Circe, a lesser known goddess to the Greek pantheon, is a mythological retelling by Madeline Miller. There’s nothing new added to the story, but Miller’s narrative neatly ties her life together over centuries, perhaps even a millenia. Part of Homer’s Oddyssey, Circe is told from the perspective of Circe herself for maybe the first time. The story is a journey to learning of her power and how she grows through each of her encounters and adventures.
*Content warning for mentions of Sexual Assault.*
A Powerful Prisoner
Circe is not a vengeful god, but she is cautious of the Olympians and the Titans, for justifiable reasons. Often they abused or neglected her, shunned her, and ultimately made a prisoner out of her. And so most of her life is spent alone, with her animals and her herbs on Aiaia. She is banned to it by her father Helios for interfering with human affairs, sculpting a god out of Glaucos and creating the monster Cylla.
There’s something strongly human and accurate about how someone who is hurt by others has to pay the price for it later on. Abusers get to sit on their thrones and continuously abuse, much of the time. Unless something is done after all, and often the abused have to pay for that too.
Love as Motivation
Every time Circe has the attention of a man, she awakens, but falls into a trap. Either they use her and leave, or they use her, stay for a while, and then leave. In one of these instances she has a child with Odysseus, the mortal hero of The Odyssey. Glaucos loses interest in her once she makes him into a god. Many of her infatuations do not last the kind of lifetimes she’s capable of, including her kinship with her child. But Circe pines for connection and company, even if she is a strong witch that does not back down from a challenge. Perhaps even because of that.
Circe helps me to envision how long a mythological god’s life must be. She spends years raising Telegonus to age sixteen and even that is just a blip of her life. There are her years with her family, where they believe she lacks any power what so ever and bully her for it. Her time with Odysseus spans only one year, though lives in her head and heart for much longer. She has a few other adventures besides these, including the troubled nymphs that find themselves drawn to her as some kind of mother figure, and the adventure with the minotaur and Pasiphaë.
At the end of Miller’s story, she gets to leave Aiaiai as a mortal with someone who might love her, after all. It’s a satisfying ending to her centuries-long ordeal of being undermined, used for her power, familial ties, body. There’s also no real indication that her powers would leave her if she was mortal, too. Like she says in the book, one must only will it to be a witch.
Miller’s Words, Some Guy’s Story
I find myself entranced with her adventures and the happenings of her life and those around her. And through both Madeline Miller’s words and Perdita Weeks’ narration the story comes to life. Knowing that previously this story was told through Odysseus, it’s far more empowering to read it from Circe herself. But I wonder about what if it was reworked for a modern, feminist audience more explicitly. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood does something with this idea. Penelope, too, shows up in Circe, though her voice is one of protection and jealousy.
In fact many of the goddesses in Circe are jealous, protective of their lovers, and motivated by that simplicity. One would think a goddess could find more motivations to their lives than their lovers, if their male counterparts do. Her heart breaking rape, though with a satisfying conclusion, also left me feeling her mortality and weakness. So even though it is Madeline Miller who writes Circe, the story itself is bound to thousands of years of patriarchal rule and dominance that sometimes disappoints.
Personally and despite this, I very much enjoyed Circe. And like I said on my IG post, I feel hungry for more of these modern versions of mythological stories. What did you think?
Rating: 4/5
If you’re interested in purchasing a copy of Circe and you live in Canada you can get a copy at the Book Outlet. If you’d like to help me support independent book stores in the US and UK, you can get a copy from Bookshop.org and UK Bookshop too.
