Circe - In case you haven't heard enough!

The first mention of Circe or her home is through the image of smoke rising from her house. Smoke is definitely something visual but not necessary tangible it is not something that can be controlled by man’s touch or force. This is a very telling first sign for Circe and the episode to come. She has the same alluring but slippery quality of smoke. And also smoke implies fire and thus cooking, a typically domestic chore associated with women. And what I find most interesting about Circe is that although she does fit this gender expectation of cooking for men what she cooks and feeds to the soldiers (barley, cheese and wine) also includes a potion that turns them into pigs. She is a strong female character because here she is subverting the stereotype of providing for men because she is a woman instead she is using the men to provide herself with livestock. Also there is another subversion of this idea of the female providing for the male when she not only ‘feeds’ them as human males but also as male pigs with barley, ilex and cornel buds. I find this humorous and ironic. She is mocking this expectation in my opinion.

Circe is physically described as having glorious hair and a sweet singing voice. These are physical attributes that are praised in women by men but she uses them to her advantage (luring the men into her home to transform them into animals) against these same men. Again she uses stereotypes and expectations of men for women ultimately against them to aid their downfall.

Another female expectation that is ascribed to Circe is that she is weaving at the time when the men come to her house. “...she went up and down a great design on a loom, immortal / such as goddesses have, delicate and lovely and glorious their work...” This takes away her individuality as a person and as women since it is something that all women and goddesses are expected to do and the quality of all the weaving of immortals is described in the same terms. It is expected that she weave and that is will be delicate and feminine.

I found the ‘showdown’ between Circe and Odysseus to be very problematic in a feminist reading of the text. Circe at first uses her potion against him but it is her ‘long wand’ that is the tool for final domination. In my opinion this is an undeniable subverting the stereotype that women are more emotional phallic image.

Odysseus then counteracts with his own phallic symbol, ‘drawing from beside my thigh the sharp sword.’ This confrontation becomes nothing more than a, for lack of a less crude phrase, a competition of whose is bigger. The only way Circe can dominate a man and have power over him if she has a phallic tool just as they do. Odysseus does win the ‘competition’ however but Circe does show her great intelligence by discerning that his identity instead of waiting for him to give her this information. But I did also find Hermes’ recounting of what would happen next in this confrontation problematic. Hermes tells Odysseus, “...she will be afraid, and invite you to go to bed with her.” I interpreted this line to literally be saying she will save herself by offering her body. Why does she have to sacrifice her body and sexuality to a man in order to save herself?

Another thing I found interesting about his book and the Circe episode is that men are often lamenting and weeping in great emotion. Excessive displays of emotion is a stereotype traditionally applied to women but this also is subverting with the character of Circe. The men are often weeping around her and she eventually ‘calls them out’ for this by telling yes she already knows all the pain they have suffered but they can’t move on unless they suck it up. As Circe’s states it, “I too / know all the pains you have suffered on the sea where the fish swarm, / and all the damage done you on the dry land by hostile / men. But come now, eat your food and drink your wine, until / you gather back again into your chests the kind of spirit / you had in you when first you left the land of your father / on rugged Ithaka.”

Though I found some aspects of the Circe episode problematic I thought she ultimately was portrayed as a strong female character for all the of the stereotype subversions she employs.

-- Marian