While many consider the study of the classics as unnecessary, and the studies of a bygone era, they would be surprised to realize how much of an effect Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome have had on society today. Greco-Roman mythology is intertwined with the public consciousness: from democracy’s birth in Ancient Athens to pop culture staples such as the Disney movie Hercules. However, as society has modernized, many old myths have been revised, found lacking, and re-written to better suit modern-day sensibilities. Muskaan Kapoor writes in the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics that retellings strive “to answer how the present is shaped by the competing past and in doing so, not only remake the present but also create a new past.” Retellings emphasize female autonomy and female voices at the forefront in direct opposition to the silencing of female voices in ancient mythology. Specifically, portrayals of feminine monstrosity in Greco-Roman mythology illustrate parallels between the misogyny present in the ancient world and the misogyny of today and demonstrate that despite our leaps toward equality, women still face many of the same problems today as they did millennia ago. This can be seen in three main cases: sexual assault and the story of Medusa, domestic abuse and Clytemnestra’s bond with her daughter, and Circe’s and Arachne’s position as women in the workforce.

Retellings of Medusa’s story shift the focus from justifications for sexual assault to empowerment and healing for her, transforming her into a powerful symbol. Medusa is a snake-haired gorgon whose gaze turns men to stone. The archetypal myth of Medusa is written in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, published 8 CE: Medusa, a priestess of Athena, is raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. Athena, a virgin goddess, hides “her chaste eyes behind her aegis / but so that the crime would not go unpunished / she changed the Gorgon’s hair to loathsome snakes” (Ovid 117). Medusa is assaulted, and it is Medusa who is punished. The hero Perseus is then tasked to kill Medusa, and with the help of Athena, the same goddess who punished Medusa for her rape, he sneaks into her cave while she is sound asleep and “severed her head from her neck” (Ovid 116). Medusa is the ultimate victim of sexual assault: not only is she assaulted by a god, but she is then punished by a female god for the act; her punishment at the hands of a fellow woman only emphasizes the justness of the punishment for Medusa’s so-called wrongdoing. The entire incident is the ultimate violation of female bodily autonomy—in Metamorphoses, the story is not even her own, but just a side-note in the myth of Perseus, a son of Zeus. 

Importantly, the myth conforms to a modern-day viewpoint known as the just-world view, which retellings argue against due to its inherent unfairness. The just-world view claims that if a woman is assaulted, it is her fault; specifically, David Gurham at the International Journal of Law writes that “this ‘just-world view’ may be at the foundation of the belief that it is only ‘bad girls’ (that is, women who fail to conform to traditional feminine expectations of good behaviour) who get raped by bringing the violation on themselves.” Retellings take this just-world view and discard it completely, focusing instead on Medusa’s recovery from her violation by both Poseidon and Perseus. The feminist retellings of the myth are an outpouring of empathy, because as Heidi Morse at Duke University writes, “if Medusa has become a central figure for the woman artist to struggle with, it is because, herself a silenced woman, she has been used to silence other women.” The unfairness of the “just-world view” can be summed up by the above paragraph: the world is not just, not to women going about their day and especially not to women who refuse to be silenced and try to seek justice by calling out men who violate their consent. It was not fair in the Ancient Greek society that demonized Medusa and it is still not fair today. Is it any wonder that Medusa—who never once petrifies a woman in the myths and only turns to stone the men who attack her—is a rallying cry?

