Saturday, December 22, 2012

A Love Letter to Bigamists

Right off the bat, you need to know that the Snow White story has never done much for me. This may have something to do with being traumatized before age 6 by the re-release of the Disney version (the transformation scene, oh my god), but it's also deeply rooted in my disdain for heroines who don't do anything, and distrust of stories that hold them up as role models. By now you should know that I'll take Kate Crackernuts over the fairest of them all any day of the week.

Which makes it odd that a Snow White variant is among my favorite fairy tales of all time.

Silver-tree, John Batten
"Gold-tree and Silver-tree" is different from the classic version, though, in all the ways that matter. The Scots felt no need to whitewash the mother's murderous designs on her biological daughter; Silver-tree, the evil queen, even couches her single successful plot in a false solicitude for Gold-tree's well-being. Gold-tree has a modicum of sense; when she sees Silver-tree's ship coming for her, she knows perfectly well that her mother wants to kill her, and that she needs to hide. But the biggest difference, and the reason why I love this version, lies in the actions of the prince.

In the Grimms' Snow White, the prince is at best a moron and at worst a necrophiliac. Either way, he is primarily a plot device. And in "Gold-tree and Silver-tree," that's exactly how he starts out. Right after Silver-tree finds out that Gold-tree is more beautiful than she is, up rides the prince, seeking Gold-tree's hand in marriage. Problem solved: Gold-tree marries the prince, her father slips Silver-tree a goat's heart, and for bonus points, Gold-tree and the prince actually fall in love. Everything's perfect until Silver-tree realizes that Gold-tree's alive, sticks a poisoned dart in her finger, and sails back home, presumably cackling all the way.

Death of Gold-tree, Michelle Hunt
Point one in the prince's favor: He doesn't try to kiss, sleep with, or otherwise perform acts of dubious consensuality on the seemingly-dead body of his wife. (He does keep her unblemished corpse in a locked room, but he can't really be blamed for that, since it's plot-relevant and he's grieving for his lost love. At least, I cut him some slack on that. And I bet poor Talia would, too.)

And then things get really interesting. The prince remarries.

So. It's a fairy tale. We already know that Gold-tree's not really dead. But no one in the story does. This may be the one and only time where I'm glad to see characters not operating in full awareness of fairy tale logic. I'll pull out my hair and scream at clueless third brothers and innocent girls victimized by their stepsisters, wondering why the hell they don't wise up. But here, I'm completely on board, because what's happening is that real-life logic is superseding fairy tale logic. Of course the prince would remarry. He's a prince, and he didn't have any kids with Gold-tree. It's his job, regardless of the fact that he still mourns the woman he loved.

Gold-tree, Morris Meredith Williams
And then, he wins my undying love, because his second wife is a complete and total badass. When he forgets to take the key to Gold-tree's locked room, she Bluebeards in there and finds the body of her predecessor. Does she go all "other woman" on poor defenseless Gold-tree? Does she cook her in a stew? Does she confront her husband about the near-literal skeleton in his closet?

Nope. She just takes out the poisoned dart. And when the prince gets home, she tells him right away, "Hey, I woke up your first wife, and you obviously still love her, so I'll just peace out and let you two lovebirds get back together." Is there anyone else in fairy tales who freely walks away from a love conflict with sincere goodwill? Is there anyone in the real world who can do that? The second wife basically thumbs her nose at fairy tale convention, while at the same time making us desperate to keep her around. I love her for it.

Two Princesses, One Prince, V-Eclipse
Point two in the prince's favor: He made a very intelligent second marriage.

Point three in the prince's favor: As soon as the second wife offers to step out, he refuses to let her. She says she'll go away. His exact words in reply? "Oh! indeed you shall not go away, but I shall have both of you."

This guy is so cool. Maybe not smart enough to just take the dart out of his first wife's finger, but totally smart enough to marry a woman with brains, to value her for her intelligence, and to let his first and second loves know that he cherishes them both equally.

It's hardly conventional, either in fairy tales or in the world we live in. But I have to think that this is one awesome three-way marriage. No one is superior: Gold-tree owes her life to the second wife, who owes her continued place to the prince, who owes his happiness to both of them. It's impossible to feel like anyone's an interloper here, because they all play integral parts in the relationship. Plus we get to keep the smart girl on the heroes' team. This is a total win for everyone involved.

The clincher of it all, vindicating the prince's unconventional decision, is that the second wife is solely responsible for the death of Silver-tree (remember her?). Once again, Silver-tree hears that Gold-tree's alive and comes back for more murder. Gold-tree's initial instinct - to flee, again - is firmly countermanded by the second wife, who gets them both down on the beach to say hello. Silver-tree offers Gold-tree a cup laced with poison, pulling the caring-mother card yet again in front of witnesses. Cool as a cucumber, the second wife retorts that she doesn't know where you come from, honey, but in this country the person offering a drink takes a sip first, I mean really, where are your manners. And when Silver-tree pretends to drink, the second wife just smacks the bottom of the cup so that the poison goes straight into the would-be murderess's mouth. Call me crazy, but I think that's even more karmic than Snow White's stepmother dancing to death in red-hot iron shoes. It's quick, it's elegant, and it's not nearly as grotesque.

The Two Princesses of Bamarre, eala-nedea
This is a fairy tale where real-world rules also apply. Sure, there's a talking trout and some confusion over the actual fact of death. There's also unvarnished mother-daughter darkness, the irreplaceable value of second love, and perhaps the most unconventional marriage fairy tales have to offer, portrayed in unambiguously glowing terms. I've never read a fairy tale quite like this one. With the exception of the Beauty and the Beast variants, I've never seen more interesting romantic dynamics. It's a lot more complicated and compelling than "someday my prince will come."

