tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39310789541488101792024-03-13T10:58:28.596-07:00Story SeerLizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-27138554911307261292013-04-20T12:13:00.002-07:002018-03-28T12:57:43.165-07:00Prince Ali, Yes, It Is He, But Not As You Know Him<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My sister spent four years majoring in religious studies, with a concentration on Islam. As a side effect, she now cannot watch the Disney <i>Aladdin</i> without wincing at the rampant orientalism and the stuff it just gets wrong. I have no such handicap - in fact, Aladdin was my first fictional crush, so I'll always see that movie through rose-tinted lenses - but I also know she's got a point. And it goes all the way back to Scheherazade herself.<br />
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Why is the story of Aladdin always the story of the exotic Other?<br />
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Weird as it is for Westerners to think about (or at least for me), most of the stories of the mysterious and exotic Arabian Nights are in fact set in a milieu that would have been intimately familiar to contemporary readers and/or listeners: their own world. We don't blink at TV shows about doctors or high schoolers; even though they use tools and language that would seem miraculous to someone from another time or culture, they're a part of our world that we take completely for granted. How different is your garden-variety fairy godmother from your average djinn, anyway? Same in-story function, different trappings. And to people hearing the stories of the Arabian Nights, viziers and bazaars and multi-colored fish would have sounded as familiar to us as presidents and supermarkets and... multi-colored fish.<br />
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But while the majority of the Thousand and One Tales are set in a familiar world (albeit one with fairy tale rules added in), the story of the poor boy and his magic lamp moves across the continent to China. No, you didn't read that wrong. The names don't change ethnicity - for instance, our hero, Ala ad-Din, falls head over heels in love with Princess Badr al-Budur - and the princess's father is a sheik. There's nothing specifically Chinese about the story, the characters, or the world it's set in. The only reason for it to take place in China is to rope in the mystique of the Other.<br />
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Fast-forward to America in 1992. Is China as exotic and mysterious as it was centuries ago, at the height of the silk trade? Of course not! It's a Communist country with restrictions on childbirth, a lousy human rights track record, and potential nukes. You bet your sweet patootie Disney's not setting their next blockbuster in China barely two years after the Berlin Wall came down.<br />
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So they move it back to the setting of the rest of Scheherazade's stories - again, easy to do because it's built around the same cultural framework - and create the exact same transformation that the original story did: not just moving it, but <i>re</i>moving it from our familiar world, into the realm of the Other. The masculine threat of the original's sorcerer (who enters the tale masquerading as Aladdin's uncle and thus head of the family in Aladdin's place) is transformed into the rather effeminate Jafar, which in the late twentieth century was its own kind of threat. (Jafar also prefers to use others as his intermediaries rather than get his hands directly dirty, a holdover from the days when feminine meant powerless.) And lest the exoticism goes too overboard, the Genie is a delightful and deliberate anachronism, who provides both comic relief and temporal grounding for an American audience. Put bluntly, <i>Aladdin</i> bears about as much resemblance to Sassanid Persia as the original story does to imperial China.<br />
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So why <i>this </i>story? There are literally over a thousand in the complete base text - why the tale of a peasant and his djinn buddy? What about Aladdin says Other, not just to us, but to the original tellers?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Arabian Nights</i>, Edmund Dulac</td></tr>
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It can't be the magic - or rather, it can't be <i>just </i>the magic. We'd scarcely recognize the Arabian Nights without the dazzling overflow of magic carpets, magic rings, magic horses, and djinn of every stripe, from benevolent to enslaved to murderous. The genie of the lamp is probably the best known example of that kind of power, but he performs fairly traditional djinn magic as the stories go. It can't be the cross-social romance - not only are there a few of those in the Arabian Nights, the West can't get enough of Cinderella stories. The cynic in me wonders if it's the fact that the story continues past the "happily ever after," which hardly any Western fairy tale seems to do, but the simple fact of married life and misunderstandings blowing out of proportion don't really telegraph "mystical Other." And if it's the characters' relationships, then why do most adaptations ignore the far nicer and gentler genie of the ring, who actually seems to like helping Aladdin out, in favor of the haughtier and more remote genie of the lamp?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Scheherazade and the Sultan</i>, Sani ol Molk</td></tr>
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Maybe, at bottom, it's got nothing to do with the plot. Maybe it's a meta-interference by reality in the way we see this particular story. Like the tale of Sinbad, Aladdin was a late addition to the Thousand and One Nights, a tale set in China, told by a fictional Persian woman, and crammed in by an 18th-century Frenchman. So really, the entire history of the story of Aladdin is one of Otherness, of foreign perceptions overlaid onto an inoffensive plot that never asked to be the focus of cultural misinterpretation. Maybe that's what makes it so easy to transpose from one setting to another; it's been moved around so much, it just takes to it better (and the extravagant magical displays provide a convenient excuse for setting it in a world more exotic than ours). Like its hero's own aspirations, the story never stops changing. Maybe it never will.<br />
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<i>Or maybe there's something super simple and coherent going on that I've completely overlooked. Leave a comment and let me know!</i> Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-45988021270172042372013-02-28T20:57:00.001-08:002018-03-28T13:05:24.095-07:00Zero to Hero<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Robin Hood</i>, Milo Winter</td></tr>
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Why are heroes so stupid?<br />
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I mean, really. Think about it. Nearly every iconic hero has at least one moment of total idiocy. "Wily" Odysseus just has to give all his contact info to the god whose son he just blinded. Beowulf deliberately tackles a dragon single-handed when he's way past his prime. Arthur ignores Merlin's very specific warning about not marrying Guinevere. Even Robin Hood, possibly the cleverest hero out there, slaps on a disguise and walks straight into Prince John's perfect trap just because he might get to make puppy eyes with Maid Marian. What's going on here?<br />
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In the structural sense, of course, there's a very good reason for their stupidity: without it, we'd have no plot. But there's got to be something else going on here. Sure, in some cases codes of honor factor in; for Odysseus to slink off without shouting his address at Poseidon would be to relinquish the fame and glory that comes with having outsmarted and incapacitated a Cyclops. Beowulf's stupidity has its roots in his own very well-established character. And we can forgive Arthur's<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Blinding of Polyphemus</i>, Pellegrino Tibaldi</td></tr>
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problematic choice of wife because when he chose her, he was very young and head over heels. But other brainwashed-hero moments come out of absolutely nowhere. Rama twice questions Sita's virtue, even after she's literally walked through fire to prove her purity. Aladdin might not want to admit the source of his power to his new wife, but he never even tells her that his old battered lamp is kind of special. The archery contest changes its ending depending on who tells it, but often the trap works, as Robin really should have seen coming.<br />
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So what gives? Well, maybe Sir Galahad can help explain things.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sir Galahad</i>, Joseph Noel Patton</td></tr>
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First off: Sir Galahad. What a boring prig. Everything this guy does comes with its own angelic chorus and glowing light. He puts not a foot wrong. If you're in trouble on the Grail Quest, regardless of whether you've been previously established as a total badass, Galahad will swoop in and save you. He can sit in the Siege Perilous, he can defeat anyone, he alone achieves the Grail. He's so perfect it makes my teeth hurt.<br />
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And that is <i>dull.</i> There's no suspense when Galahad is involved. If he's on the scene, he's going to win. There's no such sweeping guarantee for any of the other knights, including Lancelot; he wins at contests of arms, but the story always reminds you that he's a failure at moral purity, and sometimes that symbolism trips him up (most notably on said Grail Quest). But Galahad only has to decide he wants to do something for it to get done. He is the reason I never much liked the Grail Quest storyline, because nothing is at stake for Galahad. It was such a relief to let him die at the end of the quest and go back to Lancelot and Guinevere and the very human, very dangerous, oh-so-relatable love that destroys a kingdom.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Fall of Beowulf</i>, Devin Maupin</td></tr>
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But when Beowulf fights the dragon, I am <i>there.</i> I bemoan the bravado that leads him to attack the dragon alone, but it hurts to read the moment when he falls. It will never not be horrible to see Robin Hood in chains. Aladdin's despair when he comes home to find home, bride and best friend vanished moves me every time. Sure, these guys made stupid - <i>stupid </i>- mistakes. But that's what makes them real enough to feel for. Without those disastrous moments of failure, they'd be too perfect, like Galahad; good fortune would come to them too easily; we would never see the price that they pay for their success.<br />
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And we wouldn't see ourselves in them. Does anyone want to be Galahad? Didn't think so. But you've imagined fighting a dragon, haven't you? You've planned out your three wishes, you've rescued your beloved, you've beaten every other contestant for the prize. Everyone wants to be these heroes, not regardless of the mistakes they make, but <i>because </i>of those mistakes. To err, after all, is human. Robin and Aladdin and Rama are beloved because we can see their humanity, and because they suffer for it as well as triumphing through it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Hamlet</i>, William Morris Hunt</td></tr>
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...which is not to say it can't go too far in the other direction.<br />
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There's a reason that Hamlet is the quintessential tragic hero, rivaled only by Oedipus. He grapples with the great dilemmas of human existence: what is life, what is death, what are humans? And he does it in exquisite poetry that speaks like prose. I honestly believe that the reason no interpretation of Hamlet ever pleases everyone is because Hamlet speaks to us individually like no other character in drama; you'll never be satisfied with someone else's Hamlet, because it's not <i>your</i> Hamlet. We all know him far more intimately than we know Oedipus or Jamie Tyrone or Willy Loman.<br />
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But <i>oh dear god, </i>do we have issues with Hamlet.<br />
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If Galahad's problem is that he's too perfect, Hamlet's problem is that he's too flawed. People have been imagining themselves into revenge scenarios for the whole of human history, but would you want to <i>be</i> Hamlet? Of course not! He sits on his hands for three hours and then murders everyone he knows. He's too introspective to be a successful action hero, too morbid to be a role model, too Oedipal to be a sex symbol, and too destructive for us to want his life. We love to <i>watch</i> him; we love to get inside his head; but in this case, the answer is definitely <i>not </i>to be.<br />
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So the classic heroes, the ones who fill our daydreams with swashbuckling adventure, are ultimately winners. But never all at once, and never without fighting for it. When they struggle, and sink beneath adversity, we know they're like us; when they break triumphantly free, we know we can be like them.<br />
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<i>Who did I miss? What heroes do you admire, and why? Leave me a comment and let's talk!</i>Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-78217591488194910152013-02-05T20:00:00.001-08:002018-03-28T13:21:17.475-07:00The Handmaiden's TaleAre there people out there who get bored by the ordinariness of their lives? Anyone feel like escaping into a less-than-ordinary world full of magic and danger and royalty? Who's up for shucking the burdens of the daily grind and diving into adventure in another world?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Athenian Women at Home</i>, artist unknown</td></tr>
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Well, have fun with that. Today I'm hanging out with a bunch of handmaidens, and hoo boy, are their lives unenviable.<br />
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It makes total sense that most stories focus on extraordinary people as well as extraordinary places and events. No one wants to read a fairy tale about the sad-sack assembly-line worker who never gets a fairy godmother. Everyone would pick the princess or the wizard or the talking fox. But just because stories are full of privileged royalty doesn't mean that nobody works in Fairytale Land. And just because they live in a world of physical gods and tangible magic doesn't mean that things don't get depressingly realistic.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Odysseus and Nausicaa</i>, William McGregor Paxton</td></tr>
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Take, for instance, the handmaidens of Europa. "The who?" you ask. Oh, you know, just the bevy of young noblewomen dancing attendance upon a Greek princess. Not an individual character among the lot. They stand en helpless masse as bull-Zeus kidnaps Europa. A minute ago they were all having fun on the beach; now they're a collective unit of ineffectual shock. So why are they there? Well, Europa's a princess. Princesses don't get to romp alone in the sand. The handmaidens are there to underscore Europa's privileged status. (And also because without them, Europa would have become the Bronze Age equivalent of a face on a milk carton; it's only because they bring back the story that Europa's family knows Zeus snatched her.) Their entire function in-story is to inform us, the audience, that Europa is important. But we already know she's important; one, she's a princess, and two, Zeus has the hots for her, which means she'll probably pop out a demigod king or a few heroes. The handmaidens do nothing for us that isn't already being done in the story.<br />
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Well. Actually. There is that bit in the middle, in case you forgot that Greek myths rival zombie movies for bloodshed. The bit where the handmaidens, despite being the only witnesses to a princess's abduction, <a href="http://storyseer.blogspot.com/2012/08/its-time-to-listen.html?showComment=1357799157145#c4042566902558265275" target="_blank">get tortured and executed</a> by said princess's totally rational dad. As colenso points out in the comment, princesses can survive the occasional reckless stunt. Their attendants, not so much. One slip-up - which was neither their fault nor within their power to prevent - and you're a goner.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D1i1MakounU/URHPAAGdZnI/AAAAAAAAAns/E2avSixGTZI/s1600/nooses.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D1i1MakounU/URHPAAGdZnI/AAAAAAAAAns/E2avSixGTZI/s400/nooses.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Penelopiad</i>, Nightwood Theatre</td></tr>
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A similar school of thought holds true in the Odyssey, when Telemachus hangs the twelve traitorous handmaidens who slept with the suitors and spied on Penelope. Theirs is, in the important details, a very different case from Europa's handmaidens; Penelope's maids chose to betray their mistress and to disrespect her to her face. But even knowing that, it still seems uncomfortably excessive to force them to dispose of the mangled bodies of their butchered lovers, wash the suitors' blood from the room where they were killed, and then be hanged themselves from a ship's cable. Again, not an individual - no names, no differentiating characteristics. Whether you "bring it on yourself" or not (and Margaret Atwood's <i>The Penelopiad</i> is a horrifying and brilliant argument that they actually didn't deserve their fate), a handmaiden's life is no cakewalk.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Goose Girl</i>, Cindy Salens Rosenheim</td></tr>
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Which goes a long way toward explaining the outright villainous behavior of some handmaidens. The unnamed heroine of "The Goosegirl" does nothing to deserve the vicious treatment she gets from her upstart lady-in-waiting; apparently asking for a drink of water is a step too far for this handmaiden. She's an exceptionally cruel villain, too: she bides her time, forcing the heroine into subservience the moment she loses her mother's protection; she marries the heroine's intended husband;<br />
she orders the heroine's talking horse, the witness to her takeover, slaughtered; and ultimately gets herself killed in a manner she'd explicitly intended for the heroine. It's as impossible to condone this handmaiden's actions as it is to accept the deaths of Europa's unfortunate attendants. But it's not hard to see why a simple, forgettable handmaiden would want to better her lot. It's much less dangerous to be royal than to attend royalty; after all, even in her degradation, the heroine survives.<br />
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Luckily, not everyone takes social climbing to such an extreme. But there are plenty of handmaidens out there who read their myths and know exactly who takes the fall for royal mistakes. Pwyll, the prince of Dyfed, falls head-over-heels for the mysterious and beautiful Rhiannon. When they finally marry, she's a perfect queen in every way but one: she gives Pwyll no children. So the eventual birth of a son is nothing short of miraculous. Parties are thrown, ale is quaffed, and everyone in Dyfed heaves a sigh of relief.<br />
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And then a monster breaks into the palace, steals the baby prince, and slips out again with no one the wiser.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yl9WxGpJbUs/URHSkbTJg9I/AAAAAAAAAoE/b95rVTO2YA8/s1600/rhichild.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yl9WxGpJbUs/URHSkbTJg9I/AAAAAAAAAoE/b95rVTO2YA8/s400/rhichild.jpg" width="275" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Rhiannon</i>, Margaret Jones</td></tr>
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Rhiannon's handmaidens, as usual, are up long before their mistress to light her fire, set out her clothes, and generally make her life easier. So they're the first ones to notice, whoops, the miracle baby's missing. And they're no fools; regardless of who's actually to blame, they'll get in trouble for not watching more closely. Their solution? Redirect the blame! Onto... the bereaved mother? Yes, obviously the only way to ensure that they're not flogged or worse is to kill a puppy, smear its blood on the sleeping Rhiannon's hands and face, and swear to high heaven that this unnatural woman <i>totally</i> killed and ate her own child.<br />
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Horror of horrors, it works. Pwyll can't bring himself to execute the woman he loves, so he makes her carry visitors into the palace on her back. Wouldn't you know, sixteen or so years down the line, along comes an old farmer and his strapping son to petition Pwyll. <i>Adopted</i> son, that is, since a cattle-stealing monster abandoned a baby at the farmer's house about sixteen years ago. Rhiannon carries her son into the palace, all the pieces of the story are fitted together, the royal family is reunited... and no one ever does anything to the seriously sketchy handmaidens who condemned the queen to a decade and a half of menial labor on oaths that they knew were false.<br />
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Don't mistake me - I'm never going to be on the side of people who kill puppies and frame mothers for infant cannibalism. But if Pwyll's literally backbreaking punishment of Rhiannon was lenient, it's easy to see why the handmaidens would have been so terrified of his vengeance that even the most grotesque lies seemed like a better option.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-221GlQZuB3g/TWLSbM0w4II/AAAAAAAACpY/oUaw8y9m9w0/s400/midwife4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-221GlQZuB3g/TWLSbM0w4II/AAAAAAAACpY/oUaw8y9m9w0/s1600/midwife4.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Birthing chair, Roman era (artist unknown)</td></tr>
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So, between the blandness of the job, the occupational hazards, and the psychological stress of knowing you'll pay with your life for the first thing to go wrong, are there any good handmaidens out there? Well, sort of. <a href="http://www.erstwhiletales.com/maidmaleen-00/#.URG2Vuj74Xx" target="_blank">Maid Maleen</a> has a devoted handmaiden who gets walled up in a tower with her, protects her on her journey to another kingdom, and basically acts as her much-needed mother. Cinderella is perhaps the quintessential good handmaiden, even though she's also the heroine of her own story. And Zilpah and Bilhah obediently let themselves become weapons in Rachel and Leah's war over Jacob, each bearing two sons and surrendering them to their respective mistresses to raise as their own. But even this good<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Seducer</i>, Nasreddine Dinet</td></tr>
