Friday Five: Women of the Odyssey

I'm in the middle of rehearsals for The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, which is a retelling of The Odyssey, focussing on Penelope, who was left behind while Odysseus went off to war and then travelled around having adventures rather than returning to her in a timely manner. I'm co-producing and directing the play which will be on at the Courtyard Studio in Canberra from 7-17 July. I have always loved mythology and the value of storytelling, so have thoroughly enjoyed providing a bit of context to some of the characters mentioned in the text. 

5 Female Characters mentioned in The Penelopiad

Pallas Athena (1898) by Gustav Klimt

1. Athena, also spelled Athene, in Greek religion, is the protector of Athens, and the goddess of war, handicraft, and practical reason – her Roman equivalent is Minerva. She was essentially urban and civilised, the antithesis in many respects of Artemis, goddess of the outdoors.

 She was the daughter of Zeus, produced without a mother – the myths tell how she emerged fully-formed from Zeus’s head, after he swallowed Metis (the goddess of counsel) when she was pregnant with Athena. Being the favourite child of Zeus, she had great power.

She represents the intellectual and civilised side of war and the virtues of justice and skill. In the Iliad, Athena is the divine form of the heroic, martial ideal: she personifies excellence in close combat, victory, and glory. The qualities that lead to victory are found on the aegis, or breastplate, that Athena wears when she goes to war: fear, strife, defence, and assault. Athena appears in Homer’s Odyssey as the Odyssey’s goddess guardian. As the guardian of the welfare of kings, Athena became the goddess of good counsel, of prudent restraint, and practical insight as well as of war. She is often depicted in art with armour, a golden helmet, a shield, and holding a spear. Her armour is the aegis made, in some accounts, from the skin of a Giant, hung with tassels of gold, and featuring the head of the Gorgon given to her by Perseus.

Athena became the goddess of crafts and skilled peacetime pursuits in general. She was particularly known as the patroness of spinning and weaving. That she ultimately became allegorized to personify wisdom and righteousness was a natural development of her patronage of skill.

Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses (1891) by John William Waterhouse

2. Circe is a sorceress known for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs, and her ability to use these enchantments to transform her enemies, and those who offended her, into animals. In myths she is known to turn an Italian king who spurned her advances into a woodpecker, and when a sea-god preferred the nymph, Scylla, to her, Circe poisoned the water where her rival bathed and turned Scylla into a dreadful monster.

In the Odyssey she is described as a beautiful goddess surrounded by tame wolves and lions. She lures any who land on her island to her home with her lovely singing while weaving on an enormous loom, and then drugs them so that they change shape. When Odysseus visits her island, she invites his crew to a feast and turns them into swine - Odysseus is protected by Athena from drinking the drugged wine that effects the transformation, and he is able to rescue his men, although he then remains on the island for over a year and has several sons by Circe.

She became representative of the results of drunkenness and gluttony over abstinence and self-control. Because she made men lose their reason and act like lustful beasts she was accused of witchcraft and considered the archetypal seductress and whore - clearly female sexual desire was perverted and the poor men couldn't possibly remain chaste and faithful in the face of such evil. 

It has been argued that the fairy Titania, in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, is an inversion of Circe. In this case the tables are turned and she is made to love an ass after, rather than before, he is transformed into his true animal likeness. Naturally, feminist interpretations reveal her in a more flattering light, and in her poem of 1870, the English poet Augusta Webster posits that when she met Odysseus and his men Circe did not turn them into pigs but merely removed their disguise which made them seem human.

The Three Fates (circa 1855) by Paul Thumann

3. The Three Morai also known as the Three Fates, are three goddesses who determine the course of human life. According to Thomas Bullfinch in Bullfinch's Mythology, they are described as the daughters of Night – to indicate the darkness and obscurity of human destiny – or of Zeus and Themis (Law), that is ‘daughters of the heavens.’ They were Clotho, who spun the thread of life; Lacheisis, who held it and fixed its length; and Atropos, who cut it off.”

