Sculptors and painters would use the Medusa head as an apotropaic symbol to ward off evil spirits. But her tragic beauty was even more inspiring.
Her head peers out from the center of the mosaic, a protective talisman offset by a shield of concentric circles. By the Renaissance, that mystique gave way to fearsome difference. There were politics at play : Cellini had been asked to use the hero narrative of Perseus, the son of Zeus sent to slay Medusa, as a way of reflecting the power of the Medici family over the Florentine people. Other artists followed suit: in , Caravaggio painted his nightmarish ceremonial shield.
He, too, wanted a piece that would win the admiration of the Medicis; so he depicted Medusa in the moment she was conquered, transferring her mighty power away to the viewer. Fast forward to the French Revolution, and for a while, Medusa became a force for change. Meanwhile, Romantics like Percy Bysshe Shelley moved far beyond other 19th century representations. The poet was so inspired by his visit to the Uffizi that he penned a tribute , undoing the patriarchal framing that had made Medusa a symbol of horror.
The story of a powerful woman raped, demonized, then slain by a patriarchal society? Forgot your password? Get help. Password recovery. Features HERstory.
Share on Facebook. Medusa is often pictured as a monster in art, such as in this piece by Caravaggio. However, this is misrepresentation, as she was a victim and not the monster of her story. Local Mental Health Resources. Calderon: Lamp Post Diner Review. Shinn: Our Pale Blue Dot. Leave a Comment on this Article Cancel reply. A night with Rowan Security March 4, Individual has died near Barnes and Noble December 11, Once the idea has been raised that the Medusa is not a horrid monster, Cixous presents the challenge to women to explore the myth further, casting aside male warnings.
If women would simply open up to one another, thereby shedding light upon the abyss, the fallacy of the myths would be exposed. Upon the realization that the myths are nothing more than a facade, women endow themselves with personal power.
Cixous explains that if women do this, if they dare to "look at the Medusa straight on," female explorations will result in the discovery that the Medusa "is not deadly, she's beautiful and she's laughing. Back to "Medusa's Orgasm" Main Page. Back to Helene Cixous' Research Page. Introduction to the Myths. Why the Myths Were Created. Nora McGreevy. Monsters reveal more about humans than one might think. As figments of the imagination, the alien, creepy-crawly, fanged, winged and otherwise-terrifying creatures that populate myths have long helped societies define cultural boundaries and answer an age-old question: What counts as human, and what counts as monstrous?
In the classical Greek and Roman myths that pervade Western lore today, a perhaps surprising number of these creatures are coded as women. The myths then, to a certain extent, fulfill a male fantasy of conquering and controlling the female. Ancient male authors inscribed their fear of—and desire for—women into tales about monstrous females : In his first-century A.
Both are described as unambiguously female. Medusa struck fear into ancient hearts because she was both deceptively beautiful and hideously ugly; Charybdis terrified Odysseus and his men because she represented a churning pit of bottomless hunger.
In this essay collection, newly published by Beacon Press, she reexamines the monsters of antiquity through a feminist lens. Though fearsome female monsters pop up in cultural traditions worldwide, Zimmerman chose to focus on ancient Greek and Roman antiquity, which have been impressed on American culture for generations.
What if, instead of fearing these ancient monsters, contemporary readers embraced them as heroes in their own right? Scylla—a six-headed, twelve-legged creature with necks that extend to horrible lengths and wolf-like heads that snatch and eat unsuspecting sailors—resides in a clifftop cave.
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