“You unbend your
forehead at last,” said Mr. Rivers. “I
thought Medusa had looked at you, and that you were turning to
stone. Perhaps now you will ask how much
you are worth?”
“How much am I
worth?”
“Oh, a
trifle! Nothing of course to speak
of—twenty thousand pounds, I think they say—but what is that?”
“Twenty thousand
pounds?”
Here was a new
stunner—I had been calculating on four or five thousand. This news actually took my breath for a
moment: Mr. St. John, whom I had never heard laugh before, laughed now.
-
From Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Medusa, one of
the three Gorgons, is celebrated for her personal charms and the beauty of her
locks. Neptune being enamoured of her, went ahead and received favours from her
in the temple of Minerva, who was angered by this desecration of the sanctity
of the temple, and hence she changed the
beautiful locks of Medusa to serpents. You may read more on the myth at your leisure.
Now, Medusa, in
myth can thus be seen as a representation of the Other by virtue of her ‘antagonizing’
difference.
This function of Medusa
as a representation of the Other, has
been bandied about extensively by a host of 19th & 20th
century writers too. Let’s have a look at some of the important ones here!
The Raft of the
Medusa (1818) by Théodore Géricault, which subsequently became an icon of
French Romanticism.
The Head of the Medusa (1963),
in Greek novelist Pandelis Prevelakis’s trilogy,
“The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975) by Hélène
Cixous
Look, Medusa! (2014)
by Suniti Namjoshi
Eve Meets Medusa (1993),
by Michelene Wandor
“Sphinx and
Medusa” by Clark Ashton Smith
Medusa's Mirrors: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and the
Metamorphosis of the Female Self (1998), by Julia
Walker
Medusa (1970), by Ann
Stanford
“Medusa” (1980), by
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail
(1983) the fourth book in the Four Lords
of the Diamond series by Jack L. Chalker.
Medusa's Child (1997), by John
J. Nance
The Medusa Encounter (2001) by
Paul Preuss
“Medusa and the
Female Gaze” (1990), Susan R. Bowers
Mesmerism,
Medusa, and the Muse: The Romantic Discourse of Spontaneous Creativity (2012),
by Anne DeLong
Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon
(2007), by Stephen R. Wilk
The Medusa Effect: Representations and Epistemology in
Victorian Aesthetics (2009), by Thomas Albrecht
[Compilation by this blogger]
No comments:
Post a Comment