It's Time to Listen

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

It all sounds a little too familiar.

The Rape of Europa, Noel-Nicolas Coypel

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

The Rape of Europa, Felix Edouard Vallotton

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

Sun, Moon, and Talia, Chris Beatrice

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

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

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

The Rape of Chrysippus, KidaGreenleaf

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

Chrysippus and Laius, KidaGreenleaf

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

Math Son of Mathonwy, Margaret Jones

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

Appalling as this is, Goewin has, crucially, what Europa, Talia and Chrysippus do not: access to a support system. When Math returns, she confides in him that he can no longer put his feet in her lap, since she's no longer a virgin. And Math responds in a manner that makes him a strong candidate for Best Human Being Ever: he comforts Goewin, marries her, and makes her his co-ruler, with as much authority and power as he himself has. And he punishes Gilfaethwy and his brother

Gwydion and Gilfaethwy, Margaret Jones

Gwydion by turning them into paired animals for three straight years, alternating who is male and who is female so that by the end of their punishment, they have both experienced rape firsthand.

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

Olwen, Alan Lee

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

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

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

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

And we all need to listen.

The King's Evolution

What happened to King Arthur? One minute he's a young warrior king who can pull swords out of rocks and anvils, the next he's stuck shuffling papers in some keep while his wife dallies with his best friend. That is one serious midlife crisis.

And it happens very abruptly, too. The first quarter, at least, of any Arthurian cycle revolves around the once and future king himself: his conception, his fostering, his coming-of-age via sword trick, his defeat of the rival kings, his marriage to Guinevere, and his creation of the Round Table knights.

The Sword in the Stone, Rodney Matthews

Then all of a sudden it's about the knights, each one getting a day in the limelight. Gawain, Percival, Balin and Balan, Kay, Gareth, and of course Lancelot, each with his own quests, successes and failures, which they dutifully report on back at Camelot. Where Arthur's

King Arthur, Winchester
Round Table

sitting, presiding over feasts and refusing to eat until he sees marvels and all that jazz. Kind of a comedown for a vigorous young king whose early career puts everyone else's to shame.

There's a lot going on in the transition from fighter to lawgiver, from active participant to benevolent presence in the wings. The first factor in play was probably the difficulty legends have with making a legislator a warrior. The archetypal "wise leader" is rarely found making corpses on a battlefield. We remember Hammurabi as the first lawgiver in history, conveniently ignoring the fact that he was a Mesopotamian emperor, which by definition means he kicked ass like nobody's business. Nestor, spouting smart advice Agamemnon rarely heeds, is old and ill suited to hack up Trojans. Ptah, the Egyptian god of creation, also presides over handicrafts, products of peaceful times; Maat, who represents balance and justice, is a woman. Nobody wants their legal system in the hands of a berserker. So for Arthur to take the place he himself has prepared - that of lawgiver to the masses, bringer of peace to a troubled land - he has to become inactive. He can't represent good government while also taking the lead in all quests that come to Camelot. And once it becomes clear that Guinevere will never give him a son, it's all the more important that the king protect his life and not go gallivanting after every Questing Beast and white hart that turns up.

The White Hart, Arthur Rackham

There's also the nature of the mythos itself. Arthurian legend as we know it is a hodgepodge of individual stories collected under one great umbrella. That umbrella is Arthur and his law-forged peace, which wasn't even in some of the stories in their original forms. Latecomers to the mythos - Merlin, Lancelot, Galahad, Tristan and Isolde - are the active and heroic centers of their own stories. There's simply no way to inject Arthur into a tragic tale of star-crossed lovers, especially given its similarity to his own marriage, except to say, "Well, it was happening in Arthur's reign." Merlin's exploits become a prequel and a foreshadowing of Arthur's greater glory; Lancelot can fight for the honor of Queen Guinevere as easily as for any other woman. But their stories are their own. Arthur's peace can bring them all together and give us a tapestry of courtly life, possible only in peace. Without Arthur, they'd be disconnected and blurring together; but his inclusion, although important for the unification of the mythos, is in name only.

