Love your gimlet eye. And please, whoever is going to write these stories, don’t just turn the man question into a man quest with a vagina and skirts. Women don’t think or act like men do and we are not like them. We deserve our own stories.
Exactly. I had the same thought when someone announced they were going to remake Lord of the Flies, but with girls. Like we could just swap out like for like and remake the movie. Um…no? And yes, we deserve our own stories, not just the ones that were told around us.
It would be a very different story. Everyone would be fed and cared for and we'd still have time to braid our hair. When the ship showed up to "save" us we'd tell them to stop disturbing our peace.
I’ve read a lot of those and just put Clytemnestra on my library hold list (after having downloaded I, Medusa this morning). There are a few more I’ve read: Ariadne by Jennifer Saint, which just wasn’t my jam, The Death and Life of Iphigenia by J. Susanne Wilson which was an interesting take on Iphigenia, and esp. her relationship with her mother, and The Song of Achilles, of course.
@Dina Honour have you read Madeline Miller’s book Circe? One of my absolute favorites bc it does exactly what you are asking for, gives her a rich inner life, ambitions, and an amazing arc. (Not to mention beautifully written). I have been pining for a movie version of this Circe since the first time I read it. Now after multiple reads and all the Odyssey buzz, I am demanding it!
I adore that book, and it’s what I was thinking of when I was writing this. The characters are there, waiting. Also, I looked it up because, like you, I can’t believe it hasn’t been made into a movie and apparently it was optioned for a Netflix series…but in 2018? I don’t know if it’s in progress or stalled or what. And, if you haven’t read Song of Achilles by Miller—it’s even better (even though it’s a dude ;-) )
Great minds think alike 🤪. Yes I have! Loved it too, multiple reads. Even though it’s a dude, he is a sensitive lovely soul, so much more than meets the eye. I am jonesing for Miller to write something else please!!
Actually did some digging myself after your comment just now. First off, she suffers from long covid so her writing is tortuously (for her and us) slow. Secondly, she is in the process of writing Persephone yay! Just might be awhile due to the health issues. She does have a short story Galatea which I need to get but won’t fully satisfy me hahaha. Third, imdb has a listing for the series but no real content. The interweb says HBO Max is developing it for an 8 episode series but it was supposed to be out in 2021. Can’t find any further info on my quick dive into it. Does anyone know someone at HBO we can harass?
I LOVE Miller's take on Circe. In fact, now that you both have planted that seed in my brain, I think I will begin a third (or is it fourth) reread. Thanks for that!
Great piece ,Dina! Two stories come to mind that are fabulously powerful: The story of Inanna’s descent and return. Inanna was the most elevated and written about deity of Mesopotamia. Also, the story of the Egyptian deity, Isis ,as she searches for her murdered husband Osiris. Boudica of the British tribes is another great one. I think so much of our modern problem is monotheistic culture that always centers and elevates male divinity and male heroism. The inherent sexism in modern culture is a major problem, where girls are still brought up reading and watching stories about men, while boys are taught that stories about women aren’t interesting. It’s still like this, unfortunately.
I think I must have been typing out the Inanna story in another comment when you left this comment :-). Interesting that all of those examples, and other someone mentioned from Japan, come from non-”western” cultures, isn’t it? I hesitated to include Inanna because she’s a goddess, but yes, there are, of course, stories that center women. I wish there were more. There are more now, actually. But I wish that men reached for them in the same way that I reach for The Odyssey when I’m looking for references. A woman can dream.
I hear you, Dina! This is why this growing Substack community of feminist writers is so important to me. I feel surrounded by women who have stories to tell that inspire me and who have their own amazing journeys. We’re centering ourselves and our stories. I’m loving that.
Have you ever read Natasha Pulley? Her most recent book is The Hymn to Dionysus, and it’s a queer love story between Dionysus and the soldier Phaidros. It’s super smart and witty and, did I say smart? Anyway, Andromache is mentioned a few times in a role I’ve never seen ascribed to her. It was kind of a jolt, in the best way.
