Notes on Medusa and Clytemestra - Angry Women

These notes have been in my Google Keep for a while. I decided it was time to get them out since Keep has been getting a little weird. 

I wrote in another post recently, that I really do not know how to deal with myths. Maybe this is why the delay in using these notes. Outside of Eugene O'Neill and Ross Lockridge, Jr., I am at a loss of many American authors investing in myths. Oh, year, one story by John Cheever. I do not know if it shows a lack of my imagination that I cannot see much of mythology in the American life.

The following comes from JStor's What If We’ve Been Misunderstanding Monsters?

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, published around 8 CE, however, Medusa had a backstory that’s often elided in modern retellings. She was attractive and innocent when Poseidon (Neptune) lured her into Athena’s (Minerva’s) temple and raped her. When Athena found out, she turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, erasing her beauty.

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Though Freud posited that Medusa’s hair represented sexual repression, a symbol of castrated genitalia and the madness to which that might lead a person, the poet Ann Stanford, in her “Women of Perseus,” unpacks the more nuanced psychological effects of Medusa’s rape and the complications it adds to understanding her. Commenting on Stanford’s work, the poet and scholar Alicia Ostriker notes in her article “The Thieves of Language” that “the trauma ‘imprisons’ Medusa in a self-dividing anger and a will to revenge that she can never escape, though she yearns to.”

Consumed by this vengeful desire, Medusa might be not so much a monster as a tragic figure. Given the way her story as a “monster” has been told over the last few centuries, however, you’d be hard-pressed to know it. 

This came from LitHub's Is Clytemnestra an Archetypically Bad Wife or a Heroically Avenging Mother?:

But for wronged, silenced, unvalued daughters, she is something of a hero: a woman who refuses to be quiet when her child is killed, who disdains to accept things and move on, who will  not make the best of what she has. She burns like the beacon she waits for at the beginning of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. And if that means men think twice about drinking from a wine cup with her murderous rage depicted upon it, so be it. She would—at least in Aeschylus’ depiction—relish their fear.

 Having angered my fair share of women in my 63 years, I cannot help but notice it was men who set both Medusa and Clytemnestra on their path to monsterhood. Maybe there is the story to be told nowadays - how the men did them wrong without any means of recompense.

Speaking of Clytemnestra, Costanza Casati has a novel titled appropriately Clytemnestra.

 The novel’s strength lies in its ability to weave many complex stories into one linear narrative by centering all of these episodes on Clytemnestra herself. Clytemnestra is often portrayed as a side character or villain in Greek mythology, but in this novel she takes the center stage. Classic Greek heroes such as Theseus, Odysseus, Jason, and Achilles thereby become supporting characters in Clytemnestra’s compelling storyline rather than dominating the narrative. While literature and art has typically depicted male Greek heroes as courageous or exemplary, “Clytemnestra” instead highlights their horrible deeds and sexist beliefs. As Clytemnestra quips about Theseus, “Heroes like him are made of greed and cruelty: they take and take until the world around them is stripped of its beauty.” The novel shows how the heroes of some stories are the villains of others — and vice versa.

Casati’s careful consideration of different perspectives allows the reader to sympathize deeply with Clytemnestra. In Greek mythology, Clytemnestra is often remembered for being insane — a wretched woman who, blinded by a need for vengeance, murders her husband. But in Casati’s novel, she is a fiery figure, still fueled by a burning desire for revenge, but never painted as delusional. “Clytemnestra” shows how she is shaped by trauma yet still bravely holds onto power in a time when women were seen as subhuman. Casati’s clear feminist stance makes this retelling fresh despite being based on stories that are thousands of years old.

‘Clytemnestra’ Review: A Fresh Greek Mythology Retelling 

sch 5/2