Let’s talk about Medusa.
Is she a victim of sexual assault, a wrathful protector of women . . . or neither?
There are multiple versions of this myth, and layers of potential meanings.
But heads up, this post talks about tough topics, like rape.
Medusa #1: The Victim
I’ll start with the version most of us are familiar with.
In this version, Medusa was a beautiful mortal woman. So beautiful, with her long blonde hair, that she was desired by Poseidon.
Medusa didn’t reciprocate his desire, but Poseidon was a Greek God, and brother of Zeus, by damnit. He decided to have his way.
Medusa fled. She went to Athena’s temple for protection, but it didn’t help.
Poseidon caught up with her and raped her—right there in Athena’s temple.
Now, Athena is a “virgin goddess” (a term popularized by Jean Shinoda Bolen, who wrote Goddesses in Everywoman), who does not have lovers. It basically means her archetype exists independent of relationships (as opposed to someone like Aphrodite or Persephone, for whom relationships are fundamental).
When Athena saw this act of fornication in her temple, she was seriously offended.
How dare this upstart, self-important mortal woman have sex in her inviolate virgin’s temple? Athena didn’t pay attention to the fact that Medusa had been forced.
She punished Medusa by turning her into a hideous gorgon, half-snake and half-woman, with serpents for hair and a gaze that could turn men to stone if you looked her in the eyes.
Try attracting lovers like THAT, Medusa. Ha!
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In other versions, Medusa brought this curse on herself.
She was a priestess of Athena, sworn to celibacy.
Until one day, the super-hot, immortal, powerful god of the sea came knocking and seduced her. And in this case, I’m not using the word “seduced” as a polite euphemism for “assaulted.” I mean he seduced her. Medusa was into it.
But Athena was not.
Changing Medusa into a gorgon was punishment for breaking her vows of celibacy.
Which, honestly, is pretty par for the course when it comes to the gods. If you make a vow to a god, you’d better take that shit seriously.
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Willing participant or unwilling victim, Medusa was condemned to life on the fringes of society (not necessarily a cave), where she wouldn’t accidentally turn anybody to stone. (Especially no women.)
There she lurked.
Until Perseus.
A Side Note about Perseus
Perseus isn’t really a side note, is he?
But I can’t have him taking Medusa’s spotlight. So I’ll try to keep it short . . .
Perseus was the son of the mortal Danae and Zeus, who impregnated her in the form of a shower of gold (heh).
Danae wound up marrying a guy who didn’t like Perseus much, and who sent Perseus on a quest to get Medusa’s head, figuring the kid wouldn’t make it three steps into the gorgon’s lair before getting stoned.
Seriously, Perseus was sent on this quest by his passive-agressively murderous step-dad.
It wasn’t some noble mission to save Andromeda from the Kraken. (Not in the sources I’ve found. That’s a Hollywood thing, not an ancient myth thing.)
So Perseus got all this help from Athena and Hermes and some nymphs, and gathered his sacred weapons and tools—these include a mirror and the helmet of Hades (which turned him invisible). Hermes also gave him his winged sandals and an adamantine sickle and/or sword and/or sickle-shaped sword.
So Harry took all this stuff and went down into the Chamber of Secrets—
Oops. Sorry. Wrong myth. (Kinda.)
Ahem. Perseus went to Medusa’s cave and looked into the mirror to see her while she was asleep. (No epic gorgon vs hero battle.) He used the sickle-sword to cut off her head, and put the head into a magic bag that would contain its power.
He got away no problem, and took himself to Ethiopia, where “the king’s daughter was set out to be the prey of a sea monster.” (Maicar.com) Perseus kind of had a thing for slaying monsters now, so he used the head of Medusa to kill this sea monster and married the King’s daughter. Later, he used it to kill his step-dad (who sucked) and his grandfather (who also sucked) and then founded Mycenae.
All in a good day’s work.
More on Perseus here at Theoi (there’s a LOT here!) and Maicar (this is more digestible).
Medusa #2: I Am Vengeance
What if Athena wasn’t cursing Medusa?
What if she wanted to give Medusa the power to revenge herself on men?
Being a gorgon pretty much guarantees no man is ever going to bother her sexually again. Or even encroach on her territory without paying the price.
Perhaps Athena looked into her heart and was like, “I see your rage, sister. Let it out.”
