My obsession with mythology started in the same way as most myth enthusiasts my age: I picked up a copy of Percy Jackson and never looked back. I was about eight years old and the first Percy Jackson movie had just been released in theatres. As a self-proclaimed bookworm, what kind of well-read person would I be if I didn’t read every book that had a film adaptation to go with it? From there, I dove into the wonderful world of Hellenic gods. However, there was one thing that a lot of the stories lacked: good female figures.
I didn’t start thinking about this until a few months ago when I started to read historical and myth-based fiction again. Growing up, I had always searched for figures in Greek mythology to look up to; powerful and independent women that knew what they were doing. For the longest time, I gravitated toward Athena who, in my eyes, was one of the most intelligent and confident women there was in Greek mythology. But even she did some really messed up stuff — Arachne and Medusa can attest to this.
The portrayal of women in most Greek myths shows them as devious, manipulative, and deceitful beings. They credit the source of all pain and evil in the world to a woman who simply opened a box. There was also Hera, the goddess of women, who ironically did terrible things to any woman who was unfortunate enough to come into contact with her husband, Zeus. While there is the occasional good female character such as Psyche, whose only downfall was looking at her mystery husband’s face, a greater portion of Greek mythology portrays women and female characters in a bad light.
We can’t really blame the ancient Greeks for this villainization since this is technically a reflection of what life was like back then and how their society viewed women. Also, it’s important to note that while most myths were originally spoken-word, most of the records we have of ancient Greek myths are all written down by men. You can’t really avoid shades of misogyny when it’s coming from a man who lived in a deeply patriarchal time. In some instances, the word “woman” was even used as an insult to call someone weak, as in Aeschylus' play Agamemnon. Nonetheless, I’ve learned to take this infamy with a grain of salt. When a woman is shown doing something like turning a man into a deer after disrespecting her, is she really the menace the author meant to call her, or is she a strong and independent character?
I like to think that the way women are portrayed in ancient myths shows how far we have come in regards to equality. Granted, we still have a lot to do in order to have real equality, but it’s still interesting to compare the then and now. If a man wrote every woman as a jealous, evil, and manipulative character today, he would get eaten up by critics and readers and probably lose a lot of opportunities, whereas he would have been praised thousands of years ago. It’s important to view the ancient portrayals not simply as demonizations but also as a reminder of how much the Western view of women has changed for the better.
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