Part four

Myths and the power of stories

“We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or to hate, to see or to be blind” …. “Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do, and we do it without questioning. The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them, and then to become the storyteller.” Rebecca Solnit

“Protest involves the taking up of space.” Helen Morales

In this post I will be drawing from Helen Morales’ book, Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths, which through the examination of several myths touches upon all the important issues that we are facing today, and probably have dealt with to some extent since antiquity. I will inevitably touch upon a few themes only within the space if this piece.

I believe that myths and fairy tales give us new ways of looking at and understanding the world. In particular, Greek and Roman mythology have been broadly influential in Western culture and beyond.  Greek and Roman myths explore love, citizenship,  leadership, freedom, justice, ethics, moral dilemmas, politics, war, revenge and punishment,  abuse of power, relational violence and human weaknesses. Through the characters and events in the myths people can reflect on their local politics, difficult moral dilemmas and dynamics in relationships. Morales claims that “being able to explore questions such as what makes good leadership and how to resist state fascism allows audiences to reflect on those issues in relation to particular, local events, at one remove.” Myths, she says, enlarge people and literary characters when they overlay them with attributes and accomplishments from the figures in ancient myths.

To engage in any conversation, whether that be around art, politics, ethics, law, justice, philosophy, religion,  history, health, gender or the environment, will probably involve, to some degree or other, engaging with ideas from ancient Greece and Rome. Ideas from classical antiquity have influenced declarations, constitutions, professional guidelines, trades union movements, gay rights and political and economic theories, but as Morales writes they have also been used to justify “fascism, slavery, white supremacy, and misogyny.” She writes: “Ancient Greeks and Romans have given us a rich and influential inheritance of mythology, philosophy, architecture, theater, and politics. We do not need to hide the destructive aspects of these legacies, nor do we need to use antiquity to perpetrate myths of European and Western superiority to appreciate the value of ancient Greece and Rome.”

Critical evaluation of myths and ideas from antiquity does not deny the value of Greek and Roman inheritance. I’d like to highlight this because sometimes my posts, and maybe even the simple act of posting art and written material, are met with some pushback, even more so because I live in a small community. I am aware that these recent posts to do with classic antiquity and Greek mythology might trigger some resistance in some people or get misinterpreted. But I believe that myths and stories can be powerful in awakening us and that reading them critically, engaging in a new conversation, and using them creatively and artistically can be productive and empowering for society at large. The book mentioned above demonstrates the role that ancient myth plays in our cultural hardwiring, but also shows us how these stories from antiquity can be used to bring about change. And in any case, myths have always been read selectively, re-created, adapted, since antiquity, when as Morales says the different versions of myths operated collectively as a kind of long-running conversation. If we want to create a more respectful, peaceful and inclusive world we need to learn about the stories that define our social realities, reflect on and interact with them to reach new understandings and perhaps write different endings. Morales writes: “we’re due for a fresh understanding of how ancient Greek and Roman myths, and their characters, can be claimed and defined by all of us who want to resist the current movement toward greater patriarchal control and who are working to make this a more equal, empathetic, and enlightened world.”

As I mentioned the book covers many issues, but I will only discuss or refer to a few topics. I’ll begin with dieting and dress code and the policing of girls mostly through control of the way they dress and eat. Morales writes that “girls’ safety, school dress codes, and dieting, as well as dealing with a changing political climate in which their freedoms were being curtailed and environmental protections reversed— are all underpinned by cultural narratives. One of the planks in this ideological scaffolding is classical mythology. Part of being empowered and fighting back involves understanding these myths and their cultural impact and turning them to our own advantage.” She claims that some of our beliefs in relation to school dress codes and the policing of women’s dress more generally go back to antiquity, and to ignore this history blinds us to how entrenched some violent social structures really are. She writes: “The first step toward understanding, and therefore doing something to prevent, misogyny is to recognize how and where it is culturally hardwired.” She explains that misogyny isn’t just an attitude toward women that individual men and women may hold; instead it functions to enforce and police women’s subordination against the backdrop of other intersecting systems of oppression and vulnerability, dominance and disadvantage. One of the main ways in which misogyny does this is by differentiating between “good women” and foreign or “bad women” and punishing the supposedly “bad women.”