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behavior has its limits; Bilhah and Reuben's fling gets Reuben disinherited. And Cinderella's social climbing is acceptable because it's less of a climb than a restoration; she was born to privilege, and the perversion of the natural order is not in her ascent from handmaiden to princess, but in her earlier enforced <i>de</i>scent from wealth to poverty. Compare her fate with the Goosegirl's handmaiden. Ouch. Fairy tales love them some status quo.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xL369WjL0bQ/URG9ijAkWiI/AAAAAAAAAnU/SDWd-0KEq2o/s1600/maidmalhand.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xL369WjL0bQ/URG9ijAkWiI/AAAAAAAAAnU/SDWd-0KEq2o/s1600/maidmalhand.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Maid Maleen</i>, Louisa Roy</td></tr>
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Ultimately, that's the moral of whatever fate the handmaidens of legend meet. It's not about character development, rewards, or even, really, punishment. If a story features a handmaiden, she is there to reinforce the status quo. She may get to move the plot, but if so she's a villain; the lower classes are supposed to wait for their betters to order them, not take matters into their own hands. Only by obedience and devotion can a handmaiden end the story alive and on the side of the good guys.<br />
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But if that's too much of a downer ending for the rest of us real-world peons, just remember: handmaidens also know how to frame someone and get away with it. Not quite glass slipper material, but agency and survival aren't bad consolation prizes.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-19554116127108335132013-01-05T15:14:00.000-08:002019-01-18T09:27:52.158-08:00Hell Hath No FuryIt's no secret that the Greek gods had a very over-the-top idea of punishment for mortals who crossed them. Brag about your musical talent? Apollo will flay off your skin and make a drum out of it. Display pride in your vast brood of children? Whoops, they're all dead and now you're a stone because you just wouldn't stop crying about it for some reason. And gods all help you if Aphrodite catches you (or anyone close to you) even <i>thinking</i> you're prettier than she is.<br />
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But then there are some punishments that really cross a line. Some of the foulest monsters of Greek mythology started out as mortals or demigods who actually didn't do anything. Arguably the most memorable metamorphosis in the mythos was in fact right. And there's something else they all have in common, aside from the varying degrees of innocence: the cruelest transformative punishments in Greek mythology are all perpetrated on women, by women.<br />
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Let's start off light. Atalanta, fastest human who ever lived, has just lost the race to Hippomenes, who cleverly employed divine assistance from tricksy Aphrodite. But lo and behold, the frigid ice-queen falls head over heels in love with the man who defeated her! It's a happy ending all around, with Atalanta bending her murderous pride enough to fall in love, Hippomenes' guts and devotion being amply rewarded, King Iason getting his troublesome daughter off his hands, and Aphrodite getting plaudits for arranging the whole thing.<br />
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Except not so much with that last one. No, Atalanta and Hippomenes are way too busy going at it like rabbits to toss a nod in Aphrodite's direction. Granted, this was a dumb thing for them to forget, but it's hardly on the level of, say, Agamemnon forgetting to sacrifice to Artemis and then being forced to kill his daughter in penance. A newlywed couple forgets to thank Aphrodite, goddess of love and desire, because they're too busy having sex. Of all the sins of omission, this has got to be the easiest to forgive.<br />
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But Aphrodite, as previously stated, is a vindictive bitch. One roll in the hay too many, and poof! Atalanta and Hippomenes are now lions. "So what?" you ask. So plenty - the Greeks thought lions couldn't mate with each other. Aphrodite harnesses the pair to her chariot, furnishing them with an eternal bondage setup that, according to the wisdom of the day, they could never take advantage of.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Atalanta and Hippomenes Changed into Lions</i>, Crispijn van de Passe</td></tr>
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Biology saves the day here. I like to imagine the two of them in the Olympian stables, unharnessed after a long day's work, turning to each other and saying, "Oh, honey, those gods are so dumb, aren't they? Move that fine feline ass over here!" But for the Greeks, there was no happy Darwinian ending. For a perfectly understandable slip of the mind, a pair of consumingly passionate lovers are kept apart forever. And it's not difficult to interpret this as Aphrodite's reaction to being threatened. Hippomenes isn't the problem child; his petition to Aphrodite before the race proves him very aware of the gods' power. No, the stone in the sandal here is Atalanta, determined virgin, spurner of Aphrodite's gifts, the dream convert who forgets to thank her sponsor. Aphrodite likes Hippomenes, but Atalanta is the prize she's after. And when famously independent Atalanta doesn't instantly fall to her knees and thank Aphrodite for the gift of a sex drive, there are no second chances. How <i>dare</i> Atalanta enjoy her sexy times? How <i>dare </i>she imagine it's got more to do with her and Hippomenes than with Aphrodite's influence?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lnJXSlYMrCQ/T7z__rg_3kI/AAAAAAAAAoM/HS1reQWKZU0/s1600/circe+invidiosa+1891+circe+water+house+water+witch+water+magic+water+scrying+water+divination.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lnJXSlYMrCQ/T7z__rg_3kI/AAAAAAAAAoM/HS1reQWKZU0/s320/circe+invidiosa+1891+circe+water+house+water+witch+water+magic+water+scrying+water+divination.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Circe Invidiosa</i>, John William Waterhouse</td></tr>
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And like I said, that's the light version. The first you ever hear of Scylla is that she's half-woman, half-monster, with six ravenous animal heads instead of a lower half, and that she gets the munchies when Odysseus' ship sails by. But this beast started out as a perfectly normal naiad whose only "crime" was being unrequitedly loved by Glaucus, the first merman. When Glaucus goes to Circe for a love potion, Circe decides that his fish tail isn't nearly the turnoff that Scylla thinks it is and puts the moves on Glaucus herself. He rejects her, which she really should have seen coming, given the whole love-potion thing. Circe's reaction? She poisons Scylla's bathing pool, turning her into the monster Odysseus meets.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qq9DQT4UYm0/UOir9JZ0gSI/AAAAAAAAAm8/q_jPbgrC_3w/s1600/scylla.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qq9DQT4UYm0/UOir9JZ0gSI/AAAAAAAAAm8/q_jPbgrC_3w/s320/scylla.png" width="229" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Scylla</i>, GENZOMAN</td></tr>
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Keep in mind that Circe has never met Scylla. She knows nothing about her except that Scylla's her rival, which isn't even really true; Scylla's not interested in Glaucus at all. Circe directs her anger at a completely passive noncombatant who has tried repeatedly to step offstage and live her damn life. Because one fish-legged weirdo said no, a freaking goddess destroys the life and future of a harmless would-be passerby. Poor Scylla is condemned to eternity as a hideous monster because Circe can't be bothered to vent her anger constructively. At least Aphrodite had a reason for flipping out on Atalanta and Hippomenes - a stupid and flimsy reason, but a reason. In Scylla's story, Circe behaves with all the wisdom and maturity of a fifteen-year-old nursing a first crush.<br />
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And she never suffers for it. Sure, she loses Glaucus, but she'd already done that; transforming Scylla is retaliation, not Plan B. She never gets called to account; she just goes on with her seductive witch-goddess gig. And she never gives a second thought to the innocent whose immortal life she just ruined. I never thought I'd say this, but she might be worse than Aphrodite.<br />
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Continuing the "unexpected bitch" trend, guess who makes it on here twice?<br />
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Only my favorite goddess, Athena. You know. Goddess of wisdom. The one who you'd think would be immune to all this nonsense. <i>Dammit.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Athena and Arachne</i>, SnittyCakez</td></tr>
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I've already covered the reasons why <a href="http://storyseer.blogspot.com/2012/08/holy-insecurity-batman.html" target="_blank">Athena massively overreacted to Arachne's stupidity</a>. But the fact remains that Arachne was right. Greek mythology's most famous metamorph arguably deserved what she got, but inarguably had a valid point. Because the only thing the gods hate more than being shown up is being wrong.<br />
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I also don't think it's a coincidence that Arachne challenges Athena on that most womanly of her talents, weaving. It's easy to forget, what with her armor and badass nature and patronage of Odysseus, that Athena also taught handicrafts to humankind. By picking a fight over weaving, Arachne issues a direct challenge to a surprisingly masculine goddess's sense of femininity. No wonder Athena gets defensive; in modern terms, Arachne is blatantly implying that even a goddess can't have it all. But it's hard to see Athena's reaction as a feminist triumph when it comes at the expense of an even more talented woman (not to mention a melodramatic tantrum that could provide a textbook case of that most female of fake diseases, "hysteria").<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Medusa</i>, Peter Paul Rubens</td></tr>
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And what about Medusa?<br />
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This one is even sadder than Scylla, and the vindictive goddess involved is even worse than Circe. Medusa, like Scylla, started out as quite a looker (in fact, the only pretty Gorgon). Like Scylla, Medusa was desired by a god, in this case Poseidon himself. But Scylla actually lucked out in her unwanted admirer; the worst Glaucus did was try to buy a love potion. When Medusa refuses Poseidon, he rapes her in Athena's own temple and waltzes off scot-free.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Perseus, Medusa, and Athena</i>, 5th century (artist unknown)</td></tr>
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Again, you would think that the goddess of wisdom would understand about victim blaming. You would think that her longstanding feud with Poseidon would lead her to direct all her righteous anger at the desecration of her temple on her asshole of an uncle. Appallingly, Athena turns on Medusa instead. As "punishment" for "Medusa's" sacrilege, the goddess of wisdom turns a rape victim into Greek mythology's most famous monster, a being so hideous that the simple act of looking at her turns you to stone. And that's not even enough. She carries such a grudge that when Perseus is sent to kill Medusa, Athena actually tells him how to do it. And when he succeeds, using her tips and equipment, he gives her Medusa's head, which she promptly fixes on her shield to make herself even more invincible. That's right - not content with destroying Medusa's life and arranging her death, Athena is so committed to punishing this poor girl that she has to be the winner even after Medusa's been murdered. There are so many levels of bitter and overkill here that I don't even know where to begin.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Medusa</i>, CarrieAnn Reda</td></tr>
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Okay. I know god logic follows no rules of actual logic. But can someone please explain to me <i>exactly what Medusa did, <b>herself,</b> to deserve such vicious treatment?</i><br />
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Nothing. The answer is, she did nothing. She, in fact, is the only one in the whole sordid situation who did anything right. She said no to a guy she didn't want to sleep with. Is it her fault that she happened to be in Athena's temple? Is it her fault that Poseidon couldn't take no for an answer? The entire case against her is circumstantial at best and built on others' faults at worst.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nB26olZxM8w/WrEuTH5PoxI/AAAAAAAADh8/E9_6ZfKUZMInQf3AMB9USSvbD_HZffBeACLcBGAs/s1600/the_despair_of_scylla_by_bleminh-d31qpph.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nB26olZxM8w/WrEuTH5PoxI/AAAAAAAADh8/E9_6ZfKUZMInQf3AMB9USSvbD_HZffBeACLcBGAs/s400/the_despair_of_scylla_by_bleminh-d31qpph.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Despair of Scylla</i>, Le Minh Bui</td></tr>
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But the helpless woman is a much easier target than the righteous man, the love interest, or the powerful god. Even in stories where the whole point is their superior might, goddesses are never pitted against men. The worst of their wrath is reserved for other women, regardless of whether or not they deserve it, because the women don't fight back. Hera found that out long ago; fighting Zeus is a no-no, but plotting against the women he sleeps with is almost consequence-free.<br />
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So why isn't Hera in this post more? Well, because even she never goes to these extremes. She's persistent and vindictive, sure, and her treatment of Semele in particular is unnecessarily harsh. But all Hera wants is a quick proof that she's better than whatever hussy her husband's shacking up with today. She's not after the long-term revenge, the slow torture, the painful day-after-day agony of a life utterly blighted. She doesn't want her rivals to suffer endlessly; she just wants them gone. She's not a patch on Athena for inventiveness, or Aphrodite for cruel irony. Hera invented the technique of persecuting the defenseless woman; the other goddesses perfected it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vUZleVgB8Kg/UCBVnUeODmI/AAAAAAAABKc/G1uGEPgPmWA/s1600/Athens+-+Statue+of+Athena.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vUZleVgB8Kg/UCBVnUeODmI/AAAAAAAABKc/G1uGEPgPmWA/s320/Athens+-+Statue+of+Athena.jpg" width="256" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Athena</i>, Leonidas Drosis</td></tr>
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These goddesses' ultimate goal is to assert their power and regain face. In every situation, it's a goddess who's lost face somehow, whether she's been romantically rejected or ritually desecrated. And the gender code of the times guarantees that if she goes after the man responsible, she is unevenly matched and will not regain the fear and respect crucial to her worship. So she pursues the woman involved, whether or not that woman actually was responsible, because that makes the match uneven in the opposite way: the X-chromosomes cancel each other out, and we're left with immortal versus mortal (or demigod, which is just as useless sometimes). Which is not to say that goddesses don't go toe-to-toe with males and kick their ass: Artemis and Actaeon come to mind, as do Athena and Poseidon fighting over the city of Athens. But in those cases, there was no handy woman to take the blame. When there is, the goddesses come down like she-wolves on the fold. And there will never be mercy.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-24990756458603260492012-12-22T23:41:00.000-08:002018-03-28T14:50:28.635-07:00A Love Letter to BigamistsRight 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 <i>transformation</i> scene, <i>oh my god</i>), 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 <i>any day of the week</i>.<br />
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Which makes it odd that a Snow White variant is among my favorite fairy tales of all time.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Silver-tree</i>, John Batten</td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/jacobs/celtic/goldtree.html" target="_blank">"Gold-tree and Silver-tree"</a> 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Death of Gold-tree</i>, Michelle Hunt</td></tr>
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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 <a href="http://storyseer.blogspot.com/2012/08/its-time-to-listen.html" target="_blank">Talia</a> would, too.)<br />
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And then things get <i>really</i> interesting. <i>The prince remarries.</i><br />
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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.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iS9RjFwod_Y/U-bjtqY4PwI/AAAAAAAAArU/U7igE6AkjO0/s1600/gold+tree.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iS9RjFwod_Y/U-bjtqY4PwI/AAAAAAAAArU/U7igE6AkjO0/s1600/gold+tree.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Gold-tree</i>, Morris Meredith Williams</td></tr>
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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?<br />
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Nope. She just <i>takes out the poisoned dart. </i>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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Two Princesses, One Prince</i>, V-Eclipse</td></tr>
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Point two in the prince's favor: He made a very intelligent second marriage.<br />
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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."</div>
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<i>This guy is so cool.</i> 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UwUEpOdZGJ8/UNVj0eNe-_I/AAAAAAAAAmY/KVFc8Tw5hmE/s1600/queencup.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UwUEpOdZGJ8/UNVj0eNe-_I/AAAAAAAAAmY/KVFc8Tw5hmE/s1600/queencup.png" /></a>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 <i>you</i> come from, honey, but in <i>this </i>country the person offering a drink takes a sip first, I mean really, where are your <i>manners</i>. 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.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Two Princesses of Bamarre</i>, eala-nedea</td></tr>
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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 <a href="http://storyseer.blogspot.com/2012/03/tale-as-old-as-time.html" target="_blank">the Beauty and the Beast variants</a>, I've never seen more interesting romantic dynamics. It's a lot more complicated and compelling than "someday my prince will come."</div>
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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.</div>
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If only we could get Snow White to read it...</div>
Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-74478583354356736022012-12-06T16:47:00.002-08:002018-03-28T15:04:20.502-07:00Where 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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Death of Rachel</i>, Giambettino Cignaroli</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Snow White</i> illustration, Franz Juttner</td></tr>
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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, <i>real</i> 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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Kate Crackernuts</i>, Trina Schart Hyman</td></tr>
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But that line of thinking leaves us singularly ill-equipped to handle, say, the heroine's mother in <a href="http://storyseer.blogspot.com/2012/01/siblings-have-feelings-too.html" target="_blank">Kate Crackernuts</a>. 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 <i>out of love for Kate,</i> 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.<br />
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So, having no mother is bad. Having a vindictive mother is bad. Having a caring mother is bad. Is there <i>any </i>kind of good mother who's not also dead?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Demeter and Persephone</i>, Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire</td></tr>
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Well, there's always Demeter.<br />
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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.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--BaqohqFhPU/UMExdGrIooI/AAAAAAAAAlE/TIQkVpCYDkI/s1600/isishorus.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--BaqohqFhPU/UMExdGrIooI/AAAAAAAAAlE/TIQkVpCYDkI/s320/isishorus.png" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Isis & Horus</i>, Judith Page</td></tr>
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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 <a href="http://bettermyths.com/set-jizzes-on-his-enemies/" target="_blank">some <i>interesting</i> methods</a>), avenges his father, and becomes king of Egypt (and ultimately a god). Well done, Isis.<br />
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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<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vbJfKBv_5PA/UMEzC0EBL8I/AAAAAAAAAlM/Nhrfjr-JA5Q/s1600/madchi.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vbJfKBv_5PA/UMEzC0EBL8I/AAAAAAAAAlM/Nhrfjr-JA5Q/s320/madchi.png" width="263" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Madonna and Child</i>, Il Sassoferrato</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dqLeVAJdJ3Y/UME5G4HGW6I/AAAAAAAAAlk/PQmLxDM5TnA/s1600/brave.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dqLeVAJdJ3Y/UME5G4HGW6I/AAAAAAAAAlk/PQmLxDM5TnA/s320/brave.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Brave</i>, Disney/Pixar</td></tr>
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It might actually be fine. Because what the ranks of good living mothers sorely need to oppose the army of evil mothers is <i>power.</i> 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 <i>need</i> 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.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-2355003006502561222012-10-04T21:19:00.003-07:002018-03-29T08:30:52.875-07:00Revisiting Lancelot<div style="text-align: right;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sir Lancelot</i>, Melissa A. Benson</td></tr>