And it's subversive as hell. It pokes fun at the passive heroine. It giggles at the genre's conventions. A secondary character steals center stage halfway through, and the reader never looks back. It never punishes its heroes for their atypical choices, and in fact rewards the unexpected over the standard. Fairy tales exist to reinforce the status quo. But by the end of this one, you're cheering for the triumph of true love expressed through bigamy. That is gutsy like nobody's business. And more than anything else, I love this story for that very fact: that it stakes out its territory, takes a stand, and refuses to back down.

If only we could get Snow White to read it...

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Where Have All the Mothers Gone?

It's impossible to read fairy tales without realizing one very glaring absence in the lives of nearly every hero or heroine. They have no mothers. They have stepmothers out the wazoo, perfectly ready to throw their innocent stepchildren under the closest available bus, but no mothers. They have fathers, who are either malicious favorite-players or ineffectual weaklings bullied by their second wives. But no mothers. Fairytale Land should put out an APB for all its missing moms.

The Death of Rachel, Giambettino Cignaroli
The lack of maternal influence has painfully obvious results. Scads of motherless heroines fall effortlessly into the clutches of their evil stepmothers. And that's not even the worst of it. Take the story of Joseph and his brothers. Granted, those kids had four mothers to share around, but the death of the beloved Rachel leaves a huge hole in the structure of Jacob's family. Zilpah and Bilhah are never allowed much say in the raising of their sons, and Leah is either incapable of or uninterested in keeping twelve rowdy boys in line. In effect, if not in fact, Jacob's sons are motherless. They live in a world of ruthless male competition. And Jacob himself, as consolation for the loss of his love, makes no bones about the fact that Rachel's son Joseph is his favorite. With no mother to teach morality and a father who's hardly modeling good behavior, it's no wonder that resentment and hatred fester among the brothers, leading ultimately to the other eleven selling Joseph into slavery to get rid of their rival. It's difficult to say what would have happened with Rachel as an active presence in their lives, but it's pretty clear that Jacob wouldn't have favored Joseph so flagrantly if he hadn't been mourning the boy's mother.

Snow White illustration, Franz Juttner
The plot thickens when you go back to the Grimm stories and realize that those clever German boys weren't just cataloging folktales. They were deliberately shaping the moral compasses of the next generation. Mothers, real mothers, could never be allowed to do the horrific things to their children that they do in those well-loved stories: poison them with apples, abandon them in the woods, etc. It was much easier to kill the mothers before they had a chance to become evil. That way, the stories preserved a saintly image of a mother who often dies in giving her child life, side by side with the villainous hag who usurps her place. Better to put the kids at risk from a world without a mother than to admit that mothers are, in fact, capable of the same horrors as other human beings.

Kate Crackernuts, Trina Schart Hyman
But that line of thinking leaves us singularly ill-equipped to handle, say, the heroine's mother in Kate Crackernuts. Bold, quick-thinking princess Kate is clearly the story's protagonist, but her half-sister Anne is the beauty of the family. Kate's mother (who is Anne's stepmother) resents her biological daughter being overshadowed, so out of love for Kate, she magics a sheep's head onto Anne's shoulders. What on earth should our reaction be? Should we be glad that at least one fairytale mother cares about her daughter's future? Should we be outraged that the queen could do such a thing to her trusting stepdaughter? Should we renounce the queen's actions utterly (as Kate herself does), or should we allow that her motive was love and concern? After all, the queen's just doing exactly what fairytale convention demands of her: being cruel and manipulative toward her stepdaughter. It's her bad luck that her story involves one of the few sets of siblings who actually like each other, creating an instant gray area where the evil stepmother's biological child is our hero.

So, having no mother is bad. Having a vindictive mother is bad. Having a caring mother is bad. Is there any kind of good mother who's not also dead?

Demeter and Persephone, Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire
Well, there's always Demeter.

Right from the start, she's got the loving and nurturing aspect of motherhood covered; she's goddess of the harvest, so we already know she'll take awesome care of her daughter. And going by the brief glimpse we get of young carefree Persephone before Hades abducts her, it seems fair to say that Demeter knocked it out of the park. Once Persephone goes missing, Demeter essentially shuts down the earth, holding life itself hostage until her daughter is returned. Her determined crusade to find Persephone is the sole reason Zeus gets off his arse and sends Hermes to bring Persephone back. And even though Hades tricks Persephone into spending three months of the year with him, the remaining nine are divinely judged to be the purview of the mother-daughter team of spring and harvest, which creates lovely weather and plentiful harvests and ensures that even the mortals want Persephone to stay with her mom.

Isis & Horus, Judith Page
And look over there! It's Isis, who brought her dead husband back to life just so she could get pregnant. She spends decades incognito, using her powerful magic to protect Horus from his murderous uncle who's got teams canvassing Egypt looking for him. When Set gets past her vigilance and nearly kills Horus via scorpions, Isis calls in favors from the gods in order to save her son. She devotes every waking minute to teaching Horus exactly how to survive the inevitable battle with Set. Unlike with Demeter and Persephone, we get to see Isis's efforts fulfilled: Horus trounces Set (albeit with some interesting methods), avenges his father, and becomes king of Egypt (and ultimately a god). Well done, Isis.

And now the Virgin Mary is knocking at the door. Gotta count her, too. Betrothed-but-not-married knocked-up-by-God virgin mom sounds like the premise of a VH1 show. But Mary makes it work. She convinces a very skeptical Joseph that she didn't actually cheat on him (at least not by choice - we can talk
Madonna and Child, Il Sassoferrato
about God's consent issues later), goes with him to Bethlehem ready to drop at any second, gives birth alone in a freaking stable, and maintains a strong and loving relationship with her son for his entire life, which sadly ends before hers. Statistically, she should have been screwed. Every card was stacked against her. But out of the jaws of defeat, Mary snatches an enormous parental victory. Very few women can successfully raise a Savior.