The topic of policing women’s dress it is not just a contemporary practice, but has a long history. Morales writes: “Ancient Greek and Roman regulations are a small, but foundational, part of the long history of dress codes. At its beginning are the gunaikonomoi, the “women controllers,” of ancient Greece. Gunaikonomoi (Γυναικονόμοι) were city officials, elected to office, whose responsibility was to ensure that women dressed and behaved appropriately. Controlling adornment, dress, behavior and order were inextricably linked.  In most cities, respectable women were not allowed out in public much; they spent their time in the women’s quarters of their homes. Slaves and poor women would have been forced to venture out to get water or work….. by and large, the only time that respectable women went out in public in ancient Greece was for religious festivals and events like funerals and weddings. …. Women who had committed adultery were not allowed to participate in Athenian festivals or to enter temples, and it might have been the job of the gunaikonomos to keep records of women who had been found guilty of committing adultery and to enforce the law excluding them from public religious life….”

Morales refers to sources like the Andania inscription that suggests that the gunaikonomos would tear the clothing that violated the dress code and dedicate it to the gods, and to other sources that suggest that girls and women who broke the dress code were given fines, notices of their transgressions were posted on a white board on a plane tree in a public area, and also, put under a kind of house arrest, exiled from the few areas of public life they had access to. Shaming was part of the penalty. Plutarch also describes restrictions placed upon women in Athens by the lawmaker Solon. For instance, he writes: “Women’s behavior at funerals was regulated; public displays of grief that were too passionate and prolonged were outlawed.” Another example is the Oppian Law, introduced in 216 BCE as an emergency measure, during wartime. to curb the increasing visibility and independence of Roman women, but there was pressure to repeal the law. The women of Rome protested for days blocking access to government buildings. Morales writes: “The mass demonstrations were extraordinary— it was not socially sanctioned for women to assemble in public and protest— and they were successful: the Oppian Law was repealed in 195 BCE”.

In reference to school dress codes, whether it is about an adult bending over to check attire fit, or measuring blouse straps or skirt length, Morales says that they are about more than dress: they are a means of shaming and enforcing patriarchal control. Reading this chapter took me back to my early teen years. I know first hand what it feels like to have the length of your skirt measured in the midst of a crowd of students, whose skirts are actually no longer than yours and then have the hem of your new school uniform taken out because the skirt is a centimeter above the knee instead of reaching the middle of the knee. At school I had tried to laugh it off, but deep inside it hurt. I knew I had broken no rules. My mother had it made adhering to the school regulations. Mostly I remember having to walk home with the hem of my skirt half undone and feeling both anger rise in me and the powerlessness of the situation, wondering why she had to rip the hem in front of everyone else instead of talking with me in private. Turning to history and ancient stories helps us become aware of patterns and connections across time and contexts, and see how systems and structures work, and hopefully, resist these old practices or stories and do something to change the world by changing the narratives.

Another chapter in the book is dedicated to body size, stories of practices of measuring students in college campuses and comparing them with Venus de Milo [the statue missing two arms that was found on the Greek island Milos], dieting and the diet culture, which according to Morales sometimes misquotes or relies heavily on Hippocrates, who she writes: “may seem like a surprising authority for modern health writers. Medicine has come a long way since the fifth and fourth centuries BCE.” She is also critical of how other parts of Hippocrates’ work is ignored, like for instance, his advise against restrictive diets for healthy people (breaking such a diet was a risk to one’s health)” and concludes that Hippocrates’s outlook was considerably more complicated and varied than what is usually quoted. She also makes reference to the Hippocratic oath sworn by all physicians, which states “I remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings” (my [Morales’] emphasis) and to abide by the maxim “first do no harm” (this is not, as is often thought, in the oath itself, but an equivalent sentiment is found in Hippocrates’s Epidemics).” Finally, she suggests that Aristotle’s call to eat until satiety and to reflect on the reasons for overeating is a better and kinder prescription for human happiness and health.

