Friday Five: More of the Women in 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. This is Part Two (Part One is here).

Helen of Troy (1898) by Evelyn De Morgan 

1. Helen of Troy, also known as beautiful Helen, Helen of Argos, or Helen of Sparta, was said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. The myths relate how she was born (hatched from an egg) after Zeus 'visited' Leda (wife of Tyndareus) in the form of a swan and 'seduced' her. Helen's appearance inspired artists of all times to represent her, frequently as the personification of ideal human beauty. Images of Helen started appearing in the 7th century BC, with her abduction by Paris (or escape with him) being a popular motif.

In her youth, Helen was abducted by Theseus. He liked the look of her so with his mate Pirithous, the the king of Larissa, he went to Sparta, kidnapped Helen and brought her back to Aphidnae, a small city outside Athens, to be taken care of by his mother. Pirithous then decided he would like Persephone, goddess of the Underworld, for his wife, so the two mates popped down to Hades (the place) to kidnap her. Things didn't go so well, however, as Hades (the god) threw Theseus into prison and let his dog, Cerberus, tear Pirithous to pieces. Meanwhile, Helen's brothers, Castor and Pollux, invaded Aphidnae, rescued Helen and brought her back to Sparta.

When it was time for Helen to marry, many kings and princes from around the world came to seek her hand, bringing rich gifts with them, or sent emissaries to do so on their behalf. Menelaus, her future husband, did not attend, but sent his brother, Agamemnon, to represent him. Tyndareus was afraid to select a husband for his daughter, or send any of the suitors away, for fear of offending them and giving grounds for a quarrel. Odysseus was one of the suitors but had brought no gifts because he believed he had little chance of winning. 

Odysseus promised to solve the problem if Tyndareus would support him in his courting of Penelope, daughter of Icarius, and Tyndareus readily agreed. Odysseus proposed that, before the decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath (known as the Oath of Tyndareus) promising to provide military assistance to the winning suitor if Helen were ever stolen from him. After the suitors all swore the oath, Menelaus was chosen as Helen's husband. For some, this marriage marks the beginning of the end of the age of heroes, as Zeus planned to obliterate the race of men and heroes in particular, using the Trojan War as the means to this end.

Cut to Paris (the Trojan prince), who was appointed by Zeus to judge some kind of Greek Goddess Beauty Competition between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. Aphrodite promised Paris that if he chose her, she would reward him with the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, as a bribe. Surprise! Paris chose Aphrodite, and incurred the wrath of Hera and Athena, but won the prize, carrying off Helen and kicking off the Trojan War as all the sworn suitors set out to reclaim her. 

This abduction or elopement is deliberately ambiguous, depending on which side you're on and which motif you wish to pursue - in medieval illustrations this event was frequently portrayed as a seduction, whereas in Renaissance paintings it was usually depicted as a rape. This ambiguity continues through her relationship with Paris, Menelaus, and the warriors of Troy. Some tales claim Helen revelled in her fatal mischief, tormented the Greeks inside the wooden horse and rejoiced over the carnage of the Trojans; others suggest she was distraught and racked with guilt at being the cause of so much death and destruction, and was desperately lonely because so many people (particularly women) held her responsible and hated her.

According to some accounts, Greeks and Trojans gathered to stone her to death, but Menelaus demanded that only he should slay his unfaithful wife. When he saw her, however, she dropped her robe from her shoulders and the sight of her beauty caused him to let the sword drop from his hand, and the couple were reunited. 

Helen a la porte scee (1888) by Gustave Moureau

In stories, Helen is a prize; a possession; a temptress and seductress; she forces men to act a certain way and her beauty has been portrayed as potent and destructive. But here's the thing; she is always passive - things are done to her and because of her and for her, but never by her. She is born from rape, abducted, captured, stolen, rescued, contested, and never gets to tell her own story. We know that she is beautiful, but not a lot else, and if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then she is a blank canvas on which we project our own ideology. Gustave Moreau portrays her as faceless in his painting of her witnessing the destruction of Troy. 

In The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood refers to Helen as "the sceptic bitch" and "poison on legs". She redresses the balance, however, in her 1995 poem, Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing, in which Helen understands that her 'beery worshippers' would like to 'watch me/ and feel nothing. Reduce me to components/ as in a clock factory or an abattoir./ Crush out the mystery./ Wall me up alive/ in my own body." If we're talking about Helen's influence on poetry and plays, we cannot ignore Chritopher Marlowe's lines from his 1604 tragedy Doctor Faustus, in which the titular character sells his soul for (among other things) a night of passion with Helen of Troy, and when he first catches sight of her remarks,

"Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!"

