"It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did." This quote from Madeline Miller's remarkable novel, Circe, encapsulates the transformative journey of a sorceress who defies convention and embraces her humanity, breaking free from the shackles of perception.
While Circe's appearance in Homer's Odyssey spans just 15 pages in Emily Wilson's 2017
translation,
her presence as the enchantress who turns men into swine leaves an indelible mark. Miller's Circe delves into the narrative gaps, revealing a sorceress who grapples with her fallibility and evolves in ways gods and immortals cannot. Her progression from an outcast to a hermit, a sorceress, and ultimately a human is portrayed in a unique and exciting way—painful yet beautiful, unfiltered, and raw.
Miller astutely points out the gender disparity in epic adventures, wherein women seldom seize heroic sagas as men do. This very observation sets the stage for Circe, a powerful testament to the unspoken stories of women. Madeline Miller isn't alone in her pursuit; authors like Emily Wilson with her Odyssey, Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls, and Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad all try to amplify the muted voices of ancient Greek women. Through these retellings, women like Penelope and Circe transcend their traditional roles, emerging as multidimensional individuals rather than mere shadows of myth.
Other recent works that offer vindication that had an impact on me were the album Magdalene by FKA Twigs and the film Marie Antoinette (2006) from Sofia Coppola. This quote by Twigs from an interview with NPR stood out to me:
I think, for me, it relates to the unpaid and unacknowledged emotional labor that women put into the world on a daily basis. Certainly ever since I was young, I was taught to nurture, and taught to be aware of myself socially, and aware of my emotions and [to] mother.
Connecting with Mary Magdalene over the past couple of years, spiritually, I started to explore the concept of the virgin-whore, which is the idea that, as a woman, you can be pure, and you can be innocent, and you can be like a fresh flower — but at the same time, you can be dangerous, and seductive, and all-knowing and healing. It's been incredibly exciting for me to know that that's okay and it exists and I am as much sacred as I am sensual.
As well as this excerpt from Meghan Farnsworth’d article “Remembering Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette”:
History remembers Marie Antoinette at her worst rather than finding an understanding in how she acquired such reckless behavior. Coppola, though, doesn’t approach Marie Antoinette as a revisionist film. Instead, it offers a new perspective on the centuries-old story, one that parallels the theme of dislocation and disillusionment occupying a majority of Coppola’s films. A world of privilege dominates, yet her characters are troubled by their disconnection between themselves and their societal purposes.
I think these completely different formats and mediums all share one thing in common, something that touched me deeply: the idea of revisiting misunderstood, forgotten, and often ignored women in history. But it’s done in a subtle way, just looking and imagining who they could have been. These works flesh these women out in different ways but they flesh them out nonetheless. They are real, vulnerable, and human.
In the end, Circe and many other works beckon readers to reevaluate ingrained notions of womanhood and their oft-dismissed narratives. These works stand as monuments to the strength and complexity of women who have been relegated to the peripheries of history, inviting us to peer beyond the veneer of myth and perceive the complexities underneath.