So yes, there are positive models of motherhood who play active and crucial roles in their children's stories. But there's a catch. They're all goddesses. (You can quibble about Mary's divine status, but she ascends to Heaven at the moment of her death, and has more icons and fan-worship than any sanctified Christian who's not Jesus. The woman's a goddess.) Fairytale mothers are mortals with only mortal strength. Is it fair to ask human mothers to live up to the astonishing lengths that goddesses go to in protecting and raising their children?

Brave, Disney/Pixar
It might actually be fine. Because what the ranks of good living mothers sorely need to oppose the army of evil mothers is power. The evil mother's menace comes from the fact that she has all the power and her child-victim has none. To declare her disgust for her mother's methods, Kate Crackernuts has to go into self-imposed exile. Even the sainted dead moms have power; Cinderella's dresses her up for the ball, assisting her in her only avenue of escape from her powerful stepmother's dominance. So the good mothers need the power that goddesses of life and love can provide: the strength to endure, the courage to nurture, the will to make things better. The goddess-mothers aren't providing an unreachable ideal. They exist to brace up mortal mothers, to show them what qualities will serve them best, and to remind them that - divine or not - every good mother has what it takes.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Revisiting Lancelot

Sir Lancelot, Melissa A. Benson
Is it just me, or is Lancelot kind of boring?

Because really, you can only hear "best knight in the world" so many times before you get sick of both the phrase and the person it describes. From his intro to his elegantly repenting death, Lancelot is so perfect it's disgusting. He usurps the stories the second he appears; his arrival at Camelot signals the transition from "exploits of Arthur the warrior king" to "loosely connected vignettes mostly centering on this new French guy." There's no enemy who can face him, and no woman who can avoid falling head over heels the second she sees his exquisite yet manly face. He does exactly one thing wrong in his entire life, and even that had a certain inevitability to it: of course the world's most beautiful woman is going to fall for the best knight.

It's even written into the legends that Lancelot nauseates his fellow knights, who understandably don't get the joke the seventeenth time Monsieur Perfect knocks them out of their saddles. (While in disguise. And then rides away like tournaments are beneath him, when he obviously cares enough to joust in them.) Let's not forget how easy it was for Mordred to gather a band of disaffected knights to surprise him in Guinevere's chamber. Dude did not have a huge fan club.

So here's the thing. If we accept that it's very easy to get bored with Lancelot, the question that never gets asked is: why?

Sort of redundant, yes? Didn't I just answer it?

The Sword of Lancelot, Howard David Johnson
Well, yes and no. Take a step back from the stories. Look at them as plot alone. Lancelot is incredible. Remember what I said a few paragraphs above about how no enemy can face him? No enemy can face him. He goes up against knights who make careers of killing for fun, and he routinely destroys them. He does unspeakable things to ideas like "hopeless situation" and "no way out." When the woman he loves is in danger, he morphs into this amazing cross between James Bond and Superman, traveling incognito, busting up everything but his beloved during the rescue, and fighting the abductor with one hand tied behind his back because honor demands it. And he still splits this guy's head open. There is a reason this man is described as the best knight in the world. And it is because he is the best knight in the world.

One could argue that if it weren't for everyone else's insistence on his perfection, Lancelot would be seen not as irreparably fallen and kind of bland, but as the badass to end all badasses. I'd bet on him versus anyone. Batman? Please. Darth Vader? Don't make me laugh. Lancelot could take out Jaws if he wanted to. Without even using a boat.

Gawain and the Green Knight, David Hitchcock
Look at Gawain, another badass from the same cycle, and another owner of the "best in show" title (before Lancelot came along, that is). No sissy perfection for Gawain. He runs headlong into danger, carried away by his impulses, and he too wins more than should be humanly possible. But he (and his authors) aren't nearly as obsessed with his perfection as Lancelot. Sure, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" takes valuable time out of the quest shenanigans to explain why his pentangle shield is the most sacred thing ever, but it's really just ironic foreshadowing of Gawain's ultimate failure. He carries the perfect shield, but the knight it guards is only human.

Sound familiar? Perfect knight, fatal weakness, inevitable fall... It's the same story as Lancelot's ill-fated romance with Guinevere. On the outside, he is all that a knight should be; inside, he knows himself to be unworthy.

The difference between them, though, is that Gawain moves on. Humiliated and angry with himself, he tells all of Camelot about his disgrace. But Arthur, demonstrating exactly why he's awesome, gently reminds Gawain of his many accomplishments over the course of the quest, not least of which is the fact that the Green Knight honored him enough to leave him alive. Arthur takes it a step further by declaring that Gawain's green garter, until now a badge of shame, will be regarded by all as a symbol of Gawain's honor and courage in revealing his own weakness.

For obvious reasons, Lancelot cannot do the same. But that's a cop-out, because of course Arthur isn't stupid and already knows about Guinevere. Gawain's declaration allows him to get his failure off his chest, and in fact helps him reclaim the honor he thought he had lost; Lancelot's unwillingness to jeopardize that very same appearance of honor dooms him to cling to his sin. With no expiation, it festers, becoming the central facet of his character, while Gawain is able to grow beyond his misdeed.

So in addition to being the biggest badass at the Round Table, Lancelot's also got the most emotional turmoil of anyone (except maybe Arthur). Constantly aware of the hypocrisy on which his life is built, hating himself but loving Guinevere more, he has the most fascinating inner life of all the knights. He is a man desperate for perfection who can't help clinging to his one flaw. And he knows it the whole time. He is never allowed a moment to forget the contradiction of himself. He wrestles with it every single day, and always comes back with the same answer: he is not strong enough to reject what is at once the best and worst thing in his life.