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Is it just me, or is Lancelot kind of boring?<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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: <i>why?</i><br />
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Sort of redundant, yes? Didn't I just answer it?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Sword of Lancelot</i>, Howard David Johnson</td></tr>
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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? <i>No enemy can face him.</i> 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. <i>And he still splits this guy's head open.</i> There is a reason this man is described as the best knight in the world. And it is because he is <i>the best knight in the world.</i><br />
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Gawain and the Green Knight</i>, David Hitchcock</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yLVNIVL-2V8/UG5cgDY_ihI/AAAAAAAAAkg/buvDwQyNwdk/s1600/lancegwen.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yLVNIVL-2V8/UG5cgDY_ihI/AAAAAAAAAkg/buvDwQyNwdk/s320/lancegwen.png" width="315" /></a>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.<br />
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He's not just a badass. He's a <i>relatable</i> badass.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Lancelot of the Lake</i>, Delphine Gache</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-19516428517115516962012-09-11T19:20:00.000-07:002018-03-29T08:52:31.201-07:00Three to Tango<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Triple Goddess</i>, Briar Mythology</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/White-As-Snow-Fairy-Tale/dp/0312875495/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1347403717&sr=8-4&keywords=white+as+snow" target="_blank">White as Snow</a> 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.)<br />
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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.<br />
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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 <a href="http://storyseer.blogspot.com/2012/03/deadlier-than-male.html" target="_blank">aggressive war goddesses</a>. 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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Death of King Arthur</i>, Katharine Cameron</td></tr>
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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 "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2CWXseOdQo" target="_blank">Three Queens</a>" 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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Masque of the Four Seasons</i>, Walter Crane</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Triple Goddess</i>, Susan Seddon Boulet</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-56155825649752031832012-08-23T21:21:00.001-07:002018-03-29T09:08:33.625-07:00It's Time to ListenI 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.<br />
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It all sounds a little too familiar.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Rape of Europa</i>, Noel-Nicolas Coypel</td></tr>
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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 <i>know</i> 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?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Rape of Europa</i>, Felix Edouard Vallotton</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sun, Moon, and Talia</i>, Chris Beatrice</td></tr>
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We've been over the arguably-worse horror that is "Sun, Moon and Talia," the original <a href="http://storyseer.blogspot.com/2012/03/shh-its-baby.html" target="_blank">Sleeping Beauty</a>. 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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While you let that sink in, let me introduce you to Chrysippus. Because surely you don't think only women get raped.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Rape of Chrysippus</i>, KidaGreenleaf</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Chrysippus and Laius</i>, KidaGreenleaf</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Math Son of Mathonwy</i>, Margaret Jones</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Gwydion and Gilfaethwy</i>, Margaret Jones</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Olwen</i>, Alan Lee</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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?<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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And we all need to listen.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-61516398212264224742012-08-14T21:26:00.003-07:002019-01-18T10:25:15.312-08:00Troy and Other Ten-Year ProblemsThere'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.<br />
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You know those two epic poems that provide some of the most basic foundations for Western society? The <i>Iliad</i> and the <i>Odyssey</i>? 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 <i>Iliad</i>, which makes it great fun to watch him really act out in the <i>Odyssey.</i> I don't really like any of the <i>Iliad</i>'s characters as much as I like - no, let's do this right, <i>love</i> - Odysseus.<br />
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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 <i>Odyssey</i> is a far more thoughtful and touching character study... I like the <i>Iliad</i> better.<br />
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Let's be clear. My favorite character in the <i>Iliad</i> 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 <i>do not get me started on Achilles.</i> 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 <i>Iliad</i>, 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 <i>the freaking god of war</i> crying home to Dad, in what is arguably the funniest scene in literary antiquity. Including everything in <i>Lysistrata</i>. If you can only have one chapter in which to shine, this is the one to have.<br />
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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 <i>Iliad</i>, 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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Calypso Takes Pity on Odysseus</i>,<br />
Henry Justice Ford</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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But I confess it: when I read the <i>Odyssey</i>, I was bored.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QfzniHeMoM0/T-ZacN2IvjI/AAAAAAAAku8/hmIV7_ZZcok/s1600/BienaimeLuigi-TelemachusArming-1835.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QfzniHeMoM0/T-ZacN2IvjI/AAAAAAAAku8/hmIV7_ZZcok/s320/BienaimeLuigi-TelemachusArming-1835.jpg" width="238" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Telemachus Arming</i>, Luigi Bienaime</td></tr>
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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 <a href="http://storyseer.blogspot.com/2012/04/problematic-myths-and-people-who-love.html" target="_blank">the d'Aulaires</a>, who valiantly refrained from spoiling the <i>Odyssey</i>. 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<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TlQTkLSXPf0/WrFMhEUye2I/AAAAAAAADkc/qnsC680h7uM8VE0ruvwLpmCa7YpYcfA8QCLcBGAs/s1600/odysseus-and-penelope1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="298" data-original-width="328" height="290" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TlQTkLSXPf0/WrFMhEUye2I/AAAAAAAADkc/qnsC680h7uM8VE0ruvwLpmCa7YpYcfA8QCLcBGAs/s320/odysseus-and-penelope1.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Odysseus and Penelope</i>, John Flaxman</td></tr>
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<br />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 <i>Odyssey</i>, 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.<br />
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But no one spoiled the <i>Iliad</i> 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 <i>anti-</i>war.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s14oCwycT80/TM1MN2OH64I/AAAAAAAAACo/pvsW6okIK98/s1600/Achilles_Triumphant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s14oCwycT80/TM1MN2OH64I/AAAAAAAAACo/pvsW6okIK98/s400/Achilles_Triumphant.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Achilles Triumphant</i>, Howard David Johnson</td></tr>
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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 <i>the </i>war story astounded me. People who dismiss the death lists and the catalogue of ships completely m<span style="font-family: inherit;">iss the point. For chapter after chapter, the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Iliad</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> 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.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Hector Brought Back to Troy</i>, artist unknown</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">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 <i>Iliad</i> 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.</span><br />
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I had no idea. And I could not put the thing down.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ulysses and the Sirens</i>, Roman mosaic, 3rd century CE</td></tr>
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The <i>Odyssey</i>, 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 <i>Iliad</i> 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 <i>Odyssey</i> is the emotional arc of three complicated characters, disguised as a simple story; the <i>Iliad</i> is a message disguised as a series of episodes.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy</i>, Domenico Tiepolo</td></tr>
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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 <i>Iliad</i> 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.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-67568076567512314562012-08-04T09:33:00.000-07:002018-03-29T09:43:39.830-07:00Holy 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?<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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 <i>arrogance</i>. 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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sedna</i>, Antony Galbraith</td></tr>
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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!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sedna</i>, Tara Borger</td></tr>
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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 <i>swan</i>. 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 <i>drown</i> 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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And lest you think this is just a hormonal female thing, we haven't even gotten to the most appalling divine exhibition of power.<br />
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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.<br />
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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?<br />
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How about <i>everyone</i>?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Plagues of Egypt</i>, John Martin</td></tr>
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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 <i>the entire country</i>, 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?"<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Plague of Locusts</i>, James Tissot</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Death of the Pharaoh's Firstborn Son</i>, Lawrence Alma-Tadema</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-53581166924204933182012-07-21T21:24:00.002-07:002018-03-29T10:05:33.843-07:00Queen of HeartsLegends love problematic queens. Semiramis, Helen of Troy, the endless range of evil stepmothers - their ranks are some of the largest out there. You can see why: the dramatic potential of a woman who stands for an entire country and doesn't do her job by it is fantastic. On one hand, the queen is a powerful symbol; on the other, she's also an imperfect person. And for my money, no problematic queen is more interesting than Guinevere.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h6uicORGGc4/WrFqJIgfy0I/AAAAAAAADmM/PjpVFxX1gCsHbI81QyrFlxSHeqhZvReXgCLcBGAs/s1600/blair-leighton_accolade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="824" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h6uicORGGc4/WrFqJIgfy0I/AAAAAAAADmM/PjpVFxX1gCsHbI81QyrFlxSHeqhZvReXgCLcBGAs/s400/blair-leighton_accolade.jpg" width="242" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Accolade</i>, Edmund Blair Leighton</td></tr>
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For one thing, she embodies that dramatic potential better than anyone else. The other problematic queens really aren't very good at the queen thing. Helen may look great on Menelaus' arm at public festivals, but she also openly and drastically shucks her duty. Semiramis drags Babylon into a war because a hot king turned her down. The jealous stepmother of "The Six Swans" robs her country of every single one of its heirs, just because they're not her kids. Not only are these women troubling, they can't even do their actual job properly.<br />
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Not Guinevere. Regardless of what she does behind Arthur's back, she is acknowledged in every version as a paragon among queens for her performance of her duties. She does the arm candy thing at every tournament and Pentecost feast Arthur throws. She hosts Maying parties and leads court excursions. She even (in an ironically Anglo-Saxon move, given who the historical Arthur's enemies were) offers the cup to his knights when they gather. (We'll ignore that one time the cup was poisoned and she was accused of murder. That's not the point.) Guinevere knows what none of the other queens do: her title is a role. She has lines to memorize and marks to hit, and she nails them all, every single time. Even the writers who don't like her (<i>ahem</i>, Tennyson) freely concede that publicly she is everything and more that a queen should be.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zyf9rzEE0gc/UAt9MyTKmpI/AAAAAAAAAi0/Ysd9gGAe0dA/s1600/guinlance.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zyf9rzEE0gc/UAt9MyTKmpI/AAAAAAAAAi0/Ysd9gGAe0dA/s400/guinlance.png" width="276" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sir Launcelot and the Queen Talked Sadly Together</i>,<br />
Arthur Dixon</td></tr>
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Her failures, unlike her fellows', are private and behind the scenes. And also incredibly, heartbreakingly human. It's hard to forgive her for her betrayal of Arthur, but it's also hard to hate her just because she fell in love. And it's not as if (like Helen, say) she jumped headlong into Lancelot's arms. There are versions I've read where their love remains unconsummated, and even unspoken, up through the Grail Quest. Again: this is a woman who knows her duty. She bottles up her passion, confides in no one, and goes the hell on with her life, her job, and her marriage, as best she can and as long as she can. There's no outside divine influence, no heedless snap decision, not even any base motives. She just loves a man she must not love, and she fights it as hard as she can.<br />
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But not hard enough. Guinevere is a problematic queen for a reason.<br />
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When at last she begins her affair with Lancelot, writer after writer leaps on those problems. The perfect queen who betrays her duty, her husband, and her kingdom presents a stunning piece of hypocrisy. It doesn't help that Guinevere is actually a crucial piece of the lasting legend of Camelot. <a href="http://storyseer.blogspot.com/2012/04/kings-evolution.html" target="_blank">Arthur the lawgiver</a> creates a kingdom, but it's Guinevere who brings civilization. Arthur only gets the Round Table because it's part of his wife's dowry. Without Guinevere, Camelot would lack its most potent symbol, as well as much of its courtly appeal and chivalric code. So for one of the true backbones of the realm to break faith with its highest aspirations is an act that undermines not only Guinevere personally, but the entire kingdom she represents.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1tQ84erUZ74/WrFpHGZ52AI/AAAAAAAADmE/uYJCNM3JXj8sOEiGJ27NpR8g_O-IENNKQCLcBGAs/s1600/LnG-EDO-full-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="941" data-original-width="1600" height="188" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1tQ84erUZ74/WrFpHGZ52AI/AAAAAAAADmE/uYJCNM3JXj8sOEiGJ27NpR8g_O-IENNKQCLcBGAs/s320/LnG-EDO-full-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Lancelot and Guinevere</i>, Michael Manomivibul</td></tr>
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And Guinevere's character becomes the mirror for that hypocrisy. From the wise and gracious hostess handing out elegant atonement to young Gawain at her wedding feast, she becomes a shrew of the first order, constantly doubting and questioning Lancelot's love. She can never just talk things out like a normal person; instead she picks fights, deliberately choosing her words to wound. Only honest people make clean breasts of their problems; Guinevere's deception bars her emotionally from taking the straightforward and more honorable road. Worse, she sometimes engages in petty jealousy, in a way highly uncharacteristic of the charmer and politician she would have to be in order to foster harmony and civilization.<br />
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In one sense, of course she can't be sensible and thoughtful; she is too symbolic a figure not to be identified first and foremost with her position, and her betrayal is too great not to exploit symbolically in literature. But the transformation of Guinevere from angel to harridan is also much too simple. If she's so obnoxious, why did Arthur fall for her? Why does her court mostly like her? There's got to be something else going on, something not symbolic but human.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z6ktmxexTnY/WrFqX_e9UYI/AAAAAAAADmQ/jAVTAx7GeYQ4MH556hDT3k6uQay4VCUrgCLcBGAs/s1600/N04999_10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="1090" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z6ktmxexTnY/WrFqX_e9UYI/AAAAAAAADmQ/jAVTAx7GeYQ4MH556hDT3k6uQay4VCUrgCLcBGAs/s320/N04999_10.jpg" width="227" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>La Belle Iseult </i>(also called<br />
<i>Queen Guinevere</i>), William Morris</td></tr>
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Enter perhaps the oddest knight in shining armor ever: William Morris.*<br />
<br />
A would-be painter and a revolutionary craftsman, Morris wrote the first work to present Guinevere not as a symbol of a decaying realm built on a dream and a lie, but as a human woman caught between passion and duty. <a href="http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/defguin.htm" target="_blank"><i>The Defence of Guenevere</i></a> imagines her at her trial before Arthur's knights, speaking on her own behalf with eloquence, dignity, and full awareness of herself. Brilliantly, her "defence" rests on that very thing nearly all earlier Arthurian chronicles deny her: total emotional honesty. Having at last found love, she demands to know if she "must...give up forever...that which I deemed would ever round me move, glorifying all things; for a little word, scarce ever meant at all, must I now prove stone-cold for ever?" She describes her agony of conscience, the anguish of love, the delight at its fulfillment and the shame she feels at that delight. She is, at last, open and honest and entirely sympathetic.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-duxWuq1ioHY/VLbaUJvKHXI/AAAAAAAAAsU/L8DJjVYLqCg/s1600/guinevere.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-duxWuq1ioHY/VLbaUJvKHXI/AAAAAAAAAsU/L8DJjVYLqCg/s1600/guinevere.png" width="236" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Guinevere</i>, Meredith Dillman</td></tr>
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But even at her best, she can't win. Because despite her eloquence, and despite the real torment of her soul, she is still a woman both wronged and wronging. Guinevere's archetypal appeal and human fascination are both tied directly to her dual nature: perfection and destruction, love and betrayal, honor and shame. No matter how sympathetic and understandable her motives are, what draws us to her are the contradictions that break Camelot. She is the greatest problematic queen in all of legend: problematic because we understand her and cannot absolve her. <br />
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*(Morris, of course, had personal experience with a problematic woman torn between love and duty: his own wife, Jane, one of the great muses of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It's not hard to see where Morris could have drawn from life; but it is moving that he, the cuckolded husband, can summon such vast sympathy for the adulterous wife.)Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-71946979350835755252012-07-17T21:18:00.000-07:002018-03-29T10:52:51.202-07:00The Reckless Ring-GiverIs Beowulf a hero?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yDtzbAY6hAs/Wr0mawTG7hI/AAAAAAAADts/bnkZcXaqY0oWOJMPf0jhiyxsRUiakTOOQCLcBGAs/s1600/Reckless%2B1%2B%2528TheFool432%252C%2BBeowulf%2Bv%2BGrendel%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="305" data-original-width="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yDtzbAY6hAs/Wr0mawTG7hI/AAAAAAAADts/bnkZcXaqY0oWOJMPf0jhiyxsRUiakTOOQCLcBGAs/s1600/Reckless%2B1%2B%2528TheFool432%252C%2BBeowulf%2Bv%2BGrendel%2529.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Beowulf vs. Grendel</i>, TheFool432</td></tr>
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Sometimes you just need to ask the blunt question. Even when it sounds incredibly stupid. By any definition, of course Beowulf's a hero. He fights monsters! He kills dragons! He trash-talks with class! He's right up there with Hercules for perhaps <i>the </i>classic heroic archetype. Is Beowulf a hero? What meds, exactly, am I on to ask that question?<br />
