Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(31)

It was the perfect illustration of what many women felt and continue to feel about the violence they experience at the hands of some men. Not only do these women face it in their daily lives, but they see it all around them presented as a norm, everywhere from newspaper headlines to the walls of art galleries and museums. Thousands of people walk past the Cellini statue in Florence every day; thousands more see the Canova in New York and in Rome. Medusa may have snakes for hair, but she still has the face and body of a woman. The Canova sanitizes this with its gleaming white marble. The name of the statue may be Perseus Triumphant, but it is only a triumphant image if you associate yourself with Perseus. The Cellini shows Perseus defiling Medusa’s body so brutally that it must come from anger or contempt, or a combination of the two. It is no less shocking than when Achilles does the same to Hector in Books Twenty-Two and Twenty-Three of the Iliad: dragging his corpse around the walls of Troy, refusing to bury him or to allow anyone else to do so for days, until the gods finally intervene in Book Twenty-Four. And yet Cellini’s Perseus gazes down at the ground, even as he holds Medusa’s head aloft and in front of him: there is no possibility he might accidentally catch her petrifying eyes. He is still afraid of her, even after he has beheaded her and trodden her down. If you’re looking for a better metaphor for virulent misogyny, I’m afraid I don’t have one.

We are so accustomed to seeing this image that we barely notice the cruelty which underpins the story: it’s just a hero and his trophy. We walk past it in the same way we might half-heartedly notice a statue of St George and a dragon: it’s only a dragon, who cares? But Medusa isn’t a monster like a dragon. She’s a woman who was raped and then punished for it with snakish hair. Her lethal stare is a localized peril: avoid her and you would never be in danger, because she keeps herself far away from mortals. She is damaged first by a god, then by a goddess. And finally Perseus comes looking for her to kill her and mutilate her, to satisfy the whim of another man. No matter who she encounters – besides her sisters – they only want to injure her.

The shock of seeing Garbati’s reversal of this, of Perseus’ head in Medusa’s hand, is incredible. It jolts the viewer into acknowledging a double standard: it is so rare in art to see men objectified, even rarer for the objectifier to be a woman. It reminded me of a scene in season three of the Netflix show Orange is the New Black,39 where two of the female inmates plan and then prepare to rape a male prison guard who has raped one of them. The scene is toe-curling and shocking in equal measure. Is the show really going to allow two characters we have come to like, or even love, to behave in such a horrific way: raping an unconscious man with a broom handle? In the end, they can’t go through with their revenge attack. It is an enormous relief for characters and viewers alike. And yet, we have seen the scenes of male-on-female rape. Be thankful they just want equality, and not payback.

Long before the Garbati meme, however, there was a gender-reversal of Perseus decapitating Medusa. The tale of Judith and Holofernes dates back to perhaps the second century BCE and can be found in the Book of Judith, which appears in some versions of the Old Testament. The Assyrian general, Holofernes, is blockading the town of Betulia.40 Deprived of food and water, the Betulians hold out for as long as they can, but, after several weeks, they are reduced to near-surrender. Judith befriends Holofernes by walking to his tent and introducing herself as a widow: she is so beautiful, his soldiers allow her to enter. Holofernes invites her to stay for dinner, during which he gets drunk. Once he is unconscious, Judith prays for her god to assist her, and beheads him. She takes his head back to Betulia and the Assyrians – deprived of this necessary part of their general – withdraw.

The parallels between this story and that of Medusa and Perseus are as revealing as the differences. Firstly, Judith has to go and find Holofernes. Her quest is somewhat shorter than Perseus’, but she still needs to seek out her target. Second, she needs to take advantage of his feeling of security in his own space: this is not a battlefield killing. Next, Holofernes, like Medusa, is unconscious when he is killed. His superior power might otherwise have produced a different outcome. And Judith, like Perseus, is reliant on assistance from a god to help her commit the actual beheading.

But the differences are also crucial: Holofernes is the aggressor in this story (well, unless you can find an account by an Assyrian). He has cut off a whole town from food and fresh water. And when Judith finally kills him, it is in desperation, just a few days before her town would be forced to surrender. Of course, we might feel that Perseus is similarly forced into his quest, but being asked to fetch an unlikely object for a king is considerably less of a moral duty than trying to save men, women and children from thirst and starvation (even if that king is a villain trying to marry your mother). Judith hopes that by committing her murder, she will save a town full of people; Perseus kills Medusa and then goes on to commit hundreds more murders: in Pindar’s tenth Pythian Ode,41 he turns an entire island populace to stone, while Ovid has him petrify two hundred people during a fight at his own wedding.42 That’s certainly one way to make sure you have enough cake to go around.

A few metres away from Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa in Florence is a copy of a bronze sculpture by Donatello, of Judith and Holofernes. The original was cast in around 1460, and stands in the nearby Palazzo Vecchio. Judith has a remarkable set to her jaw as she raises her sword. Her chin juts forward as she steels herself for the task ahead. Both characters are clad in respectable drapery and the bronze of Holofernes’ bare chest has been rendered without much muscular detail: there is none of the athleticism of the naked Perseus in Cellini’s image. Similarly with Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, which was painted in 1611–12 and can be found in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, in Naples. Here, Judith and her maid approach the task of beheading this enemy general with all the weary efficiency of two women doing the laundry. Nothing about this killing is presented as erotic. Judith is a widow, she lives a life of complete chastity after the death of her husband.43