He's not just a badass. He's a relatable badass.

Lancelot of the Lake, Delphine Gache
Everyone knows about the struggle to succeed; everyone understands the unexpected roadblocks that get in the way; everyone knows how bitter failure tastes. Lancelot's story is the story of every time we couldn't make something better. He is universal and human like no other character in the entire cycle.

I think it's time we reclaimed Lancelot. It's not going to be easy; his character forms around the very thing that holds him back. But we can definitely start celebrating his feats of arms as the ridiculously awesome career that they are. We can see the good as well as the sinful in his love for Guinevere; it's hard to do justice to the man when we keep dismissing and belittling the passion for which he sacrificed his soul. And instead of complaining about how boring he is, we - and I include myself here - can instead start asking why, for hundreds and hundreds of years, we've kept coming back to his story and finding things in it that touch our hearts.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Three to Tango

The Triple Goddess, Briar Mythology
The Triple Goddess is one of those fantastic myths you only learn about in your teens, once you graduate from Myths 101 and move on to the more interesting courses. Between them, the Maiden, Mother and Crone offer a fascinating view of the divine female at any and all stages of life, not just the shrink-wrapped virginity so beloved of fairy tales. The idea that divinity doesn't hinge on youth and beauty was a fantastic paradigm shift for thirteen-year-old Liz, who began recognizing triple goddesses when she saw them, and even wondering if the Holy Trinity weren't another triple goddess, only male.

Of course, thirteen-year-old Liz also fell squarely into the trap that is the triple goddess. With three different roles needing to be cast, it's very easy to forget that the roles themselves are much less than the sum of their parts. Taken as a tripartite whole, the triple goddess presents an illuminating view of womanhood, seeing each phase as worthy of honor. Split the triple goddess into her components and you're right back where you started: with a set of simplistic, easily categorized female roles.

Take my favorite Greek triple goddess, best known as Persephone. "Persephone?" you say. "That's one goddess." Well, yes, as we know her today. But her story is a fertility myth, perfect for a triple goddess given that the story itself is about change. Her title as maiden abductee and goddess of spring is Kore, which translates quite literally to "the maiden"; as the heartless queen of the underworld, she is Persephone; as someone who has harnessed the power of life and of death, she is Hecate (herself often depicted as a triple goddess). And to complicate things even more, Robert Graves suggests that the name "Demeter" is the one given to all three aspects of the goddess when combined, which - admit it - explains Demeter's nurturing personality and purview as well as her obsessive pursuit and reluctance to share her adult daughter. (By the way, Tanith Lee's brilliant novel White as Snow gets a huge amount of its power from exploring the parallels between the Demeter-Persephone myth and the tale of Snow White. Check it out, it's phenomenal.)

On their own, each aspect of the goddess is fairly straightforward: Persephone is the abducted innocent, Demeter the vengeful mother, Hecate the mysterious witch, and poor Kore an insignificant minor deity. Put them all together and the implications are dizzying. Not only does one person pass through every state of being, there's also an aspect of her character that allows her to be all of them at once. In essence, the triple goddess represents character development, also known as having lived a life.

In contrast, the Morrigan, often cited as a classic triple goddess, is practically a handbook for how to get it wrong. For one thing, it's never been clear whether or not she is actually a triple goddess, or one member of a triad, or just a standalone war goddess doing her thing who gets saddled with a bunch of warlike girl sidekicks. For another, the three goddesses who make up the triple-goddess Morrigan - Macha, Badb, and Nemain - are all aggressive war goddesses. Not much room for character development if they all handle the same thing. The Morrigan also shares a close affinity with animals; Badb can take the shape of a raven, and Macha is deeply identified with horses. A triple goddess's very nature means that she already has other potential forms to shift into; Kore and Demeter don't have familiars as the Morrigan does, and while some forms of Hecate have three animal heads, she herself doesn't turn into an animal. The confusion and the lack of variation makes the Morrigan even more troubling as a triple goddess. Unlike the Demeter-goddess whose three faces reveal growth and change, the Morrigan presents the same image no matter where she turns.

The Death of King Arthur, Katharine Cameron
Even in a highly Christianized story, the triple goddess persists. It's impossible not to recognize her in the three queens whose barge takes Arthur to Avalon after the fatal battle of Camlann; it's fascinating that Morgan Le Fay is one of those queens (although it's never clear what aspect she represents, my money's on Crone). Heather Dale's song "Three Queens" changes the identity of the other two - traditionally the Queen of Northgalis and the Queen of the Waste Lands - to Igraine and Guinevere, presenting Arthur with the great female triad of his life at the moment of his death. That makes the designation of each aspect obvious: Guinevere as Maiden, Igraine as Mother, Morgan as Crone.

The Masque of the Four Seasons, Walter Crane
And it poignantly points up the ways in which these three women, each essential to the legend of Arthur, fall short of becoming "complete." Guinevere is the eternal Maiden, beautiful regardless of the passing years, constantly abducted and in need of rescue, until her whiplash-inducing change at the very end of the cycle, becoming a nun as an act of penance and transitioning straight into the Crone without having borne the son who would have spared Arthur the necessity of Mordred. Igraine's role as Mother defines her entire role in the cycle; her brief moment as Maiden is problematic, both because she's already married when Uther falls in lust with her, and because that leads directly to her husband's death and her own rape. Once she's given birth to Arthur, the story has no more need of her; she never gets to evolve into the Crone. And Morgan, identified with the Crone through her magic (like Hecate) and with the Mother through her murderous son, never gets a chance to play the Maiden. Her story-imposed role as villainess cannot allow her a time of beauty and growth. Seen in that light, these pivotal heroines are as tragic as Arthur, and more deeply flawed; the exploitation of those flaws is what both creates and brings down Camelot. Even an imperfect triple goddess is illuminating.

