Politics of Forbidden Love The world has changed in so many ways. There are always going to be times when families go through hard times. In the past, there were some very awkward family situations that wouldn’t occur to families in today’s society. Throughout history, there were stories that were written that described the politics of forbidden love. There were consequences that came along with certain behaviors that went on. The consequences that occurred in some of the stories may not be what one would expect. There are three stories that are great examples of the politics of forbidden love. These stories are known as, the story of Iphis and Isis, Pygmalion, and Ceres and Proserpina. They show the importance of trust and honesty. The story …show more content…
Pygmalion was a man who only dated women that lived shameful and deviant lives. Ovid writes: “Pygmalion had seen them spending their lives in wickedness, and offended by the failings that nature gave the female heart.” … (Book X, 243-297). He decides to build a sculpture of a woman. Pygmalion treated this sculpture like a human. This sculpture was so life-like that it would bruise when he would touch it. Pygmalion attended the holiday that honored Venus. He prayed to the goddess to bring him a woman that looked like the sculpture he built. Pygmalion’s prayer came true, and he married the woman. They had a daughter named Paphos, and she had a son named Cinyra. The politics of forbidden love comes into place when Cinyra got married and had a daughter name Myrrha. Myrrha had a crush on her father. She was very ashamed her of her feelings. Her nurse caught her trying to commit suicide one night and made Myrrha tell her what was going on. “Cinyra’s daughter wakeful, stirring the embers, reawakens her ungovernable desires, one moment despairing, at another willing to try, ashamed and eager, not yet discovering what to do” (Book 10, 356-430). When Myrrha’s mother went to pray at night, the nurse would go to Cinyra’s room and get him drunk so the daughter could go in there with him. Cinyra eventually wanted to know who this person was, and when he found out he wanted to kill his own …show more content…
In this story Proserpina gets abducted by Pluto while she was picking flowers. “While with girlish fondness she filled the folds of her gown, and her basket, trying to outdo her companions in her picking, Dis almost in a moment, saw her, prized her, took her…” (Book 5, 385-424). After Pluto abducted Proserpina, he took her to the Underworld. Ceres, which is Proserpina’s mother was panicking over her daughter going missing. She searched everywhere for her, and no one knew where she was. Ceres came across Cyane’s fountain and also found her daughter’s girdle. Arethusa, which is a water goddess told Ceres that Proserpina had been taken to the underworld by Pluto. Ceres goes to Jove so Jupiter will help find their daughter. Jove would only help Ceres if Proserpina hadn’t eaten any food from the underworld. Jove said, “but if you have such great to separate them, Proserpine shall return to heaven, but only on one condition, that no food has touched her lips, since that is the law, decreed by the Fates.” (Book 5, 487-532). Proserpina had eaten seven pomegranate seeds. Since she had eaten food from the underworld, Jove decided to split the year in half so Proserpina could spend equal time with her mother and her abductor, which was also her husband now. Today, there are people all around the world that get abducted, but they don’t get taken to the
Eupriedes, Medea and Sappho’s writing focus on women to expose the relationships between a variety of themes and the general ideal that women are property. The main characters in both pieces of literature demonstrate similar situations where love and sex result in a serious troll. These themes affected their relationship with themselves and others, as well as, incapability to make decisions which even today in society still affects humans. Headstrong actions made on their conquest for everlasting love connects to sacrifices they made to achieve their goal which ultimately ended in pain. Love and sex interferes with development of human emotions and character throughout the course
Yet, despite the fact that no two women in this epic are alike, each—through her vices or virtues—helps to delineate the role of the ideal woman. Below, we will show the importance of Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa, Clytaemestra, and Penelope in terms of the movement of the narrative and in defining social roles for the Ancient Greeks. Before we delve into the traits of individual characters, it is important to understand certain assumptions about women that prevailed in the Homeric Age. By modern standards, the Ancient Greeks would be considered a rabidly misogynistic culture. Indeed, the notoriously sour Boetian playwright Hesiod-- who wrote about fifty years before Homer-- proclaimed "Zeus who thunders on high made women to be evil to mortal men, with a nature to do evil (Theogony 600).