Morales links women’s oppression, racism and the politics of “fat”. She writes that “fat” was part of a trend in the 18th and 19th centuries, in theories and popular culture, which linked fatness to blackness and thinness to whiteness. She cites sources that suggest that fat phobia in relation to black women, for instance, did not stem from medical concerns about health, but with the association among fatness, blackness, stupidity, and savagery. At the same time, an association grew among thinness, whiteness, intelligence, and civilization. Morales believes that these images have been used to degrade black women and discipline white women, She also situates herself in the story. She describes how she was put on a diet when she was ten years old and was allowed one thousand calories per day, plus a bag of Maltesers chocolates as a treat every evening. She concludes: “My story is not unusual.”

Myths also contain difficult topics like sexual violence. Morales says “some of these myths invite us to empathize with the women who are assaulted, and they show insight into the psychology of sexual assault and the effects of trauma on the victims of the assault.” I would add that some fairy tales also describe the effects of this kind of violence, and it is really interesting to see this depth of insight into trauma responses way before trauma theories and scientific research were developed.  For instance, Morales refers to Ovid who depicts women who are attacked leaving their bodies and turning into trees or bushes or clumps of reeds. She writes: “I read these as imaginative dramatizations of the paralysis and dissociation caused by trauma. Daphne’s response to Apollo’s assault— she is unable to run or speak and a “heavy numbness seizes her limbs”— captures what happens to victims of sexual assault. Dissociation allows the person under attack to avoid experiencing the assault. Our medical vocabulary terms this involuntary temporary paralysis tonic immobility. The feeling of leaving one’s body and being alienated from it are well documented, as are their longer-lasting effects.” Other myths describe the effects of this kind of trauma on other women like Persephone’s mother, Ceres, who was so overcome by grief that she plunged the world into famine. And there are myths that speak of the silencing and the telling, as well as, the strength found in support from others. Morales writes: “They are perceptive about the psychology of trauma, highlight victims’ strength and strategies of survival, and guide our attention toward aspects of the experience of sexual assault that are sometimes overlooked. They also offer hints of women’s empathy toward one another and the empowerment possible through those seemingly tiny moments of solidarity:”

I’d like to add that often in myths and other artistic creations there is a subtext. Across time and space during oppressive regimes artists and writers have used metaphors or stories to talk about things they couldn’t otherwise articulate without severe consequences. Morales writes: “it’s important to remember when and why he [Ovid] was writing about sexual violence. It was during the reign of the emperor Augustus, which was an oppressive and authoritarian regime, at least for a subversive writer like Ovid. There is a subtext to many of Ovid’s stories about rape.” She claims that Ovid took the association between the gods and the emperor and used it to reveal the authoritarian, controlling side of Augustus. So, rather than focusing on positive aspects of Jupiter and Apollo, Ovid represents them as imposing their power upon unwilling victims and by association suggests that Augustus is autocratic and abusive. She writes: “It is an effective technique. It gives Ovid an out: he avoids direct criticism of an emperor who was prone to exiling his opponents (and who did, eventually, exile Ovid) but allowed readers at the time to join up the dots….”

As I have mentioned the book raises questions about many topics and associated myths, which are not mentioned in this post. Issues to do with racism, gender, the trans experience, environmental destruction, culture and the small or non-existent representation of women’s art, especially Black women, in museums, About museums Morales writes: “but museums are not uncomplicated spaces of display: facing repeated accusations of theft, unethical acquisition and display of objects, and cultural appropriation, museums are at the forefront of the question of who owns culture….. Museums do not just display culture; they create it. Curators are in privileged positions to decide what to include and what to exclude and which artists and whose myths count….”

