Leda and the Swan

Domination is an important motif throughout “Leda and the Swan.” The central act of domination is Zeus’s domination of Leda, when with her “her nape caught in his bill / He holds her helpless breast upon his breast” (Lines 3-4) and rapes her. The rape is Zeus’s way of asserting his divine power (as a god) over that of mortals, but it also speaks more simply to the traditional gendered domination of men over women.

The poem suggests that this act of domination is mirrored and enlarged in the Trojan War later caused by Helen of Troy’s infidelity:

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead” (Lines 9-11).

The juxtaposition of the moment Leda conceives Helen with the imagery of Troy’s destruction not only explicitly links the two events in terms of linear causality but also suggests the thematic importance that cycles of violence have in the poem more generally (See: Themes): Since domination begets other forms of domination, violence also begets violence.

The swan is one of the poem’s two important symbols, as it is both Zeus’s avian disguise in raping Leda and a symbol of his power.