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Venus represents all that is complex and contradictory in the early modern period's perception of love. Unsurpassed as she is, the goddess remains enigmatic, partly concealed behind a series of surrogates, by the veils that draw attention to the beauty they mask, or by the mystery of her own desire for successive objects. The fact that, as the origin of love, she intervenes only to lead more often to sorrow than to happiness indicates an anxiety about the sexual pleasure the period at once relishes and reprehends. Love conducted under the aegis of Venus commonly suffers from misalignment. But while the goddess so frequently withholds gratification, what she offers instead is pleasure at the level of the signifier, as she takes part in the stories, plays, and poems which enable the period to find ways of defining a passion that generates both civilization and its discontents. (C. B.)
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