“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep”
In 2011 novelist Madeline Miller published The Song of
Achilles, an interesting retelling of Homer’s “The Illiad”. She took the
canonical text of a classic literature and focused on its untold perspective
with a freshness and immediacy. The book chronicled the siege of Troy from
Achilles second-in-command Patroclus, although it was not entirely a story of
Greek Wars. Miller positioned it as a tender love story – between Patroclus and
Achilles – while also consciously and sensitively touching upon the burden of
gendered inequality that constantly overwhelms the women in the tale. The Song
of Achilles was also deeply evocative and tragic in the way it accounts for
Patroclus death, followed by Achilles’ quest for vengeance which brought great
curse upon Troy and especially on Hector, whom he killed and tied his corpse to
chariot and dragged it around the ancient city. The book instantly became an
international best-seller and bestowed Miller with the prestigious Orange Prize
for Fiction. With her equally powerful second-novel Circe (April 2018),
Madeline Miller returns to fecund text of Greek Mythology, this time it is
Homer’s “The Odyssey”.
Circe, the barely sketched goddess and witch, the formidable
hero Odysseus meets (amidst his sprawling journey) whose men she turns into
pigs, is the bewitching heroine of Miller’s novel. Circe is the first-born
daughter of sun god Helios and beautiful Oceanid-nymph Perse. Right from her
birth, Circe is dismissed as unattractive, ungainly girl (her weak mortal voice
offends her mother). As a young girl, Circe walks through her parents’ immortal
halls largely ignored by other Gods. But she is a keen witness to the splendors
and cruelties forged within those gods-filled palaces. Circe closely observes
the vicious punishment of Prometheus under the hands of Olympian god Zeus (for stealing
fire and gifting it to humans). Circe’s early life is one large string of
disappointments and failings, insinuated by men whom she earnestly loves. Her
young brother Aetees, whom she rears from birth, treats her with unfathomable
indifference after growing up. Father Helios comes close to turn her into heap
of ash when she defies his words.
Circe thinks she has eventually caught a break through her
love for humble, mortal fisherman named Glaucos. Desperation drives her to turn
him into a sea-god, but once blessed with immortality and unbridled power,
Glaucos rejects Circe and takes up with an attractive nymph named Scylla.
Driven by pure rage Circe unleashes her outlawed sorcery, for which she is
banished to the island of Aiaia. Freed from the vainglorious life among the
gods, Circe embraces her isolation and develops her unique witchcraft. Unlike
the sweeping narrative arc found in ‘The Song of Achilles’, Circe is more
episodic but profoundly imaginative. Fate pushes Circe in the paths of master
craftsman Daedalus, the bloodthirsty Minotaur, horrifying sea-monster, the witch-princess
Medea, etc. In The Odyssey, Circe turning Odysseus men into pigs is a mere display
of witchery; here it becomes her self-defense mechanism and adds an intriguing
layer to their first encounter. With Odysseus’ arrival on Aiaia the tale
seamlessly follows an arc, the struggles and evasions of the characters not
only reads like a page-turner, but also imparts the narrative that fine coating
of lived-in experience.
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| Madeline Miller |
Although a tale of fantasy where the sun-rise is described
as Helios driving his golden chariot, Miller’s novel largely resonates because
it tackles the emotionality of a tenacious woman who won’t be silenced. What I
felt as the novel’s achievement is the way it takes on familiar mythological
figures and their familiar character nature to wrought a thoroughly satisfying
fantasy novel. Not only Circe, from Helios, Hermes, Odysseus to Telemachus and
Jason, all these brave heroes' emotional and mental state are laid-bare with
sharp retrospective view-point. These constantly emerging character insights
embroider the narrative with powerful sheen. The re-imagination of Greek myth
is also stronger in Circe compared to The Song of Achilles, the result of
Miller trying to peel away the layers of gendered inequalities and
two-dimensional portrayal of flattering godliness. The prose at some occasions
feels archaic and too stiff, plus the plotting in second-half of novel is too
neat. However, these are minor flaws in a book that seamlessly sews together
the themes of woman empowerment, freedom, emasculation, forbearance, motherhood,
guilt, and rebellion. Altogether, Circe cleverly subverts the strict ‘culture-bound’,
male gaze of legends and myths.
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