Odysseus Wants to Embrace the Ghost of His Mother (1901) by Jan Styka 

2. Queen Anticlea

Odysseus’ mother Anticleia is a shady character in the Odyssey; we meet her only in the Underworld, where Odysseus has gone to seek the advice of the dead prophet, Tiresias. Initially Odysseus rebuffs his mother as he is waiting for the prophet to approach, but after speaking with Tiresias, he allows Anticleia to come near and lets her speak. She asks him why he is in the underworld while alive, and he tells her about his various troubles and failed attempts to get home. Then he asks her how she died and inquires about his family at home.

Anticleia says that she died from a broken heart, longing for him while he was at war and having given up hope of ever seeing her son again. She also says that Laërtes (Odysseus' father) "grieves continually" for Odysseus and lives in a hovel in the countryside, clad in rags and sleeping on the floor. Penelope has not yet remarried but is overwhelmed with sadness and longing for her husband while Telemachus acts as magistrate for Odysseus' properties. Odysseus attempts to embrace his mother three times but discovers that she is incorporeal, and his arms simply pass through her. She explains that this is how all ghosts are, and he expresses great sorrow.

Odysseus’ futile attempt to reach out to her could be seen as an indication of his distant relationship with his mother. His warm memories of planting trees in the family’s orchard with his father is not matched by any such memories of his mother.

Ulysses Recognised by Eurycleia (1849) by Gustave Housez

3. Eurycleia

As a girl, Eurycleia was bought by Laertes, Odysseus's father. He treated her as his wife, but she was never his consumated lover, so as not to dishonour his real wife, Anticleia. She later nursed Telemachus, Odysseus's son. The name Eurycleia means 'broad fame', while Anticleia means 'anti-fame'. The tension between the meanings of their names can be seen to reflect the tebsion between the aspects of Odysseus's life.

Odysseus was born to Anticleia, a noble woman, but nursed and raised by Eurycleia, a lower-class maid. Odysseus's fame came from his role as a noble hero paralleled to his role as an anonymous beggar. His heroism was essential for capturing Troy; his skills as an orator and a schemer as well as his strength and tactics on the battlefield were instrumental in the success of the Greeks. However, he disguised himself as a beggar at critical moments, such as when he entered Troy and killed the unsuspecting Trojan soldiers, and when he returned to Ithaca and killed Penelope's suitors.

Eurycleia was the only person to recognise him without him first revealing himself (as he did to Telemachus) when he returned home after the Trojan War. She then informed him which of his servant girls had been unfaithful to Penelope during his absence, conspiring with Penelope's suitors and becoming their lovers. His son, Telemachus, hanged the twelve maids that Eurycleia identified.

Eurycleia supports Telemachus in much the same way as she had Odysseus before him, giving Telemachus provisions and supplies before he left for Pylos to seek out news of his father. She swore not to tell Penelope he had left until twelve days had passed, as Telemachus did not want his mother to be any more worried than she already was, or indeed to prevent him from going.

Some classicists argue that the woman who anoints Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is a direct reference to Eurycleia. She is the only one to recognise Jesus, and what she has done will be widely known in the same way as Eurycleia is the only one to recognise Odysseus and whose name means 'widely known'.

Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, a Roman copy of the original by Leochares circa 325BC

4. Artemis

Artemis, daughter of Zeus and Leto, is the twin sister of Apollo and a goddess of the moon. She was the patron and protector of young girls, and was believed to be able to both bring disease upon women and heal them of it. She was worshipped as one of the primary goddesses of childbirth and midwifery, and was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities: her temple at Ephesus was one fo the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Her Roman equivalent is Diana and she is also known as being a hunter. Homer calls her either 'Mistress of the Animals' or 'She of the Wild', and she is often referred to as 'arrow-pouring' or 'deer-shooting'. Just like her brother she may occasionally be called 'bright' or, even more illustrative of her function as a moon goddess, 'torch-bringer'. Her symbols included a bow and arrow, a quiver, and hunting knives, and the deer and the cypress were sacred to her. 

Women gods and demi-gods traditionally followed one of two paths: sultry or chaste: Artemis was definitely in the latter camp, preferring to remain a maiden and swearing never to marry. This chastity could be interpreted as cruelty or frigidity (fancy not giving her self away to anyone who desired her!) especially by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. When Actaeon stumbled upon Artemis while she was bathing, she was so enraged that he had seen her naked that she turned him into a stag and whipped his hunting dogs into a fury until they turned upon him and ripped him to pieces.

Her legacy lives on in the Artemis Program, formally begun in December 2017 under the Trump administration with the stated intention of landing the first woman on the Moon. Together with commercial and international partners, NASA intends to establish a sustainable presence on the Moon 'for private companies to build a lunar economy' (i.e. to establish commercial mining) and to prepare for missions to Mars. The scale of and motivation behind this project are quite literally out of this world. 

