Medusa's Many Daughters

Visited the Art Gallery of Ontario and, during the tour, heard a brief talk on Ruben’s painting of the head of Medusa. The gallery guide gave a brief account of the legend, explained that the painting was commissioned to shock, suggested improbably that it might have been a barbed reference to Protestantism, and, painfully, explained that Medusa was a “strong woman.”

She added a question for the audience: “What always happened to strong women in Victorian novels?” And she answered it: “they get killed.”

I am not up on Victorian novels. Perhaps this is true. Perhaps it is somehow relevant to Greek myth. But this was eagerly picked up by one of the listeners. She declared that she would use Medusa as a model for her daughters, because she wanted them to grow up to be proper feminists.

Another striking example of how our society is mad. Taking the story as told by Ovid, in what way was Medusa a “strong woman”? In what way was she a model for anyone? 

Athena

To recap the tale, she was “violated” as a young woman by Poseidon in the Temple of Athena. As revenge for this desecration, Athena turned her hair into serpents, so that her very gaze turned any living thing into stone. She spent her life in lonely semi-darkness at the edge of the world, alone, no one daring, obviously, to approach. Until Perseus came and beheaded her. The world’s poisonous snakes were generated from her blood as it dripped.

She is a monster in the legend, not a heroine. It is like advocating Frankenstein’s monster as a role model for your sons.

And a “strong woman”? Her gaze killed things; but in all of this, she appears to have been powerless, the victim of Athena. She cannot have desired this; it made her life hell. Her one voluntary act seems to have been to have sex with Poseidon. In Ovid, it might have been a rape; but this does not account for Athena’s punishment, as Athena tends to be a figure of strict justice. Other accounts, such as Hesiod’s or that of Apollodorus, make the sex voluntary on her part. So that, and only that, was her “strength.”

If you want a model of a strong woman for your daughters, why Medusa and not Athena? 

Lilith

But this seems consistent: feminists likewise venerate Lilith, a similar figure in Jewish legend. Lilith is the mother of all demons; she kills infants in the cradle. So that makes her a “strong woman.” Why not Esther, if you want a Biblical figure? Why not Joan of Arc? Why not Catherine of Siena? Why not Boadicea? Yet such genuinely strong women get no following among feminists. They want Lilith and Medusa.

It seems plain that “strength” is not the real issue. This is a euphemism. What feminists really admire is being boldly immoral, violating moral norms. Medusa or Lilith are attractive because they are killers. And no virgins need apply. This, indeed, was the original meaning of the term “liberated woman”—for “liberated,” read “licentious.”

“Feminism” is just a cover for vice.