when women retell the classics

wonder | wander | women enjoy compiling and sharing our summer reading and holiday book lists as we read, read, read all throughout the year. 

Greek tales are having a recent renaissance with feminist retellings that are not just reclaiming women in mythology but are also turning patriarchal folklore on its head. 

There’s something about our oldest stories that never gets old. Rereading classical mythology can be an exercise in surprise and recognition mixed together. 

The Iliad & The Odyssey by Homer - Emily Wilson’s translations

There are things missed in a myth from previous tellings that can be utterly vital to understanding its meaning. Myths hit us somewhere below the brain, at some irrational, dreamlike level that somehow feels truer than regular stories. 

Life certainly seems epic right now, doesn’t it? A chaotic roller coaster ride of Olympian highs and plunging lows into the River Styx. All happening in theatrical and dramatic mix of comedy and tragedy. 

The books in this list are the smartest, most beautifully wrought adaptations of classical myths we’ve ever encountered. They also all just happen to be by female writers. 

a feminist retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey

We've read many of these titles - enjoying these master storytellers' reworking of heavy, hardened clunkers of the male-centered myths into supple substance for building new worlds. 

Retelling is the act of looking at an old text with harmful values and repurposing it with a new understanding of the world and the people that inhabit it. 

Writing is so malleable. The words a writer uses, especially when they are retelling a previously written story, can change the entire narrative simply to how those words are used. 

Re-vision, when used to give voice and life to those ill-served female characters, is the epitome of this new narrative. 

Integrating the concepts of women, myth, and retelling brings a better understanding of how entrenched these three concepts are in society. 

a novel in verse retells the tale of Herakles’ tenth labor

The best way of getting there is to look first at all of these subjects separately, to learn their roots and how they exist individually, before looking at what they all mean. 

Tying together the elements of an ancient tale to reveal the problematic history of women in myth is an acquired skill - for both its author and their readers. 

Clarity and balance are needed in these retellings of art and power. For too long, women have been placed in Man’s Box of Ideology - an empty, windowless room with two openings. 

One being that they try to become the ideal woman - likely losing themselves along the way. The other being that they diverge from it and become the villain, the witch, the monster. 

a retelling of the fall of Troy

Emily Wilson might be the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English, but she's not the first woman to translate an Ancient Greek text into a contemporary language. 

With her translation, Wilson joins the ranks of women who have broken gender barriers to give their voices to the Classics. Does the translator's gender influence the interpretation of a text?

A translation is the result of a series of choices that the translator makes. No other story demonstrates this better than The Odyssey, in which scenes can be read from several different perspectives, and words and phrases can be translated in a number of ways. 

Take the poem's very first line, for example. The first line of a text is important. It sets the tone and direction for everything that follows.

longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023

Take Medusa. How many people know her story better than Perseus’? She was punished for being assaulted, transformed into a monster, and then slaughtered so that her head could be used as a weapon by a man deemed a hero. Read Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes. 

Or Cassandra. Granted the gift of prophecy and then cursed so no one would ever believe her, all as a punishment for refusing Apollo’s sexual advances. This myth feels less like fantasy and more like a depressingly accurate metaphor. Read Cassandra by Christa Wolf.

Daphne escapes assault by being turned into a tree. Io is transformed into a cow. Callisto is banished. Europa is abducted. Again and again, women are changed, silenced, or destroyed to preserve male power or divine reputation. Read Circe by Madeline Miller. 

a #1 New York Times bestseller 

For years, these stories were presented as morality tales or tragic inevitabilities. 

Retellings from the female perspective ask: 

Why are these women punished at all? 

Why on Earth were we taught not to notice? 

How have they gotten away with that one? 

Their translations differ from those of their male counterparts in details and tone, but not in essence. Instead, it is the work they choose to translate that becomes the gender-political act. 

Read up and get back to us with your feedback - your opinions count a lot.