Q: How does Byron criticize the trend and tendencies of the contemporary society?

Lord Byron, the most consistent satirist of the period and by far the best, has written the satiric piece Don Juan in a wholly fresh manner. His purpose is to expose the hypocrisy and the corruption of high society. However, he has used wit, humor and irony plentiful to satirize his objects effectively.
In the opening stanza we find a very explicit irony in the attempts and procedure of Juan’s education chosen for him by his mother Donna Inez. Juan always kept away from the company of other boys for fear of being corrupted. The subjects and texts of his study are taken from great authors’ works which have no even the slightest touch of sexual reference. For this sake, some of the classical literature is remained unknown to Juan. As a result, Juan is not becoming a pure learner. Through this irony Byron mocks at the society where “love is taught hypocrisy from youth.”
In the brilliant description of the characters of Donna Julia and Donna Inez, Byron satire upon the hypocrisy of women. Though Donna Inez is a devoted Christian, we find that she had relationship with Alfonso before her marriage. Even she had good terms with Alfonso’s mistress to show her love for Alfonso. Even Donna Inez had tried to convince the physicians to prove her husband, Don Jose, as an insane. In the case of Donna Julia; though she is married and fully conscious about social, moral and religious law, she made physical relationship with Don Juan. One day when Alfonso come to investigate but fails to discover Juan. At this Julia harshly rebukes her husband for his baseless suspicion. Even to prove her innocence she pretends of weeping and goes into a fainting fir to declare her own innocence.
Byron also deliberately criticizes Robert Southey for his poetic attitude to introduce a new taste in poetry for public which rejects the poetry of Pope and Dryden. He also mocks at Wordsworth for his dimness in his poems and Coleridge for his immature metaphysics, and Plato for his mystified fantasies.
Byron does not attack mankind, but behavior of man which lacks reason and morality. Byron has criticizes the brutality, immortality, hypocrisy in man. But everywhere he has used wit, humor, irony as his tools to satirize them.