13 - Women and Greek Myth

Summary

What I want is a mythology so huge

That settling on its grassy bank

(Which may at first seem ordinary)

You catch sight of the frog, the stone,

The dead minnow jewelled with flies,

And remember all at once

The things you had forgotten to imagine.

Rebecca Elson

The question of how to characterise the relation of women and myth is primarily one of definition. For just as myth is widely acknowledged to be a problematic category that signifies quite differently at various historical moments, so too the designation of woman has no clear definition outside of specific cultural formations. There is an aspect of the combination of women and myth that complicates the issue still further: are we concerned here with myths in which women are regarded as the main protagonists or myths that have been creatively interpreted by or for women? Although both have continuously provided a resource with which writers and artists have explored the relations between the sexes, either within the landscape of myth itself, or in relation to the particular social and historical contexts of its various instantiations, the latter category has become particularly associated with the feminist interpretation of myth and thus with its explicit positioning as either liberating or oppressive for women. This essay will explore some of the tensions surrounding the description of stories about women as being either ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ women and the ideological entailments of such descriptions.