And then there's the whole question of courtly love. Let's face it: the husband never comes off well in those stories. It's actually a miracle that Arthur survives his bout with courtly love with an even greater reputation as a friend, lover and king. It would be so easy to turn him into a

Lancelot Brings Guenevere to Arthur, Henry Justice Ford

Mark of Cornwall, obsessed with proving his wife's guilt and stabbing his friend in the back. Instead, facing a scenario tailor-made to break a great man, Arthur proves his greatness of spirit by acknowledging Lancelot and Guinevere's pain at their betrayal of him. He may be the only cuckold in legend with depth. But he's never going to be the hero of this story. That part is always going to go to Lancelot, to the flashy young wooer in love with a woman above his station. The whole notion of courtly love was invented so that character could seem heroic rather than lecherous. Lancelot is a creation of courtly love; the structure of the story requires that he be the hero. It's a testament to the appeal of Arthur as benevolent ruler that the worst he suffers is passivity, rather than character assassination.

So in terms of the mythos' requirements, Arthur has to be deactivated. You could argue that his

time with Merlin is his apprenticeship in learning how to rule from a throne rather than a battlefield, and that Merlin only leaves when Arthur finally learns. But that doesn't mean we have to forget that teenage Arthur led an army against several northern kings and defeated them all to prove his right to the throne, or that his earliest appearances in Welsh legend are all as a great war-leader, or that in the twilight of his reign he still personally led troops to Brittany.

The Two Crowns, Frank Dicksee

We tend to simplify Arthur. He makes it easy for us; he takes so easily to the mantle of lawgiver that we give him no other plaudits. But he's a much more complicated figure than that. He's a gifted warrior who deliberately retreats from the field of glory to concentrate on day-to-day administration. He's a devoted husband and friend who sacrifices his peace of mind to protect the hearts and consciences of the people he loves. He steps back to give other people time to shine, becoming forgotten even in his own story cycle until the end. He's a leader, in every sense of the word. And he shouldn't be put in a neat little box. He's too interesting for that.

Part of Your World: Limited Engagement Only

Adrift at Sea, Nilah Magruder

So much fuss gets made over the little mermaid who failed to nab a prince that we tend to forget the scores of supernatural women who succeeded. Human men, it seems, are a hot commodity on mythical women's mash notes. And with the exception of Andersen's strangely blind prince, they tend to be rather eager for a supernatural wife. Which is no surprise - these are, after all, magical women whose goodwill can ensure success and wealth.

Some men actively set out to catch an otherworldly wife. There are endless tales of men who steal a mermaid's red cap or a selkie's sealskin to trap her on land. Others go about their wooing more delicately, like the Shepherd of Myddfai offering his chosen mermaid a bite of bread to entice her to a life on shore. Still others are forcefully wooed. The Fairy Queen is notorious for abducting handsome men with nice voices, regardless of their opinions. But the benefits of having a supernatural lover are immense. Without exception, the women's influence - from magical blessings to excellent housekeeping - win the men comfort and renown for their good luck.

So everyone's happy, right?

Not so fast. This is the fairy world. There's always a catch.

Loss, Cheryl Kirk Noll

Supernatural brides hold to the letter of their bargains. Make one wrong move (three at most), and they pop out of your life as suddenly as they entered it, taking all their magical support with them. The classic setup goes thusly: upon engagement, the bride names a single condition with which the groom must comply. Melusine forbids her husband to look at her while she bathes; the mermaid of Myddfai (in a nice move for women's rights) vows to leave her husband if he strikes her three times; the Crane Wife won't let her husband watch her weave the cloth that brings them wealth. Sounds easy, up until curiosity kills the cat and the husbands have to look, or lose their temper, or forget to lock up the sealskin. There's no fooling a supernatural bride, either. They know when the deal is broken. (Melusine's husband tries to lie to her, which only makes him look worse.)