Modern-day reimaginings of Medusa’s story focus on telling stories about women for women, focusing on her healing instead of her violation. In Nikita Gill’s 2019 poetry and prose collection, Great Goddesses, Athena turns from a punisher to a fellow woman and protector: Athena proclaims to Medusa, “relinquish your human. / And I will turn you into a Goddess / in your own right, a deity of monsters, / a myth that will scare men for all the years and their seasons” (Gill 189). Medusa’s transformation turns from a sign of punishment and shame—both of which conform to a just-world view that believes she deserved what she got—to a sign of empowerment and of Medusa’s immortalization in the public psyche as a protector of women. In the 2018 song, “Medusa”, Kailee Morgue sings about Medusa empowering and helping a fellow woman: “hold on to this moment / and fight until you’re hopeless.” The empowered Medusa symbolizes women across the world standing up to patriarchal justifications for rape; she even became a focal point of the #MeToo movement in 2016 through the statue “Medusa With the Head of Perseus.” The artist “conceived of a sculpture that could reverse that story, imagining it from Medusa’s perspective and revealing the woman behind the monster,” and women across the world latched on (Jacobs). Nowadays, Medusa tattoos are even a common symbol for sexual assault survivors. Nikita Gill has another poem that likens gorgons like Medusa to women in general: “Perhaps the truth about Gorgons is they are just women, / women who do not bend to the world / or fit into the narrow mould you want them too. / Maybe that’s why you demonised them, turned them into monsters, / because you think monsters are easier / to understand than women who say no to you” (Gill 195). The gorgon turns from a nameless monster to a symbol of the punishment and shame that can come from saying “no,” and becomes a symbol who stands against the shame that can center sexual assault stories. Medusa’s final punishment becomes her power and immortalization; people hardly remember the myth of Perseus, the so-called hero who murders Medusa, but Medusa is etched into the public consciousness. Ultimately, Medusa herself has turned from a silenced afterthought in a myth about a hero killing her to achieve glory—a final violation—to a symbol for women to identify with.

On the other hand, the story of Clytemnestra, Queen of Mycenae, shines a light on changing opinions on the role of the mother as she progresses from a monster to a victim to an empowered woman taking power for herself when it is denied to her. The earliest portrayal of Clytemnestra occurs after the Trojan War in Aeschylus’s tragedy Agamemnon, around 525-456 BC. During the Trojan War, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra’s husband, sacrifices their daughter Iphigenia on the altar to the goddess Artemis, who demands a virgin sacrifice from the Greek army. Clytemnestra is furious, vows revenge for her daughter, and upon her husband’s return to Mycenae, brutally murders him with an ax. In the eyes of the audience, Clytemnestra transforms into a reviled monster for avenging her daughter: the prophetess Cassandra cries out in the play, “What fangèd reptile like to her doth creep? / Some serpent amphisbene, some Skylla, deep / Housed in the rock, where sailors shriek and die.” According to Aeschylus, she violated gender norms, acted like a man, and is thus in the eyes of society, a serpentine monster. Aeschylus’s portrayal of Clytemnestra justifies misogyny, patriarchal control over both women and their children, and abuse of the wife and mother in the household—when set free for years, as Clytemenstra was during the Trojan War, the consequences are unimaginable. In the sequel to Agamemnon, Clytemnestra’s son, Orestes, murders her to avenge his father Agamemnon, and is then acquitted by Apollo and Athena because “Not the true parent is the woman’s womb / That bears the child; she doth but nurse the seed / New-sown: the male is parent; she for him, / As stranger for a stranger, hoards the germ / Of life.” This is the ultimate standard set up by ancient societies: women do not have the rights to their children and are just incubators for a man’s child. Just like the wife and mother are objectified, so too is the daughter, who is her father’s property to marry off or kill as he pleases, as in the case of young Iphigenia. Orestes is allowed to defend his father as his true parent, and thus his murder of Clytemenstra does not matter, because, to ancient Greek society, she was simply a vessel for Agamemnon to do with as he pleased. Ancient societies barely saw the abuse Clytemnestra faced as abuse because she, and all other women, were just objects to their husbands, but this perception changed as the centuries progressed.