While reading the works of Hesiod, it is impossible not to notice the way that women are characterized and discussed. In his two major poems, the Theogony and Works and Days, he makes no attempt to make his contempt and abhorrence of the female sex a secret. In Works and Days, Hesiod includes the story of Pandora – a woman created by the Greek gods meant as a punishment for the human race – in his discourse to his brother, Perses. The Theogony – through an account of the creation of the universe and the origins of all the gods – presents depictions of women as monstrous and wicked. The negative and misogynist views of women exhibited in Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days give insight into the similar views of women that existed in ancient
Ovid’s Metamorphoses sees a case of links throughout the books and his work as a whole. Book ten is no different to this and the structure of book ten relies on the same idea of links throughout the text. The links can parallels in characters and their situations both from within the book and interaction elsewhere in the stories. We can also compare the thematic links like love, madness and betrayal in the story. But the biggest link throughout the texts is the transformations themselves which do have an effect on the structure of book ten as a whole.
She places in people the desire to have sexual relations and causes fear in men of the power of seduction by women. Her marriage to her husband was ignored as she had affairs with immortal and mortal men. Her infidelity in her marriage places her on the side with Greek men, rather than Greek women because only Greek men were able to cheat on their wives; not the other way around. In conclusion, the three important rules discussed in this paper that Greek women were required to obey, can be seen in the myths of the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Whether or not the Greek goddesses obeyed or did not obey these rules, their importance to the Greek culture is ever strong.
Byblis and Myrrha, two of Ovid's impassioned, transgressive heroines, confess incestuous passions. Byblis yearns for her brother, Caunus, and Myrrha lusts for her father, Cinyras. Mandelbaum translates these tales effectively, but sometimes a different translation by Crane brings new meaning to an argument. As Byblis and Myrrha realize the feelings at hand, they weigh the pros and cons of such emotions. Despite the appalling relationships in question, each young girl provides concrete support and speaks in such a way that provokes pity for her plight. Their paths of reasoning coincide, but Byblis starts where Myrrha's ends, and visa versa; Myrrha begins where Byblis' concludes.
Metamorphoses is Ovid’s most famous work. The poetry preserves information pertaining to the author, provenance, genre, and intended audience and provenance of the text. The author, Ovid, was born around 43 BCE in Sulmo, which is a town about 100 miles from Rome. He was born into a politically active family whose intention was for Ovid to have a political career. They sent him to Rome with his brother, and this was where Ovid found poetry. He began writing in 26 BCE, and in 8 CE Ovid was banished to Tomis because his work Ars Armatoria was offensive and he committed an unknown crime. At the time of his exile from Rome, Ovid was finished with Metamorphoses, but he burned his original manuscript as a result of anger. It was later
After reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses, speech and or voice was very metaphorically brought up many times throughout the book. Whenever a god would get angry, scared, sad, or emotional in any sense, woman whom made them feel that way would be transformed into something other than human form. After a few women in Ovid’s Metamorphoses were transformed the identity and voice of the women had been stricken from them. From the result of sexual assault women were transformed, which then led to the loss of speech/voice. Daphne and Io couldn’t reciprocate what they wanted to say; they both were dehumanized. “Loving her still the god puts his right hand against
There were two major rape narratives in the Metamorphoses: one in Book I, when Jupiter rapes the nymph, Io; and one in Book II, when Jupiter rapes Diana’s follower, Callisto. After the first instance, Ovid sympathizes considerably with Io. First, he addresses her with the title “fleeing girl” (Ovid 9), which gives her the characterization of being innocent and unwilling towards Jupiter. In addition, after the rape, Io is turned into a heifer then taken away from her home to be kept in captivity by Argus, which makes the readers sympathize with her because she is being held against her will for being the victim of rape. Lastly, Ovid conveys sympathy for Io when she looks into a river and sees that she is a heifer and becomes “terrified of herself”
However, Calypso’s “love” is more like sexual desire. Calypso holds Odysseus on her island for sever year, and “in the night, true, [Odysseus] would sleep with her in the arching cave - he had no choice - unwilling lover alongside lover all too willing…” (Odyssey 5, 170-172). Calypso is a selfish goddess who wants to dominate Odysseus without considering Odysseus’s feeling. The fact that Calypso sleeps with Odysseus every night demonstrates that she treats Odysseus more like as sex captive than a real lover. Even though she claims, “ I welcomed him warmly, cherished him, even vowed the make the man immortal, ageless, all his days” (Odyssey 5,150-151), the hospitality that she shows here is just a tool to help her possess Odyssey. By making Odyssey ageless and immortal, Calypso can hold Odyssey and satisfy her possessive obsessions forever. Calypso’s sexual desire can be further proved in her angry speech. She says, “ Hard-hearted you are, you gods! You unrivaled lords of jealousy-scandalized when goddesses sleep with mortals, openly, even when one has made the man her husband” (Odyssey 5,130-133). Calypso is angry because female gods and male gods are treated unequally about the affairs with mortals. She asks Odysseus to become her husband because she wants to achieve sexual equality. However, at the end, Calypso releases Odyssey since she is afraid of the punishment from Zeus (Odyssey 5, 153). The fact that Calypso easily submits to Zeus’s
She tempted many, even Zeus: “she beguiles even his wise heart . . . mates him with mortal women, unknown to Hera” (Hesiod). The goddess of love, “she was a particular favourite with the city’s many prostitutes but also supervised the sexual life of married women” (Blundell, 1998). To curb her promiscuity, Aphrodite was married to Hephaistos (god of the forge), who cared deeply for her, and made he...