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First off, what on earth do we actually mean when we say "hero"? By the Anglo-Saxon code under which he should properly be judged, Beowulf is as close as you can get to perfection. He is a valiant fighter whose prowess commands the respect of the men he leads. He never falls victim to false modesty; his boasts are always justified by his feats, and he isn't shy about explaining his worth. He jumps at the chance to win glory, even - especially - embracing the danger by which that glory can be had. And when he comes into wealth and power, he shares it out among his friends and thanes, as a good lord should.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nnhBcwatuG8/Wr0nGg0sxLI/AAAAAAAADt4/JV_afXLVY0ImQmZ9_l49eu0Ylg2yJKOAQCLcBGAs/s1600/Reckless%2B2%2B%2528Howe%2BGrendel%2527s%2BMom%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="377" data-original-width="540" height="278" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nnhBcwatuG8/Wr0nGg0sxLI/AAAAAAAADt4/JV_afXLVY0ImQmZ9_l49eu0Ylg2yJKOAQCLcBGAs/s400/Reckless%2B2%2B%2528Howe%2BGrendel%2527s%2BMom%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Beowulf Battles Grendel's Mother</i>, John Howe</td></tr>
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Beowulf also passes the classical Greek definition with flying colors. He's no coward, shying away from danger and fate; he, like Achilles, wants nothing more than to be remembered well. He upholds the honor of the noble house into which he was born. He charges headlong into treacherous situations, winning free by equal virtue of his strength and his wits. He always keeps one eye on posterity. The Greeks would have loved this guy almost as much as the Anglo-Saxons did.<br />
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And what do we mean now, when we talk about heroes?<br />
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It's a considerably more complicated question than it used to be. Modern myth-readers are less inclined to give heroes a pass on their brutality or their stupidity simply because of their divine birth or their astonishing strength. Hercules is superhuman; he also murdered his first wife and all their kids in a fit of temporary insanity. Achilles is a self-absorbed whiny one-man killing machine. And Beowulf is a glory hound.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-da55wK1DIHk/Wr0m1S8LimI/AAAAAAAADtw/lWt9a0HDZdgFAlU27emGTiHe56VHMvPOACLcBGAs/s1600/Reckless%2B3%2B%2528Howe%2BFuneral%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="311" data-original-width="540" height="230" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-da55wK1DIHk/Wr0m1S8LimI/AAAAAAAADtw/lWt9a0HDZdgFAlU27emGTiHe56VHMvPOACLcBGAs/s400/Reckless%2B3%2B%2528Howe%2BFuneral%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Beowulf's Funeral</i>, John Howe</td></tr>
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On one hand, it's his story; we'd feel cheated if he went around offering his thanes the chance to do something awesome. On the other hand, even we know that he is very overmatched when he takes on a dragon alone. Beowulf's end is classic Greek hubris: his pride forbids him to enlist the help of the able-bodied men who accompany him to the dragon's lair. And when they all desert him except for valiant and loyal Wiglaf, it's hard not to wonder if Beowulf monopolized everyone else's chance to become a hero and made himself great by making his contemporaries cowards.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YPwK7pXfdKY/Wr0mNnj1HRI/AAAAAAAADto/eTLs16FZFQMikdFKl_6hi6R07tJjXm-yACLcBGAs/s1600/Reckless%2B4%2B%2528Virgil%2BBurnett%2BFuneral%2529.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="568" data-original-width="359" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YPwK7pXfdKY/Wr0mNnj1HRI/AAAAAAAADto/eTLs16FZFQMikdFKl_6hi6R07tJjXm-yACLcBGAs/s320/Reckless%2B4%2B%2528Virgil%2BBurnett%2BFuneral%2529.gif" width="202" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Beowulf's Funeral</i>, Virgil Burnett</td></tr>
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In that sense, he himself contributes tremendously to the fall of his kingdom, built mainly on his own reputation. The crone who cries his funeral lament at the end of the poem foresees no defense of her homeland now that its hero has fallen. Why were there no young Beowulfs ready to take their dead king's place? Well, maybe because that king took their shots at glory for himself. Unwilling to follow in the well-meaning but ineffectual footsteps of Hrothgar, Beowulf goes out in a blaze of aged glory. But Hrothgar at least kept his people together until a hero could arise. Beowulf's death is actually rather selfish, seen in that light. By risking his life as a hero should, Beowulf robs his people of their greatest protection. His wholehearted embrace of the hero's role leads him to ignore the role in which his people need him most: that of guardian, guiding hand, and arbiter of justice. His betrayal (or worse, ignorance) of that need is hardly a heroic act.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Oi-71dbauPM/Wr0nhVzej1I/AAAAAAAADuA/WF7Ihizme3ATSix893TMMK9X0YSC8EiwQCLcBGAs/s1600/Reckless%2B5%2B%2528Falinskaya%2BBeowulf%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Oi-71dbauPM/Wr0nhVzej1I/AAAAAAAADuA/WF7Ihizme3ATSix893TMMK9X0YSC8EiwQCLcBGAs/s400/Reckless%2B5%2B%2528Falinskaya%2BBeowulf%2529.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Beowulf</i>, Olga Falinskaya</td></tr>
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But all the same, it's impossible to discount his astonishing deeds. He rips off a monster's arm with his bare hands. He fights a she-demon underwater for hours on end. He takes on a dragon with the help of one young retainer. And throughout his story, he retains a nobility of spirit. When he makes mistakes, he makes them with the best intentions. It's hard to blame him for always betting on himself when he always wins through. Beowulf knows himself. He knows who he is and what he's capable of. It's a blunt kind of wisdom, one that heroes like Theseus and Lancelot - other heroes with grave single flaws - often display.<br />
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Is Beowulf problematic? Yes. He's too proud, too reckless, too overconfident. But he commands admiration in spite of his flaws. He is a hero, but not a divine one. Despite his supernatural foes, Beowulf is heroism at its most human: endangered by its weaknesses, but always capable of surpassing greatness.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-84019738225763292662012-07-10T20:52:00.001-07:002018-03-29T11:08:56.290-07:00A Woman's Other Weapon<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JnqF865Zll0/WrU72f_YPJI/AAAAAAAADm0/2FYxUmAOLPE4019t0-kRgppuaPYR4yPwACLcBGAs/s1600/6a00d8341c504553ef00e553538a4a8833-800wi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="598" data-original-width="252" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JnqF865Zll0/WrU72f_YPJI/AAAAAAAADm0/2FYxUmAOLPE4019t0-kRgppuaPYR4yPwACLcBGAs/s400/6a00d8341c504553ef00e553538a4a8833-800wi.jpg" width="167" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Jupiter and Io</i>, Antonio da Correggio</td></tr>
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The sexploits of most gods are quite literally legendary. Sometimes a god is remarkable for being the only one in a pantheon to get much action; sometimes you just can't join the club until you drop your pants and chase every nymph in sight. What doesn't get talked about nearly as much, if at all, are the comparative lusts of goddesses.<br />
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(Yes, I just saw <i>Magic Mike</i>, and my mind's on double standards. Can you tell?)<br />
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Take the Greek gods. Hera's seduction of Zeus in the Iliad is possibly the only time in the entire mythos when we see its central couple engaging in mutually consensual sex, and this is well after she's given birth to at least two kids. (She's also the mother of the goddesses of youth, childbirth and discord; analyze <i>that</i>, Dr. Freud!) Aphrodite has a very famous roving eye, and what does it get her? Trussed up in a net by her husband, as well as being bad-mouthed forever as the biggest slut in a pantheon of sex maniacs. Echo's shy advances to Narcissus are brutally rebuffed; Eos claims a man and has to watch him wither into a grasshopper, while her sister can only sleep with her beloved while he is actually asleep. And it's never made universally clear whether Persephone was a product of rape or not.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-euCD8uQb15o/T_z1rXqGPdI/AAAAAAAAAio/nul-_WSYHck/s1600/isos.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-euCD8uQb15o/T_z1rXqGPdI/AAAAAAAAAio/nul-_WSYHck/s400/isos.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Isis and Osiris</i>, Susan Seddon Boulet</td></tr>
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Things don't get much better elsewhere. The contemporary Norse turned a relatively blind eye to Freya's gadding about, but nearly everyone since has passed judgment on her actions, either by censoring, over-excusing, or simply writing her sex drive out of the story. Isis, who as a mother goddess derives an enormous amount of her power from her sexuality, gets mostly a throwaway mention about how she resurrected Osiris and slept with him to get pregnant and can we move on now please? Inanna's undeniable and insatiable passion gets her typecast as a terrifying hellion to fear and avoid, and her very real power is, if not shunned, then not actively courted. And the Virgin Mary's power is right there in her name: to be important, she <i>has </i>to lack desire.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pXrSoaFRkOs/TsrHU2fK-yI/AAAAAAAAAgw/578bdjtXhtQ/s1600/Presentation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pXrSoaFRkOs/TsrHU2fK-yI/AAAAAAAAAgw/578bdjtXhtQ/s200/Presentation.jpg" width="160" /></a>So what are we talking about here? Is female sexuality too much to handle, even in primal tales of basic urges, even in pantheons with characters like Zeus and Odin and Jacob? Did the mostly-male mythologists shy away from really discussing women and sex out of blind fear? If myths ignore or censor women harnessing their sexuality free of judgment, isn't that really just an age-old manifestation of the madonna-whore complex?<br />
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Well, maybe not.<br />
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Female sexuality is an astoundingly powerful force, in myth and in reality. Women hold the power to create life as a direct result of their sexuality. You get early matriarchal society because early humans recognized and acknowledged that power. And you get creation myths like the Greek one, where Gaia trains her children to destroy her selfish and unsatisfactory consort, harnessing the product of her sexuality to annihilate Uranus once he's given her the missing ingredient to make life. And she turns that same power on Cronus when he too displeases her. It is no accident that Cronus' final defeat is Zeus castrating him; by going against the will of the female - that is, the one in charge - Cronus brings on himself his unmanning, by all the classic Greek rules of hubris.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Jupiter and Juno</i>, Annibale Caracci</td></tr>
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And even in the less satisfactory myths, you can see the threads of that power. Hera distracts Zeus from the most epic war of all time just by flashing a bit of cleavage. Inanna may be frightening, but as Gilgamesh aptly points out, she is not someone to mess with; tapping into her primal power allows her to control men's lives. Freya snatches up the best warriors for her own hall before even Odin gets his pick, and no one dares to question her. Isis and Mary turn the alarming threat of female sexuality into salvation by giving birth to their respective messiahs.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Awakening of Adonis</i>, John William Waterhouse</td></tr>
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Yes, openly sexual women are scary things to the makers of myths. But it's not plain old misogyny. It's born of a healthy respect for the change a woman can make in the world, just by embracing her sexuality. And while stainless Vestal Virgins might get a story or two - Artemis, anyone? - it's the women grounded in their instinctive power who keep coming back to shake things up, even when the men around them get scared and try to push them away.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-62837505328134426672012-07-03T20:41:00.000-07:002018-03-29T11:29:49.430-07:00The Lone ArtistLet's talk about Hephaestus.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Hephaestus</i>, Scott Eaton</td></tr>
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Because honestly, who else is going to? The poor guy is the underdog to beat all underdogs, even in a mythos that includes <a href="http://storyseer.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-defense-of-menelaus.html" target="_blank">Menelaus</a>. He's the son of Zeus and his actual wife, so he gets no fun cavorting origin story. He's got a much hotter, flashier brother - and a gorgeous wife who flagrantly cheats on him with said brother. He's stuck in a volcano making pretty and amazing things for the ungrateful bastards he calls family, who grab what he gives them and don't even stay to say thank you. After Oedipus, he may have been dealt the worst hand in all of Greek mythology.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan</i>, <br />Alexandre Charles Guillemot</td></tr>
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It gets worse. All the memorable Hephaestus myths involve him getting humiliated in some way. How did he become lame? Well, Zeus pitched him off Olympus for siding with Hera in a marital spat. How did he score the most beautiful of all goddesses? Well, because his dad thought opposites might attract (and also figured that he owed him one after the whole laming business). How did he finally figure out that Aphrodite was two-timing him? Well, he had to catch her with Ares in a net before he could get anyone to pay attention. Even when he's a peripheral character, he's put-upon; when Achilles needs new armor in which to kill Hector, guess who has to pull an all-nighter to have it ready by morning?<br />
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You have to feel for the guy.<br />
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What makes things even sadder is that everyone on Olympus recognizes his competence. No one dreams of going to anyone but Hephaestus for everything from jewelry repairs to new thunderbolts. Among scads of glory-hungry and talented deities, he is universally recognized as the most gifted. And no one ever asks anything more of him than what they want from him. He's the ugly friend who makes you look better by comparison.<br />
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And he does his job tragically well. Athena gets all the glory for giving handicrafts to humans, with no mention of who might have taught her. Apollo runs away with the artistic laurels, because it's not like any other god might be good at making pretty things. The guy can make a freaking volcano erupt when he works the night shift, but his own father steals the shock-and-awe points whenever he feels like pitching a hissy fit and a few thunderbolts. Hephaestus gets no credit for things that, in a more attractive god, would be cause for adoration and fangirling.<br />
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To which he says, with consummate grace: <i>So what?</i><br />
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Hephaestus isn't a fame-seeker. He's not waiting with bated breath for the popular verdict on his latest creation. He knows it's good. He knows he made it. And he knows the next one will be even better. Hephaestus is an artist. He's actually a much more dedicated artist than Apollo, who spends more time skirt-chasing and scoring good PR than actually making music. Hephaestus lives in his studio. He literally breathes his creations. He is focused 24/7 on the thing he does well and that he loves to do. And most importantly, he's made it pay. All artists need patrons; what good is art if no one sees it? Hephaestus's skills earn him a dedicated clientele. Big freaking deal if they don't actually talk to him; capital-P Patrons of Art are almost always assholes in one way or another. The main thing is, they come back. They recognize the value of what he creates, and they want more. Hephaestus is living the artist's dream.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-17i8vNBq2Rg/WrU9t1L-9dI/AAAAAAAADnI/yfegXSJ0RRkjY4cQGjSntFOzxHXf-OOdQCLcBGAs/s1600/Bog-Hefest-9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="430" data-original-width="600" height="286" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-17i8vNBq2Rg/WrU9t1L-9dI/AAAAAAAADnI/yfegXSJ0RRkjY4cQGjSntFOzxHXf-OOdQCLcBGAs/s400/Bog-Hefest-9.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Sure, he's the solitary artist, the one who works in seclusion churning out beauties. But he's also a god. When he wants something done, he gets it done, whether it's a gorgeous new shield or an invisible wife-catching net. It's no coincidence that he traps Ares and Aphrodite in the literal coils of his own skill, which they thoughtlessly undervalued in undervaluing him. Hephaestus lives by his art. And he likes it that way.<br />
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Because if he didn't? Come on. This is a go-getter. This is a guy who knows where he's headed. If he didn't like the destination, he'd just set course for a new one. He wouldn't do it with a fuss and a fanfare, and someone would probably tease him for it. But he'd still be doing what he wanted. You just can't stop him.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-16034634363910601092012-06-26T20:59:00.000-07:002019-01-18T11:46:24.770-08:00Chivalry in SkirtsArthurian legend has no shortage of uppity women. From Guinevere to Nimue to Morgan le Fay, the legends abound with damsels and ladies who know their own minds, set their own goals, and aren't afraid to admit their ambitions. Unfortunately, most of them get absolutely squashed. Whether by outside interference or their own backfiring machinations, scarcely a go-getting Arthurian lady gets what she came for.<br />
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So it stands to reason that when one of them does, she is vividly remembered.<br />
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Linette, the razor-tongued sister of Lady Lionors, is unique among the ladies of Arthuriana not only because she gets everything she set out to get, but because she is one of the only successful cases of character development in the legends. So many characters spring to life already equipped with their defining personality traits: Lancelot is noble and has a guilt complex, Mordred is evil and scheming, Merlin is wise, Guinevere is beautiful and capricious. We see Arthur develop in the early going from impulsive youth to mature and just king, but he's pretty much the only one.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sir Gareth and Lady Lynette</i>, Arthur Rackham</td></tr>
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Besides Linette. We first meet her when she demands a champion from the king while refusing to give her name, the name of her sister (for whom she's requesting said champion), or even the common courtesy due to another person. When Gareth, incognito as a kitchen boy, calls in the favors Arthur owes him and claims her quest as his, she spits out a few choice insults and rides in high dudgeon from the court. Undaunted, Gareth catches up; equally unfazed, Linette proceeds to blister the air for days with details of his idiocy, his inadequacy, and his incapability to survive a poke, let alone a series of one-on-one combats. There is literally no reason at all to like her.<br />
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And then she gets her wake-up call. The second of four knights that Gareth trounces is a real gentleman, inviting his ex-foe and his companions to dinner. Linette does her usual awful shtick; unlike Gareth (who handles his crappy damsel with true chivalry), the defeated knight calls her on it. And suddenly Linette realizes she's been a complete hag to the one man who was willing to help her sister.<br />
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For comparison: Lancelot gets a similar wake-up call on the Grail Quest, when his sinful love for Guinevere bars him even from <i>seeing</i> the Grail. He gets the message loud and clear. He is the greatest earthly knight in the world; he knows just how badly he failed. And when he gets back to Camelot, he promptly forgets all about it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>La Belle Dame Sans Merci</i>, Frank Dicksee</td></tr>
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Not Linette. The very next day she apologizes to Gareth. When he fights his next foe, she acts as his own personal cheerleading squad; it's her cry of support that energizes him when he was ready to give up. The most atrociously snobby character in Arthuriana becomes, in the space of a few paragraphs, one of the most endearingly human: she recognizes her fault and takes every possible step to amend it. Some versions (<a href="http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/IDYL-GAR.HTM" target="_blank">Tennyson's</a> among them) even end with Gareth marrying Linette, rather than her beautiful and anonymous sister to whose rescue he rode.<br />
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So what gives? Why does Linette get off with a scolding, while other ambitious women get utterly broken? Morgan le Fay is foiled, exposed, and vilified. Guinevere is disgraced and often portrayed as a jealous shrew. The Lady of the Lake gets her head chopped off by Balin, who offers a deeply insufficient excuse: "She was a witch!" Geraint's wife Enid, as haughty and outspoken as Linette, is mocked by her neighbors, verbally abused by her husband, and threatened with rape on multiple occasions. In<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Lady Lyonors</i>, Katharine Cameron</td></tr>
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contrast, Linette's only real peers are Lady Ragnell, who also takes her fate into her own hands and is amply rewarded, and her own sister Lionors, who concocts a scheme to expose Gareth's identity before she'll marry him. Unlike her sister, Lionors' uppityness is very subversive; Linette wears her heart on her sleeve, while Lionors hides her quick wits behind a frigid courtly mask and bids to control her own life behind the scenes. Neither sister suffers in any material way for daring to shape their destinies.<br />
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The answer to their mysterious get-out-of-jail-free cards lies in their circumstances. The women punished for their ambition all have men to speak for them.