I'll have to check that one out. Thanks for the recommendation! A friend (Dr. Jeana Jorgensen) is a professor in Indiana and her PhD is in Folklore. Whenever I have an obscure mythology question, I always ask her for information. She's also an author and her Folklore 101 book is excellent.
Dina, I used to think I missed something by not having an education in the classics. I was spared in a way. Have you read The Heroine's Journey? Maureen shows how the psychic development of women matures quite differently than a psyche desperate for conquest. As you know, we are relational (not only), care about connection, yet too often our focus has been survival. Natalie Haynes is a fantastic writer — Stone Blind etc. Well done.
That’s an interesting thought, Prajna, the idea that lacking a “classical” education, which is itself very male, means that something is missing. And again, was just talking about The Heroine’s Journey on another comment!
The Heroine's Journey is such an excellent book. I love that she turns Joseph Campbell's assumptions just a little and reveals a whole other way of looking at stories.
I wrote an article once on seventy two things that were invented by women. Women who were out there in the world with careers and achievements alongside of men. And some guy commented to say wow, they must have been genetic aberrations because women weren't really known for making history. I said no, not true. Men were not known for documenting women's history. He was gobsmacked. I was not. Well written, Dina. :)
I will never not be astounded by folks thinking that in every period of history there was only one woman who did the science-ing, or the math-ing or the (fill in the blank). It’s such lazy thinking to assume that just because women couldn’t easily do things on paper that women were not doing those things—and we have clear evidence of some of them—and that there was only one per century. It’s such a weird way to look at it to me.
I think that our suffering and death in pregnancy and childbirth stood like the judgement of the very gods against our equal human worth to men, who after all are the agents of our reproductive suffering and death.
The endless male valorization of death, of their own deaths and the deaths of other men at their hands is several things.
It is meant to make us take them seriously, because as an old infantry general told me, otherwise women would have no reason to. (An unusually honest man.)
It is an externalization of absolutely justified grief and guilt and shame. Because no matter how the woman wants that man and that specific sex and the child she may create and to whom she will give life—no matter how dearly she longs to meet that child—she will still suffer in pregnancy and die in childbirth. These are terrible deaths: in any other context, except perhaps direct murders of women by men, we would call them torture killings. And because ejaculation and impregnation are entirely and solely male acts, the responsibility is entirely and solely male.
Finally, they are intimidation, because long before capitalism, women were the first slaves and also the means of production because we can create additional human beings, as well as work with our minds and our hands. Men can never do that. But it means all men materially and psychologically benefit from our subjugation, whether they want to or not—and most do. Men have chosen to define their manhood as the subjugation, rather than the support, of women. Though they themselves are half-women and no woman is half-man.
This is really the first draft of my extended thoughts about this, although I touched on them in my 2006 book, Women in the Line of Fire.
It also seems to me, women rarely take male sexual and reproductive malice seriously enough.
It is such a great book. And her earlier one, Song of Achilles, is even better. So, so good. I’ve a few more I’ve read if you like a good mythology retelling!
This is why I freaked out when first reading Wide Sargasso Sea. Not only was Bertha, the character i was most curious about in Jane Eyre was given a voice now but I'd just realised that almost all of the stories I loved growing up were about boys and men. It was confusing for sure.
I loved this piece! Mostly because you show how it's not as black and white as misogyny. Your call to action for more female stories has my imagination buzzing! Thank you
A buzzing imagination can only ever be a good thing. Unless it buzzes you awake at 3 am…
So much of this stuff is baked into how we do things. It’s not necessarily nefarious (though sometimes it absolutely is). But just because it’s not intentional doesn’t mean it’s not harmful. It’s not the we can’t or shouldn’t enjoy The Odyssey (or any other story) as a woman, it’s the women have had 2,000 years of learning how to enjoy stories that center men and the reverse has never been true.
Yezterday I gave a talk about Marie Catherine d'Alnoy. Haven't heard of her? Well, you're not alone but she coined the word, fairy tales and gave us our firat prince charming. She wrote about worlds outside time and place -ou-tropias. These places were ruled by fairies, magical women with enormous powers. But these worlds were also inclusive. Men and women were equals. Wiith wit, insight and foresight she was writing about the world she wanted this world to be. She started the fairy tale craze in 17th century Paris. The craze that Charles Perrault would pick up on. Don't know his name either? Bo matter. You know his work Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Bluebeard. These stories became famous while L'ile de la felicite and the White Cat, disappeared into obscurity. My talk was titled Fairy Tales and Feminism. Women have stories and they are every bit as exciting and interesting as those told by men. But we have been taught to liaten to men's voices. To give them space and wait our turn. But when it's our turn to talk, the audience has been distracted by some new voice that's louder, more excited to talk. The books you want to read are out there. You just have to look for them.
That’s exactly it. But there is also the feeling of sorrow that we have to search for them, to seek them out, when they should be on the shelf next to the others. Thank you for the mini-lesson, I had no idea about Marie Catherine. She’s going on my list now.
Along these lines, I'm a huge fan of fantasy action-adventure/role-playing games, and when given the option to customize my character, I almost always choose to make her a woman. (One of my favorites has been Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, which, as the name implies, draws heavily on Greek mythology.)
Do you play on a server with others? I’m just wondering if you find that your avatar/you is treated differently or if the interactions are different because it’s a female, or if, in some corners of the gaming world, something like equity reigns.
On the extremely rare occasion when I did used to join in multi-player sessions, misogyny was rampant, a fact which played no small part in my immense distaste for such sessions.
I will say that when I played a female character in actual "tabletop" sessions, my character was treated as equitably as any male character I played.
I wish we were closer.... I love your brain and would spend hours picking at it for juicy bits of your inner life over margaritas and French fries.... BTW, have you read Margaret Atwood's "Penelopliad" It is the story told by her in a number of genres. Worth your time, reader extraordinaire.
I have read it, it’s brilliant. But I will take any other mythological retellings you’ve got to recommend. (Also, how did you know that french fries are my weakness???)
You go! Love it… though, I’m reminded of the women of the court of the Fujiwara period in Japan who developed the foundations of the modern written language in Japan then in the Heian period, the 11th century made space for Murasaki Shikibu to write the first novel, the epic Tale of Genji. She was pretty bad ass in the very insider games you describe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murasaki_Shikibu. In this popular culture surrounded by The Odyssey, it’s a reminder of other worlds swirling in the miasma of ancient popular culture.
When I was looking up some stuff, I came across the epic “Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld”, which is about 4,000 years old. I knew of Inanna (and that’s actually another great story about female story tellers), but not this epic. So yes, especially outside the “western” cannon, there were epics and stories with female heroes, but not many. Which is another aspect of all of this—of course there were women doing this all along, it’s ridiculous to think there weren’t. So why don’t we know more of them? (That was mostly rhetorical ;-). )
I couldn't wait to see how the movie The Odyssey portrayed the sirens. Imagine what they could have done with them. Instead they were just mentioned in passing. So disappointing.
Another back story just waiting to be told. I long for a little bit of originality and imagination rather than the same story told over and over again, you know?
Love your gimlet eye. And please, whoever is going to write these stories, don’t just turn the man question into a man quest with a vagina and skirts. Women don’t think or act like men do and we are not like them. We deserve our own stories.
Exactly. I had the same thought when someone announced they were going to remake Lord of the Flies, but with girls. Like we could just swap out like for like and remake the movie. Um…no? And yes, we deserve our own stories, not just the ones that were told around us.
It would be a very different story. Everyone would be fed and cared for and we'd still have time to braid our hair. When the ship showed up to "save" us we'd tell them to stop disturbing our peace.
I have been collecting notes on women, espionage, textile-making and needlework in different eras and cultures.
Fuck Yes! I will write the stories!