Triple Goddess, Susan Seddon Boulet
But the Arthurian women have an advantage that Persephone or Macha don't; they're highly individualized characters, quite outside their triad. For the others, their greatest moment of depth comes as a facet of the triple goddess; it grants them a development not given to them in their own stories.

Maybe that's why we have triple goddesses in the first place: to grow characters given short shrift on their own. And maybe that's why already-developed characters don't neatly fit the archetype. It's a very strange kind of growth that sets up barriers and prerequisites. But the presence of a triple goddess changes the way we look at the divine female. Problematic though she may be, ultimately the triple goddess does enhance our perspectives, both on the characters and on what it could mean to be female.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

It's Time to Listen

I don't generally like to let harsh realities invade this blog. It's my happy space where I get to blather about stories, not a soapbox from which I shout what I think you should be thinking. But then Todd Akin opened his idiotic mouth, and I remember how little has really changed since the days of the stories I love. Rape is a huge plot point in so many myths, but so often the victim's story is rarely even listened to. Worse, his or her experience is mostly brushed aside, with the rape-conceived child being seen as justifying the assault.

It all sounds a little too familiar.

The Rape of Europa, Noel-Nicolas Coypel
Take, for example, Europa. Really, you could take any of Zeus' conquests, including his wife. But Europa's the one who gets the word "rape" in the title of her story. Search for "Europa" on its own, and you get images of a moon and the official EU website. Search "Rape of Europa" and you get stories, pictures, and a film about stolen art treasures that turns the seizure and assault of a girl by a god-turned-bull into a metaphor for the loss of Europe's artistic identity. In our cultural mindset, Europa is nothing without the rape. Before, she's not even a blip on the radar; after, she's only important because she conceives from that rape, and gives birth to the future king of Crete and the greatest judge of mythological Greece. The only story we tell about her - the only one we know about her - is that she was raped by Zeus in the form of a bull. Oh, and did I mention stolen away to a freakin' island afterwards, by her rapist? And then handed over to the current king of Crete like a door prize once Zeus gets bored?

The Rape of Europa, Felix Edouard Vallotton
It actually gets worse. When her father, showing a unique moral and familial affection, sends his sons out to look for his missing daughter, Zeus distracts them by giving them their own cities, thus barring them from ever locating their sister and depriving Europa of anything from her pre-rape life. But this ban isn't forever; when Europa's sons Minos and Sarpedon clash over a boy they both love, Sarpedon flees Crete for his uncle Cilix's kingdom. Obviously he can leave the island; obviously he knows, or has been allowed to discover, where his mother's family is. A young man who's never seen his uncle is easily permitted to take up residence with him, but a rape victim torn from her home is flatly denied even a glimpse of her brother. "Double standard" doesn't begin to cover how appalling this is.

Sun, Moon, and Talia, Chris Beatrice
We've been over the arguably-worse horror that is "Sun, Moon and Talia," the original Sleeping Beauty. But it bears repeating. While in the grip of an enchantment, Talia is raped while unconscious and left pregnant by an already-married king. She only wakes up when her newborn son mistakes her finger for her nipple and sucks the spindle splinter out. Again, it gets worse; when King Rapist returns to his perma-sleeping sex doll and finds that, whoops, she's awake and he has twins, he doesn't even have the guts to own up to what he's done. He keeps her in her castle and goes about his life, blissfully unaware that his actual wife (or sometimes his ogress mother, depending on whether it's Perrault or Basile telling the story) is trying to serve him his children for dinner. It is purest luck that Talia and her children survive; the only time the king ever takes responsibility for what he's done is when he marries Talia at the end, which is both a foregone conclusion and a horrifying ending.

Talia, like Europa, does literally nothing to deserve or earn the fate she gets. Both are victims of passing proprietary lust. Both bear children conceived in rape. Both are cut off forever from their families, and from any support system to help them cope with the upheavals in their lives. Their stories are ones that we've heard many times. They're the realities that too many women live with every day. And if they were real and alive today - a kidnapped young woman and a teen mother - they would be among the many that Todd Akin suggested were not "legitimately" raped.

While you let that sink in, let me introduce you to Chrysippus. Because surely you don't think only women get raped.

The Rape of Chrysippus, KidaGreenleaf
If Talia's and Europa's stories make me think of faces on milk cartons and sexual slavery, Chrysippus reminds me of the also-too-common priest scandals in the Catholic Church. Chrysippus, an athletic young nobleman, sets off for the Nemean Games (basically the Olympics), accompanied by his tutor Laius. He never gets to compete in the Games, because Laius abducts him, rapes him, and carries him to Laius' home city of Thebes. Stories vary on the precise details of the ending, but in all of them Chrysippus dies: sometimes by his own hand out of shame, sometimes by his half-brothers, afraid that he would inherit their father Pelops' throne. In all of them, Laius feels no guilt or remorse for his hijacking of the life of a young man whose well-being is his responsibility. In all of them, only Chrysippus bears the burden of what has happened to him.

Chrysippus and Laius, KidaGreenleaf
And as so often happens, the victim does not see justice done. Chrysippus dies long before Laius meets his fate at the hands of his son Oedipus (you might have heard of him). Typically for Greek myths, divine vengeance for Chrysippus' suffering comes too late and very over-the-top: the family of Laius, from Oedipus to Jocasta to Antigone, all pay an impossibly high price for the sins of the father. But Chrysippus is long dead when that happens, and his life in tatters even before his death. What can it matter to Chrysippus that the children and grandchildren of his rapist suffer agonizing moral and physical torment? What difference can it make now? It can't. Nothing that the Theban royal house endures can change or heal Chrysippus in any way. It's an empty vengeance, and the rapist who set it in motion gets off lightest of all. Laius is allowed to marry, to have a child, to rule for decades after he destroys Chrysippus' life. And worst of all, he wins. Chrysippus' is a forgotten story. Even though his tale jumpstarts Oedipus', you never hear it when you hear the story of the fall of the house of Thebes. Laius successfully spins the story to make himself essentially an innocent bystander, a victim of Oedipus' irrational wrath, rather than the root cause of such destruction.

