann’s subversion of the biblical Potiphar’s wife story is most radically expressed through:
A. the wife’s explicit sexual agency, which the original text only implies
B. the transformation of her guilt into a romanticized rebellion against oppression
C. the portrayal of Joseph as a passive object of desire rather than a virtuous resister
D. the conflation of Egyptian paganism with Judeo-Christian morality to critique both
E. the use of Orientalist tropes to exoticize her passion as inherently foreign and corrupt
Solutions and Explanations
1) Correct answer: B
Why B is most correct: The passage meticulously traces the wife’s cognitive dissonance—her oscillation between rage and longing isn’t merely capriciousness but a defense mechanism. Brann highlights how her desire rewrites memory (e.g., fixating on "happy hours by Nilus’ bank" while erasing her initial fury) and justifies transgression ("love has sanctified her shame"). This aligns with psychological theories of self-deception and motivated reasoning, where emotions shape perception to alleviate guilt. The focus is on the mechanisms of distortion, not a broad moral judgment (A) or a societal critique (C/D).
Why the distractors are less supported:
- A: While Brann does critique female morality, the passage doesn’t present this as a universal flaw—it’s a case study of one woman’s psychological conflict. The tone is more analytical than misogynistic here.
- C: The marital critique is present, but the primary lens is the wife’s internal conflict, not an allegory for Victorian norms.
- D: Wealth is mentioned ("Mammon’s shrine"), but the core focus is on emotional volatility, not material corruption.
- E: The passage doesn’t contrast spiritual and physical love; it blurs them (e.g., "sanctified her shame").
2) Correct answer: A
Why A is most correct: The "grizzly gorgon" inverts the mythological trope: traditionally, Medusa/Gorgon is the female monster who petrifies men, but here, the husband is the gorgon—a predatory, dehumanizing figure who turns his wife’s beauty into a commodity ("cast her beauty on Mammon’s shrine"). This reassigns monstrosity to the husband, forcing the reader to re-evaluate the biblical moral framework where Potiphar’s wife is the villain. The metaphor is narratively radical because it undermines patriarchal assumptions embedded in the original story.
Why the distractors are less supported:
- B: The allusion isn’t about the wife’s power; the gorgon is her husband, not her.
- C: While the wife is victimized, the metaphor isn’t primarily about eliciting pity—it’s about redefining villainy.
- D: The Decadent movement did explore primal terrors, but the gorgon here is specific to marital oppression, not a broad commentary on female autonomy.
- E: There’s no cross-cultural critique—the gorgon is a Greek figure imposed on an Egyptian setting, but the point isn’t cultural hypocrisy.
3) Correct answer: B
Why B is most correct: The hypothetical mourning ("Wert thou dead...") reveals that her love thrives on absence and impossibility. She doesn’t long for Joseph as a living partner but as a martyr—someone who can be idealized in death without the messiness of reality. This aligns with Freudian thanatos (death drive) and romantic martyrdom tropes, where love is most intense when unfulfilled. The "golden urn" and "living sepulcher" imagery suggests she prefers symbolism over substance, a hallmark of obsession.
Why the distractors are less supported:
- A: While there’s performativity, the focus isn’t on manipulating societal perceptions—she’s alone, fantasizing.
- C: The death drive is present, but the text emphasizes idealization, not resentment.
- D: The biblical allusion ("Love is strong as death") is a tool, not the purpose—the purpose is her psychological state.
- E: The Decadent merge of eroticism/mortality is part of it, but the core is the impossibility of fulfillment, not the merge itself.
4) Correct answer: E
Why E is most correct: The fire imagery ("fickle flame," "smoldering embers," "fed with camphor wood") embodies the paradox of passion: it’s destructive yet intoxicating, unstable yet all-consuming. The "desert winds" and "camphor wood" (a highly flammable resin) suggest external forces fanning internal chaos, while the self-consuming nature of fire mirrors how her love devours her rationality. This aligns with the passage’s theme of emotions as volatile and self-destructive.
Why the distractors are less supported:
- A: There’s no divine wrath—the fire is psychological, not theological.
- B: The fire is metaphorical, not a literal foreshadowing of destruction.
- C: Joseph isn’t portrayed as rational—he’s the object of her passion, not a contrast.
- D: The fire doesn’t purify; it consumes—there’s no redemptive arc.
5) Correct answer: B
Why B is most correct: Brann’s most radical subversion is turning the wife’s guilt into rebellion. In the biblical version, she’s a one-dimensional temptress; here, her transgression becomes a defiant act against oppression ("loveless life with her sullen lord," "gaudy robes and glittering gems" as chains). She reframes shame as glory ("love has sanctified her shame"), transforming moral failure into romantic heroism. This inversion of virtue/vice is far more provocative than merely exoticizing her (E) or giving her agency (A).
Why the distractors are less supported:
- A: Her agency is implied in the original (she acts on desire); Brann’s innovation is the psychological depth, not just explicitness.
- C: Joseph is not passive—he’s the catalyst, but the focus is on her transformation.
- D: There’s no conflation of Egyptian/Judeo-Christian morality—the critique is secular, targeting hypocrisy, not religious systems.
- E: Orientalist tropes are present, but they’re secondary to the moral inversion—her passion isn’t framed as "foreign corruption" but as human rebellion.