Essay by Gabrielle Brittain
"The Greeks' most important legacy is not, as we would think, democracy: it is their mythology." - Lefkowitz, Women in Greek Myth As Greek mythology has become more accessible, it has also become more influential in contemporary popular culture. As a result, we must address the misogynistic lens through which women in these myths are portrayed. Female characters in Greek mythology are chronically objectified and defined by their relationships with men. While Greek goddesses are portrayed as having access to power, their mortal counterparts are consistently denied freedom and multi-dimensional representation in Ovid and Homer's original myths. Due to this, feminist writers have begun to reclaim the narratives of these women, offering insight into their experiences through a lens of empowerment and autonomy. PENELOPE One example of women being characterised and controlled by men is Penelope. Throughout The Odyssey, Penelope is essentially portrayed as Odysseus' unfailingly loyal wife, consumed by grief due to his absence, until his return to Ithaca. Both out first and last impressions of her are centered around this archetype. She weeps for him as early as Book 1, and is praised for how loyally she "kept the husband of her youth" towards the end of the myth. However, Penelope's faithfulness to Odysseus is not her only trait. Homer intermittently alludes to her cleverness and cunning. For example, she holds suitors off by claiming that she's marry one of them once she finished weaving a certain tapestry, yet undoes her progress on the tapestry each night to keep the marriage at bay. This demonstrates that Homer's Penelope has the potential to be a fascinating character, but is denied this opportunity. He neglects her personality and perspective, essentially portraying her as an extension of Odysseus, not as a valuable person in her own right. It is crucial that shallow portrayals of female characters, like that of Homer, are evaluated through a critical lens. Literature and media, as well as serving as a reflection of social attitudes, can influence them. Furthermore, authors often use characters to give certain people a real voice, by amplifying their - sometimes previously stifled - perspectives. As a result, we must be critical of women being characterised entirely in terms of men, and have their experiences erased. It is vital that the under-representation of women's experiences is challenged and reclaimed. Margaret Atwood undertakes this project in The Penelopiad. She retells The Odyssey from Penelope's perspective, making her the eponymous character. During her revision, Atwood highlights Penelope's intelligence, as well as granting her a cynical attitude, remarkable observational skills, and a sharp wit. Throughout The Penelopiad, we hear from a first-person point of view about her experiences, including her life before marriage and during the events which unfold in The Odyssey. This gives us an insight into how her character's thoughts evolve as she grows up, providing a much more three-dimensional, autonomous portrayal of Penelope than that of Homer. One example which highlights these qualities is Penelope's disclosure that, at the age of 15, she was "handed over" to Odysseus like "a package of meat in a wrapping of gold, a sort of gilded blood pudding", accentuating her character's sense of humour and cynical attitude towards the misogynistic marital traditions of her time. Furthermore, Atwood's Penelope quickly expresses quickly expresses her dissatisfaction at how her identity is stripped away in The Odyssey, reduced to the loyalty which she showed to her who (against Homer's heroic portrayal) is "tricky, and a liar." Before delving into her experiences, she questions what she amounts to in the original, after her years of waiting, "despite the temptation, almost the compulsion, to do otherwise." Her answer to this is that she becomes an "edifying legend, a stick, used to beat other women with. Why couldn't they be as considerate, as trustworthy, as all-suffering as I had been?" She clearly does not want other women to follow her example, and is furious at the erasure of her other qualities, likely echoing (on a micro-level) Atwood's own thoughts on Homer's portrayal. This frustration reflects on a macro-level, however, attitudes of women toward the portrayal of female mythological figures in modern media and literature. Whilst the characterisation of women has improved significantly since Ancient Greek times, some authors and directors still fail to create three-dimensional, autonomous female characters whose identities do not revolve around men. Atwood's portrayal, therefore, opposes not only Homer's two-dimensional characterisation of Penelope, but also the lack of importance attributed to women's lives and experiences as seen in aspects of contemporary media and literature. She presents Penelope as an intelligent, perceptive woman, with a matter-of-fact demeanour, a razor-sharp wit, and her own opinions. There qualities are either non-existent or highly neglected in the original myth, making The Penelopiad a version which attributes to Penelope much more power and autonomy. This echoes the aim of many feminist retellings of Greek mythology, including Miller's Galatea. THE STATUE/GALATEA A perhaps stronger example of women being portrayed in a shallow way, purely in terms of their relationship to men, is the statue from Ovid's Mrtamorphoses. She is not even given a name and does not talk; her only purpose is the fulfilment of her husband's sexual fantasies. As a result, she is objectified more explicitly than Homer's Penelope. In The Story of Pygmalion and the Statue, Ovid narrates the tale of Pygmalion. He is a man who hates women, but desires "a consort of his bed", leading him to carve a statue and pray to the Gods that it will come alive. His wish comes true, and after she is transformed into a real woman, Ovid describes how the statue's body is "like pliant wax, when chasing reduce / the former mass to form, and frame for use." This highlights her bending to his will, accentuating how she is reduce to, as Miller outlines, a "compliant object of desire and nothing more." She has no autonomy, no thoughts or wants of her own; her entire identity is constituted by the role designed for her by her husband. Moreover, Ovid does not criticise this in slightest - the pair, to quote Miller, "live, theoretically, happily ever after." All that we are told about the aftermath of the statue gaining life, aside from her having sex with her husband, is that her and Pygmalion have a son. We are told more about what he achieves in two lines than about the woman herself throughout the entire poem, because she has no identity outside of what Pygmalion designed her to be. This further accentuates women's lack of autonomy and personality, as she is never treated as more than an object, existing for and being entirely characterised by her husband's wants. The nature of women as sexual objects, defined by their relationships with men, exists within both Ancient Greek myths as exemplified by the statue and areas of contemporary society. Madeline Miller's retelling, Galatea, aims to challenge this notion, attributing to the woman a name, which she, similarly to Atwood, then uses to title her book. This echoes the common theme of retellings aiming to centre the previously neglected perspectives of women.