Guinevere's duty is to be true to Arthur; Morgan is actually married,
and supposed to be subordinate to her husband, when she concocts her
deadliest plots against her brother; Enid's troubles stem from her
flouting of her owed obedience to husband and father. Even the Lady of
the Lake uses Merlin as intercessor with Arthur; her death is the end
result of the one time she came on her own. Their downfalls come about because they disregard the rules of the world they live in.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Erec and Enide</i>, Rowland Wheelwright</td></tr>
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But the social order and the chivalric code have utterly failed all the successful uppity ladies. Linette and Lionors are trapped by a pack of rogue knights no one challenges; Ragnell's own brother has turned against her. No one speaks for them; no one is coming to their rescue. Lacking any socially-expected champion, these women <i>have</i> to stand up for themselves in order to survive. In extremis, it's not only okay to own your fate - it's actually celebrated.<br />
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In that sense, Linette and her fellows are actually playing the roles of knights-errant, filling in the gaps of an idealistic system put into practice by flawed human beings. They know exactly what's due to them, they know why they're not getting it, and they possess the wit and courage to get it for themselves when the system fails. They operate within that system, fixing it as best they can, and upholding the very social order they seem, at first glance, to subvert.<br />
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Someone get these girls a couple of chairs at the Round Table.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-48685720918503139852012-06-21T20:52:00.001-07:002019-02-14T14:51:54.476-08:00You're Grounded, Young LadyUnsurprisingly for a man who wrote one of his two surviving daughters out of his will, Shakespeare's plays are full of girls with daddy issues. Hermia, Ophelia, Kate, Hero, Miranda, Cordelia and the terrible twosome, and that's without opening a book. Regardless of whether they're shrews or angels, every heroine whose father appears onstage gets put through the wringer, often in ways deliberately designed to test her relationship with her father. And sometimes it's hard to say who suffers more, the daughter or her father.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>King Lear and His Three Daughters</i>, William Hilton</td></tr>
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Take the obvious example, <i>King Lear</i>. The body count in this play would be ridiculous if it wasn't so devastating. Lear, trying vainly to hold onto the trappings of power (both political and fatherly) without actually doing his job, endures more excruciating onstage agony than any other Shakespearean character. Goneril and Regan delight in backstabbing their trusting father, only to fight to the death over a man even worse than they are. Cordelia gets punished and exiled for being honest, loses a battle even with right on her side, and is strangled in prison a few hours after being reunited with her sadder-but-wiser father. The play might as well be called <i>Ye Olde Daddy Issues.</i> It's really, really hard to say who gets the rawest deal.<br />
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<i>King Lear</i> is perhaps the best illustration of Shakespeare's view of the father/daughter relationship at its worst. From Lear to Polonius to Baptista Minola, Shakespearean fathers have an incredibly hard time letting their daughters grow up. And when, inevitably, they do, both father and daughter suffer from the father's deliberate refusal to give his daughter agency in her own life. You can play it for comedy: Baptista really wishes Kate would just get married and get out of his house. You can play it for tragedy: Polonius brutally squashes Ophelia's timid attempts to make her own decisions about her love life, leading directly to his murder and her insanity. And given that it's Shakespeare, you can even play it for weird dark laughs: if Hermia doesn't marry the man Egeus wants her to marry, he's perfectly happy to let her be ritually sacrificed.<br />
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In every case, the fathers know exactly what they want their daughters to grow up into. When the daughters get their own ideas about who they want to be, the fathers uniformly lose their marbles. Baptista forces Kate into marriage with a hilarious and terrifying abuser. Cymbeline banishes Imogen from England when her secret love-match with Posthumus comes to light. Lord Capulet threatens to let 13-year-old Juliet starve to death unless she marries his choice of husband. And most horrifically, Leonato wishes death on Hero to her face at the first hint that she might not be a perfect human being. (Hero, as always, gets dealt the worst hand ever: she alone didn't actually <i>do</i> the thing her father reviles her for.)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Prospero and Miranda</i>, William May Egley</td></tr>
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Mercifully, for us and possibly also for Shakespeare's daughters, it's not all bad. Among all the chaos, one father/daughter relationship stands out as sweet and touching. Prospero and Miranda's relationship is the most important one in <i>The Tempest</i>. It's for his daughter's sake that Prospero engineers the entire plot; he doesn't want her to grow up isolated and ignorant of her rightful heritage. Their first scene together is tender and funny by turns, and Prospero uses the most loving language of any Shakespearean father for a daughter. Miranda, for her part, is still very young, running to her father to fix all the wrongs in her world - but she also teases him for his long-winded story, and even in her instant attraction to Ferdinand is hesitant to cross Prospero's will.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ferdinand and Miranda</i>, Paul Falconer Poole</td></tr>
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But even Prospero finds it hard to let go. He makes very clear - to the audience, if not to Miranda - that he has planned her meeting with Ferdinand specifically to restore her to power and luxury. He exults to himself and to Ariel about the success of this scheme. And he throws as many roadblocks as possible in the way of his daughter's burgeoning love, and the womanhood that comes with it. His excuse is that Ferdinand may not cherish Miranda as he should if he wins her too easily. But it's hard not to see in him the master manipulator's petty glee as he turns the man who would take away his daughter into his own personal slave. (Not to mention that his pro-chastity speech would terrify any prospective son-in-law.) At the beginning of the play, Prospero is not above casually putting Miranda into a magical sleep to get her out of the way. His struggle to rise above himself and renounce his eerie powers is also a struggle to let his daughter live her own life.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Claudio, Deceived by Don John, Accuses Hero</i>, Marcus Stone</td></tr>
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Luckily for Prospero, Miranda's about as perfect as you can get. She jumps enthusiastically at his plan for her, which helps to ease the uncomfortable feeling that she's still doing just what he wants; it also happens to be what she wants. Other daughters, even seemingly perfect ones, don't cooperate. Sweet Bianca is revealed to be as willful and more manipulative than her sister Kate. Juliet's defiance of her father comes as a true shock to parents accustomed to dictating orders. Lear gets bit twice: first Cordelia refuses to play his game, then Goneril and Regan change the rules without informing him. And even cooperation isn't a sure bet; Ophelia winds up an insane suicide for her trouble.<br />
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The only ones who manage to survive the gauntlet with their relationship even a little intact are the fathers and daughters who let each other go. Prospero and Miranda will probably always adore each other; long-suffering Hero forgives her alarming father and her appalling fiance; Cymbeline, faced with Imogen's sheer guts, has the grace to realize that he can't put her back in a box she's already broken out of. The fathers who cling to their own visions for their daughters' future actually destroy it. And the harder they hold on, the harder the girls fight to be free, and everyone gets hurt much, much worse.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-15346459218762912132012-05-22T19:32:00.000-07:002018-03-29T12:03:40.657-07:00The Course of True LoveReading a legendary love story is a bit like flipping a coin. Heads, they survive; tails, they die miserably. For all that people like hearing about a young couple in love, they sure do have a lot of stories that end in tears and heartbreak. And for that certain subsection of these tales - the star-crossed lovers - everything they do to fix their situation just ends up drawing the noose even tighter around their necks.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Deirdre and Naisi</i>, Breogan</td></tr>
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Take Deirdre and Naisi, the great tragic lovers of Irish mythology. The cards were stacked against them from the start; poor Deirdre wasn't even a day old before druids prophesied the bloodshed that would result from her incredible beauty. Locked up away from the world, promised to a king with a yen for a trophy wife, Deirdre decides that she deserves a say in her own fate and promptly falls in love with the equally-gorgeous Naisi. Like any knight in shining armor worth his salt, he throws caution to the winds and elopes with her. So far, so good, right?<br />
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Well, there's that king. He's not happy about this interloper. And he's also not above using treachery, magic, and plain old pettiness to avenge his wounded pride. By the time the story's done, Naisi and his brothers have been murdered, and Deirdre - who tried belatedly to warn them of the dangers of hanging out with her - has died of a broken heart, but only after having been married for a year to King Backstabber. And the worst part is that they go into danger knowing that they could die. Deirdre's ominous dreams, the warnings of Naisi's brothers, even the prophecy that started the whole shebang are all openly discussed and perfectly interpreted. They know exactly what faces them, and they still can't change their fates.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Lancelot and Guinevere</i>, Herbert James Draper</td></tr>
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For that very reason, Lancelot and Guinevere fight tooth and nail against their forbidden passion. They too can see with perfect clarity the chaos that it could bring: the destruction of the Round Table, the death of Arthur's dream, the confusion and anarchy of civil war. Lancelot, sworn to be Guinevere's knight from the moment they meet, goes out questing again and again to remove himself from temptation. (Of course, lesser temptations present themselves all the time, but the strength of his love for Guinevere - unacknowledged, unconsummated, and for all he knows unreciprocated - lets him steer clear.) Guinevere wrestles her demons in silence, molding herself into a perfect queen and Arthur's mainstay. But when they finally give in and become lovers, all their good work goes for naught. Just as their secret passion tormented them earlier, now their betrayal of Arthur cuts them both. Tons of versions (Tennyson most notably) turn Guinevere into a jealous shrew, quarreling with Lancelot over the strength of his love at any opportunity. And it's their affair that provides the crack through which Camelot is broken open - again, the very outcome the lovers foresaw and dreaded, come about directly through their own actions.<br />
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In comparison, the Weaving Princess and the Cowherd seem positively peaceful. They don't cause any wars; there's no blood shed on their behalf; they don't even die. But it's still tricky to get more star-crossed than them. They're total workaholics - her cloth and his cows are the best in the world - until she gets wistful about the fact that her crazy work schedule means she'll never have time to fall in love. Her father, the Sky King, brings the two of them together, and it's love at first sight, which means they both take an indefinite vacation from weaving and tending the herd. From being exemplars, they become a cautionary tale, and the Sky King goes to the opposite extreme: he puts a river between them and forbids them ever to cross it. Only when his daughter begs him to let her see her beloved again does he allow them to meet for one day out of every year, and then only if there are enough magpies to make a bridge for her to cross the river. No magpies, no reunion. And it's really hard to blame either lover for this bittersweet end to their story. Yes, if the Weaving Princess had just been satisfied with a life chained to her loom, or if the lovers had only acted in moderation, none of this would have been necessary. But you can't fault them for wanting to fall in love, or for being carried away by a grand passion. Unlike Deirdre and Naisi, who walk with open eyes toward their fate, the Weaving Princess and the Cowherd get blindsided by every twist in their path. Their actions still create their lousy situation, but much less deliberately.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, Frank Dicksee</td></tr>
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We probably don't even need to discuss Romeo and Juliet. But you can't mention impulsive star-crossed lovers and not talk about them. They get married the day after they meet, and separated the following morning. They concoct wild schemes of escape and reunion. And their own unwillingness to move "wisely and slow," as Friar Laurence urges, leads to their horribly early deaths. Juliet prefers a faked death to coming clean to her (admittedly terrifying) parents; Romeo can't even wait a day after hearing of it before making rash plans to kill himself. Given how early and often these two threaten suicide, it's a miracle they make it through Act Four still alive.<br />
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But here's the catch. Even though pretty much everyone can agree that each pair of lovers creates their own problems, no story ever takes them to task for the impulsiveness and recklessness that leads them to separation and/or death. Deirdre and Naisi are fulfilling a prophesied fate; Lancelot and Guinevere are used as pawns by Mordred; the Weaving Princess and the Cowherd are perhaps most sympathetic because they're most human, stumbling through life with no foreshadowing and reacting to things as they happen. And Romeo and Juliet get romanticized to a ludicrous extent. They were incredibly lucky that the greatest poet of the English language made their story famous. Without Shakespeare's exquisite words, they'd be a couple of innocently moronic teenagers who made their bed and now have to lie in it. As it is, they're the English byword for true love, with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xg3vE8Ie_E&ob=av2n" target="_blank">countless</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CUyWJ7UINM&ob=av3e" target="_blank">silly</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkZAaxNSa_c" target="_blank">songs </a>using their names as shorthand. (No, Taylor Swift wasn't the first one to misread the play. She's just the most obvious.)<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4QeibZaUu58/SqpQw4PPu9I/AAAAAAAAABg/-OFw_RieZyc/s320/dd300cda5d622b9ea42b86699d431bb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4QeibZaUu58/SqpQw4PPu9I/AAAAAAAAABg/-OFw_RieZyc/s320/dd300cda5d622b9ea42b86699d431bb2.jpg" /></a>So even when the lovers themselves contribute materially to their own destruction, they're not really blamed. Storytellers may be trying to hammer home a moral about rash impulse, but even they fall under the spell of an all-consuming love. It's an easy thing to do. Two people who sacrifice everything, including themselves, for each other, is an incredibly attractive story. In fact, the lovers who make that sacrifice get immortalized far more readily than those who don't. Prince Charming and his princess of choice have a zillion iterations; Romeo and Juliet are unique, and instantly recognizable. It's as if the making of that sacrifice elevates a particular love above all the other couples who, for all we know, would have given their lives for each other just as readily. But it wasn't asked of them, and so they're not the celebrated ones.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, Joseph Wright</td></tr>
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It's much easier to swoon than to question. Rationality has no place in a tale of grand passion and high stakes. But there's probably a reason that those lovers die young and wildly. They don't just make their fates; they make their world. The rules they live by are not the rules that the rest of us cleave to. Theirs is an all-or-nothing world (with the exception of the Weaving Princess and the Cowherd, who get dragged out of that world and forced into a compromise that tortures them eternally). We swoon because we admire their absolute conviction, their refusal to have only some when they want all. But while theirs may be a world that two people can live in, it's not one that fits well with the rest of us. In their refusal to surrender to outside demands, these lovers lay down an ultimatum to themselves. And if they are to hold true to each other and their wild and reckless love - which is what their world is built around - they must follow through.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-64982081954379832622012-05-12T18:02:00.000-07:002018-03-29T12:48:34.854-07:00Love Potion Number NineAh, young love. You burn, you pine, you perish. A smile sends you soaring; a glare tumbles mountains around your head. You just have to feel for those two crazy kids, thrown together by their unruly hearts. Sometimes. After all, if the object of your affection doesn't return your<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Love Potion</i>, Evelyn De Morgan</td></tr>
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feelings, you can always brainwash them with a handy love spell! Those <i>never</i> backfire!<br />
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For all their ubiquity in myths, it is a rare story where the love spell actually works out all right. There's Cupid and Psyche, sort of; he scratches himself with the arrow of love, falls head over heels, and... abducts her, woos her while invisible, and has to abandon her to a torturous set of quests before they can be reunited. And that's the happy one.<br />
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It's much easier to find a love spell gone wrong. Sometimes it's played for laughs, as Shakespeare does in <a href="http://storyseer.blogspot.com/2012/02/threes-crowd-four-is-chaos.html" target="_blank"><i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i></a>. Frequently it's the province of a villainous woman, a "false bride" seeking to blot out a man's memories of his beloved and claim him for herself. (There's a splendid Grimm story, <a href="http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms/56sweetheartroland.html" target="_blank"><i>Sweetheart Roland</i></a>, in which the heroine's loss of her beloved is just one of the many trials she faces.) More often, however, a love spell leads to total disaster. And I'm not talking about Our Hero and Our Heroine not ending up together. I'm talking about the breaking of the world.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Aphrodite Leading Helen to Paris</i>, Jack Pane</td></tr>