Hardly a century later, the ancient Greek writer Euripides, who lived from (480-406 BC), used his tragedy, Iphigenia at Aulis, to focus on Clytemnestra’s backstory and provide justification for her monstrosity by focusing on the mother-child bond between her and Iphigenia, demonstrating the already slowly-changing standards of the time. In the play, Clytemnestra spits at Agamemnon that “thou didst wed me unwilling, and obtain me by force, having slain Tantalus, my former husband, and having dashed my infant living to the ground, having torn him by force from my breast.” In modern retellings, Steve Wilmer for Cambridge University finds that “by incorporating Clytemnestra’s revenge into productions of Iphigenia in Aulis, the play can become less about victimized females, and more about females taking justifiable revenge for wrongful actions.” For example, in the 2017 retelling House of Names, by Colm Tóibín, Mayron Lucuara at the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics finds that Clytemnestra’s “eyes cannot see beyond the need to grieve her daughter’s death not in a state of mere passivity, but with the resolute will to act in retaliation,” to avenge her beloved daughter. Ultimately, it is the mother-child bond between Clytemenstra and Iphigenia that turns Clytemnestra from a monster to a sympathetic wife who after years of staying silent, has had enough. She represents the silenced woman who fights back against the abuse she has faced and is then turned into a monster for doing so. It is not even a question as to whether Clytemnestra is the mother of her daughter; by taking revenge for Iphigenia and the grief that they have faced at Agamemnon’s hands, as detailed in Iphigenia at Aulis, his death is justified and Clytemnestra sheds the objectification of Aeschylus’s trilogy, which would see her and all other mothers as silent baby-makers for their husbands. 

Modern retellings of the story of Clytemnestra understand her story as one of a wife and mother escaping years of domestic abuse the only way she knew how, combining Eurpides’ helpless and Aeschylus’s monstrous Clytemnestra into a more whole version. Wilmer explains that today, Clytemnestra represents “women who have been victimized but fight back, who empower themselves and are empowered, by the support of other women, to take action to overturn their oppression.” This modern-day portrayal of the powerful queen is incredibly relatable to women, all of whom in one way or another, fear the abuse so many of their sisters face. Costanza Casati’s soon-to-be-released novel Clytemnestra is emblematic of this modern Clytemnestra. The summary of the book says it all: “this was not the first offence against you. This was not the life you ever deserved. And this will not be your undoing… If power isn’t given to you, you have to take it for yourself.” Clytemnestra had faced abuse after abuse, offense after offense, and after years of being helpless to her cruel husband Agamemnon, she had enough and chose to take stolen power back. In Clytemnestra and House of Names, her monstrosity transforms from reviled to understood—she turns from the monstrous wife akin to the sea monster Scylla to the rightful, abused avenger standing up to her husband. Her story goes from one of justification for misogyny to a transformative story of breaking free from patriarchal oppression, which aligns better with today’s society: one where more and more women are breaking free from their abusers and forging their own paths.

The myths of Circe and Arachne demonstrate the ultimate evolution of society’s perceptions of feminine monstrosity because their retellings embrace monstrosity instead of demonizing women who create their own power. Circe, for example, is an independent goddess who lives alone on the island of Aiaia with her nymph attendants: she is the epitome of the lone working woman in today’s society. Ancient myths demonize her chosen method of making a livelihood and the fact that she is single by turning her power into witchcraft. For example, in Metamorphoses, she creates the monster Scylla out of jealousy by going to the pool where Scylla bathed and then “the goddess tainted the pool, / contaminated it with her freakish poison, / sprinkling it with juice squeezed from toxic roots / and muttering dark spells, a mysterious maze / of magical words repeated thrice nine times” (Ovid 386). Her actions are used as justification for her subjugation at the hands of the gods, who set the standards for Ancient Greek societies. With the help of Hermes, the hero Odysseus enters her palace and he “drew his sword on the now trembling goddess. / they came to an understanding and, Ulysses, / now in her bedroom, demanded as a wedding gift / the bodies of his friends,” whom she had turned into pigs. In Ancient Greece, it was seen as okay for Odysseus to threaten her and then take her to his bed under dubious circumstances because she is a witch living alone (Ovid 394-395). Arachne, on the other hand, is not a witch but in Metamorphoses, “she was a commoner herself” who “had made a name for herself throughout Lydia / although she came from a small, nimble house / and lived in a small town called Hypaepa” (Ovid 147). Because of her confidence in her skills and her refusal to pay homage to the goddess Athena for her skills on the loom, she is challenged to a weaving competition, and when she wins, “the golden virago, / incensed at Arachne’s spectacular success, / ripped the fabric apart with all its embroidery / of celestial crimes” and transforms Arachne into a spider (Ovid 147). Arachne is a working-class woman: all the power she has comes from her own hands, but the gods would still have her attribute her successes to them, and when she protests, she is transformed into a monster. In both scenarios, Arachne and Circe work hard to make their livelihoods and create their power, but at the will of the Gods, are hurt and depicted as monsters, because monsters are easier to hate. Monstrous imagery only helped justify sexism in Ancient Greece, and tout the costs of allowing women to stay unmarried or work independently.