Calypso (1869) by Henri Lehmann

5. Calypso

If Helen of Troy is the face that launched a thousand ships, then Calypso is the name that launched almost as many products, including ships. Tributes to her come in the form of a drink (rum, peach schnapps, orange juice and grenadine), a dance, a style of music, video games, software companies, space craft, British Navy ships, an underwater camera, and a 1942 British minesweeper that was later repurposed as an oceanographic research ship operated by Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

The name means to cover, conceal or hide, and in Greek Mythology, she is a nymph who 'detained' Odysseus on the island Ogygia for seven years when he was attempting to return home to his wife, Penelope in Ithaca. In some accounts this 'detainment" resulted in two children. In others, Odysseus pines for his wife until Athena intervenes and begs her father, Zeus, to order the release of Odysseus from the island.

Zeus orders the messenger Hermes to tell Calypso to set Odysseus free, as it was not his destiny to live with her forever. She is furious and points out the double standards that allow gods to abduct females willy-nilly, but that punish goddesses who have affairs with mortals. Eventually she reluctantly concedes and sends Odysseus on his way after providing him with wine, bread and the materials for a raft. She then takes up the same position on the rock looking out to sea and pining for him, as he had previously sat longing for his Penelope.  In The Odyssey, this is the section of the adventures that begins the tale, before it plunges back into flashback, thus positioning it as an important highlight of the journey.

Misfortune; Carelessness; and...: My Sister, The Serial Killer

My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Atlantic Fiction

Pp. 226

The novella begins, “Ayoola summons me with these words – Korede, I killed him. I had hoped I would never hear those words again.” Immediately we are in familiar but foreign territory. The structure is reminiscent of Charlotte Brontë’s, “Reader, I married him”, from Jane Eyre, but the shocking content is a lot less comforting. Originally published in Nigeria as an e-book entitled Thicker than Water, this tale of two sisters crosses genre lines from thriller to black comedy and socio-political commentary. As Richard Lea writes in their interview with the author (published at the end of the novel), “A novel that puts the relationship between two sisters at its heart, with men as supporting characters who may or may not make it to the final act, has been greeted as a riposte to crime fiction where the plot is so often set in motion by the gruesome death of young women.”

It clearly strikes a chord as it won the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/ Thriller, the 2020 British Book Award for Crime & Thriller Book of the Year, and it was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. As well as being critically praised, it is also popular with the public, and won the 2019 Amazon Publishing Reader’s Award for Best Debut Novel. It is certainly easy to read with short chapters (all with a one or two word title) and a fairly universal theme – we may not all have murderous siblings, but many of us understand sibling rivalry and family dynamics.

As the oldest, Korede is obliged to care for her younger sister, Ayoola, and now, she literally cleans up her sister’s messes. It doesn’t help Korede’s mental state to feel that her sister is outstandingly good-looking, and to constantly compare herself unfavourably. “The resemblance is there – we share the same mouth, the same eyes – but Ayoola looks like a Bratz doll and I resemble a voodoo figurine.”

Ayoola carries a knife on dates and she seems to have little compunction in disposing of her suitors, she claims in self-defence. Korede wants to believe her, but there is a touch of the Oscar Wilde loss of parents about her narrative; after all, she has killed three people; “Three, and they label you a serial killer”. Ayoola is seemingly remorseless and is back partying and posting on Instagram and Snapchat straight after she has killed her partner. She apparently believes that she is entirely innocent: “Her actions were the fault of her victims and she had acted as any reasonable gorgeous person would under the circumstances.” The implication is that she is excused because of her looks – it’s different if you’re beautiful.

When Ayoola shows interest in the doctor with whom Korede works, he of course reciprocates it, despite never having noticed Korede’s passionate feelings towards him. This might inform her questioning her sister’s version of events, at which Ayoola accuses her of victim shaming. “Victim? Is it mere coincidence that Ayoola has never had a mark on her, from any of these incidents with these men; not even a bruise?” At a time when we are struggling to believe women, this seems irresponsible, but education is not the duty of the author. Indeed, in her interview, Braithwaite contends, “I like to have fun. The books where I can tell I’m being taught something are a trial in the reading. If there’s a story and you learn something along the way; it’s a bonus.”

It transpires that the girls’ father subjected them to traditional and tribal cruelty, and Korede is concerned that Ayoola may have inherited some of this inherent brutality. “More and more, she reminds me of him. He could do a bad thing and behave like a model citizen right after. As though the bad thing had never happened. Is it in the blood? But his blood is my blood and my blood is hers.”

There are some things which may seem a little far-fetched for a genuine crime thriller – how could they possibly not get caught? One explanation is that the police force is highly corrupt, as are many other institutions in Nigeria, and they can be bribed to look away. Another consideration is that this is not meant to be forensically accurate. The page numbers are in a font that looks as though letters have been cut from newspaper print, or perhaps a graphic novel where all the information is condensed into one frame. It is currently being considered for film, which will be dramatic but not exactly realistic.

Oyinkan Braithwaite has provided us with a fast-paced, high-actioned, black-comedy crime thriller. It covers a lot of genres and is a terrific story. It seems churlish to expect more from her and we should be grateful for this offering and the knowledge that there are authors who can still deliver a gripping novel.