Stephen Fry in his book, Mythos, instructs, "Their name derives from a word that means ‘portion’ or ‘lot’ in the sense of ‘that which is allotted to you’. ‘It was not her portion to be loved’, or, ‘It was his lot to be unhappy’, are the kinds of phrases Greeks employed to describe attributes or destinies apportioned by the Moirai. Even the gods had to submit themselves to the Fates’ cruel decrees.”

He continues, “The Fates seldom allowed glory and triumph without the accompaniment of suffering and sorrow... The Greeks felt that for every individual there was a personal, singular moira that could be expressed as a mixture of necessity, doom, justice and fortune. Something between luck and kismet.” Isn't it interesting that the Greeks had a world of gods doing terrible things to humans (raping, abducting, torturing...) and it's the women who get blamed?

The Delphic Sibyl (detail from the Sistine Chapel) (1509) by Michelangelo

4. The Oracle “answers from the gods to questions from mortals seeking knowledge or advice on the future. They were usually given in equivocal form so as to fit an event. Also the places where such answers were given forth by a priest or a priestess.” - Thomas Bullfinch

“In a trancelike state of prophetic ecstasy the priestess would sit out of sight on her interrogator, above a chasm in the ground which channelled down to the womb of the earth itself, and call her ambiguous prognostications up into the chamber above where the anxious petitioner awaited her proclamation… Oracle never lies, but nor does (s)he ever give a straight answer, finding it amusing to reply with another question or a riddle so obscure as only to make sense when it is too late to act upon it.” - Stephen Fry

Lilaia the Naiad (2013) by Annie Stegg

5. Naiads are water nymphs of lakes, rivers and fountains. They derived their vitality and in turn gave life to the water in which they dwelled. Generally speaking, Naiads were not considered to be the most helpful of nymphs, for they could be vengeful when angered.

Friday Five: Popular TV

I've started directing another play and taking more singing lessons, plus with the reading that I do for review and dramaturgical purposes, I haven't got much time for television, but there are a few shows I will watch (whether as and when programmed or later, having recorded them, which has the added bonus of missing all the adverts).

I loved the Downtown Abbey Christmas special (shown in the middle of summer, but enjoyed nonetheless with my female friends, Him Outdoors and a bottle of Central Otago Pinot Noir) and will watch Coronation Street if I'm home when it's on.

I've begun to take note of Single Father with the incomparable David Tennant and Suranne Jones (Karen from Coronation Street), and Homeland with the wonderful Damien Lewis (who appears to be becoming the new Hugh Laurie - i.e. the Americans want to appropriate him). As I've only seen one episode of each, however, it's too early to tell, and the former is a four-part miniseries anyway, so perhaps that doesn't count.

Football and cricket also meet the regular viewing requirements, but there are some programmes I consider 'appointment viewing'.

5 Favourite TV Shows (at the moment):

1. Frozen Planet - David Attenborough narration over some of the most incredible photography of some of the most amazing landscape and animals; inspiring and beautiful
2. Outnumbered - Fantastic acting from both the parents and children. If ever I feel the merest twinge of remorse that I have not reproduced, five seconds of this programme supports my decision
3. Miranda - Comedy for grown-ups who haven't ever grown-up, with great scripts and asides to camera
4. QI - A quiz programme that doesn't really care about the score; Stephen Fry and Alan Davies plus a coterie of educated and entertaining guest panellists. It's been going for ages and I still enjoy it
5. The Graham Norton Show - Series 10 (I think) and still going strong - a 'light' entertainment chat show with a mix of guests, stand-up, regualr features and performers that works - better in format than Johnathan Ross, or any other chat show on TV

Friday Five: Favourite books of 2011

Earlier this week I did a piece on Radio New Zealand National about my favourite books of 2011. Slightly misleadingly, it was introduced as the books I have read over the summer, which isn't exactly true and has led many people to believe that I read incredibly fast - I don't; I just spend a lot of time reading! Furthermore, among the books I read over summer was Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay, which was actually written in 1967 and so not exactly admissible.

As I pointed out, I usually read fiction over and above non-fiction, so five of my favourites are fiction. I also included an autobiography, however, which was The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry, the second part of his autobiography, in which he regales us with his progress through university and his first forays into university, acting and comedy. He has a lot to say on all fronts (the book is 425 pages long) and there is a further instalment to come. This may seem slightly excessive, but he writes as he speaks; with screaming intelligence and an evident love of language, never saying in ten words, what he could in a hundred.

The others are as follows (in no particular order):

1. Gillespie and I by Jane Harris - Harriet Baxter is an elderly spinster writing her memoir about events in Glasgow in 1888 when she arrived in town for the International Exhibition, and stayed due to her friendship with the Gillespie family. This culminated in a criminal trial which she dissects here with ever-increasing ambiguity. Memoirs are always unreliable by definition; referring to contemporary known facts does not make them any less so. Trust is a tenuous commodity and its nature makes this an intriguing novel, and Jane Harris a beguiling author. More please!
2. The German Boy by Patricia Wastvedt - This is a novel of endless love and terrible war, but it is nowhere near as trite as that makes it sound. Peopled with many characters, the story revolves around sisters Karen and Elisabeth, their friend, Rachel, and her brother, Michael. Elisabeth and Michael experience a connection - "the arrow through the heart that stops it beating" - in a London kitchen in 1927, and it takes us 356 pages to discover whetther they ever act upon it. Full of miscommunication, passionate relationships and spontaneous decisions that return with haunting consequences, there is a touch of Atonement about the novel.
3. Snowdrops by A D Miller -  A D Miller's debut novel is a high-class, up-market mystery thriller with short, punchy descriptions and a gathering sense of intrigue. Set against the ferociously challenging backdrop of a financially progressive Russia, it was a surprise but deserved inclusion on the shortlist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Nick decides to make a career and lifestyle move to Moscow to prevent himself from succumbing to the "thiry-something zone of disappointment". He is soon revelling in a glitzy social whirl of parties and nightclubs, meeting the enigmatically beautiful Masha, with whom he becomes infatuated. Suspicions begin to knock at Nick's subconscious, but he refuses to let them in. Snowdrops are "the bodies that come to light with the thaw. Drunks mostly, and homeless people who give up and lie down in the snow, and the odd vanished murder victim." But snowdrops are also fragile harbingers of the promise of spring and new beginnings. The sentences are short, and the pace is fast, but the apparent simplicity belies poetry and humanity that will melt your defences.
4. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett - It seems impossible to review this novel without mentioning Heart of Darkness as there are obvious similarities: a nervous acolyte (Marina Singh) travels through jungle and up river (the Rio Negro) to meet an old mentor (Dr Annick Swenson), who has gone native, and try and return her to 'society'. She is forced out of her comfortable surroundings to face tribal civilizations and to question her accepted Western ethics. Patchett conveys the sense of place and discomfort brilliantly as the Western world collides brutally with the law of the jungle. Medical and environmental ethics are questioned as Marina finds herself among an Amazonian tribe called the Lakashi; a fascinating, if slightly stereotypical, case study. There are many relationships in the novel: husbands and wives; lovers; parents and children; community and colleagues, but the central one is that between Marina and Dr Swenson - erstwhile student and teacher.
5. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman - The eponymous imperfectionists are those who work together, or more often apart, to publish an English-language newspaper in Rome. Individual chapters are devoted to different characters so the novel is told from a variety of viewpoints and the separate stories come together to make a comprehensive novel, just as feature sections should complement each other in a good publication. People used to be informed by publications comprised of real people meeting each day to discuss and communicate; now there are silos of information delivered from isolated consoles. The novel yearns for human contact, with all its imperfections. This was Tom Rachman's debut novel - I will be eagerly awaiting the next one.

You can listen to my interview here: