Then it felt like there were new ones coming out every other week. I quickly forgot the distinguishing details of particular books and grew tired of the genre as they began to merge under a general theme.
Where did all of these Greek mythology retellings come from, and why have they become so popular?
The act of retelling old stories goes back to the classical world. In the 20th century, writers such as Mary Renault continued the tradition, with Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin following in her footsteps in the 2000s, publishing “The Penelopiad” and “Lavinia” respectively.
Something changed in the 2010s and early 2020s. Madeline Miller’s wildly successful “The Song of Achilles” retold the story of Achilles and Patroclus’ relationship as a homoerotic romance, reviving the idea from ancient textual evidence. “The Song of Achilles” won the 17th annual Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2012, securing Miller’s pre-eminence in the literary world.
With the publication of “Circe” and “The Silence of the Girls” in 2018, the genre shifted again. Suddenly every story was from a feminist perspective, focused on giving a voice to unheard women from the most famous classical texts.
I’m not entirely sure why Greek mythology retellings suddenly became so popular in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Maybe they came at exactly the right moment in our cultural history. With the political unrest of Trump’s first term sparking new conversations about women and reproductive rights, maybe feminist retellings were just what readers were craving. Or maybe the pandemic simply encouraged people to turn to more fantasy-esque stories as a form of escapism.
Whatever the case, their popularity didn’t last. Authors are still churning out novels inspired by classical texts, so why aren’t people reading them anymore?
I have a few theories. One is that the genre has become so oversaturated that readers have become numb to new novels in this area. How many feminist Greek mythology retellings can you read before they start to lose their luster?
Another potential problem I see is that all of these novels are based on the idea that women’s stories are ignored or glossed over in the classical canon. Is it really true that women are completely unrepresented in Greek mythology?
Take Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. Known most famously for her trick of weaving and unweaving to strategically defers insistent suitors until her husband’s return. Clytemnestra, too, is a famous figure. She avenges the sacrifice of her daughter, Iphegenia, by killing both Agamemnon and his concubine, Cassandra, upon their return from the Trojan war. And what about Nausicaa? She bravely helps the wandering Odysseus and orchestrates his arrival at her father’s palace.
How do we know these stories? Because ancient peoples decided that they were important enough to keep telling. Women’s stories were not prioritized in the same way that men’s stories were. But it is a gross simplification to say that women’s stories were completely untold until the 21st century.
In fact, the stories we already know are the ones that probably need to be retold the least. The countless unknown women who lived and died in obscurity are the ones who were forgotten by history, not Clytemnestra, Helen nor Cassandra. But I know that when I’m browsing the bookstore, I’m more likely to pick up a book about Medea than about an unknown woman. The paradox is that we are both drawn in by this notion of retelling and repelled by its redundancy once its creative energy feels spent.
I think the crux of the issue with modern Greek mythology retellings is that the protagonists are just too similar. Cultural biases shaped female characters in the classical canon, but they were still complex and multi-dimensional, while modern retellings have a tendency to define them as ignored, overlooked or mistreated by history.
Not all female characters, however, are supposed to — or have to — be likeable. Stories thrive on a combination of unsavoury, angelic, and vexing characters. In fact, it seems a disservice to the classical corpus to reduce its female characters to digestible, “previously misrepresented” portrayals. Maybe the point of Clytemnestra’s murderous rage is not for us to justify it, but to examine its violence as a function of the myth itself.
“ Since when do characters need to be good to be likeable? If in every feminist Greek mythology retelling, the protagonist’s primary characteristic is fighting against an oppressive system within the confines of her gender, it’s no wonder they begin to blend together.”
For me at least, they start to feel flat as the complexities of the different source myths and characters are condensed. In the 21st century, I don’t think it’s enough to write a book from the perspective of a woman and call it feminist.
Ava Chambers PO ’28 is currently reading ‘The Decameron’ and ‘The Housemaid’. She enjoys watching movies, eating breakfast foods, and adding books to her ‘want to read’ list.
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