Medusa, scourge of myth, tells her side of the story
Anyone who has been on Tiktok lately — or anyone who shares a house with a Tiktoking teen — knows that Medusa tattoos are all the rage. More broadly, the infamous mythological figure, once a symbol of female monstrousness and best known for her snake hair and lithifying gaze, has lately undergone a rebranding as a scorned woman come survivor of sexual assault.
According to the new narrative, not only was Medusa raped as a maiden by Poseidon in Athena’s temple, but she suffered the further injustice of being blamed for her own attack, and by another woman no less. Or, at least, it was Athena, the goddess of war, who, in retaliation for the perceived desecration of her temple, replaced Medusa’s hair and eyes, rendering the once gorgeous Gorgon hideous, deadly and effectively blind.
The publishing and film worlds have been slow to catch up. As recently as the aughts, when Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series exploded onto the middlegrade market, the Gorgon was still coming in for wicked witch/ evil succubus treatment. ( In the 2010 movie version, Uma Thurman plays Medusa as a lipsticked and latexed quasi-Bond Girl, from whom the floppy- haired, A. D. H. D.- afflicted Percy — clearly inspired by Perseus, who, legend has it, decapitated Medusa — barely escapes with his life.)
Fast- forward seven years to the # Metoo movement, then another half decade to the classicist- turned-novelist Natalie Haynes’s “Stone Blind.” A retelling of the Medusa legend and its associated story lines, the novel substitutes actionadventure for feminist tragedy, a point made clear in the opening pages. “This particular monster is assaulted, abused and vilified. And yet, as the story is always told, she is the one you should fear,” Haynes announces in her fierce yet conversational style. “We’ll see about that.”
As she did in “A Thousand Ships,” a retelling of the Trojan War through the voices of women caught in its path, Haynes covers a lot of ground ( and sea) in a compressed time frame. Everyone and his uncle in the ancient Greek mythological pantheon seems to get a shout- out. This includes a lineup of male deities and mortals alike who make Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby seem like Mister Rogers.
The novel begins with the king of all gods, Zeus, casually raping his ex- wife Metis before swallowing her whole inside a thunderbolt — and his long- suffering current wife, Hera, lamenting, “There were days when she believed he could scarcely rise from his bed without seducing or raping someone.”
Still, Zeus is no match for his marine- based brother on the awful front. An insecure narcissist, Poseidon is as rapey as he is petty and self- regarding. ( His frequent carps include the failure of the Greek people to build him a temple quickly enough, and the smaller size of his kingdom relative to Zeus’; think Trump complaining about Biden’s win in the 2020 election.)
Haynes edges uncomfortably close to a Regency bodiceripper in a scene where a“tall, well-muscled” Poseidon attacks Medusa, threatening to unleash death unless she gives in: “He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her to face him. She could feel the pillar pressing against her back and the smell of salt and anger on his face. … She stared at his dark green eyes and loathed him.”
But afterward, when Medusa, traumatized, retreats to the Gorgons’ remote cave on the north coast of Africa, to be cared for by her older sisters, Euryale and Sthenno, there can be no doubt as to what occurred. It is here, among the communal sisterhood of the winged and snake- haired, that Haynes is at her most affecting.
To be fair, some of the goddesses in “Stone Blind” are hardly more sympathetic than the gods, beginning with Athena. There is also the mortal queen of Ethiopia, Cassiope, who, like Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest,” proves so vain and selfish that the Nereids, a group of vengeful sea nymphs, demand a sacrifice in the form of her daughter’s life. But by the time poor Medusa is decapitated by yet another toxic male — the clueless and naïve yet violent and callous Perseus — readers may feel compelled to decry the patriarchy, while crying along with Medusa’s brokenhearted sisters.
Still, the book is not all tears and bloodshed. Haynes also has a delightfully droll sense of humor, which she brings to bear on her deities. Here is Zeus idly musing on the whereabouts of his perpetually jealous wife: “He assumed that Hera was busying herself turning one of his favorite girls into a cow or weasel or whatever.” Then there is Athena, cajoling a mortal to fight alongside the gods in a war against the giants: “If you do die, I’ll put in a word for you to get a constellation. Promise.”
Less winningly, Haynes’s commitment to providing multiple perspectives, spread out over dozens of short chapters, can leave a reader feeling disoriented, if not perplexed. Suffice it to say that “Stone Blind” is, to my knowledge, the first novel ever narrated in part by an olive grove, a crow and, finally, a severed head.
There are also moments when Haynes comes close to stepping out of the novel completely, as in this jeremiad against Perseus: “The idea that Perseus is a hero is one I have taken exception to since — I can’t even tell you how long it is,” she writes, in the voice of the semi- dead Medusa. “He’s arrogant and he’s spoiled. … He is a vicious little thug.” By the book’s end, readers may begin to suspect that its author takes mythology not only seriously but somehow personally.
I admit that fantasy fiction has never been my preferred genre. Yet by the time I finished this otherworldly cri de coeur, I felt both wiser for it and glad that it had been written. I was also riled up enough to wonder if I was too old to get my first tattoo.