Just bumped into this juicy reading list. Enjoy!
https://substack.com/@mariannaportela/note/c-300938840?r=a1gz1&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I’ve read a lot of those and just put Clytemnestra on my library hold list (after having downloaded I, Medusa this morning). There are a few more I’ve read: Ariadne by Jennifer Saint, which just wasn’t my jam, The Death and Life of Iphigenia by J. Susanne Wilson which was an interesting take on Iphigenia, and esp. her relationship with her mother, and The Song of Achilles, of course.
Amen!
@Dina Honour have you read Madeline Miller’s book Circe? One of my absolute favorites bc it does exactly what you are asking for, gives her a rich inner life, ambitions, and an amazing arc. (Not to mention beautifully written). I have been pining for a movie version of this Circe since the first time I read it. Now after multiple reads and all the Odyssey buzz, I am demanding it!
I adore that book, and it’s what I was thinking of when I was writing this. The characters are there, waiting. Also, I looked it up because, like you, I can’t believe it hasn’t been made into a movie and apparently it was optioned for a Netflix series…but in 2018? I don’t know if it’s in progress or stalled or what. And, if you haven’t read Song of Achilles by Miller—it’s even better (even though it’s a dude ;-) )
Great minds think alike 🤪. Yes I have! Loved it too, multiple reads. Even though it’s a dude, he is a sensitive lovely soul, so much more than meets the eye. I am jonesing for Miller to write something else please!!
Right? Like what is taking you so long, Madeline???
I would watch the hell out of this. Movie snacking on pork crackling.
Actually did some digging myself after your comment just now. First off, she suffers from long covid so her writing is tortuously (for her and us) slow. Secondly, she is in the process of writing Persephone yay! Just might be awhile due to the health issues. She does have a short story Galatea which I need to get but won’t fully satisfy me hahaha. Third, imdb has a listing for the series but no real content. The interweb says HBO Max is developing it for an 8 episode series but it was supposed to be out in 2021. Can’t find any further info on my quick dive into it. Does anyone know someone at HBO we can harass?
I LOVE Miller's take on Circe. In fact, now that you both have planted that seed in my brain, I think I will begin a third (or is it fourth) reread. Thanks for that!
I need to reread it myself. Can also recommend Natasha Pulley’s The Hymn to Dionysus. She’s a new author for me, and I was sucked right in.
Also Song of Achilles was also optioned but the rights lapsed, but she is hoping that will get revived.
Great piece ,Dina! Two stories come to mind that are fabulously powerful: The story of Inanna’s descent and return. Inanna was the most elevated and written about deity of Mesopotamia. Also, the story of the Egyptian deity, Isis ,as she searches for her murdered husband Osiris. Boudica of the British tribes is another great one. I think so much of our modern problem is monotheistic culture that always centers and elevates male divinity and male heroism. The inherent sexism in modern culture is a major problem, where girls are still brought up reading and watching stories about men, while boys are taught that stories about women aren’t interesting. It’s still like this, unfortunately.
I think I must have been typing out the Inanna story in another comment when you left this comment :-). Interesting that all of those examples, and other someone mentioned from Japan, come from non-”western” cultures, isn’t it? I hesitated to include Inanna because she’s a goddess, but yes, there are, of course, stories that center women. I wish there were more. There are more now, actually. But I wish that men reached for them in the same way that I reach for The Odyssey when I’m looking for references. A woman can dream.
I hear you, Dina! This is why this growing Substack community of feminist writers is so important to me. I feel surrounded by women who have stories to tell that inspire me and who have their own amazing journeys. We’re centering ourselves and our stories. I’m loving that.
Yeah, when get one of three jobs in mythology: wife, mother, or monster.
Ha! I have 4: wife, mother, witch, or bitch.
I think I am only one — a bitch witch.
I loved the movie The Old Guard because the lead character was Andromache.