Jocasta and Emilia, important minor characters in their plays, both showcase the power of love as well as how destructive it can be. Emilia and Jocasta both unknowingly end their own lives, as well as others, and spread tragedy throughout the towns in which they lived. It is believed that in 425 B.C., Sophocles first produced Oedipus the King (Theater of Sophocles). In the play, Oedipus the King, Jocasta is the main character, Oedipus’, mother and wife. Jocasta’s love for Oedipus ultimately destroys him and results in her death. Sophocles helped shape the heroic ideal that is later embodied in medieval romance, which Shakespeare traditionally uses in Othello (Zerba). William Shakespeare wrote Othello in about 1604 (The Theater of Shakespeare). In the play, Othello, Emilia is a companion to the main character, Othello’s wife Desdemona. Emilia’s love for her husband, Iago, ultimately destroys Othello and results in her own death.
Glome is a somewhat morbid place, led by King Trom, father of Orual, Redival, and Psyche. Trom is an uncharitable, malicious king who is completely selfish. Ungit, the goddess who is worshiped in Glome, shares common characteristics, proving to be a brutal and dark goddess. One who even requires blood sacrifices. Orual describes ungit saying, “She is a black stone without head or hands or face, and a very strong goddess. My old master, whom we called the Fox, said she was the same whom the Greeks call Aphrodite” (4). Aphrodite, being the goddess of love and beauty is often viewed as a gentle and kind goddess. This represents the love in which Aphrodite stands for. In contrast, Ungit being strong and dark in appearance symbolizes the love which she represents, and that in which the kingdom of Glome has come to know through worshiping her. We see this dark and powerful love through the way Trom treats his daughters, the way the priest speaks of Psyche’s sacrifice, and the way Orual loves Psyche, Bardia, and the
Ovid's work ridicules the concept of marriage and harmony between the sexes. It paints men and women as individual creatures who have little desire of joining with the opposite sex. The male gods are impelled by Cupid's power to chase certain female characters. Of course, the female characters are not interested and choose to evade capture so that they may continue with their individual desires. When the female god Venus falls for a human male and lays with him, she goes to great lengths to protect him from the wild animals. She specifically tells him to be bold "when you approach the timid animals, those who are quick to flee: but do not be audacious when you face courageous beasts" (Ovid 936). The man Adonis chose not to heed the god's warning and went on to hunt a wild boar with the aid of his hounds. The boar that Venus despised killed the human that she lusted after. This is another example of individual wants taking precedence over the joined couple. Pygmalion was so much of an individualist that he created his own mate from ivory.
Transformations from one shape or form into another are the central theme in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The popularity and timelessness of this work stems from the manner of story telling. Ovid takes stories relevant to his culture and time period, and weaves them together into one work with a connecting theme of transformation throughout. The thread of humor that runs through Metamorphoses is consistent with the satire and commentary of the work. The theme is presented in the opening lines of Metamorphoses, where the poet invokes the gods, who are responsible for the changes, to look favorably on his efforts to compose. The changes are of many kinds: from human to animal, animal to human, thing to human, human to thing. Some changes are reversed: human to animal to human. Sometimes the transformations are partial, and physical features and personal qualities of the earlier being are preserved in mutated form.