Math Son of Mathonwy, Margaret Jones
I can think of precisely one rape myth with a somewhat happy ending. The Welsh king Math lives under a spell that requires him, whenever he's not in battle, to rest with his feet in the lap of a maiden. Being a king, he chooses Goewin, the most beautiful virgin at court. Things go swimmingly until Gilfaethwy, a warrior kinsman of Math, falls in lust with the king's designated virgin. Gilfaethwy's sorcerer brother sets up a smokescreen war to distract Math, and the two men together rape Goewin while Math is away fighting.

Appalling as this is, Goewin has, crucially, what Europa, Talia and Chrysippus do not: access to a support system. When Math returns, she confides in him that he can no longer put his feet in her lap, since she's no longer a virgin. And Math responds in a manner that makes him a strong candidate for Best Human Being Ever: he comforts Goewin, marries her, and makes her his co-ruler, with as much authority and power as he himself has. And he punishes Gilfaethwy and his brother
Gwydion and Gilfaethwy, Margaret Jones
Gwydion by turning them into paired animals for three straight years, alternating who is male and who is female so that by the end of their punishment, they have both experienced rape firsthand.

We never hear from Gilfaethwy again. But Gwydion, the enabler and co-rapist, is one of the greatest and most popular figures in the Mabinogion, the great Welsh collection of tales and sagas. He's a consummate trickster, on par with Loki and Coyote; he wins praise and accolades for his magic and his skillful manipulation of his enemies; and after his three-year punishment is over, Math welcomes him back to his court and relies on his skills just as he always did.

Olwen, Alan Lee
You wonder what Math's queen had to say about that. You wonder how many women have to look their rapist in the eye every day. You wonder how many bite their tongues and keep quiet for fear of disturbing the peace, sacrificing their own inner peace in the process. You wonder how long it's been going on.

What stories like these tell us is that it's been going on forever. This has been happening all around us, basically since humans figured out what they could put where. We're supposed to learn from the past, from the stories we tell. Why haven't we, yet?

Because, for as long as it's been happening, we've been excusing it. It's okay that Uther raped Igraine; it produced King Arthur. It's no big that Zeus raped Europa; she got to be queen of Crete. Todd Akin is the latest in a long line of whitewashing assholes who have been telling us for millennia that the experience of a rape victim does not matter.

But what seems to shut them up, or at least make them think twice, are stories. The stories of the victims, not the rapists or the narrators; the stories told by the people whose experiences are routinely dismissed and belittled. It takes courage, in such a cultural climate, to speak; to insist that your experience is "legitimate"; to demand recognition from those who would prefer to shrug you away. The victims in legend have been used to justify one way of looking at the world; the victims of today, more and more, are refusing to be so used. It's astonishingly, heartbreakingly brave of them.

And we all need to listen.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Troy and Other Ten-Year Problems

There's a conundrum I've been puzzling over for, ironically, ten years. I have never been able to figure it out. And it's a little embarrassing, as a fan of mythology, not to have a good reason for it. But nevertheless, it stands.

You know those two epic poems that provide some of the most basic foundations for Western society? The Iliad and the Odyssey? Well, I've read them both. I like them both a lot. I especially like Odysseus, the quintessential lovable trickster. He and Nestor provide the most reliable voices of reason in the Iliad, which makes it great fun to watch him really act out in the Odyssey. I don't really like any of the Iliad's characters as much as I like - no, let's do this right, love - Odysseus.

But despite the fact that many of its main characters are morally deplorable creatures who whine, mope, and pet their own egos, and despite the fact that the Odyssey is a far more thoughtful and touching character study... I like the Iliad better.

Let's be clear. My favorite character in the Iliad alternates between Hector, Diomedes, and Aeneas, depending on the mood I'm in that hour. Menelaus doesn't get enough screen time, Agamemnon's obnoxious, Helen's underused, Zeus is a bitch, and do not get me started on Achilles. I cannot with the glorification of a whiny self-absorbed mama's boy. I just cannot. And the characters I do like? Well, Hector is Hector, i.e. Living Awesome, but sometimes the sheer wow factor gets overwhelming. (Is there anything wrong with him? Anything at all?) Aeneas, to my surprise, turned out to be a very active participant in the war; before I read the Iliad, I thought of him as the sequel guy, and I enjoyed seeing him kick ass before Dido and Virgil got hold of him. And Diomedes... okay, he has basically one chapter, but in that chapter he makes Achilles look like a wuss, gives Aphrodite the bladed bitch-slap we all wanted her to get, and sends the freaking god of war crying home to Dad, in what is arguably the funniest scene in literary antiquity. Including everything in Lysistrata. If you can only have one chapter in which to shine, this is the one to have.

There's really no comparison with Odysseus. He's charismatic, brilliant, fast-thinking, and good at what he does. (Which is everything.) He knows exactly what he's worth, but unlike Achilles or Paris or any of the other entitled "heroes" of the Iliad, he doesn't sit around waiting for the world to give it to him. He goes after it, and if he fails the first time, he comes back with a better plan.