Have you ever read Natasha Pulley? Her most recent book is The Hymn to Dionysus, and it’s a queer love story between Dionysus and the soldier Phaidros. It’s super smart and witty and, did I say smart? Anyway, Andromache is mentioned a few times in a role I’ve never seen ascribed to her. It was kind of a jolt, in the best way.
I'll have to check that one out. Thanks for the recommendation! A friend (Dr. Jeana Jorgensen) is a professor in Indiana and her PhD is in Folklore. Whenever I have an obscure mythology question, I always ask her for information. She's also an author and her Folklore 101 book is excellent.
And thank you for the recommendation!
Dina, I used to think I missed something by not having an education in the classics. I was spared in a way. Have you read The Heroine's Journey? Maureen shows how the psychic development of women matures quite differently than a psyche desperate for conquest. As you know, we are relational (not only), care about connection, yet too often our focus has been survival. Natalie Haynes is a fantastic writer — Stone Blind etc. Well done.
That’s an interesting thought, Prajna, the idea that lacking a “classical” education, which is itself very male, means that something is missing. And again, was just talking about The Heroine’s Journey on another comment!
The Heroine's Journey is such an excellent book. I love that she turns Joseph Campbell's assumptions just a little and reveals a whole other way of looking at stories.
Yea Jamie. I haven’t read it in a while, but I do remember her insights directly from lived experience.
I wrote an article once on seventy two things that were invented by women. Women who were out there in the world with careers and achievements alongside of men. And some guy commented to say wow, they must have been genetic aberrations because women weren't really known for making history. I said no, not true. Men were not known for documenting women's history. He was gobsmacked. I was not. Well written, Dina. :)
I will never not be astounded by folks thinking that in every period of history there was only one woman who did the science-ing, or the math-ing or the (fill in the blank). It’s such lazy thinking to assume that just because women couldn’t easily do things on paper that women were not doing those things—and we have clear evidence of some of them—and that there was only one per century. It’s such a weird way to look at it to me.
I think that our suffering and death in pregnancy and childbirth stood like the judgement of the very gods against our equal human worth to men, who after all are the agents of our reproductive suffering and death.
The endless male valorization of death, of their own deaths and the deaths of other men at their hands is several things.
It is meant to make us take them seriously, because as an old infantry general told me, otherwise women would have no reason to. (An unusually honest man.)
It is an externalization of absolutely justified grief and guilt and shame. Because no matter how the woman wants that man and that specific sex and the child she may create and to whom she will give life—no matter how dearly she longs to meet that child—she will still suffer in pregnancy and die in childbirth. These are terrible deaths: in any other context, except perhaps direct murders of women by men, we would call them torture killings. And because ejaculation and impregnation are entirely and solely male acts, the responsibility is entirely and solely male.
Finally, they are intimidation, because long before capitalism, women were the first slaves and also the means of production because we can create additional human beings, as well as work with our minds and our hands. Men can never do that. But it means all men materially and psychologically benefit from our subjugation, whether they want to or not—and most do. Men have chosen to define their manhood as the subjugation, rather than the support, of women. Though they themselves are half-women and no woman is half-man.
This is really the first draft of my extended thoughts about this, although I touched on them in my 2006 book, Women in the Line of Fire.
It also seems to me, women rarely take male sexual and reproductive malice seriously enough.
This comment made me immeasurably sad, because of the sheer amount of truth contained within it.
Thank you. It took me a long time to be able to write it. I really wish it to be not so.
I can’t bring myself to see this movie. I don’t want to. But I am inspired to find and read Madeline Miller’s book Circe.
It is such a great book. And her earlier one, Song of Achilles, is even better. So, so good. I’ve a few more I’ve read if you like a good mythology retelling!
I do! Feel free to recommend!
This is why I freaked out when first reading Wide Sargasso Sea. Not only was Bertha, the character i was most curious about in Jane Eyre was given a voice now but I'd just realised that almost all of the stories I loved growing up were about boys and men. It was confusing for sure.
