Europa

In the research I’ve been doing for my dissertation, I came across an interpretation of Ovid’s Europa myth that I found interesting. The story is widely interpreted as one of rape. Although the rape happens off-stage, the Latin used commonly represents rape in the Metamorphoses, and other texts (in particular, the use of the verbs abit, fert, and ablata, all having something do with with carrying off or away, which often indicates rape). Liz Oakley-Brown, in Ovid and the Cultural Politics of Translation in Early Modern England, argues that a tapestry retelling the myth of Europa, by a woman named Elizabeth Talbot, actually depicts the story as a representation of female desire. Europa goes willingly into the waves and onto the back of Jupiter-as-bull, with no indication that she is putting up a fight or being forced to do it.

More than anything, this interpretation surprised me. Perhaps because most of the time when I read Ovid’s Metamorphoses, I am hyper-aware of all the instances where male translators use out-dated words and phrases to translate rape and which don’t really show the full weight of the action (think, “took her chastity” and “deflowered”). I am so focused on the action in the stories, searching for indications of anything that might look like force or rape. I haven’t always looked for what these women want, I gloss over their desires and look only for the moments when something bad happens to them. The more that I’ve been reading some of these stories, the more that I am realizing that the women in these stories do have desires. But this feels like historically uncharted territory. We don’t have women’s voices because these are not stories that are told or written explicitly by women (although some have argued that Ovid is the Roman author who gets inside women’s heads the most, who shows us their perspectives). It’s the retellings that show us what women wanted instead of what they got in more explicit terms, however, there are seeds of these desires in the original texts themselves. 

Daphne wants to be a virgin forever, she wants to run in the forests with Diana and her band of women, and she tells her father so. Philomela wants to see her sister, and Procne wants to visit Philomela; after Tereus rapes Procne, both sisters want to make Tereus pay. Iphis wants to be with Ianthe, although whether or not Iphis is trans, or just needs a little education about lesbian sex is up for debate. Arachne wants to be the best weaver, better than Minerva. After she’s turned into a cow, Io just wants to be able to speak to her father, to tell him everything. Retellings by women make these desires much more clear. From “Daphne” by Nina MacLaughlin: “I wanted the woods. I wanted the weight of the game on my shoulders” (4) and “‘The way your look is going to make what you want impossible’” (5). From “Medusa” by Nina MacLaughlin: “He put his body where I did not want his body” (140) and “I hope for a day when a fury as white-hot as mine can be held by another, accepted, understood, maybe even shared” (142). The retellings give us women’s voices, women’s desires, from women’s perspectives. How surprising it is to see the story clearly from a woman’s perspective, to see her in control, doing what she wants to do, and yet (because it is a retelling of an original) still becoming victim to the action in the original. Europa’s retelling by Elizabeth Talbot is like this, surprising because it is perhaps not what we expect at all: Europa wanting (to be carried off by) Jupiter. But here, as in MacLaughlin’s stories and in many other retellings, women are free from the originals, free from the modality and language of the original, male author. In that space, a new story is possible. 

Sources

MacLaughlin, Nina. Wake, Siren: Ovid Retold. FSG Originals. 2019. 

Oakley-Brown, Liz. Ovid and the Cultural Politics of Translation in Early Modern England. Routledge. 2006.