Calypso Takes Pity on Odysseus,
Henry Justice Ford
And oh yeah - he fails sometimes. Big time. He is the only man on his flagship (at least; he took eleven others to Troy) to make it back to Ithaca; that's one lousy rate of retention. He dozes off among his suspicious men, leaving Aeolus' bag of winds carelessly unguarded. Worst of all, he basically gives his address and phone number to an enraged and blinded Cyclops whose father rules the sea, right before he starts off on a long sea voyage. But he pays the price for those failures. He loses the men whose safety is in his keeping; he spends ten years trying to get home; he nearly dies about a million times. And he learns. By the time he gets back home, he's able (with some help from Athena) to diffuse a civil war in the making. He has the best character arc of anyone in Greek mythology.

But I confess it: when I read the Odyssey, I was bored.

Telemachus Arming, Luigi Bienaime
Maybe it's because Odysseus' adventures have crossed so deeply into popular culture that I already knew the whole story. The suspense of his escape from Polyphemus, the seductive threat of Circe, the innocent relief of Nausicaa and the Phoenician episode, all lost their full impact because I already knew how it ended. "Okay, Odysseus, you stabbed the Cyclops in his one eye. Good for you. Can you tell me something new, please?" (Full credit, by the way, to the d'Aulaires, who valiantly refrained from spoiling the Odyssey. That being said, I would have LOVED to read a d'Aulaire version.) What did make an impression on me were the Telemachus side plot and the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope. Telemachus surprised me just as Aeneas did; I kind of knew he was there somewhere, but I hadn't expected him to be
Odysseus and Penelope, John Flaxman

energetic and enterprising and very much a worthy son to Odysseus. And even though I knew the plot summary of that reunion, I was utterly unprepared for the exquisite language it's written in, and the aching sweep of love and shock and joy that carries it forward. When I read the Odyssey, I read Penelope's speech to Odysseus aloud. I can't help it. There are sentences that exist to be spoken. I had thought of that scene as the standard capper to the hero's journey; I had never envisioned it as the emotional climax of lovers estranged for twenty years. That scene broke me in all the wonderful ways literature is supposed to break you.

But no one spoiled the Iliad for me. I mean, I knew Hector died, but I didn't know Diomedes was a badass, or that there was so much divine machination, or that Helen gave Paris a verbal emasculation that rivals Lady Macbeth. No one told me about the agony of the fight over Patroclus' body. I was unprepared for the scene where Priam begs Achilles for his son's corpse. And most of all, I was stunned to find that the war epic to end all war epics is actually anti-war.

Achilles Triumphant, Howard David Johnson
Really, who does that? Who paints a masterpiece of how art sucks, or compiles a complete and working investment portfolio illuminating all the flaws of Wall Street? The guts and the vision to decry war while writing the war story astounded me. People who dismiss the death lists and the catalogue of ships completely miss the point. For chapter after chapter, the Iliad sets you up with all the glorious claptrap, applying epithets to the war leaders, giving us gorgeous details like the red bows of the Ithacan fleet, the pathetic offering of three ships from Nireus the pretty boy, and Ajax of Salamis' seven-layer shield covered with bronze.

Hector Brought Back to Troy, artist unknown
And then they die. Then they all pour onto the beach and start fighting, and we see all the men who die in their last moments. "The end of death covered over his eyes and nostrils." "The spear-point went right through [his helmet] and smashed the bone, and all his brains were spattered inside, and the man brought down in his fury." "He shrieked as the life breathed from him, and fell screaming in the dust, and his spirit flitted away." These are visceral, claustrophobic moments, rendered with sympathy for the dying and an implicit condemnation of the reason they died. It happens over and over. The Iliad is relentless. It will trick you into thinking you're reading something golden and glorious, and then it'll throw a chapter of death lists in your face and dare you to believe, after all that, that war is a good thing.

I had no idea. And I could not put the thing down.

Ulysses and the Sirens, Roman mosaic, 3rd century CE
The Odyssey, in comparison, is structurally far simpler: it's a quest, told with unusual timing but still straightforward. Odysseus starts at Point A, zigzags through a maze of adventures, and ends up at Point B. The Iliad starts exactly where it ends: two great nations, both with admirable and appalling people, destroying each other. There's no journey, no revelation, no catharsis. Achilles manages to find his humanity in the end, but that's a hollow victory, because we all know he too is soon to die; his emotional progress matters not a jot. Come the next day, these flawed and brave and blind people we've come to know so well are going to go back to that beach and keep killing each other. The Odyssey is the emotional arc of three complicated characters, disguised as a simple story; the Iliad is a message disguised as a series of episodes.

The Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy, Domenico Tiepolo
And I have no reason for why I like one better than the other. The secrets that both were hiding blew me away. They're both seminal pieces of Western culture; I wouldn't want to live in a world without them. But the one that moves me most is the story of despair at human nature, not the uplifting and adventurous yarn. Odysseus is the best of all traveling companions, but he's only one man. The Iliad tells me hard truths about human nature, using beautiful language to create horrific images. And in that very act, it affirms the good as well as the bad in humanity: no matter how low we sink, there will always be voices like Homer's, to tell us with such blunt grace what we're doing wrong.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Holy Insecurity, Batman!

You'd think being a god is one of the sweetest jobs out there. Incredible power, tons of perks, the ability to shape the future... a person could feel good about themselves if they were a god, right?

Wrong. Gods are some of the most insecure beings ever created. From Greece to Alaska to Egypt, gods across pantheons just can't stop showing off the extent of their power and control over every other living thing. It's as if, divine and omnipotent as they are, they still have something to prove, either to themselves or to us. I would make a "compensating for something" joke, but I'd probably get turned into rock if I did. Because the one thing gods can't stand is a lowly mortal pointing out their flaws.

Take Arachne. Granted, she was a moron for willfully engaging a goddess in a contest of skill; the barometer of stupid probably shattered when she challenged Athena. But her prideful idiocy doesn't change the fact that she was also right. Athena's entry into their weaving contest is a complacent pat-on-the-back to herself and her entire extended family; Arachne had the guts to depict the gods' ignoble moments and reveal how ridiculous and petty they often are. And sometimes the narrator even admits that Arachne's work, if blasphemous, is also better than Athena's.