As such, Miller gives Galatea a voice, along with her own personality and desires. Her version of events begins with Galatea (transformed from a statue) in a locked room, having previously attempted to escape her husband's control. Like Atwood's Penelope, she is cunning and resents the role which she is expected to play. We see this throughout the text, but it is best exemplified by how she describes the repeated recreation of her coming alive for Pygmalion. From her perspective, we see him enter the room and declare "ah, my beauty is asleep." Miller's use of the possessive pronoun here serves to highlight the sense of ownership that Pygmalion feels towards Galatea, as well as mirroring the language used in Ovid's Story of Pygmalion and the Statue. Soon after this, Galatea is aware that she is "supposed to open my eyes like a dewy fawn, and see him poised over me like the sun, and making a little grasping voice of gratitude, and then he fucks me." The tone of this statement is matter-of-fact, but exasperated, and she craves independence and freedom from the role which her husband has trapped her in. She eventually achieves these things by cleverly deceiving the nurse, hired by Pygmalion, so she can escape. Upon fleeing the room, she finds where her husband is sleeping and says "ah, my beauty is asleep." This signifies her gaining autonomy and power, as she now refuses to play the role for which he carved her. Having done this, she runs out of his house and leads him to the ocean, where she drowns him. He tries to fight this, but "he had no chance, really. He was only flesh", representing how he can no longer control her. They both drown, but she dies peacefully and is no longer characterised by the degrading purpose imposed on her. Throughout this narrative, Miller aims to emphasise, among other traits, Galatea's "matter-of-factness, her cleverness and her courage, her complexity." This portrayal is much more multifaceted than that of Ovid and ultimately allows her to obtain some sense of power and autonomy over her own existence. Therefore, Miller's retelling, like Atwood's Penelopiad, allows the female focaliser to have a voice, challenging the normalisation of objectifying, two-dimensional portrayals of women. MEDUSA Ovid's portrayal of women in other poems is not much better, with Medusa being villainised when she is no longer subject to the power and control of men. Ovid reveals that she was once beautiful, pursued by a "crowd of envious lovers" because of her facial features and "golden ringlets." After she is "seiz'd" and "rifled" by Neptune, Athene takes vengeance not against Neptune, but against Neptune, turning her hair into "hissing snakes" which turn every living thing in their sight into stone. Some contemporary readers take an alternative view, interpreting this as the goddess's attempt to protect Medusa from further harm. This likely echoes our moral intuition that women should not be punished for the actions of men, nor should survivors of sexual assault be punished for their own suffering. Ovid ends the poem by stating that "the hissing snakes her foes more sure ensnare / Than they did lovers once, when shining hair." This highlights Medusa's transformation, and the way in which she is villainised as soon as she cannot be controlled by men, due to her curse of turning them into breathing statues. His portrayal of Medusa is shallow and dichotomous - once a beautiful girl, she becomes a monster, and there is nothing more to it. Ovid objectifies Medusa in the sense that he completely fails to consider her subjective experiences, as he does to Galatea and as Homer does to Penelope. By contrast, Natalie Haynes' portrayal of Medusa in Stone Blind is much more complex and wide-ranging. We gain an insight into her perspective throughout her childhood and adolescence, encouraging a more sympathetic response to her tale. Haynes grants Medusa the status of personhood, which she is denied by Ovid. With Medusa's character often being viewed as a symbol for sexual assault survivors, this perhaps the need for said survivors to be perceived as people, rather than reduced to unsettling statistics. The legal and criminal justice system, for example, often dismisses the importance of sexual assault survivors' feelings and experiences, taking an unsympathetic approach, like that of Ovid to Medusa, to those who have been violated. Before Haynes' Medusa is assaulted by Poseidon, there is a dialogue between them in which she notices him giving a false response and asks, "Why are you pretending to laugh?". Said conversation ends with her sacrificing herself, assaulted by Poseidon to save a girl nearby from the same fate. She does this although - as Poseidon tauntingly points out - "they will never repay your affection". The above serves to highlight her curiosity, intelligence, bravery and selflessness. Later in Stone Blind, Perseus beheads Medusa. In the original myth, Perseus is portrayed as a noble hero, and Medusa as a monster. This is the way "the story is always told." Haynes aims to subvert this, using the characterisation of Medusa's snakes to emphasise that he kills her when she is defenseless: "there is no battle to be had between an armed man and a sleeping girl." Unlike Ovid, Haynes provides a complex and autonomous portrayal of Medusa which does not deny her personhood or vilify her when, due to her curse, she poses a threat to men, so is no longer subject to their control. Whilst the portrayals of women of Homer and Ovid are shallow and constrained, contemporary retellings, for example those of Atwood, Miller and Haynes, undertake the project of unearthing feminist narrative in patriarchal myth. Given the role of media and literature in shaping gender norms and self-conceptions, misogynistic portrayals of women must be challenged. As such, feminist retellings of myth contribute to improved representation, an important first step in strides toward a more gender-equitable society.
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