I loved this piece! Mostly because you show how it's not as black and white as misogyny. Your call to action for more female stories has my imagination buzzing! Thank you
A buzzing imagination can only ever be a good thing. Unless it buzzes you awake at 3 am…
So much of this stuff is baked into how we do things. It’s not necessarily nefarious (though sometimes it absolutely is). But just because it’s not intentional doesn’t mean it’s not harmful. It’s not the we can’t or shouldn’t enjoy The Odyssey (or any other story) as a woman, it’s the women have had 2,000 years of learning how to enjoy stories that center men and the reverse has never been true.
OK, love the Princess Bride reference, and love this piece, and love you.
OMG, I’m so glad someone got the Princess Bride reference! Thank you!!
Yezterday I gave a talk about Marie Catherine d'Alnoy. Haven't heard of her? Well, you're not alone but she coined the word, fairy tales and gave us our firat prince charming. She wrote about worlds outside time and place -ou-tropias. These places were ruled by fairies, magical women with enormous powers. But these worlds were also inclusive. Men and women were equals. Wiith wit, insight and foresight she was writing about the world she wanted this world to be. She started the fairy tale craze in 17th century Paris. The craze that Charles Perrault would pick up on. Don't know his name either? Bo matter. You know his work Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Bluebeard. These stories became famous while L'ile de la felicite and the White Cat, disappeared into obscurity. My talk was titled Fairy Tales and Feminism. Women have stories and they are every bit as exciting and interesting as those told by men. But we have been taught to liaten to men's voices. To give them space and wait our turn. But when it's our turn to talk, the audience has been distracted by some new voice that's louder, more excited to talk. The books you want to read are out there. You just have to look for them.
That’s exactly it. But there is also the feeling of sorrow that we have to search for them, to seek them out, when they should be on the shelf next to the others. Thank you for the mini-lesson, I had no idea about Marie Catherine. She’s going on my list now.
Along these lines, I'm a huge fan of fantasy action-adventure/role-playing games, and when given the option to customize my character, I almost always choose to make her a woman. (One of my favorites has been Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, which, as the name implies, draws heavily on Greek mythology.)
Do you play on a server with others? I’m just wondering if you find that your avatar/you is treated differently or if the interactions are different because it’s a female, or if, in some corners of the gaming world, something like equity reigns.
On the extremely rare occasion when I did used to join in multi-player sessions, misogyny was rampant, a fact which played no small part in my immense distaste for such sessions.
I will say that when I played a female character in actual "tabletop" sessions, my character was treated as equitably as any male character I played.
I wish we were closer.... I love your brain and would spend hours picking at it for juicy bits of your inner life over margaritas and French fries.... BTW, have you read Margaret Atwood's "Penelopliad" It is the story told by her in a number of genres. Worth your time, reader extraordinaire.
I have read it, it’s brilliant. But I will take any other mythological retellings you’ve got to recommend. (Also, how did you know that french fries are my weakness???)
Kindred spirits
You go! Love it… though, I’m reminded of the women of the court of the Fujiwara period in Japan who developed the foundations of the modern written language in Japan then in the Heian period, the 11th century made space for Murasaki Shikibu to write the first novel, the epic Tale of Genji. She was pretty bad ass in the very insider games you describe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murasaki_Shikibu. In this popular culture surrounded by The Odyssey, it’s a reminder of other worlds swirling in the miasma of ancient popular culture.
When I was looking up some stuff, I came across the epic “Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld”, which is about 4,000 years old. I knew of Inanna (and that’s actually another great story about female story tellers), but not this epic. So yes, especially outside the “western” cannon, there were epics and stories with female heroes, but not many. Which is another aspect of all of this—of course there were women doing this all along, it’s ridiculous to think there weren’t. So why don’t we know more of them? (That was mostly rhetorical ;-). )
I couldn't wait to see how the movie The Odyssey portrayed the sirens. Imagine what they could have done with them. Instead they were just mentioned in passing. So disappointing.
Another back story just waiting to be told. I long for a little bit of originality and imagination rather than the same story told over and over again, you know?