What does she get for shining an irreverent but honest light on the less-than-glorious lives of the gods, via a contest she technically won? Turned into a spider. Athena is so embarrassed that she throws an appalling and uncharacteristic hissy fit: she rips up Arachne's superior tapestry and erases all evidence of the crime by disposing of the accuser. Clearly the mob missed out on a fantastic hit woman. But even in high dudgeon, Athena remains sensible enough to phrase her anger in terms that no other potentially challenging mortal could mistake: this is Arachne's punishment, not for being humiliatingly right, but for her arrogance. The message is clear: do not piss off the gods. Even if you're better. Just don't do it. We don't want to know.

Sedna, Antony Galbraith
Sedna, in comparison, gets a much better deal. But her story is still very troubling in what it says about the capricious willfulness of gods. Sedna starts out as a beautiful mortal who refuses all her suitors, until a mysterious and skilled hunter comes to town. She's interested; more importantly, her father wants her off his hands. He drugs Sedna and hands her over to the hunter, who takes her back to his "home" - an enormous nest on a clifftop. Surprise - your new husband is actually Raven, turned into a human because he spotted Sedna and fancied her!

Sedna, Tara Borger
In a shocking twist, this freaks Sedna out. (I have to wonder if Leda had a similar reaction when she was accosted and assaulted by a damn swan. What is it with randy gods and birds?) Sedna escapes from the nest, which in turn offends her putative husband's pride and dignity. Determined not to let his new bride escape - whether he's more concerned about having his disguise revealed, or losing face by losing Sedna, is rarely clear - Raven whips up a storm to drown the girl he went to such lengths to obtain. In hopes of making amends, Sedna's father kayaks over to rescue her, but only until his own life is threatened. When the storm nearly flips his boat over, Sedna's father pitches her straight into the god-sent waves, sacrificing his daughter again for his own sake. And when the poor girl, probably now thoroughly pissed at men in general, clings to the side of the kayak, her paragon of a dad cuts her fingers off so she can't hold on. Luckily karma takes a hand at this point; Sedna's severed fingers become whales and seals and fish, the creatures of the as-yet-unpopulated sea, and Sedna herself becomes a sea goddess. It's a much-deserved reward for her seriously crappy run of luck.

But having been the firsthand victim of a god's fickle pride, Sedna has a hard time learning the lesson of good behavior. She throws temper tantrums when her hair gets tangled underwater, requiring tribal shamans to travel to her ocean home to comb out the knots (since they, after all, have fingers). Only when she is appeased will she release the sea creatures for humans to catch. On one hand, yes, the lack of fingers and the inability to attend to her own personal grooming would get on someone's nerves; on the other, you'd think someone so shabbily treated would know to be helpful rather than coercive. The only lesson Sedna seems to have learned about divine-human relations is the one that led Raven to kidnap her: humans exist to serve the will of gods.

And lest you think this is just a hormonal female thing, we haven't even gotten to the most appalling divine exhibition of power.

Back in the bad old days before the Ten Commandments, Yahweh was a Mesopotamian thunder god with a lot to prove. His chosen people go nomad for a couple generations, essentially run the richest country in the known world, and then promptly get enslaved when a trigger-happy Pharaoh thinks they've gone too far. When Yahweh finally wakes up to the less-than-ideal state of his worshipers - and the affront to him implied in the subjugation of his chosen ones - he seriously loses his cool. He snags a passing Moses and makes him a divine mouthpiece for Yahweh's over-the-top display of vindictive power.

Who does he unleash this power on? The Pharaoh who enslaved his people? The overseers and taskmasters who make their lives hell? The priests who deemed him so helpless?

How about everyone?

The Plagues of Egypt, John Martin
Yahweh's reputation and career are on the line. He's up against the far more experienced and entrenched might of the Egyptian pantheon. And he is not happy with being ignored. So he makes damn sure that no one will ever forget what happens when you make him angry. He systematically ravages the entire country, forcing every single Egyptian to pay literally in blood for the insult to his prowess. His opening act is to turn Egypt's only source of potable water into blood. Once dehydration sets in, Pharaoh relents and calls Moses back. "Okay, I'm sorry, you guys can go now, but for the love of Hapi, can you get me a freaking drink of water?"

The Plague of Locusts, James Tissot
To recap: Yahweh has brought a country to its knees with one stroke. The most powerful king in the world is begging with his chosen spokesman, acknowledging Yahweh's superior might. But this is not enough. Yahweh's just getting started on his revenge. Exodus explicitly states that "God hardened Pharaoh's heart," and proceeded to unleash the other nine Plagues on the population of an entire country, just to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was awesome. He does it again and again, bringing Pharaoh to desperation and then refusing to let the king's own admission of Yahweh's power stand. He kills all the cattle; he withers all the crops; he plunges the entire country into permanent darkness. And ultimately, as his master stroke, Yahweh slaughters the firstborn of every single Egyptian family. When this is depicted, the dead firstborn are nearly always children. Innocents. Noncombatants. Some of whom had probably never met an Israelite in the whole of their short life.

Death of the Pharaoh's Firstborn Son, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
They die to prove a point. They die to show that Yahweh is not a god to ignore. They die because of a god's authority crisis. They are collateral damage in a war of divine attrition, because a couple of powerful humans wondered what would happen if they poked a sleeping dragon.

Gods are not nice people. Gods are primordial creatures, wearing a sheen of civilization over the basest impulses known to man. They exist to be worshiped. And if you forget, they will be more than happy to remind you - brutally, savagely, in a triumph of self-conscious insecurity - what happens when you don't give them their due.