@enlitment / enlitment.tumblr.com
tagged by @cryptidlark to make a poll of my fave fictional women 👑
tagging @sterlingterror, @sir-will-herondale, @yevrosima-the-third if you’re down ;)
hiii :D thanks so much for the tag!
tagging @kokocoa @aidan-thisfine @elkiemae @kodzuken-051 @enlitment if y'all want to! no pressure
Hi, thanks for the tag, this looks fun!
tagging @theghostofbean @chaotic-history @my-deer-friend @iron--and--blood @sparvverius & @xxmarvelouslifexx (no pressure ofc! ✨)
10 & 15 for the book ask 💞
Thank you for the ask! ^^
Oh boy do I!
Rousseau's Confessions definitely fits that category to a t. I might as well come clean and admit how much I actually enjoyed reading at least the first few books (while also finding myself frustrated with JJ to the point of madness ofc - many, many times).
I would of course never go full Brissot, but I can't rule out a potential re-read in the future...
Apart from that, I also have a lot of complicated feelings about Chuck Palahniuk's books (probably most famous for Fight Club). No other author seem to oscillate between brilliant and absolutely atrocious as much as he does.
It's been a while since I've read it, but I really liked Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad!
I know the book market is currently overflowing with Greek myths retellings, but this one is one of the original ones and - at least for me - one of the good ones.
I felt like Atwood didn't sanitise Penelope's character but rather made her a complex, quite morally grey heroine. I enjoyed seeing the events of the Odyssey from her perspective more than say, that of Miller's Circe. The way she felt bitterly jealous of Helen, the few sweet moments which fleshed out her relationship with Odysseus, her interactions with Telemachus... Atwood's Penelope just somehow felt more like a human being.
I also loved how she made Penelope's 12 maids into a Greek chorus, utilised a lot of different genres throughout the book (including a 21st century academic lecture), and reinterpreted one often overlooked passage of The Odyssey in a fascinating new way. No spoilers, but just for that alone, it's worth a read!
Oh OKAY so when PENELOPE doesn’t finish her art WIPs she’s a “strong female character” and “using her intelligence and cunning” but when I don’t finish my art WIPs I’m just a failure >:( That’s okay I see how it is.
For anyone who may have not known, there is a text by ovid called the heroides in which has a letter to Odysseus (or Ulysses cuz ovid was roman) by Penelope at the start. It's pretty interesting, But I want to call out this one line
SAME PENELOPE
Top five mythological characters!
Thank you for the ask and sorry for taking forever to answer!
She will always be my favourite among all the Greek/Roman goddesses. Her role in Homer's epics (especially the Odyssey) is so interesting! 10/10 would have given the apple to her if I had a chance.
Her statue in Louvre! (one of many, but my favourite I think):
Smart, cunning and kind of a bastard? Easily my favourite Greek hero. And I trust Athena to have a good taste in men, obviously.
Plus her and Penelope are my favourite couple from Greek mythology. I really like the interpretation that she displays the same skills as him when tricking her annoying suitors. They would also have had the best banter.
Another one of the Greek goddesses that has always resonated with me. I love her role in the story about Iphigenia (re: last post). Would consider joining her all-female hunters' party if positions are still open.
Her statue in Versailles! ->
She's fascinating both as a tragic mythical figure as well as purely from an aesthetic standpoint (the eyes? the snake hair?)
I'm not always there for the feminist reinterpretations of Greek mythology, but I think the idea of her becoming a sort of symbol for SA victims taking back their power is interesting (though probably not very faithful to the original myth).
It's also possible that she's my favourite because I love the Carol Ann Duffy poem so much.
I've also used the Medusa imagery in one of my poems! (& I also have her sticker on my laptop):
It's been a while since I've read the Epic of Gilgamesh (we've actually read it in my high school lit class!) but I just remember liking him so much. The origin story of how he became more human-like is both wild and kind of funny.
And – of course – his relationship with Gilgamesh will always be incredibly special to me. They're kind of like the original Achilles and Patroclus.
something something the fates holding the thread of life and penelope being a weaver constantly unraveling the burial shroud to buy her husband time something something
wait i think actually madeline miller's circe is the heir to margaret atwood's penelopiad, unintentionally, in the way it thematizes the impossibility of real solidarity among women.
bc it's such a major part of the penelopiad how penelope creates what she thinks is a real community, a sort of family, with these young women in her household only be to reminded and continue to reinforce that they are slaves over whom she (among others) holds the power of life and death. and penelope ultimately does not or cannot hold a lasting grudge against odysseus on their behalf. she aligns herself, or circumstances force her to align herself, with odysseus instead of with other women whose positions are even more dangerous than hers. the world they live in does not allow solidarity between women across lines of class and enslavement, and penelope is also complicit in maintaining that world and her place in it.
and then the thing i found so frustrating about circe was that at every turn miller forecloses the possibility of real connections between women-- but the thing in this world that prevents that is just, like, jealousy over men. and totally needlessly. the other nymphs are prettier. glaucus loves scylla and not circe. her mom never liked her. hermes doesn't really think she's hot. athena is a rival for odysseus' attention. and the book doesn't do anything with this, it's not due to structural power imbalances or a society built on enslavement or even how patriarchy pits women against each other (circe lives alone on an island outside of society that could be another writer's lesbian separatist utopia!), it's just that circe doesn't like other women and they don't like her. end of story.
much as i don't love what atwood does with helen, it does make sense in the context of the penelopiad! thematically and in terms of characterization. atwood's penelope has internalized this idea of what it means to be a good woman and, willingly or not, she's staked everything on being seen by men as a good woman. it makes sense that she's desperately trying to pull herself up or even just cling to what little she has by dragging other women down. she does to helen what she ultimately does to the maids. she's with and for odysseus, always, not helen, and not the maids. that's the kind of world she lives in, and while she likes to think that she's resisting it with a sort of radical female community, in the end she is its agent. even if she feels bad about it. she's here to tell a story about odysseus, not about the girls he killed.
