Medusa’s Wrath?
© Courtesy of the Artist and Metro Pictures
[…] One day Neptune/ Found her and raped her, in Minerva’s temple/And the goddess turned away, and hid her eyes/Behind her shield, and, punishing the outrage/As it deserved, she changed her hair to serpents.” Ovid, Metamorphoses (trans. Rolphe Humphries)
And that is how I became this monster that turns people to stone with the power of her gaze. Ironic, when you consider that Minerva turned hers away from me, her servant, her priestess. She couldn’t look or she wouldn’t look, whereas I’m condemned to look too intensely, too deeply, right into your soul, which is unbearable. No one can hold that kind of gaze and survive.
Quite a punishment, to make me judge and executioner, and to put serpents in my head and make me hideous, so that anyone who encounters me can’t help but look, so I look back … And the rage. I’m always angry and that makes me dangerous, which can be a very useful weapon in the right hands. But not to my advantage. Think of Perseus.
And the thing is that I don’t really know what I did to deserve such a harsh punishment. My memories of that night are a bit unclear and the stories circulating don’t seem to shed much light. Some say Poseidon and I were only kissing. Others say we were already lovers, which I think is unlikely because I never found Poseidon attractive, but who knows, he may have disguised himself in the way gods do when they want to seduce a mortal woman. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, and sometimes I’m inclined to believe that’s what happened, because it’s better than the other option. That option would make me the victim and Poseidon the perpetrator, and why would Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom, my Goddess, my protector, punish an innocent victim, and in such a cruel, spiteful way?
That’s the question that continues to puzzle me: why did she do it? Or rather, how could she do it? How could she punish me and let him go? Fine, it happened in her temple, her sacred space, and she felt defiled. It’s not that I can’t understand how that felt … but why? Couldn’t she sense my confusion? Couldn’t she see I was trapped, unable to act? Paralyzed. Powerless.
Some say that by turning me into a monster she made me more powerful than I had ever been, I would ever be. She made me a symbol and placed my effigy on her shield to warn others of her wrath. Her wrath, not mine.
I know what you’re thinking: where is the fierce, snake-haired Medusa, she of the petrifying stare? where’s her rage, where’s her fire, her righteous indignation? Who is this woman lying on a nest of cushions, staring vacantly into space, this apathetic figure, more odalisque than terrifying slayer? Why is she not raging against Minerva and Poseidon and Perseus and all the others? Where’s her wrath?
I ask myself the same question. Why this apathy, this indifference? Maybe because I’m tired of trying to find answers. Exhausted. Or maybe I’m just disappointed, and we all know what disappointment can do. We stop caring. Or maybe I no longer want to be a symbol of rage — Minerva’s rage, female rage —it takes so much out of you and doesn’t answer the question that matters most, the fundamental question: the matter of her betrayal.
Or perhaps it’s of no consequence. What can I say? She is her father’s daughter, after all.