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The most famous of these is, of course, Helen of Troy. The jury will probably always be out on whether or not Helen went with Paris willingly, but in the Iliad she has no doubt of the answer: she demands to know if she is to be sent hither and yon, crazed with desire, whenever Aphrodite has a new mortal favorite. Obviously this was a flawed love spell, since Helen's own wishes can still make themselves felt, but it's still highly potent. Helen does in the end sleep with Paris, and the direct outcome of Aphrodite's love spell is the destruction, not just of a city, but of an entire generation.<br />
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Helen is a particularly sad case because not only has she been brainwashed, she knows it. The gods can force mortals to do their bidding; Helen knows all too well that no matter how much she might want to go home to Sparta, she will never be able to fight off Aphrodite's mind control. The best she can do is complain about it, and even that arouses the wrath of a goddess who's notoriously vindictive when thwarted. There are plenty of love-spelled bridegrooms unaware that they're about to marry the wrong girl; Helen is fully conscious all the time of just how much she doesn't want what Aphrodite's love spell is forcing on her. Hell with brainwashing - this is torture.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Tristan and Isolde</i>, Yoshitaka Amano</td></tr>
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Later stories shift the blame away from the lovers. Tristan and Isolde drink a love potion unknowingly (again, the jury is still out on whether it really was an honest mistake, or whether Isolde's mother or maidservant thought that Isolde would be better paired with Tristan than with King Mark). It's just as unfair for them as it is for Helen; while their love is deeply felt, it's also created without their consent, and locks them into a fate as destructive as Troy's. For a long time they choose to deny their love, unlike Helen and Paris, for the sake of preserving the political alliance that Isolde's marriage creates. But all that that does is drive them to distraction and inflame Mark's suspicions. When they run away together, their guilty consciences send Isolde back to Mark and Tristan across the sea to Brittany, and ultimately into a marriage of convenience with a girl he never touches, who rightly becomes as suspicious as Mark. Conscience proves their undoing, since out of decency Tristan waits to seek Isolde's healing help until it's too late to save his life, and she dies of a broken heart when she arrives to find him dead. Their story is a tragedy where Helen and Paris's is not, primarily because they fight as hard as they can against a love that they know will doom them. But that knowledge gives them precisely zero help. The best you can do, apparently, is to live a tortured life of denial and hope that posterity thinks well of you.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Siegfried Meets Gutrune</i>, Arthur Rackham</td></tr>
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And that's only if your family is inclined to let it rest. Siegfried's wife Kriemhild enticed him away from Brunhilde with a love spell, but the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungenlied" target="_blank">ensuing love dodecahedron </a>creates a situation where murder and mayhem are the only outcomes. Siegfried's friendship with Gunther, Kriemhild's brother, leads him to betray his initial (and real) love for Brunhilde by posing as Gunther in order to win her for his new brother-in-law; Brunhilde's outraged pride and rejected love make her arrange for Gunther to kill Siegfried, and then to throw herself on his funeral pyre; and Kriemhild, furious at her brother's treachery, has him slaughtered at the feast celebrating her second marriage and burns the great hall down around them all.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d30_GBhUiqo/TtYkq_W6mCI/AAAAAAABOKA/Tvt5X2Esf2o/s1600/Br%25C3%25BCnnhilde+on+Grane+leaps+on+to+the+funeral+pyre+of+Siegfried.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d30_GBhUiqo/TtYkq_W6mCI/AAAAAAABOKA/Tvt5X2Esf2o/s400/Br%25C3%25BCnnhilde+on+Grane+leaps+on+to+the+funeral+pyre+of+Siegfried.jpg" width="273" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Brunnhilde on the Pyre</i>, Arthur Rackham</td></tr>
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The characters of the Nibelungenlied (or the Volsunga saga, whichever version you prefer) are neither heroic nor villainous. They do horrible things, but for reasons well within the code of their society. Kriemhild's terrible vengeance is something that her honor requires her to do; in the Volsunga saga, the gods decide that she did exactly the right thing and bring about a third (and apparently happy) marriage, this time to a Swedish king. Siegfried deserves more pity than condemnation; for most of the story, he operates under the brainwashing influence of the love spell, and can't even remember being in love with Brunhilde. As far as he knows, he's doing some iffy things in the service of his best friend and the woman he loves. Brunhilde, although vindictive as hell, also recognizes that she's gone too far (although arguably she's operating under the exact same rules as Kriemhild will later); her suicide reclaims for her a moment of true tragic dignity. Only Gunther comes off as a real lowlife, literally stabbing his best friend and brother-in-law in the back. The whole mess could have been avoided if the love spell had never entered the picture. Once it does, everyone involved is doomed. The rules of honor require them all to make the moves that will lead to their deaths.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Death of Tristan</i>, Robert Engels</td></tr>
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Which makes sense. Clearly we're uncomfortable with the idea that we can be brainwashed and never regain our true minds. But the horrific endings to so many love spell stories place the brunt of the fallout on the shoulders of the victims. Siegfried gets murdered; Tristan and Isolde both die; Helen sees herself become the byword for a faithless whore. Aphrodite never suffers for enchanting Helen. The queen of Ireland, who sends the love potion with Isolde, is punished not at all; nor is Kriemhild's mother, who puts the spell on Siegfried. In some "false bride" fairy tales, the villainous woman who tried to steal the bridegroom gets torn limb from limb by horses, or rolled down a hill in a barrel full of knives, or even just exiled or humiliated in front of the whole court. But in some (like <i>Sweetheart Roland</i>), there's again no punishment for the instigator of the mess.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8Z6E5tzTpg/Tqql-r6Tx2I/AAAAAAABgGA/t3HLeNgAKx8/s400/hermann-hendrich+The+Death+of+Siegfried%252C+1906.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8Z6E5tzTpg/Tqql-r6Tx2I/AAAAAAABgGA/t3HLeNgAKx8/s320/hermann-hendrich+The+Death+of+Siegfried%252C+1906.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Death of Siegfried</i>, Hermann Hendrich</td></tr>
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It's incredibly unsatisfying to see relative innocents pay with their lives for the crime of another. But it reveals a realistic attitude towards life that legends and fairy tales (often unjustly) aren't seen as having. People escape justice all the time. Innocents suffer all the time. The punishment for making a mistake is often out of proportion to the mistake itself. These aren't giddy Disneyfied tales of happily-ever-after; these are tragedies of epic scope, designed to reveal dark truths about humanity and about life. Instead of spoon-feeding you a happy ending, the love spell stories and their awful endings force you to think about human nature: about love, about hate, about injustice.<br />
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It's heavy stuff. But it's what we have legends for. We tell those stories to remember what happens when we impose our will on someone else. And in telling them, hopefully we remember that that path rarely leads to dignity, or happiness, or anything we'd want for ourselves.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-58765036159008605132012-05-08T19:48:00.000-07:002018-03-29T12:52:42.072-07:00We Are Not Amused"All right, people. Our next lot is one Muse of fire, a bit late for Shakespeare but just in time for you lucky folks! Do I hear one thousand?<br />
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"What do you mean, what's she like? She's a Muse! Of fire! Isn't that all you need to know?"<br />
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Well, that's the thing. Muses are weird that way. They might be Greek mythology's greatest crossover success story. Countless modern artists invoke them, whether in blame or in thanks. We love the idea of patron goddesses of the arts, watching over those brave and reckless souls who dare to pursue art.<br />
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We just don't know a single thing about who the Muses actually <i>are.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Apollo, Mnemosyne, and the Nine Muses</i>, Anton Raphael Mengs</td></tr>
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Sure, we know what they represent. Poetry, theater, dance, even history and astronomy. All cool, worthwhile things. But beyond each Muse's designated area of specialization, we know squat. They're the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, they hang out with Apollo (who got around with quite a few of them), they serve on occasion as jury and record-keepers for the Olympians. Calliope has a bunch of sons. That's about it.<br />
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Okay, so maybe they're the personifications of their individual arts, not just the patron goddesses. All well and good, except even in the arts that have definable personalities, they come off as extremely one-note and confusing. Is Thalia, Muse of comedy, an absurd gigglefest? Does Clio get frustrated with Terpsichore dancing away while she's trying to give a lecture on history? How does personifying epic poetry get Calliope all that action? Shouldn't that logically be the domain of Erato, Muse of love poetry? If a solution raises more questions than it answers, it's probably not the right solution.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Hesiod and the Muse</i>, Gustave Moreau</td></tr>
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There's another problem with the Muses and their lack of personality, related directly to the artists who call on them for help. Those artists consider the Muses their personal property. "Sing, Muse, of the rage of Achilles." "My muse isn't cooperating." "I'm blocked; I can't get to my muse." <i>Shakespeare in Love</i> uses the introduction of its title character to let him discourse on his need to "find" his muse. Did you check under the bed yet, Will?<br />
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From benevolent patrons who can withhold their needed assistance, the Muses become things that are owned. Part of it comes from the close identification of art with artist: it's "your" artwork, after all, and it's easy to see where the muse that inspired it could become "your" muse. But it's easy to do precisely because the Muses lack personality. Can you imagine anyone owning Zeus, or Poseidon, or Aphrodite? Artemis turns a guy into a deer and has him slaughtered by his own hounds for nothing more than the <i>implication</i> that he might <i>want</i> to possess her. The Muses don't even put up a fight. Instead they take on the personality of the artist who claims them.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BTKdbpCdL0o/WqrrL2AP_MI/AAAAAAAADgc/Jrr-9t-XOMso0TRL5jMUPV8txKO2zREagCLcBGAs/s1600/the_nine_muses_by_wegs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="698" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BTKdbpCdL0o/WqrrL2AP_MI/AAAAAAAADgc/Jrr-9t-XOMso0TRL5jMUPV8txKO2zREagCLcBGAs/s320/the_nine_muses_by_wegs.jpg" width="248" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Nine Muses</i>, wegs</td></tr>
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There are no Muse-centric stories. In the stories where they feature, it's always as side characters, and always in a group. They judge the music contest between Apollo and Marsyas (three guesses as to who wins); they gather Orpheus' strewn limbs; they get super-vindictive when a prize idiot named Thamyris tries to do a rerun of the Apollo-Marsyas contest, except with himself as Marsyas and the Muses as Apollo. When he fails to outsing them, they blind him and strip him of his skill with the lyre. But here's the kicker: yes, it's excessive punishment, but it's completely par for the course among the Greek gods. It only strikes us as over-the-top because the Muses, unlike the Olympians, have no personality to justify their harshness. Apollo, let's not forget, <i>flayed</i> Marsyas and made a drum out of his skin. The Muses were merciful in comparison. So we still don't know anything about them as characters.<br />
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It may well have something to do with the fact that the "traditional" nine Muses took a while to show up. For quite some time there were only three - Melete, Aoide, and Mneme (kind of like the equally character-less Three Graces, who receive Aphrodite on Cyprus and do basically zip for the rest of the mythology). It's tricky to make up lasting stories when no one can even agree on the number and names of your prospective characters. But even after the Romans cemented their names, number and specialties, no one had any Muse stories to tell. They stayed as they always had: benevolent but shadowy figures, popping in and out of the narrative.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7NB0NEqTaMc/T6nagMtxH6I/AAAAAAAAAhg/rWA5QEH01fo/s1600/muse1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7NB0NEqTaMc/T6nagMtxH6I/AAAAAAAAAhg/rWA5QEH01fo/s200/muse1.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Muses</i>, Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire</td></tr>
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It's a tricky business, looking for inspiration to an unknown quantity. You never know what she'll bring you, if she brings you anything at all. Artistic narcissism raises the uncomfortable question: is your muse actually you, an idealized you who only has good ideas? And why ask for help from someone randomly designated by some clown in a toga?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PRNvFlLNQVQ/T6nakYwFkrI/AAAAAAAAAho/Alj5FwdLssU/s1600/muse1-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="181" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PRNvFlLNQVQ/T6nakYwFkrI/AAAAAAAAAho/Alj5FwdLssU/s200/muse1-1.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Muses</i>, Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire</td></tr>
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If the Muses have personality, it comes from the artists who supplicate them, who see in them the personification of inspiration, that rush of excitement and energy in which nothing bad can be created. But they're not individuals. In a pantheon full of living, breathing characters, the Muses are as three-dimensional as a line. And it's very weird to have nonentities presiding over humanity's greatest form of individual expression.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-9157308929031896132012-05-01T20:39:00.000-07:002018-03-29T13:04:28.175-07:00She's Got a Great PersonalityBeautiful princesses are one of the classic staples of great fairy tales, right up there with fire-breathing dragons and evil magicians. The landscape of legend would be unrecognizable without Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Helen of Troy, to name just a few. But after a while you start to roll your eyes and wonder if any female in all of myth who's not a stepsister is anything less than a stunning beauty. Worse - a stunning beauty whose entire value rests on her looks, not on anything she says or does or thinks or is.<br />
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Luckily, there's another kind of heroine. She's much more obscure than her good-looking cousins, but she's there. She goes by names like Tatterhood, Lady Ragnell, or Penelope. In her stories, it's made explicit that she has nowhere near the beauty that's expected of a heroine. Tatterhood's twin sister is everything a princess should be; Tatterhood takes hilarious joy in subverting all those expectations, smacking goblins over the head, riding around on a goat, and negotiating her marriage by her own damn self. Penelope is Odysseus' consolation prize for ending his courtship of Helen of Troy and concocting the Oath of the Horse, sworn by all of Helen's remaining suitors. "Sorry you won't get the hottie of the century. But hey, she's got a cousin who's obviously not getting fawned over by scads of suitors. How about you marry her instead and take her off our hands?"<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BxI5tDOUnWc/T6CrA_oCfYI/AAAAAAAAAg0/1KyKplgSAv4/s1600/rag1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BxI5tDOUnWc/T6CrA_oCfYI/AAAAAAAAAg0/1KyKplgSAv4/s200/rag1.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Loathly Lady</i>, Juan Wijngaard</td></tr>
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Lady Ragnell, of course, is hideous beyond description. (Not that that's ever stopped writers from describing how physically painful it is to look at her, or artists from showing us in stomach-churning detail.)<br />
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So what gives? Why are these oddballs heroines? Why match an unattractive or even downright hideous woman with some poor dope who has little to no choice in the matter? What are these women's redeeming qualities?<br />
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Well, they tend to be far more self-sufficient than your average swooning princess. Penelope is a perfect match for wily Odysseus: when suitors finally flock to her (although drawn more by the lure of marrying a crown than by her beauty),<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Penelope and the Suitors</i>, John William Waterhouse</td></tr>
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she holds them off for ten years without ever offering the deadly insult that would turn them and their military force against herself, her son, and her throne. She even outwits her husband, forcing him to reveal himself with a well-timed lie about their bed. Lady Ragnell, cursed into ugliness, doesn't lock herself in some tower and wait for a brave knight to save her; she masterminds her own rescue, tricking her way into marriage with the one knight whose sense and goodwill can break her curse. (Not to mention that she saves King Arthur's life while she's at it.) Tatterhood is just a badass. I can't do justice to her in a sentence or two. <a href="http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/asbjornsenmoe/tatterhood.html" target="_blank">Read for yourself.</a> (But see also, above, re: goblins and goat.)<br />
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There's a very obvious, and very uncomfortable, lesson here. Beautiful girls don't need brains; plain girls, who can't coast on their looks, are the only ones who need to be able to think. But in multiple cases, that lesson is subverted by the twist ending to these stories of unlovely<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AYkzCgjopng/T6CrpLzlUgI/AAAAAAAAAhM/FUCiYajhXXw/s1600/rag1-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AYkzCgjopng/T6CrpLzlUgI/AAAAAAAAAhM/FUCiYajhXXw/s400/rag1-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"My Lord?"</i>, Juan Wijngaard</td></tr>
