The Mother With a Thousand Faces : Motherhood in Three Feminist Retellings of Homer
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Despite women being frequently portrayed and widely discussed in the Greek myth, it is done so almost exclusively through the lens of men, with Homer serving merely as one example among many. Myths about women are not necessarily women’s myths: without the necessary literary evidence preserved form the ancient times it cannot be asserted whether women participated in the process of mythmaking, and if so, to which extent. With the evidence at hand, the logical conclusion is that myths included and recorded women, but they did not preserve the experience of women directly narrated through their own storytelling. Their presence in the mythological narratives, while lacking agency, serves as a demonstration of the view of the roles of women, including motherhood, in the patriarchal Ancient Greek society. If nothing else, while men were engaging in great feats and fighting the most crucial battles of their times, women were bearing children through whom the legacy of their fathers would live on. Many women authors engaged with the portrayal of women in the Greek myths, shedding light on their experiences and changing the framing of the narrative by writing it from their point of view. They explore multiple facets of womanhood, motherhood included. This paper focuses on the notion of motherhood in three selected contemporary feminist retellings of Homer – Circe by Madelline Miller, The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad – mainly on the wide range of perspectives which their female characters have on this particular aspect of their lives. Both the toxic and the nurturing aspect of motherhood is being used by the authors in order to paint a much more complex picture of their female characters, as well as serving as a critique of the social expectations of women still prevalent today. |
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