What's more, when they go, they never come back. Volund's marriage to Hervor the Valkyrie, a perfectly happy one, ends for good when she decides she misses her old life. The husbands of local selkies get no warning when their wives discover their sealskins and return to the sea; some stories have the bereft husband walking the shore for the rest of his life, searching for his lost bride. Melusine's husband has an extra worry: in addition to the loss of his wife, he frets that she's cursed him and his lands in vengeance.

Wayland, Max Koch

Once the contract is broken, supernatural brides aren't known for their generosity. Mermaids tend to abandon their families before their children are grown and able to take over their mother's duties. The Crane Wife leaves her husband's only source of income unfinished. Volund gets bit worst: as soon as Hervor's gone, the local king orders Volund hamstrung and trapped on an island so no one else can have access to his superior smithing skills. (To be fair, Volund bites back, making the king some drinking goblets out of the skulls of the king's sons, and also raping and impregnating his only daughter, before escaping on wings he'd made in secret. All par for the course in a Norse legend.) The mermaid of Myddfai is extraordinarily generous in that, while she takes back her dowry of cattle, she also blesses her descendants with phenomenal healing powers and watches over the town. No other supernatural bride ever looks back.

Mephistophilis Appears to Doctor Faustus

The trappings of these stories are eerily similar to the tales of men who sell their souls to the devil. In exchange for instant benefits, the man makes a letter-of-the-law deal with a creature not of this world, which will hit hard when the contract inevitably runs out. True, a mermaid bride isn't quite on the same level as Mephistophilis, but the women of Melusine's line were rumored to be witches up through the Wars of the Roses. The supernatural creature retains all rights; only the human stands to lose. In some cases, the bride manipulates the terms of the contract. The mermaid of Myddfai counts an impatient "hurry up" tap on the shoulder as one of the three blows that will entitle her to return to the lake; the Fairy Queen sends True Thomas back to our world when she gets bored of him, neglecting to tell him that seven years have passed while he partied for a night in Fairyland. This is straight-up Doctor Faustus material: the seduction of a human by mystical forces that disguise the truth without ever outright lying.

Mermaid, Laurent Miny

Granted, the brides don't intend anything as sinister as dragging their husbands into Hell. But the one-sided arrangements, and the clear evidence that the power rests with the females, indicate a serious reversal of the normal run of things. It's uncomfortably easy to make the jump of reasoning that a powerful woman is on par with the devil, or at the very least in possession of abilities that are too dangerous for humans to be around for long. The Melusine story in particular throws gas on the fire: between the snake-woman and the monstrous children she bears, her identification with the devil couldn't be clearer.

So maybe there's a reason we forget those stories. They overturn the status quo. They remind us that there are forces we don't and will never understand. Like their heroines, they seduce with the promise of happiness and dash our hopes without warning. They're not comfortable bedtime stories; they're tales of man against nature, often without a clear villain or victor. Stories like that don't make for sweet dreams.

Shut Up, You're Only Getting Married

What is the deal with fathers in legends? Either they're criminally neglectful and allow their second wives to mistreat their daughters, or they're stiflingly protective and would rather kill a guy than let him say boo to his baby girl. It's as if the state of being the father of an attractive young woman triggers a chemical reaction that turns even the mildest of dads into psychotic serial killers.

You think I'm kidding? The father of the Twelve Dancing Princesses killed an unspecified number of princes before the soldier came along. Forgall sent Cuchulainn to fight a deadly warrior woman before he'd let him marry Emer. Ysbaddaden practically replicated the labors of Hercules to keep Culhwch from marrying Olwen (although to be fair, that was also to preserve Ysbaddaden's own life). And then there was the total nutjob who was so opposed to the idea of his daughter having a life of her own that he locked her on top of a glass mountain. They do say your kids drive you crazy, but that is just uncalled for.

Atalanta and Melanion, John Dickson Batten

And then there's Atalanta.

Full disclosure: this girl is My Girl. I wanted to be her when I grew up. I spent hours practicing my running, hoping one day to be as fast as her. She was a bow-shooting, speed-racing, take-no-prisoners badass, and I was dazzled from day one. But even I couldn't turn a blind eye to the engagement challenge that she, not her father, dreamed up. Beat her in a race or die? There's loading the dice, and then there's not even playing.