Becoming a gorgon does seem like a physical manifestation of the pain, rage, resentment, and spite that could settle in a woman’s heart after she’s sexually attacked (by an authority figure, no less).
An attack like that changes a woman.
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In this context, Medusa is a symbol of women’s anger—arising from such horror that you can’t even look it in the face. And Perseus harnesses that rage, channeling it in a way that actively protects women (or at least, Andromeda).
She’s a lot like Dark Artemis here.
Dark Artemis is the man-hating, violent, revenge-filled version of Artemis that we see in the myth of Actaeon (who got turned into a stag and mauled to death by his own hounds when he went all peeping Tom on Artemis), and in characters like Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (Here’s a post on Dark Artemis.)
Like Dark Artemis, Medusa is here to kick masculine ass and not bother taking their names.
Until Perseus shows up and co-opts/redirects her anger.
If you’d like to explore this angle a little more, see my post, Myth & Movie: Perseus as a Feminist Hero in Clash of the Titans.
I think my favorite thing about this version of the Perseus myth is that the hero has used the rage of the abused feminine to save the innocent feminine from abuse.
It took a hero to do this—to face what had been done to Medusa, and to channel that rage to a place of service instead of hating or fearing it.
I won’t wax poetic much more on this interpretation here, but I did want to offer it as food for thought.
Medusa #3: The Gorgon
But maybe Medusa’s story didn’t happen like that at all.
There is an older version of the myth.
In this one, Medusa was NOT originally a beautiful woman.
She was always a monster, and had been born into a family of monsters.
She had two sisters who were also gorgons. They were described as “winged women with broad, round heads, serpentine locks of hair, large staring eyes, wide mouths, lolling tongues, the tusks of swine, flared nostrils, and sometimes short, coarse beards.” (Theoi.com)
This older version of the myth comes from Hesiod, writing in around the 8th/7th c. B.C.E.
To be clear, Medusa was still mortal here. She was just always a gorgon. Also, she seems to have willingly slept with Poseidon in this version.
(The version of the myth where she was a beautiful woman, and turned into a gorgon by Athena, seems to first appear with Ovid in the 1st c. A.D.)
These days, we usually see Medusa shown as a half-woman/half-snake . . . but I can find no mention of that in the sources. That’s a modern adaptation of the myth.
There WAS a half-woman/half-snake monster in Greek myth. That was Echidna. She lived in a cave. Most modern Medusa depictions are actually showing Echidna.
In most sources, Medusa seems to be just a particularly ugly beastly woman with snakes for hair. There are even Greek vases that depict her with human legs. (The picture below is dated from the 5th century BCE.)
In this context, Medusa isn’t necessarily a symbol for the abused, vengeance-filled feminine.
She’s one of the monstrous feminine forces that appear through Greek myth. Like the harpies, the sirens, or Scylla and Charybdis. (I wrote more about the monstrous feminine in this post about The Odyssey.) Think of them like the Hindu Kali—goddess of darkness, death, and destruction. She’s eternal. She takes many forms. She’s inescapeable as death itself, and she calls to men (and women) in many ways.
Even in the older versions of the myth, Perseus came to lob off Medusa’s head.
Then he uses her head to petrify the sea monster and save Andromeda.
Perseus harnessed the power of the monstrous feminine to defend mankind.
And mankind used it.
A note on the aegis
The depiction of Medusa’s head was known throughout the ancient world as the “aegis.”
It was on Athena’s shield, as well as the shields of some soldiers, armor, banners, statues, and other places.
It was intended to petrify one’s enemies, and maybe even prevent them from looking at you altogether so you could swoop in and cut them down.
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Some of us see Medusa as a symbol for victims.
Some of us see her as a symbol of strength.
Sometimes she has sex with Poseidon willingly (in a field of flowers, no less), and other times she’s raped.
She’s victimized by Poseidon. She’s victimized by Athena.
Athena is on her side.
Her punishment is unjust.
Her punishment is her just desserts.
She’s condemned to live at the edge of the world.
The edge of the world is her place of power.
Perseus was another masculine force that came in and abused her—another insult added to a lifetime of injury.
Perseus liberated her anger and channeled it for the benefit of humanity.
It all depends on what you see in the myth.
Read more about Medusa at Theoi.