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heroines. Both Tatterhood and Lady Ragnell transform into beauties at the moment of the happy ending, to the shocked delight of their respective husbands. Lady Ragnell's comes as a relief on many counts: for her, since her spell is broken; for Gawain, since he's now married to a beautiful as well as intelligent woman; and for the audience, since we really didn't want to see Gawain the awesome shackled to a hag. Tatterhood's transformation is especially noteworthy. She's not under any curse. She herself wields the magic that changes her into a beauty. She looks the way she does because she chooses to. Whatever face she wears, it's one that she creates for herself. The message is subtler than "plain girls need brains," but it's actually much more interesting to deal with a heroine who shapes her own notion of beauty and worthiness.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PB-O1yT5EYg/S8EhXQ-hYuI/AAAAAAAA5x0/Ghxm8bctBCE/s1600/19_homer_wyeth_odysseus_penelope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PB-O1yT5EYg/S8EhXQ-hYuI/AAAAAAAA5x0/Ghxm8bctBCE/s400/19_homer_wyeth_odysseus_penelope.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Odysseus and Penelope Reunited</i>, N.C. Wyeth</td></tr>
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And Penelope's marked lack of a transformation is nothing short of heartwarming. Odysseus gets a magical face-lift thanks to Athena, who restores to him all the beauty of his youth when he arrives at last in Ithaca. But Penelope, who's now twenty years older than when Odysseus went to Troy, gets no such divine gift. She's as careworn as she was five minutes before he came back. She doesn't get to erase those years from her body. And Odysseus, who has slept with nymphs and flirted with a princess, returns to her arms with joy. For him, physical beauty is irrelevant; it's Penelope herself that he loves, her cleverness, her personality, her determination. Their reunion is both physical (as in, old as she is, he still desires her) and intellectual (they use the afterglow to catch each other up on their lives and plan for the future). Theirs is the most satisfyingly depicted marriage in all of Greek mythology, precisely because it's based on a connection deeper than that of a young prince and a beautiful princess. Penelope doesn't need to pretend to a beauty she never had in order to entrance her husband.<br />
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So why aren't there more of these heroines? Mostly because they're too complex. Fairy tales run on archetypes. Everyone already knows what you mean when you say "the beautiful princess." If you're telling the story of Tatterhood, you have to take time out to explain about her weirdness. If you create a marriage like that of Odysseus and Penelope, the characters have to be real enough to support its complications; you have to tell an epic, not a five-minute<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VMs3GF1KbsA/T6Cm5RhCxjI/AAAAAAAAAgk/JqNUqYA_lC4/s1600/tatterhood.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VMs3GF1KbsA/T6Cm5RhCxjI/AAAAAAAAAgk/JqNUqYA_lC4/s400/tatterhood.png" width="295" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Tatterhood</i>, Lisa Hunt</td></tr>
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bedtime story. But the comparative lack of non-beauties does emphasize the trend-buckers. Among all the Andromedas, Ledas, and Semeles, Penelope stands out. The Round Table seats one hundred and fifty knights; Lady Ragnell is among the few knight's wives who gets named. (Another one, Linette, is equally famous for her lack of conformity to the expectations of a damsel in distress.) Tatterhood, alas, is obscure in comparison to other fairy tales, but she's not easily forgotten.<br />
<br />
And maybe the scarcity of non-beauties lets the chosen few shine a bit brighter. After all, the independent non-beauty too can become an archetype: the shrewish unpleasant scold who lives to plague the poor hero's life, a la Kate in "The Taming of the Shrew" or the greedy fisherman's wife who makes him use up all of the wish fish's goodwill. But this kind of heroine never got so popular that she became ubiquitous and boring. Her low level of exposure let her stay stubborn, strong and awesome. She's always there, if we know where to look.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-67261394769161371772012-04-28T12:20:00.000-07:002018-03-29T13:10:43.566-07:00Problematic Myths and the People Who Love Them<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gLicJHf21Y0/Wr1IOHnAOQI/AAAAAAAADvw/Vpk-VZ1fXBY3P6crKdjBeXH_l1nZW59mwCLcBGAs/s1600/Problematic%2B1%2B%2528d%2527Aulaire%2BGreek%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gLicJHf21Y0/Wr1IOHnAOQI/AAAAAAAADvw/Vpk-VZ1fXBY3P6crKdjBeXH_l1nZW59mwCLcBGAs/s200/Problematic%2B1%2B%2528d%2527Aulaire%2BGreek%2529.jpg" width="141" /></a></div>
I grew up on d'Aulaire's Greek myths. My father brought it back from the library one day when I was about five or six, and my initial attempts to sound out the phenomenally impossible word "Aphrodite" sent my mom into well-muffled hysterics. (The best I could do, before she took mercy on me and corrected me, was "uh-PRO-fa-deet." And now you know.) The pictures were gorgeous, the stories were entrancing, and I wanted to be Artemis or Atalanta when I grew up. More recently, my boyfriend introduced me to the d'Aulaire book of Norse myths, which is just as awesome and explained a lot of things that confused me about the Norse gods. Safe to say, I'm a fan.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_tO6zVJX_44/T5xB4VQayZI/AAAAAAAAAgQ/R7QIrM10UZ0/s1600/odingunnlod2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_tO6zVJX_44/T5xB4VQayZI/AAAAAAAAAgQ/R7QIrM10UZ0/s320/odingunnlod2.jpg" width="320" /></a>But reading those myths when I was seven, and again when I was
seventeen, were two very different things. The d'Aulaires took great
pains to avoid the word "mistress," even and especially when it was
applicable. Zeus had a ridiculous number of "wives." Odin's seduction of
Gunnlod, the mother of his son Bragi, god of bards, is hinted at but <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PoL-EBCnvbQ/T5xB7V4hWUI/AAAAAAAAAgY/xO3WIZDvkr8/s1600/odingunnlod1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PoL-EBCnvbQ/T5xB7V4hWUI/AAAAAAAAAgY/xO3WIZDvkr8/s320/odingunnlod1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Odin and Gunnlod</i>, Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire</td></tr>
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never outright stated. (The story itself, in which Odin drinks up all three of her kettles of precious mead, then leaves her to weep beside her lost treasure, is suggestive enough.) The d'Aulaires told you that Aphrodite was in love with Ares, but I never learned the tale of Hephaestus catching them in flagrante - in a net, for maximum humor - until I was a teenager. Thor is outraged at the cutting of his wife Sif's hair not because she has awesome hair, but because a woman with shorn hair is branded a whore. It took a long time for me to realize that Daphne and Syrinx flee from Apollo and Pan because they're threatened with rape, rather than an awkward proposal of marriage.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Csa2djmwuCo/Wr1HroSMMSI/AAAAAAAADvk/nPbjQcezLF0XOSoz6TpOfsjYQYXKDLYagCEwYBhgL/s1600/Problematic%2B3%2B%2528d%2527Aulaire%2BLoki%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Csa2djmwuCo/Wr1HroSMMSI/AAAAAAAADvk/nPbjQcezLF0XOSoz6TpOfsjYQYXKDLYagCEwYBhgL/s200/Problematic%2B3%2B%2528d%2527Aulaire%2BLoki%2529.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Loki</i>, Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-izEwCIRCqho/Wr1IAmpHNHI/AAAAAAAADvo/dtFVN4wzQCIcq8YeyqKe9YJO8LGE1zXJgCLcBGAs/s1600/Problematic%2B2%2B%2528d%2527Aulaire%2BOdin%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-izEwCIRCqho/Wr1IAmpHNHI/AAAAAAAADvo/dtFVN4wzQCIcq8YeyqKe9YJO8LGE1zXJgCLcBGAs/s200/Problematic%2B2%2B%2528d%2527Aulaire%2BOdin%2529.jpg" width="142" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Odin</i>, Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire</td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.exodusbooks.com/Samples/Picture/7140Sample3L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>And not even the d'Aulaires could<br />
whitewash out the incredible sexual tension between Odin and Loki. They're attracted to each other at first sight. They mingle their blood. They swear fidelity. Odin even offers Loki a lovely, patient goddess as his beard. (Poor Sigunn also winds up as the beard for Loki's other marriage to the ogress Angerboda, mother of Hel, Fenris, and the Midgard Serpent. My guess is, safe and loving didn't do much for Loki's libido.)<br />
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I was shocked when I first read a kids' version of Edith Hamilton and asked my parents what "out of wedlock" meant. "But I thought Zeus was married to all his wives," I said. My long-suffering mother gently made clear that this was a polite fiction. And one of the great building blocks of my imaginative life began to shift. Zeus was no longer a responsible if reckless husband. He was a cad, a seducer, a thoughtless pig who cared more about the kids he sired than the women who bore them, and about his own fun most of all. The king of the gods, came the awful thought, was a jerk. And in that case, why was he the king? Why should I root for such a careless user?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VU8WO50klZc/TDP6UXcpOGI/AAAAAAAAAHw/akHX9-2ZpY0/s1600/mythimage1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VU8WO50klZc/TDP6UXcpOGI/AAAAAAAAAHw/akHX9-2ZpY0/s320/mythimage1.jpg" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Abduction of Persephone</i>, <br />Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire</td></tr>
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The floodgates had been opened, and the rush of criticism was impossible to stop. Hera gained a lot more of my sympathy. I stopped trying to excuse Aphrodite on account of her beauty. Hades and Persephone became one of my favorite couples for the simple reason that he was faithful to her. Suddenly the gods had faults, huge gaping faults of personality and behavior. Their humanity - the squabbles, the contests, the grousing - had been charming before. Now it became deeply problematic. The gods were worse than most people I knew. They acted with impunity, taking whatever they wanted and only offering an explanation if they felt like it. (Often those explanations were woefully inadequate. I've never been able to get behind the transformation of Niobe into a stone, just to shut up her crying. Especially since <i>the stone itself</i> keeps crying.)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0Vc6OZdVQ1A/TqYsuQml9VI/AAAAAAAAArw/-RVYro9XClg/s1600/24_freya.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0Vc6OZdVQ1A/TqYsuQml9VI/AAAAAAAAArw/-RVYro9XClg/s320/24_freya.JPG" width="303" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Freya</i>, Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire</td></tr>
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Other mythologies were equally subject to the criticism of my now-jaded expectations. So what if Freya's married? Her husband's missing, she's the goddess of love, and she has a hall full of strapping warriors. What do you <i>think</i> she's going to do with them? I revisited the tale of Sir Gawain and Lady Ragnell, understanding finally why he couldn't choose whether to have her beautiful by day or by night. I was dismally unsurprised to learn that Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys were all siblings. I'd hoped for better from the Egyptians than from the Greeks, but it was par for the course; gods liked incest. Myths became more important to me for the stories than for the codes of conduct they supported, or even for the reverence of the supernatural that they'd previously made me feel. Why should I revere Zeus the rake, or Loki the asshole, or Osiris the idiot? They didn't practice what they preached; they gleefully ignored their own rules. I enjoyed the stories; it didn't mean I had to like the characters as people.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eEqXfsRf9Yo/T5w_mEYiI3I/AAAAAAAAAgI/Zu3P0uEgEZ0/s1600/freygerd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eEqXfsRf9Yo/T5w_mEYiI3I/AAAAAAAAAgI/Zu3P0uEgEZ0/s320/freygerd.jpg" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Wooing of Gerd</i>, Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire</td></tr>
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Which, I suspect, is exactly why the d'Aulaires did what they did. It's impossible to like or respect some of the choices that the gods make. Hera dooms Semele to a horrific death for sheer spite. Set takes vengeance to an appallingly vindictive level. The wooing of Gerd is an uncomfortable story of dubious consent, with a fertility moral that transforms rape into love. You could list every altruistic act of Loki's on one hand and still have fingers left over. These are awful people: morally corrupt, shamelessly self-serving, and whiny when someone else's underhanded gambit beats theirs. But they are also the core of the world's great stories, most of which wouldn't have happened without the appalling deeds committed by the gods.<br />
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So in telling those stories, you have to bowdlerize. You have to leave out the worst of the gods in order to communicate the real wonder and excitement of their stories. Especially when writing for kids, who may be encountering them for the first time, the magic should come first. There's plenty of time later for kids to learn the shades of gray. If you're going to entrance them with the glory of myth, you'd better make it as entrancing as it can be.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9A420Nuu0xo/TNS3O9pqdUI/AAAAAAAAAHU/P1hAnickKS8/s1600/D%27Aulaire+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9A420Nuu0xo/TNS3O9pqdUI/AAAAAAAAAHU/P1hAnickKS8/s400/D'Aulaire+1.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Olympians</i>, Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire</td></tr>
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Because it does lose something. I used to fling myself headlong into those stories, trusting in the awe-inspiring power and beauty of invincible immortals to do the right thing and save the world. I still love those stories, and I've forgiven the gods for not being as perfect as I wanted them to be. But I read them with my tongue in my cheek now. I ask questions; I groan at bad decisions; I mock the gods. I'm not sorry that I learned to think and doubt, but sometimes I miss the way it used to be. And I'm hugely grateful to the d'Aulaires for making me fall so hard for those stories that I can still love them even after I learned the truth.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-44503128460147053792012-04-26T20:57:00.000-07:002018-03-29T13:55:46.470-07:00Life After Troy<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zVM_HjuSgao/WrVGk1TPQJI/AAAAAAAADoI/bq0tnsDyR38j927pfLjm4Pi3RcamkHnjgCLcBGAs/s1600/troya.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zVM_HjuSgao/WrVGk1TPQJI/AAAAAAAADoI/bq0tnsDyR38j927pfLjm4Pi3RcamkHnjgCLcBGAs/s320/troya.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Burning of Troy</i>, Francisco Collantes</td></tr>
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Part of the sheer fascination we've always had with the Trojan War is its unbelievable death toll. The Iliad spends a whole chapter naming all the kings, sons of kings, and kings' lieutenants who sailed to Troy, only to describe in equally loving detail the manners of their deaths a chapter or so later. Morbid? Of course. But magnetic.<br />
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And it explains why imagination clings so desperately to those lucky few who make it out alive. Odysseus, Aeneas, Cassandra (for a while), Andromache, the house of Atreus - all are names to conjure with. They're the survivors. Be it luck, courage, or determination, they were still standing at the end. They're the ones we want to know more about.<br />
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But there's a very distinct line drawn even among the survivors. It's apparently not enough to survive a ten-year siege of nonstop brutality. The survivors who live past the war are the ones who get as far from the war as they possibly can.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-98xjXpH5Wnc/WrVHMlC6o_I/AAAAAAAADoU/ZNMrLuEzpRkaFnJ7aDplstu0hu1kqznyACLcBGAs/s1600/Leighton_Captive_Andromache.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="758" data-original-width="1600" height="151" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-98xjXpH5Wnc/WrVHMlC6o_I/AAAAAAAADoU/ZNMrLuEzpRkaFnJ7aDplstu0hu1kqznyACLcBGAs/s320/Leighton_Captive_Andromache.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Captive Andromache</i>, Frederic Leighton</td></tr>
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This dooms most of the women from the start. Women's fortunes in ancient Greece were tied directly to their men and their city. When both those mainstays disappear, the women have no status anymore. Andromache suffers the humiliation of slavery and gets lusted after by the son of the man who killed her<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AqWTrA181M0/WrVGzQQpVMI/AAAAAAAADoM/v7kdhWMTBMwrp7FisWgq572G61ACj8FwACLcBGAs/s1600/170px-Solomon_Ajax_and_Cassandra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="347" data-original-width="170" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AqWTrA181M0/WrVGzQQpVMI/AAAAAAAADoM/v7kdhWMTBMwrp7FisWgq572G61ACj8FwACLcBGAs/s320/170px-Solomon_Ajax_and_Cassandra.jpg" width="156" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ajax and Cassandra</i>,<br />
Solomon J. Solomon</td></tr>
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husband. Cassandra - princess, priestess, and prophet - is raped by two Greek commanders and murdered as collateral damage in Clytemnestra's vengeance. (An alternate version lets her run away to start a new line, but while I'd love to believe it - Cassandra's one of my Iliad favorites - I can envision a bloodthirsty Clytemnestra mowing down everyone in her path much more easily than I can see an escape for Cassandra.) Hecuba, powerless to save her husband or her children, gets claimed as a slave by Odysseus, which means that unless she was on the ship he himself left Troy in, it's very likely that she drowned en route to Ithaca. Only Helen manages to be female and in a safe place by the end of the war, and even her peace comes through depressing self-slander. Women in a society shaped by fighting men have very few tools for forging their own paths beyond destruction.<br />
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Even among the men, it's tough to break away from the defining episode of their lives. Agamemnon is most obviously tripped by<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A9NWJ96OoQ8/WrVH8T3wdrI/AAAAAAAADok/8uYzPJ3pgGw9lyNaqh4epe1I4XEZobrvwCLcBGAs/s1600/Clitennestra-750x450.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="750" height="192" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A9NWJ96OoQ8/WrVH8T3wdrI/AAAAAAAADok/8uYzPJ3pgGw9lyNaqh4epe1I4XEZobrvwCLcBGAs/s320/Clitennestra-750x450.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Clytemnestra and Agamemnon</i>, Pierre-Narcisse Guerin</td></tr>
