A Feminist Retelling of Homer's World

“So, Muse; Tell me about a Woman.” (p23)

This is the final line of the introduction to Emily Hauser’s Mythical, a feminist retelling of Homer’s world. It echoes the first line of Homer’s The Odyssey - “So Muse; tell me about a the story of a man.” Or a more modern translation by Robert Fagles, 1996, "Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns".

In the introduction, Mary Beard talks of the first example in Western Literature of a man telling a woman to shut up when Telemachus (Penelope’s son), tells her to leave the speeches to the men and get on with her daily chores and her loom. Weaving as an everyday, feminine pursuit, one that was consuming and out of sight from the men carrying out the important work of making speeches and presumably decisions.

“If we keep telling a story in which Penelope is always silent, then that’s how she’ll stay - silenced. It’s time for her and all the others waiting in the wings to tell their stories." So, Muse: tell me about a woman.” (p23)

This book reveals many details of women playing an active if not essential role in the workings of the epic poem, as well as being the catalyst of the Trojan War. Hauser stumbles across many historical details in her research which would lead us to believe that this well trodden tale of heroism was based on real events, real people and real women in the Late Bronze Age.

In my final work, I would like to join the discourse in retelling, or reimagining the stories of these women, sent off to their looms. Silenced. But in their art-making, they find different ways to communicate, to get their stories out there.

I am reminded of Hélène Cixous’s call for women to write about women in her 1975 essay, “The Laugh of the Medussa”, which I have posted about earlier.

Emily Hauser, Mythica: A New History of Homer’s World, Through the Women Written Out of It (London: Doubleday/Transworld Publishers, 2025).