In the last part of this post I will discuss Antigone’s myth, which in Sophocles’ version does not end well for anyone. It is a layered drama with multiple themes, personality types and ethical dilemmas. The myth of Antigone, as told by the great Greek playwright Sophocles, is one of the most well known of the Greek myths and one most frequently taught at school. My own nine page school essay on this drama, which I wrote when I was seventeen, has somehow survived and is still with me. As I re-read it while writing this post I felt tenderness for this much younger me. Rick Hanson says that we need to embrace and say thank you to the myriads younger versions of ourself that have brought us thus far. My teenage self made me smile even though I was tempted to judge her mild disinterest in paragraphs, crossing out words instead of erasing them and other minor mistakes. The essay is informed by a feminist viewpoint and an empathic understanding for all the characters, even Creon, who my younger self concludes might be the most tragic figure of all. Antigone’s courage and endurance seem to have certainly made an impression on her, but she also empathizes with and understands Ismene’s stance. Morales writes that the story of Antigone is “one of the most meaningful for feminism and for revolutionary politics.  She has become an icon of resistance. Of pitting personal conviction against state law. Of speaking truth to power. Antigone insists on burying her brother Polynices, who has been killed while fighting against her city, Thebes, even though her uncle Creon, who is ruler of Thebes, expressly forbids the burial and will impose the death penalty for her defiance. Antigone, just a child of thirteen or fourteen or fifteen, stands up to a powerful adult, even when her sister won’t and when the citizens of Thebes are too afraid to do so. Antigone also challenges male authority, in the face of Creon’s insistence that women are inferior to men and that men should rule over them. She is vulnerable and terrorized, but she breaks the law anyway……She risks everything for a cause that she believes in and refuses to be cowed either by powerful politicians or by what anyone else thinks. The spirit of Antigone lives on in any women who does this in any small or big way….” Some contemporary young Antigones mentioned in the book are young girls like Greta Thunberg, who went on strike from school to protest outside the parliament or Malala Yousafzai, who campaigned for the rights of girls to be educated, even though it was dangerous to break the law.

Antigone breaks the law even though she is aware of the consequences when she alone buries her brother who is an enemy of the state and defies her uncle Creon, the king of Thebes, who orders that she be buried alive in a tomb. When Creon has a change of heart after the wise old man Teiresias tells him that his actions have been immoral, it is too late. Antigone has hung herself inside the cave and Haemon, who is Creon’s son and Antigone’s fiancé, kills himself, which then leads his mother Queen Eurydice to commit suicide. Death all around. Morales notes that there’s a strand of nihilism in Sophocle’s play that we would do well to reject. She writes: “Creon is left a broken man, but at what cost? As a script for successful activism, this story leaves quite a bit to be desired.” She also points to themes like Antigone’s lack of support and her single-mindedness, which can breed extremism and can be destructive.

Sophocle’s Antigone is one version of this myth, but myths have throughout time been re-imagined and re-told. Artists and writers have sometimes changed the stories, and in doing so Morales says they have subverted the myths (false ideas and beliefs) too. She writes: “the creative adaptations of myth— the stories, videos, images, and novels that present radically different perspectives— are more than individual contestations: they amount to a formidable cultural trend. This was always the case: rewriting myth from different perspectives goes back to antiquity……The Antigone myth is a good example of this. Euripides’s play about Antigone, which no longer survives, almost certainly revised Sophocles’s tragedy and allowed Antigone and Haemon to get married and have a baby son. Scholars’ educated guesses, based on later summaries of the play, envisage wildly different endings for Antigone and her family. Perhaps Creon tracked them down, recognized them, and had them killed. Perhaps the hero Hercules intervened, and they all lived happily after, an ending that would have allowed Antigone to rebel against Creon’s authoritarianism and to have a future. Even more shocking is the likelihood that in Euripides’s version of the myth Haemon helped Antigone to bury her brother. She did not act alone. The possibility of Antigone taking collaborative action is also raised in an exquisite modern adaptation of the myth…..”

So at the end of this longish post I’d like to say that stories matter. Stories have been used to disempower and malign, but they can also be used to inspire and liberate, to build empathy and compassion, to repair and restore respect. The re-reading and re-imagining of old stories can be transformative.

** Helen Morales holds the Argyropoulos Chair in Hellenic Studies at the University of California, taught previously at the University of Cambridge, and has been a Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in DC.