This week, I finished reading Madeline Miller’s novel, Circe (2018). As you can probably tell from the title, this is the story from Greek mythology of the renowned witch whose island is visited by Odysseus and his men when they are on the way back to Ithaca; she transforms the men into pigs but later turns them back into men for love of Odysseus. The episode of Circe’s island is but one incident among many in Odysseus’s journey, but in this novel, the story is told from Circe’s point of view and encompasses hundreds of years of her life, beginning in the court of her father, the sun god Helios.
Circe’s mother is a naiad, and all of her children with Helios turn out to be witches. In the novel, they are distrusted more than any other immortal save Prometheus for their powers, which threaten the gods because they stem from the earth, and in particular from pharmaka, magical plants. Never a favorite at her father’s court, Circe is eventually banished, for various transgressions, to the island of Aiaia, where she is marooned as a permanent exile. What’s meant as a punishment turns out to be the making of Circe as a witch; she begins to learn the ways of the island and develop her skills using native plants, while also befriending the animals who are for a time her only companions. She is later summoned to tend her sister Pasiphae as she gives birth to the Minotaur (a feat worthy of an entire team of witches). While at Knossos, Circe meets both her niece Ariadne and the famous Daedalus, the craftsman who, at the command of King Minos, builds the labyrinth to contain the Minotaur.
From all of this, you can see that Circe’s story overlaps with that of the characters central to the legend of the labyrinth. Ms. Miller takes a character peripheral to that story and lets us see Ariadne, Theseus, Minos, Pasiphae, Daedalus, and the rest from the point of view of someone who is immortal but almost human in her outlook. In my book, I explored the characters for their symbolic and psychological significance, but Ms. Miller turns them into flesh-and-blood characters—even the ones who are actually immortals. Pasiphae, for one, is thoroughly unlikeable but gives an admirably clear-eyed and unvarnished assessment of what life is like for a minor goddess in the court of a powerful father, something not even Circe is fully capable of acknowledging.
Ms. Miller manages the difficult task of “fleshing out” gods and goddesses, major and minor, and the legendary heroes and humans they interact with, giving them distinctive personalities and motivations. The inexplicable whims of the gods become understandable when she reveals them to be a mostly selfish lot of bored and egotistical goons with nothing but time on their hands. They’re either fatuous or vicious, or both. No wonder they thrive on flattery, pleasure, gossip, novelty, and the exercise of power—they’re a bit like the Ewings of Dallas or the Carringtons from Dynasty (for all you Boomers who don’t mind references to ’80s TV shows)—minus any of their redeeming qualities. They’re glorious and awe-inspiring, wonderful to look at; all hat and no cattle, if you will (though they have cattle, too, as it turns out—it’s character they lack). If you’ve ever felt sorry for the humans in the Greek stories fated to live under the thumb of the immortals who use them as pawns until the day they die and have to spend eternity in that gray and dismal spot, the Underworld: think again. This novel turns the entire matrix on its head and makes you consider whether being human is really so bad after all.
“Dreaming the myth forward” is a concept often spoken of at Pacifica, which is of course where I studied mythology. This novel is an excellent example of that, as the author creates a story that in many ways is quite faithful to the source material while putting a fresh interpretation on it. Circe, as a witch, is usually lumped in with all the other villainous gods, demigods, and monsters Odysseus must hazard on his way back home from the war. But in Ms. Miller’s conception, they meet almost as equals, having a believable if tragic relationship. When you see the situation from Circe’s point of view, turning men into pigs is an act of self-defense, perfectly understandable when you realize it is they who are abusing her. Odysseus is very much the flawed hero here, a strong man with some depth of character who is nevertheless brutal when dealing with others and out of his depth when he does return to Ithaca.
Circe is one of best retellings of classical mythology I have read. In some ways the novel might be characterized as a feminist retelling, with its emphasis on Circe’s Prospero-like claiming of her own power and agency, but the author gives a balanced view of the foibles of both gods and goddesses. Circe is in many ways a sympathetic character but remains a goddess until the end, and the twists and turns of her own fate make for a narrative every bit as compelling as that of Odysseus, if not more so.
