Rewritings of Circe

Rewritings of Circe: Representation, Resistance, and Change in Feminist Revisionism Maria Karlsson English Studies – Literary Option Bachelor 15 Credits Spring Semester 2021 Supervisor: Asko Kauppinen Karlsson Abstract This paper analyses the feminist revisionism of the Circe-myth in the rewritings by Eudora Welty, Margaret Atwood, and Madeline Miller. To that end, the paper first examines three different ways of discussing rewritings: Jeremy M. Rosen’s genre of minor-character elaboration, Linda Hutcheon’s take on postmodern parody, and Alicia Ostriker’s feminist revisionist mythmaking. Then, after positioning itself with the feminist revisionism, the paper conducts a brief reading of the myth as it appears in the Odyssey, followed by readings of the three rewritings: Welty’s short story “Circe,” Atwood’s poetry cycle “Circe/Mud Poems,” and Miller’s novel Circe. Through the reading of these works together, a pattern emerges of criticising former representations, exploring why they are problematic, and resisting them in order to create change. Karlsson Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... i 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 2. Rewriting Myths................................................................................................................... 4 2.1. As a Genre ...................................................................................................................... 4 2.2. As Postmodern Parody .................................................................................................. 7 2.3. As Feminist Revisionism ............................................................................................... 9 3. Rewritings of Circe ............................................................................................................ 12 3.1. The Myth: Homer’s Odyssey ....................................................................................... 12 3.2. (Anot)her Perspective: Welty’s “Circe” .................................................................... 14 3.3. Parodying the Passive Woman: Atwood’s “Circe/Mud Poems” ............................. 18 3.4. Resistance and Change: Miller’s Circe ...................................................................... 23 4. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 29 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................ 30 Karlsson 1 1. Introduction Circe has been an image of a powerful mythic woman since before she was pinned down in writing in Homer’s Odyssey. She is perhaps known foremost for her ability to transform men into pigs, utterly changing their bodies while their consciousness remains the same. Odysseus lands on her island of Aiaia with his men, and after he overcomes the challenge she poses to his quest, Circe invites them all to remain on her island for a year. During this year, she becomes Odysseus’ lover and offers him and his crew her hospitality, allowing them to live in plenitude and to recuperate before they continue their journey home to Ithaca. Although Circe is commonly identified with her powers of transformation, she has gone through many transformations of her own since her first appearance in the Odyssey — which is the focus of Judith Yarnall’s Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress. Yarnall explains, for example, how Christian allegory stripped the Homeric image of Circe of its positive sides, turning her into a symbol for the “Christian doctrines concerning the nature of women and sexuality,” painting her more like “a kind of Eve raised to a higher power, a demonic figure personifying the linkage between the feminine, the natural, and the deadly” (79). Later, during the Renaissance, Circe emerged as a “stereotype of the seductive, dangerous, controlling woman”, and as such became a popular “dark muse for many European poets” such as Milton and Calderón (Yarnall 99). The image of Circe, Yarnall argues over the course of her book, only became misogynistic well after Homer’s Odyssey because it was “consistently and grossly misread for centuries”, something that can only be explained through “persistent, pervasive, and unacknowledged biases” (195) against women. Madeline Miller claims in an interview that “[i]n the Odyssey, Circe is very clearly the incarnation of male anxiety about female power—the fear is that if women have power, men are getting turned to pigs” (Wiener), and as we learn from Yarnall, the picture did not Karlsson 2 get prettier with time. Circe has thus been a prevailing symbol of female power and, moreover, male fear of female power. With Eudora Welty, the myth of Circe is for the first time told from the goddess’ perspective. In the short story “Circe,” first published in the collection Bride of the Innisfallen (1955), Welty retells Circe’s part of the story, from the point of Odysseus’ arrival to his departure, and offers insight into Circe’s own thoughts and feelings regarding the events that transpire on Aiaia. Margaret Atwood similarly captures the story of Circe from the goddess’ point of view in her poetry cycle “Circe/Mud Poems,” which first appeared in her poetry collection You Are Happy (1974). Atwood’s poems, in their postmodern nature, are a blend of commentary and criticism on many issues, one of which being the portrayal of women in myth. Both these writers adopt Circe’s consciousness and viewpoint and offer a female version of the myth. So, too, does Madeline Miller in her novel Circe (2018). However, the format of the novel, as compared to the short story and the poetry cycle, allows Miller to do more than retell the episode on Aiaia from Circe’s perspective. What Miller creates is something of a bildungsroman, or the goddess’ own fictional autobiography, where we follow Circe from her birth at the court of Helios to well beyond Odysseus’ departure from Circe’s island. The rewritings of Circe by Welty, Atwood, and Miller have previously been explored separately, with the notable exception of Yarnall who examines Welty’s “Circe” and Atwood’s “Circe/Mud Poems” together. Separately, Welty’s short story has foremost been explored for its theme of what makes humans different from gods, and Circe’s inability to understand and relate to the mortal men who arrive on her island. Atwood’s poetry cycle has received a more varied response, for which the interpretative nature of poetry as well as the postmodern mix of images and references are no doubt responsible. The work on “Circe/Mud Poems” covers, for example, the island as a postmodern setting and symbol for both the myth Karlsson 3 and Canada’s colonial condition, anxieties about the future, and feminism and gender arrangements. Miller’s Circe, quite recent as it is, has not received as much attention. It has however been explored through the lens of the chronotope, and as a subversion of the male narrative. What has not been done, however, is a comparative reading of the three works as rewritings of the Circe-myth, which is the topic this paper will concern itself with. To that end, it will first give an overview of three prominent ways of discussing rewritings: as a genre, as postmodern parody, and as feminist revisionism. For rewriting as a genre, the paper will turn to Jeremy M. Rosen’s discussion of minor-character elaborations; for postmodern parody, it will consider Linda Hutcheon’s The Politics of Postmodernism; and where feminist revisionism is concerned, it will turn to Alicia Ostriker’s discussion on revisionist mythmaking by women writers. Despite shedding light on the dangers of doing so, this paper will then position itself quite close to feminist revisionism, insisting that while it is difficult— if not impossible—to speak of a female self and a collective female experience, to retell old stories and myth from a female perspective still does important work. The paper will then provide a reading of the works by Welty, Atwood, and Miller, aiming to explore their respective portrayals of Circe. It will examine how these portrayals question and critique past representations of the goddess—and by extension some of the common stereotypes of women found in myth—as well as if they appear to offer a solution on how to break with these stereotypes. Karlsson 4 2. Rewriting Myths Rewriting, straight-forward as though it may seem, is not always discussed in the same way, and this chapter will therefore examine three prominent ways of discussing rewritings, highlighting some of their similarities as well as conflicting viewpoints. 2.1. As a Genre According to Jeremy M. Rosen, rewriting is a genre, and a flourishing one at that. In his paper “Minor Characters Have Their Day: The Imaginary and Actual Politics of a Contemporary Genre,” Rosen examines at length what he calls minor-character elaboration: “a genre constituted by the conversion of minor characters from canonical works into protagonists” (139). This genre, Rosen argues, is often expressed in the terms of “giving voice to the silenced,” a choice of words which implies that “[s]omeone . has been granted agency, autonomy, the freedom to speak” (141). Rosen is, however, highly critical of this celebratory status often given to individual works belonging

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