Modern-day retellings of these myths shift the focus onto the power that the women created for themselves, and their bravery in standing up to the gods, who represent the ancient standards women had to put up with. In Madeline Miller’s book Circe, Scylla’s monstrosity, inflicted upon her by Circe, turns from punishment to an improvement upon whatever other livelihood the nymph could eke out: “A monster, she always has a place. She may have all the glory her teeth can snatch. She will not be loved for it, but she will not be constrained either” (Chapter 7). In one line, monstrosity becomes a metaphor for the independent, working woman who chooses to forge her path in the world and is demonized for it. This has striking parallels to 21st-century society, where women are a large part of the workforce, but many times, are still demonized for being too “bossy” or “strident” when forging their own path. Monstrosity makes such actions acceptable; if anything, they become a point of pride. Circe turns feminine monstrosity into a badge of honor, and this is echoed in feminist retellings of Arachne’s story. Kavita Maya in the Journal of Feminist Theology explains that Arachne becomes “a figure who protests patriarchal authority, wilfully defying the regime upheld by Athena, the goddess who identifies with the law of her father” and is punished by Athena. She uses “her divine authority to silence and appropriate Arachne’s voice by re-presenting the brave and skilled weaver as a non-speaking, lowly spider.” The spider turns from a monstrous symbol to something powerful in retellings like “Even My Rage is more Creative than Minerva’s,” where Arachne takes pride in being a spider and weaving her legacy. When she is punished, she turns it into her power: “Picture as many of us as you can. And then more because it keeps going. And how many babies will my babies’ babies have, and how many babies will my babies’ babies’ babies have? Oh, more than you can count. We will be so many. And we will keep coming. More and more together.” Arachne turns her so-called monstrosity into something powerful; she weaves herself a legacy that lasts millennia. Ultimately, retellings demonstrate that monstrosity is not just an invective thrown at women who refuse to conform to society’s standards, but a title bestowed upon powerful women that they make their own.

Retellings trace patterns in the tapestry of our history: they can create symbols of solidarity for sexual assault, illustrate the power of the mother-child bond, and turn monstrosity into a badge of honor. They can take centuries of vitriol and shame thrown at women and turn them into armor. Medusa, Clytemnestra, Circe, and Arachne are just four examples of powerful women in mythology and what their modern-day retellings can tell us about our society. They teach us about shame, power, escaping abuse, and forging our paths—all actions and emotions every woman has to understand, fear, and grapple with over the course of her lifetime. They teach us about consequences: who faces them and who does not. Nikita Gill sums it up perfectly: “you think monsters are easier / to understand than women who say no to you” (Gill 195). Feminine monstrosity does not truly exist, because monsters do not exist; it is just easier to hate a monster than to grapple with the concept of self-blame, internalized misogyny, and women who prove men wrong. In the end, Greek mythology and its retellings can help demonstrate that the problems women faced millennia ago and that they face today have not changed dramatically. In a truly equal world, monsters do not exist—just women, beautiful and imperfect and equal.

Bibliography

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Bartnett, Erin. “Even My Rage Is More Creative than Minerva’s.” Electric Literature, November 27, 2019. https://electricliterature.com/even-my-rage-is-more-creative-than-minervas-nina-maclaughlin/.

“Clytemnestra.” Goodreads. Accessed April 17, 2023. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61361681.

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