Why Does Guyon’s Gesture Cause Mammon to React with Such ‘Great Disdain’?
Also during the siege of Alma’s walls, we read that the ‘most horrible’ of Maleger’s troops are reserved for the sense of touch. We have looked at the touch offered to Amavia during her suffering, but another similar incident bears scrutiny in light of its actions by an educated, hand-wise wrestler. When Mammon is Diesel Jeans spied sunning his treasure, he rises ‘in great affright’; but, before he can hide ‘those pretious hils’ from Guyon’s sight, the knight ‘lightly to him leaping, stayd His hand’ that trembles ‘as one terrifyde’. Why is only one of Mammon’s hands trembling? And why does Guyon’s gesture cause Mammon to react with such ‘great disdain’?
To begin with, Mammon’s hands are ‘cole-black’ and ‘seeme to haue ben seard In smythes fire-spitting forge, and nayles like clawes appeard’, similar to the blacksmith Care’s hands in Book IV, which provides an apt connection between the care or worry associated with the accumulation and guarding of wealth, and the god who offers it. And, though Spenser does not specify which hand trembles, it is likely the poet thought of Mammon’s left. To put forth the left hand, writes Bulwer, is ‘to make a prize of all that comes to hand’ much as Mammon wishes to make of Guyon, and it is also a sign of ‘idleness’, ‘unlawful desire’, and ‘rapacity’, all sworn enemies of temperance. Furthermore, the left hand is a sign of ‘tenacious avarice’, and the ‘symbol of lucre, profit, gain and increase’. Although Mammon declares ‘that of my plenty poure out unto all’, the size of his hoard speaks rather of ‘lucre’, and his primary goal is to increase others by appealing to their avarice. By contrast, the right-hand speaks of ‘diligence and insinuating labor’, which suggests the hand used by Guyon to stay Mammon’s left.
In fact, the gesture Guyon uses resembles Bulwer’s Gestus XXVI: ‘To extend and offer out the right hand unto any is an expression of Calvin Klein Jeans pity and of an intention to afford comfort and relief, and is the ‘hieroglyphic of fortitude’ as well as ‘the witness of salvation’. That he not only reaches for but also touches Mammon’s hand sharpens the nature of Guyon’s witness, as Gestus XLI: ‘To take hold gently of another’s hand is a gesture used by those who admonish and persuade’. Such a gesture, complex and highly suggestive as it is, helps to account for the severity of Mammon’s reaction rather at odds with his confession ‘That of my plenty poure out unto all, And unto none my graces do enuye’. No doubt a being that considers itself a god, as Mammon does, would read the offer of pity, coupled with an admonishment to repentance, as presumptuous.
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