Once upon a time, somebody remarked of three previous ladies that that they had a single eye and a single tooth between them. The jibe grew to become a inventory joke after which a legend, and the Graeae took their place within the pantheon of Greek mythology. And now alongside comes Natalie Haynes to write down a knockabout Beckettian riff on the theme. In her darkly comedian retelling of the entwined tales of Medusa, Perseus and Andromeda, Perseus steals the shared tooth and eye and throws them into the ocean. Haynes’s narrator steps ahead to jeer at any reader on his facet. “I suppose you thought it was intelligent. Intelligent Perseus utilizing his wits to defeat the disgusting previous ladies?” On this model of the traditional tales, the hero is as thick as two planks, the maiden tied to a rock is useless and self-centred, and the monster is piteously misunderstood.
Medusa, the Gorgon, is the misogynist’s nightmare. To have a look at her is to be turned to stone. Freud thought her face, framed by the reside snakes she has rather than hair, stood for the mom’s genitals, a glimpse of which might be sufficient to petrify a boy. Feminine thinkers, led by Hélène Cixous, have reclaimed and celebrated her. Extra lately she has been recognized as an early goal of victim-blaming: it was after Poseidon seduced or raped her in Athena’s temple that the offended goddess reworked her right into a monster.
In Haynes’s telling the Olympian gods are spiteful, foolish and self-centred. Haynes isn't the primary interpreter to see them that approach, however she will be the wittiest. Aphrodite’s vainness, Zeus’s promiscuity, Poseidon’s self-importance – all are sharply mocked. Haynes’s tone is flippant, her vocabulary fashionable and colloquial. The narrator is tart, and so typically are the deities. Hephaestus prepares to smite Zeus over the top with an axe so as to help Athene’s parthenogenic beginning. “I’m not utterly sure,” says Hera drily, that “it can make your head damage much less.” These gods actually are wanton boys (and women) and, sure, they do kill mortals for sport.
Monsters, alternatively, might be candy. Medusa is the youngest of three Gorgon sisters. When she is washed up as a child on the seashore the place her elder siblings reside, they obtain her tenderly. She is mortal, and formed as people are aside from her wings (the snaky hair comes later), however the elder Gorgons have scales and a number of tusks and limbs highly effective sufficient to smash rocks. Fearsome as they give the impression of being, although, they're mild. Considered one of them, prodding the tiny woman on her crib of seaweed, retains “her talon curled fastidiously into her palm” in order to not damage the foundling, and shortly – although they discover her smallness “horrifying” and her fragility “disagreeable” – they're milking sheep to feed her and watching in amazement as she retains rising and altering (immortals, after all, are eternally the identical).
The third strand of the story is that of Medusa’s killer, the demi-god Perseus. Haynes has enjoyable describing his conception. (Simply how, precisely, does a mortal lady like Danaë have sexual congress with a bathe of gold?) She writes warmly about Danaë’s saviour, the exiled prince-turned-fisher Dictys – mortals might be beneficiant and forbearing. Perseus, although, is “a vicious little thug”, and, Haynes tells us, “the earlier you grasp that, and cease considering of him as courageous boy hero, the nearer you’ll be to understanding.” To understanding the parable, that's, within the feminist-revisionist type during which she is presenting it right here.
Instructed to deliver residence a Gorgon’s head, Perseus units out on his quest with out pausing to ask who, what or the place a Gorgon may be. He's assisted by Athene and Hermes, and lots of the jokes come from their exasperation along with his irredeemable doltishness.
Haynes speaks in lots of voices. Transient sections admit us to every of the principal characters’ factors of view; others are narrated by a crow, an olive grove and the snakes on Medusa’s head. Her narrative encompasses a conflict between the gods and giants, earthquakes and floods and the passage of aeons of time. Her focus, although, stays sharp and her message clear.
“Who decides what's a monster?” asks Euryale, one of many elder Gorgons.
“I don’t know,” says Medusa. “Males, I suppose.”
Haynes left standup comedy when she realised she most well-liked tragedy. The dichotomy is a false one. Comedy can break your coronary heart, whereas tragedy is intensified by a wise-cracking grave-digger. When Haynes turned to prose fiction in A Thousand Ships and The Youngsters of Jocasta she started by taking part in it disappointingly straight-faced. However with this, her third novel based mostly on historic fantasy, she has discovered a approach of utilizing all her classical erudition and her vivid sense of the ambiguous efficiency of the traditional tales, whereas being concurrently very, very humorous.
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