Novels retelling Greek myths and legends from the viewpoints of some or all of the women involved seem to be all the rage at the moment. I’m quite pleased about this- with most schools no longer teaching the classics, these ancient stories might have been at risk of dying out in the English-speaking world, which would have been a great shame. When I was about 7, I had a book of Greek myths (I think it must have been the one by Enid Blyton), and I loved it. I also loved the way that Colleen McCullough wove Greek myths into The Thorn Birds, but that’s beside the point. I read this one for a Facebook group reading challenge, but I was going to read it anyway.
I may well be reading something into nothing here, but I sensed a mental health theme in this book. There’s a *lot* of talk about the gods cursing women with “madness”, of having your mind taken over or taken away – first with Pasiphae, then with the Maenads, then with the women of Argos; and it’s strongly suggested that Ariadne’s sister Phaedra was suffering from post natal depression. I might just be oversensitive on this issue, but this theme did seem to keep recurring.
Women generally come off badly in Greek myths and legends. They’re rarely given a voice, and they’re treated pretty badly by gods, by mortal men, and even by jealous goddesses. Ariadne was the daughter of the King of Crete, Minos, and half-sister of the Minotaur, who was born as a result of her father Minos disobeying Poseidon, and Poseidon taking revenge by making Minos’s wife Pasiphae fall in love with a bull. Minos, after defeating Athens in war, demanded that Athens send seven young men and seven girls every few years (the number of years seems to vary!) to be fed to the Minotaur, who was kept in a labyrinth designed by Daedalus. Theseus, a Greek prince, volunteered to be one of those sacrificed, but killed the Minotaur with Ariadne’s help. They sailed off into the sunset together … or so Ariadne thought, until Theseus abandoned her on the island of Naxos. Theseus, of course, is known as one of the greatest Greek heroes, and his treatment of Ariadne is never counted against him.
The book’s told in the first person, but some of that’s by Ariadne, and some of it’s by her Phaedra, who was later married off to Theseus. The title’s a bit misleading, really, but maybe it just sounded more catchy than “Ariadne and Phaedra” or “The Princesses of Crete”. It would have been interesting to have had Pasiphae telling her story too, but I suppose that only so much could be fitted into one book. How women did suffer in Greek myths.
There are various versions of the various myths. And, because most books have each myth as a separate story, you don’t always realise how they all fit together. Medea, who ran off with Jason, was the stepmother of Theseus. Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, had a child by Theseus. Daedalus and Icarus, when they escaped and Icarus flew too close to the sun, were fleeing from Minos. Dionysus went to war with Perseus, who killed Medusa and then married Andromeda. Most versions show Dionysus wanting to marry Ariadne and therefore forcing Theseus to abandon her, and look unfavourably on Ariadne for betraying her father, but, in this version, it’s made clear that both Minos and Theseus are bad lots – Minos in general, and Theseus in his treatment of women. Theseus is shown as raping Hippolyta, whereas in some versions they’re in love. And Ariadne’s sister Phaedra, usually depicted as a villainess who tried to seduce her stepson and then made false claims about him, is shown as feeling betrayed because Theseus lied to her, telling her that Ariadne was dead, and not telling her about his son Hippolytus – and the false claims element of the myth is neatly sidestepped in this book, by showing Theseus getting the wrong end of the stick.
Because the book generally follows the myths, it wasn’t possible to show either sister as having a happy ending. Phaedra took her own life – in this version, in despair. Ariadne married Dionysus, aka Bacchus, the god of wine, and was happy with him and their children for a while, but she also met a sorry end.
There are various different myths about what happened to her. Jennifer Saint, who seems determined to paint most men as baddies, has chosen the version in which Ariadne fell victim to a war between Dionysus and Perseus. However, in this book, she first of all made the discovery that Dionysus was whipping his female followers, the Maenads, into a frenzy, and asking for first animal sacrifices and then the sacrifices of human babies. I’m not familiar with the story about the babies at all: I’m not sure whether it’s the author’s own invention or a rather obscure myth. I suspect the former, as Google didn’t seem to know about it either! And Euphrosyne, usually the goddess of joy, was brought into this as a desperate woman seeking help and sanctuary, and the Maenads as doing the same.
The war between Dionysus and Perseus is “canon”, though. In this book, a lot of emphasis is paid to Dionysus caring more about trying to win the women of Argos, the city ruled by Perseus, as followers, than he did about Ariadne and their children. I think that Colleen McCullough would have approved of that: a big theme of The Thorn Birds is men being more interested in their own aggrandisement than in their families. And, as this was the version of events chosen, it ended – very abruptly, as if the author was rushing to finish the book – with Perseus killing Ariadne with the head of Medusa, another woman who fell victim to the jealousy of the gods.
All in all, it was an interesting read, although rather rushed at the end. But it was also a bit depressing. In The Thorn Birds (yes, I do realise that the two books have nothing to do with each other), Justine succeeds where Meggie didn’t, in being a strong independent woman and also in finding a man who puts her first. At the end of this, both sisters end up dead because of the actions of men who didn’t care about them enough. But, hey, that’s Greek myths for you – they don’t tend to end happily!
This is Jennifer Saint’s first book, and, for a first book, it’s not bad at all. Recommended.
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