The Odyssey Reading Diary Part A

Circe from the Odyssey

I love Greek Mythology so this week I read the Odyssey by Homer. One of my favorite parts of this story is the section on Circe. I have two ways of looking at this section. The first being that this is an example of a woman in Greek Mythology causing chaos and death for men, after all in the Illiad it was a woman that caused the war of Troy, and here it appears that this is another case of Women getting a bad rep in the Greek mythology. Still when I read this story I can’t help but think of Circe as an heroic woman of sorts. The men first see her and call out to her in hopes of finding refuge. They don’t look at her as a danger and they are more than happy to feast and get drunk. I love the character of Circe in this book because she turns men to pigs. By today’s standards this is would be how we would look at men that acted in the way most male figures did in the stories in Greek mythology. So I am able to view her as an empowered woman of sorts. The relationship she shares with Odysseus works to add to this view of empowerment. Though she does sleep with him and frees his men it is only after Odysseus proves he is worthy of her love that she gives into his wishes. So she in a way forces him to pass, albeit small, a set of heroic trials. The relationship does have a sad ending for Circe, but I feel that has more to do with Homer’s view on women than a character flaw that exists in Circe. So I tend to look at Circe over all as an empowered heroic woman in a male dominated Mythology.



The Odyssey







Bibliography
The Story of Circe from The Odyssey by Homer, translated into English by Tony Kline

Picture Attribution
By Wright Barker (British Painter, 1864-1941) (Wright Barker, 1889) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons