Looks like I have covered this subject before - whoops! Still, a good post in a villains theme.
Circe is a Greek goddess, the daughter of Sun god Helios and sea nymph Perse. She is the aunt of Medea, sister of Minos’s wife Pasiphae, who was the mother of the Minotaur. Quite an impressive family line up!
She lived on the island of Aeaea, where she turned men who visited into various animals, including pigs. This included the crew of Odysseus, but not Odysseus himself, who was warned and received a herb called moly from the god Hermes, which he put in his mouth to protect himself. After that, he demanded she change his men back before he would sleep with her. She agreed and they all stayed on her island for a year.
When they were about to leave, she gave them advice. The only way to get where they needed to go was to travel between monsters Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla was on a rock and had six heads, which could lean down and snatch men off their ship. Charybdis was a whirlpool which would simply suck the entire ship down. She recommended they go closer to Scylla. When Odysseus protested, she told him he was an idiot. Better, in her opinion, to lose six crewmen than all of them.
Ironic, really, since, according to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, she was the one who had turned Scylla from a beautiful girl to a monster!
Madeline Miller’s wonderful novel Circe shows her in a more sympathetic light. It is absolutely accurate according to Greek mythology, but still lets the reader see the story from her viewpoint. She is, in this novel, the only decent family member. Yes, she does turn Scylla, who has taken Circe’s boyfriend Glaucus, though Circe is actually regretting having changed him from human to god.
But she starts turning sailors into animals after the first crew she welcomed raped her. Her family are a bunch of crazies. She falls in love with Hermes and Odysseus, but they turn out not to be what she thought them.
I’ve reviewed it here.
https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2018/05/just-finished-reading-circe-by.html
I love this novel too. On her website, Madeline Miller writes that HBO Max is planning to turn "Circe" into a mini-series. But that announcement dates from 2019 and so far, it hasn't materialized.
ReplyDeleteBeing a Greek God is like being born into a family of nobility. You get all the press and well talked about life. But the living is not so excitng and the tragedy oh so real.
ReplyDeleteAt least Circe is most practical with her advice.
I liked how she was portrayed in the book.
ReplyDeleteRonel visiting for C: My Languishing TBR: C
Unsettling Changelings