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it, and through his death his entire family becomes accessory to the destruction of the Trojan War. Ajax of Locris earns the enmity of Athena when he rapes Cassandra inside her temple; his prideful refusal to atone, or to acknowledge the power of the gods, is so outrageous that Athena and Poseidon put aside their own feud to tag-team on drowning Ajax. Menelaus jumps at the chance to relive the war when Telemachus comes to visit. In the guise of telling the young man about his unknown father, he journeys back to the thrill of war, something he's evidently missed in the past ten years of domestic calm. Keep in mind here that Menelaus is by far the most successful, of the men who get back to Greece, in living beyond the war. Even he can't get over it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xYRWV7C6D3I/WrVIcutgIKI/AAAAAAAADos/aN8FrzKN9bUXcnYnIJFmnICtcQ4XaeKQwCLcBGAs/s1600/mlw_0001_0003_0_img0154.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="247" data-original-width="312" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xYRWV7C6D3I/WrVIcutgIKI/AAAAAAAADos/aN8FrzKN9bUXcnYnIJFmnICtcQ4XaeKQwCLcBGAs/s1600/mlw_0001_0003_0_img0154.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ulysses and the Sirens</i>, Roman mosaic, 3rd century CE</td></tr>
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What about Odysseus, you say? Well, sure, Odysseus is really good at making his own life. The Odyssey is arguably more famous than the Iliad. And he does indeed return home, to where his loving wife and valiant son await him. But don't forget that it takes him ten years to get home, on top of the ten years he spent fighting at Troy. Don't forget that one stupid remark to Poseidon's Cyclops son dogs him throughout those ten years. And don't forget - however much you might want to - that tradition, if not Homer, sends him on still further journeys after his return to Ithaca. Odysseus' success in shaking off the Trojan War wakes in him a wanderlust that he cannot ignore. He all but creates the archetype of the restless wanderer, searching for something new and different. His life is big enough to contain the war and his own travels, but one snares him as completely as the other snares the women.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tjK_f38imnM/WrVImuSO51I/AAAAAAAADow/MJk5pDjk1ygGa2JAB-vvhheLBdTxmonSQCLcBGAs/s1600/painting-aeneas-sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="584" data-original-width="340" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tjK_f38imnM/WrVImuSO51I/AAAAAAAADow/MJk5pDjk1ygGa2JAB-vvhheLBdTxmonSQCLcBGAs/s320/painting-aeneas-sm.jpg" width="186" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Aeneas and Dido</i>, Pierre-Narcisse Guerin</td></tr>
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And then there's Aeneas. Flat-out awesome in the Iliad, with no ending given him by tradition, he gets co-opted into a spectacular piece of poetic propaganda written to justify the Roman Empire. He's the only one who gets a truly happy ending: his journey done, his quest fulfilled, his line and city firmly founded. Like Odysseus, he has rough seas to sail; unlike Odysseus, he knows what he's looking for and when he's found it. In one sense, of course Aeneas triumphs in the creation of a life free of the Trojan War; the rise of Augustus Caesar demands the legitimation that only Aeneas can provide. But even within the story, as a character, Aeneas tries harder than anyone to break free. He may be haunted by his failure to save his wife from Troy, but it doesn't stop him from falling in love with Dido or marrying Lavinia. Offered the chance to call it quits and rule Carthage, he refuses. He clings to his search for a new city, far from his home, precisely because it is the only way to escape Troy. He creates his own life on his own terms, refusing to be defined by the war, and he alone manages to get a satisfying happily ever after. (It's telling, too, that in the happy-ending alternate version of Cassandra's fate, she also finds a home and a life far beyond Troy or the Greek city-states. Getting out of Dodge is the only way to escape.)<br />
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The Trojan War is a paradigm-breaker. It's massive, spanning generations and continents; its consequences define "far-reaching." It makes sense that a world trying to patch itself back together in the image of the past is a world doomed to failure. Aeneas and Odysseus are the only ones who realize the impossibility of going home after the breaking of the world, and only Aeneas realizes it in time.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-41563987559134559772012-04-24T20:29:00.000-07:002019-01-22T08:01:58.347-08:00Too Much of WaterOh, dear. It looks like you've got a tragic heroine on your hands. Well, there's only one thing to do with her: get her to the nearest body of water and dump her in.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ophelia</i>, John Everett Millais</td></tr>
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It's really astounding how many tragic heroines die by water. You'd think there was a handbook or something. Elaine, Ophelia, Hero, Helle - their deaths are all intimately associated with water. Helle's is particularly egregious, as the only purpose she serves in her entire story is to fall off the Ram with the Golden Fleece while he's flying over an ocean. Her brother, also riding the Ram, survives to found a royal line, but his sister just drops into the sea like someone cued her. She <i>exists</i> to drown. I smell a thematic necessity.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jTlEx-kivY0/T5drzCGBRPI/AAAAAAAAAf4/UWbCg_kgCTM/s1600/shalott.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jTlEx-kivY0/T5drzCGBRPI/AAAAAAAAAf4/UWbCg_kgCTM/s400/shalott.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Lady of Shalott</i>, John William Waterhouse</td></tr>
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It's fairly obvious at first glance why water, of all four traditional elements, is so closely identified with women. Shakespeare spells it out when Laertes mourns his sister. "Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia," he chokes out upon hearing of her death, "and therefore I forbid my tears." Women cry; tears are water; water is a woman's element. That makes it especially appropriate for heroines foiled in love, like Ophelia and Elaine; death by water is as good as a signed confession of love. "I drowned in the tears I shed for my lover." The Lady of Shalott dispenses even with Elaine's farewell letter; she only needs to drift down to Camelot on the river for everyone to understand that she has died for love. The symbolism of a woman in water is universal.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XA2m7pmiyec/TSZiwShwAdI/AAAAAAAAEhA/Kf4IciRcPyU/s1600/Wm.+H.+Rinehart.+Sculpt.-+Rome.1874.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XA2m7pmiyec/TSZiwShwAdI/AAAAAAAAEhA/Kf4IciRcPyU/s400/Wm.+H.+Rinehart.+Sculpt.-+Rome.1874.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Hero</i>, William Henry Rinehart</td></tr>
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And then there's the nature of these women's characters. Water-deaths are generally performed by women who lack control of their lives. Ophelia is hounded from pillar to post by father, brother, lover and king, until her suicide becomes her only act of agency in the entire play. Hero is first aggressively wooed by Leander, then sits in her tower and lights a lamp and waits for him to swim to shore. The several Elaines in Arthurian legend make it murky which, precisely, is the one who dies for love of Lancelot, but in some versions she's not even the spunky rapist who gives birth to Galahad; in these, she tends his wound, gets summarily rejected, pines for him, and expires right after demurely stage-managing her own death to give it the proper emotional punch. And the Lady of Shalott (who I differentiate from all the zillion Elaines because, after all, Tennyson never names her, and "Shalott" is not "Astolat") is the saddest of them all, locked in her tower by the whispered threat of a curse, and doomed to death in the very moment she truly experiences life. These are women more acted upon than acting, for whom the cool calm of a watery death seems fitting.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Death of Dido</i>, Peter Paul Rubens</td></tr>
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Compare them to, say, Dido, another suicide for love. But she dies by fire, and therein lies all the difference. Dido <i>is</i> fire; she's passionate, headstrong, determined, and impulsive. She's not the kind of woman who could float from Carthage to Rome with a passive-aggressive scroll of farewell in her languid dead hands. There is nothing passive about her. When she goes out, she makes damn sure that everyone in the vicinity knows about it. She even goes the extra mile and stabs herself on her own funeral pyre, proving her courage and her recklessness - and starting the bitter feud of Rome and Carthage at the same time. All that makes her far more intimidating than an Elaine or an Ophelia. Dido, the suicide by fire, is a dangerous femme fatale. In comparison, the other tragic heroines are far easier to swallow. They don't wreak havoc; they don't die in a grand operatic manner; they have the decency to shuffle off quietly and modestly, without causing too much fuss and drama for their menfolk. Water is acceptable; fire is, well, fire. And sensible women, even tragic heroines, don't play with fire.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WYvfWmNglnA/T5dvKc-ybhI/AAAAAAAAAgA/S-QvCwTs1sc/s1600/ophelia1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WYvfWmNglnA/T5dvKc-ybhI/AAAAAAAAAgA/S-QvCwTs1sc/s400/ophelia1.png" width="290" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ophelia</i>, Fernando Vazquez</td></tr>
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But, as always, there's more to the story. Water isn't just smooth and serene. Its depths are invisible and ominous; the calm surface covers the roiling underneath. In the same way that fire provides a key to Dido's character, water tells us everything we need to know about what's really going on in the heads of the drowned heroines. These aren't emo girls who feel the need to proclaim their heartbreak at the top of their lungs. They keep everything inside, undercover, out of sight - but it doesn't mean it's not there. Sometimes it breaks free, as in Ophelia's madness; sometimes it provides a poignant emphasis to the heroine's tragic fate, like the Lady of Shalott "singing in her song" as she dies. And sometimes it drives a quiet, secretive girl like Hero to the drastic act of flinging herself out of her tower.<br />
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The water suicides make it too easy for us to take them, as we take their element, at surface value. Drama queens like Dido get all the attention, while the Ophelias and Elaines sit quietly by, holding their emotions in. But those emotions are still there. They ruffle the surface. And they offer some answers to the mysteries of these heroines.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931078954148810179.post-38016115153066959102012-04-19T17:16:00.015-07:002019-01-22T11:43:41.834-08:00The Problem With Gawain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have a problem. It's very serious. Ladies and gentlemen, I confess to you all that I am a Gawainaholic.<br />
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You wouldn't think it would really be a problem. Gawain's one of the shining stars of Camelot. He has more adventures than anyone but Lancelot, and his pedigree is better than that French interloper's, anyway. His marriage to Lady Ragnell is one of the great love stories of the whole cycle, and unlike most of the others it even has a happy ending. He's there at the beginning, and he lasts almost until the bitter end.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gSqTbNRPN8Y/T5DTDrmHy_I/AAAAAAAAAeU/a0IWPmgmTeQ/s1600/garag.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733314385838328818" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gSqTbNRPN8Y/T5DTDrmHy_I/AAAAAAAAAeU/a0IWPmgmTeQ/s400/garag.png" style="float: left; height: 400px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 337px;" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sir Gawaine Finds the Beautiful Lady</i>, Howard Pyle</td></tr>
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But while those are among the many reasons why I love Gawain, there are also the inevitable issues of character continuity in a story cycle tweaked over centuries with no initial canon. The interpretation of my favorite knight's character runs the gamut from dreamy ideal knight to dimwitted oaf to bloody avenger. It's very hard to reconcile the bold idealist of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" with the end of Malory, when Gawain pursues vengeance against Lancelot even when it costs his life and the security of Arthur's rule. Even allowing for the inevitable jading of a youth as he matures, that is a huge change in personality from the kid who's heartbroken when he fails to do the right thing. Later variations of the Loathly Lady story even impose a random separation between Gawain and Ragnell, where she leaves him after a certain number of years because she "must." (There is no truly official Arthurian canon - even Malory wrote long after the legends had mutated beyond any original form - so I ignore this nonsense utterly. In my Arthuriana, Gawain and Ragnell live happily ever after forever.)<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ibe0wfWL0fk/T5DUMuQVZfI/AAAAAAAAAes/aX5uSYG69tk/s1600/gawain2.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733315640682702322" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ibe0wfWL0fk/T5DUMuQVZfI/AAAAAAAAAes/aX5uSYG69tk/s200/gawain2.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 200px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 176px;" /></a> It's pretty easy to see where this change happens. The instant Lancelot comes on the scene, everyone else gets massively downgraded. It makes sense, of course; the greatest knight in the world is going to trounce everyone else in everything, be it chivalry, honor, or feats of arms. He's the greatest for a reason. But Gawain takes the brunt of that hit. He doesn't just lose prestige at court, he loses character depth. The day before Lancelot arrived, he was upstanding, honorable, valiant, and badass. By the next morning, he becomes crass, boastful, and kind of an idiot.<br />
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Hey, French troubadours! I'll still like your character even if he's not the only nice guy in the bunch. I PROMISE, OKAY?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Orkney Princes</i>, LilyBotanica</td></tr>
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It's also no coincidence that in his later, less glorious years, Gawain is deeply identified with the rest of his siblings, the bold and problematic Orkney princes. The children of the traitorous Morgause and Lot turn out very flawed (with the exception of Gareth, who <span style="font-style: italic;">of course</span> is Lancelot's best friend and <span style="font-style: italic;">of course</span> gets accidentally killed, which provides the reason for Gawain's loss of reason at the end of his life). Agravain is generally seen as all bad, mainly because he hangs out with Mordred, who's also in a way part of the Orkney brood. Gareth is a sweetheart, Gawain often a blustering bruiser, Gaheris a nonentity who can go either way. But despite their many good points (not least of which is their loyalty to Arthur), the Orkney princes are instrumental in the downfall of Camelot. Gaheris (or on occasion Agravain) ropes his brothers into a blood feud with their mother's lover, which results in the death of Lamorak and the exiling of a few of the Orkney princes. Gareth's death at rage-blinded Lancelot's hands shatters what goodwill is<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QnJVZoosmK0/T5DXRnJZEII/AAAAAAAAAfE/TfD7rIsk-hA/s1600/knights.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733319023208763522" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QnJVZoosmK0/T5DXRnJZEII/AAAAAAAAAfE/TfD7rIsk-hA/s400/knights.png" style="float: right; height: 170px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 363px;" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Joust</i>, Mariusz Kozik</td></tr>
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left, driving Gawain to an obsessive quest for revenge that pits Arthur against Lancelot, sends Guinevere to a nunnery, and leaves Britain undefended when Mordred makes his move. You'd think we'd have heard something about Gawain's intensely close relationships with his brothers before - you know, a touching farewell when he heads off to face the Green Knight, or a bawdy commiseration as he prepares to marry hideous Lady Ragnell - but no. Gawain is a lone wolf when heroic. And all his less-than-heroic deeds tie directly back to the demands of his family when they do decide to pop up.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MoMqghUP5JM/T5DalqEudHI/AAAAAAAAAfc/6f6mEugEdEE/s1600/gawain3.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733322666126767218" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MoMqghUP5JM/T5DalqEudHI/AAAAAAAAAfc/6f6mEugEdEE/s400/gawain3.png" style="float: left; height: 400px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 287px;" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Green Knight</i>, Julek Heller</td></tr>
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I blame a lot of Gawain's character deterioration on the troubadours who wanted to puff up Lancelot. With the exception of the doomed love for his queen, Lancelot just acquired wholesale most of Gawain's heroic traits: the solitude on a quest for honor, the widely acknowledged superiority of strength and will, even the reputation for heedless acts of courage. But that's not fair to Lancelot, who's very much a character in his own right.<br />
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It's much more interesting to look at Gawain as the embodiment of Camelot, in microcosm. At first, young and on his own, he achieves incredible glory through his own bravery and resolve. He basks in the glow of his accomplishments without resting on his laurels, building a reputation for honor as his fame spreads. And it's through the direct intervention of familial ties, that the seeds are sown for his downfall.<br />
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I don't know about you guys, but that sounds a lot like Arthur, and the course of Camelot itself, to me.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UmgQafF0M6w/T5Da13rHHEI/AAAAAAAAAfo/Brj70mn_ys4/s1600/knighting.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733322944655334466" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UmgQafF0M6w/T5Da13rHHEI/AAAAAAAAAfo/Brj70mn_ys4/s400/knighting.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 400px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 387px;" /></a> Not that it's intentional. I don't think the storytellers shaped Gawain's tale like this on purpose. It's far more likely that they realized they'd forgotten about their initial Best Knight and pulled him back in for the climax, disregarding his early characterization. But I also don't think it's an accident that Gawain is destroyed by his devotion to his family, just as Arthur (and Camelot by extension) is destroyed by his son's betrayal. At its core, the Death of Arthur is a dysfunctional family drama played out on a world stage. As Arthur's nephew, Gawain is implicated in that drama and doomed by it.<br />
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It all comes down to family. The youthful idealism of the beginning is broken by the betrayal of kin at the end. It holds true for every member of Arthur's family. But Gawain, who has a place with the heroes as well as with the villains, is the only one whose life mirrors the trajectory of Arthur's kingdom.Lizhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14444235737902757507noreply@blogger.com0