I always thought that that absurdly cruel challenge was a power play between Atalanta and her father. "You want to marry me off? Fine. But we'll do this my way, and even then you won't really be able to pretend you've got any say in my life." Dozens of poor saps, as infatuated as I was, got sent to their deaths for something that had absolutely nothing to do with them.

Atalanta's engagement challenge is doubly unique: 1) The potential bride gets input, and 2) her input creates the challenge. The other promised girls rarely get a word in edgewise about what they think of the unnumbered men who die for their sakes. Emer slips out of a marriage proposal while she's waiting for Cuchulainn, but only because Fiance Number Two decides not to be a jerk and steal Our Hero's girl. The Twelve Dancing Princesses certainly connive at their suitors' deaths, but their actions are never judged within the story, and they never comment on how they feel about dooming these men.

The Prince Enters the Briar Wood, Edward Burne-Jones

The worst-case scenario, as in so many other things, is poor Sleeping Beauty. No one ever asks her what she wants. She exists in limbo while men die in sight of her tower. None of it is her fault - unlike Atalanta, she has no say in whether or not anyone dies - but what a lot of baggage to wake up to. The knowledge that a century of death and pain went on while you slept, unaware and unable to help, must be devastating.

Culhwch at Ysbaddaden's Court, Ernest Wallcousins

And what about someone like Olwen, where the choice is between your father's life and your future? Culhwch kills Ysbaddaden at the end of the story without a second thought, neatly getting vengeance for a broken promise, fulfilling the gimmick of the plot, and securing his task-free life with his blissful bride. Except for the bit about how he just cut her father's head off. Have fun with that in marriage counseling. Would Olwen be happy with Culhwch, who after all is brave and stubborn enough to fulfill her father's insane challenges, or would she prefer to have her dad alive? Or was there someone else she'd rather have married? Or did she want to get married at all? No one ever asks.

The fulfillment of the challenge is always treated as the bride's answer: of course she'll marry the hero! He's jumped through all these hoops for her sake! It would be a total bitch move, not to mention anticlimactic, if she refused him! No one wonders what life would be like, married to a prince who happened by the castle on the right day, or to a guy who'd let her dad get flayed and beheaded, or to a girl who'd have sent you to die without regrets if you hadn't happened to toss her a few shiny apples. Sometimes the story goes out of its way to prove that there will be a happy ending: Olwen does in fact fall in love with Culhwch, Emer holds out for Cuchulainn, Atalanta and Hippomenes actually get busted by the gods for having too much sex. But what about the soldier, married to a Dancing Princess who wanted him dead? What about Sleeping Beauty and the prince from another century? What about all the rescued princesses who get handed over to whatever schlub pries them free from the dragon, or the wizard, or the sacrificial knife?

Brides are mute. No one's interested in what they have to say, unless they're a wild card like Atalanta, and the most even she can do is amend the engagement challenge rather than dispense with it completely. When brides try to have a say in their future, it's disregarded. The most Olwen can do to help Culhwch is to get him an audience with Ysbaddaden, at which the men do all the talking despite Olwen's presence; after that, she has to sit around and wait for outside factors to decide her fate. Sleeping Beauty's castle throws a wedding party about ten seconds after waking up. Spell or no spell, that is no way to treat a disoriented teenager in the grip of someone else's will (in this case, the goddamn fairy who was supposed to fix her life). We know it'll work out; we flipped to the end and saw "Happily Ever After." But the implications of the silencing of the women at the moment of crucial choice are terrifying. A fairytale bride's entire culture conspires jointly to shut her up at the very moment when her voice should be heard. And this is the happy ending.

For extra weirdness, often the stated reason for an engagement challenge is to ensure that the prospective bride's husband is "worthy of her." If you care so much about your daughter's welfare and happiness, wouldn't it make more sense to ask her what she thinks?