{"id":365,"date":"2017-10-18T15:40:47","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T21:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.kellyerin.com\/?p=54"},"modified":"2017-10-18T15:40:47","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T21:40:47","slug":"medusa-as-a-symbol-for-womens-empowerment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/student-posts\/medusa-as-a-symbol-for-womens-empowerment\/","title":{"rendered":"Medusa as a symbol for women\u2019s empowerment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife<\/em> has got me thinking about historic women, particularly Medusa. I heard somewhere (that is not a very reliable source I know) that the story of Medusa is actually a story ancient Greek women would look to for empowerment.<\/p>\n

In the original tale, Poseidon raped the fair and beautiful maiden Medusa in Athena’s temple. Athena in anger made Medusa so hideous she turned anyone who looked upon her to stone.<\/p>\n

In a slight perspective shift of that story, Poseidon raped Medusa in Athena’s temple and Athena, in anger against Zeus and men in general, made Medusa powerful enough to slay any man who would look on her (in lust or otherwise) ever again. Medusa was blessed, not wrongfully cursed because of something that wasn’t her fault.<\/p>\n

Now I couldn’t find any sources that say this is what ancient Greek women actually believed, it seems this change in perspective is more of a modern feminist convention, but even then I still think it’s powerful.<\/p>\n

Although Duffy doesn’t get into this particular interpretation, many of her poems in\u00a0The World’s Wife<\/em> seem to have a very feminist point of view. None of the women she writes about are weak, and they all are forgers of their own path, empowered and making their own decisions. They have lives and thoughts outside of the men in their lives.<\/p>\n

It makes me wonder a lot about the sisterhoods back then. There must have been some feeling of sisterhood among the ancient Greek women. They must have passed around stories. I want to know what they were.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Image: Medusa’s Grief by j-am on DeviantArt. Can be found here:\u00a0https:\/\/j-am.deviantart.com\/art\/Medusa-s-Grief-373392815<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife has got me thinking about historic women, particularly Medusa. I heard somewhere (that is not a very reliable source I know) that the story of Medusa is actually a story ancient Greek women would look to for empowerment. In the original tale, Poseidon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9aQyB-5T","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1130,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/1130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}