Madeline Miller's Circe
Spoiler Alert: This reviews Madeleine Miller's Circe. I don't believe I give too much away (since this book takes its stories from existing Greek myths), but I do share passages from the book
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All great books work on my heart. Madeline Miller's Circe is one of them. Miller writes a book about this witch, this woman who exists in the background of enough Greek myths to have her own Epic.
However, not only does Miller push the boundaries of the traditional epic (by featuring a female), she writes one novel that resonates simultaneously on every level. Miller writes for the woman seeking a good chick flick. She writes for the reader infatuated with exquisite metaphors and crafted sentences. She writes for those open to changing their mind and those seeking clarity in language for what they already know.
One of the central themes of the book is the abuse of power, demonstrated primarily through the Greek Gods, who are both humanly flawed and all-powerful.
A typical day looked like this: "Someone’s daughter was changed into a bird. Boreas and Apollo quarreled over the youth they loved and he died. Boreas smiled slyly from his feasting couch. His gusty voice made the torches flicker. 'You think I’d let Apollo have him? He does not deserve such a flower. I blew a discus into the boy’s head, that showed the Olympian prig.'"
The Gods in Circe's world only care about themselves. And, perhaps as John Dalberg-Acton condemned papacy and monarchy, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". The Gods can only care about themselves because they do not have to answer to anyone except themselves. They take what they want (e.g. Zeus pursuing Io and turning her into a cow or Poseidon sending Odysseus on a 20-year journey home). Mortals cannot punish the Gods and the Gods are so different from the mortals they play with to understand them or empathize with them.
What about those with power but not absolute Godly power? What about people like Circe (daughter of God Helios) and her kin? Greek mythology is interesting in that the only females with agency are also monsters. Before I read Circe, I knew her as the witch who turned Odysseus' men into pigs. Pasiphae creates the flesh-eating Minotaur. Medea chops up her brother and murders her children. With her six heads, Scylla eats men.
In embodying these women and giving voice to their inner thoughts, Miller helps us understand why they perform monstrous acts. Pasiphae is Circe's sister. She asks Circe to help her birth the Minotaur, and in return, Circe demands to know why Pasiphae conceived the flesh-eating monster. Pasiphae responds,
Tell me, what do you think would happen if I did not make monsters and poisons? Minos does not want a queen, only a simpering jelly he keeps in a jar and breeds to death. He would be happy to have me in chains for eternity, and he need only say the word to his own father to do it. But he does not. He knows what I would do to him first
I do believe twenty-first century ethics informed both the writing and the consumption of this passage. But it is fascinating to consider Pasiphae in three dimensions and consider a world where women can have power but men still rule. And the abuse of patriarchal rule could hurt women so deeply that they use their power offensively to defend themselves.
We see this again in Medea. In the epic poem of Argonautica (commonly referred to as Jason and the Argonauts), Jason travels to Colchis and asks Medea's father, King Aeetes, for the Golden Fleece. King Aeetes agrees to hand over the Fleece -- but only after Jason performs a series of impossible tasks. Fortunately for Jason, Medea falls in love with him and solves each task for him. (Side note: It is hilarious to read Medea, cloaked in front of Jason, try to hide her prowess behind words of humility as she relays this story to Circe). However, even after Jason has secured the Golden Fleece, Medea's father remains on their heels. When Medea sees her brother, she forms a plan. She orders Jason to kill her brother and she scatters his pieces across the sea. Consequently, King Aeetes stops chasing them to retrieve each piece of his son for a proper burial.
Circe presses Medea,
“He [Medea's brother] did not have to die. You could have turned yourself in with the fleece. Gone back to your father.”
The look that passed over her face. Like a comet indeed, when it veers to earth and turns the fields to ash.
“I would have been made to watch while my father tore Jason and his crew limb from limb, then been tormented myself. You will pardon me if I do not call that a choice.”
Medea then proceeds to recount the ways her father (a minor God as well as a King) has used his power against the powerless time and time again. Medea's actions were undoubtedly wrong but this is another example of a woman using power offensively for defense.
Later on, Circe will birth a boy who will make up bedtime stories about heroes and monsters. She will look at him and muse, "I loved his certainty, his world that was an easy place of right action divided sharply from wrong, of mistake and consequence, of monsters defeated. It was no world I knew, but I would live in it as long as he would let me."
From these stories, it seems that everyone with power in Greek mythology abused it at the expense of mortals. However, Miller writes about one God in Circe who does not -- Prometheus. Prometheus was the God who defied Zeus to bring fire to humans. In retribution, Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock and ordered an eagle to eat Prometheus' liver every day while it would regenerate every night. This would be Prometheus' eternal punishment.
In Miller's novel, Circe watches as the Gods bring in Prometheus and order the Furies to whip him. The Gods all throng around, eager to see this offender writhe. Circe cannot. Instead of eagerness, she feels his pain and, in a quiet moment, brings him nectar. While Circe experiences this as a child, Prometheus' suffering remains in her mind.
Not all gods need be the same.
Prometheus had not cried out as the blows fell, though he had grown so covered in blood that he’d looked like a statue dipped in gold. And all the while, the gods had watched, their attention bright as lightning. They would have relished a turn with the Fury’s whip, given the chance.
I was not like them.
In Circe, thinking aboutPrometheus reminds Circe that she can be better than the Gods she sees around her. He allows her to break out of the circle of violence that is abuse begetting abuse. Prometheus additionally inspires Circe. By giving humans fire, Prometheus gave power to the powerless. And for that, he gave up his life.
Circe's encounter with Prometheus initiates a turning that allows her, unlike the other Gods, to admit to a gross use of power early on in the novel. It allows her to acknowledge and bear the evil of helping bring the Minotaur into the world later on. And it helps her recognize the wrong in turning men into pigs without bothering to first look in their hearts.
There is so much more in this novel! Miller creates an Epic out of motherhood, which I cried through even the second time around. There is so much courage and ingenuity in motherhood and great (even good) mothers are unacknowledged heroes.
And the language! I think that I could pick any passage at random and it would rival poems. One of the things she does really well are character portraits.
The anger stood out plain and clean on his face. There was a sort of innocence to him, I thought. I do not mean this as the poets mean it: a virtue to be broken by the story's end or else upheld at greatest cost. Nor do I mean that he was foolish or guileless. I mean that he was made only of himself, without the dregs that clog the rest of us. He thought and felt and acted and all these things made a straight line. No wonder [X] had been so baffled by him. He would have been always looking for the hidden meaning, the knife in the dark. But [Y] carried his blade in the open.
Last Friday, I had the pleasure of going to the Petworth Citizen Reading Room for Circe night. Every week, their bartender reads a whole book and picks out phrases that she then turns into drinks on Friday and Saturday night. So, here, I present the Circe Reading Room menu:
