If Jesus Heard the Sirens' Song
If Jesus Heard the Sirens' Song
By Emily McConkey
I have been thinking about Sirens lately. In Homer’s Odyssey, Sirens lure men to death with their songs. Odysseus sails past their island in Book 12; curious to hear their voices, he gives his crew a warning from Circe and then a command:
[…] Sirens
Weaving a haunting song over the sea
We are to shun, she said, and their green shore
All sweet with clover; yet she urged that I
Alone should listen to their song. Therefore
You are to tie me up, tight as a splint,
Erect along the mast, lashed to the mast,
And if I shout and beg to be untied,
Take more turns of the rope to muffle me.
As their ship nears the Sirens, desire pierces Odysseus and he pitifully begs his crew to release him. Having stuffed their ears with beeswax, the crew members ignore Odysseus’ cries and pass the singing Sirens, safely making it to their destination. By heeding Circe’s advice, Odysseus avoids the consequences of temptation, yet still hears the Sirens’ song—a rare prize.
In the Western imagination, the Sirens are spirits of seduction; they are vengeful monsters; they are metaphors of the vices. Taken into a Christian context, they provide a useful morality tale representing the sources of temptation the believer must face. I need stories like these to guide me in my own spiritual journey, but here is the catch: I have been thinking about Sirens because I used to regard them as metaphors. Lately, I’ve only been able to see them as lonesome, anguished women.
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Throughout my graduate studies in English literature, I have become interested in mythologies of the “feminine.” In my research and in my life, I reflect upon the power that mythologies have over the way we understand ourselves and the world. In doing so, I have noticed a pattern. Many of the stories–or retellings of the stories–most fundamental to our Western culture portray women as auxiliary characters in a male hero’s journey. They sort female characters into two types: supportive or suspicious. In the process of literary categorization and subjectification, we forget their histories. We remember Medusa as Perseus’ trophy; we forget her as the victim of Poseidon’s rape. Eve, once equal in dignity to her mate, has been condemned as the real perpetrator of the Fall; Adam has been relieved of most of the blame.
“Mythology is a search,” G.K. Chesterton writes in The Everlasting Man. Admittedly, I have found it a strenuous search, since my fascination with mythologies of women has led me to dig through competing and often perplexing definitions of female identity. For while myths contribute to the quest for universal truth, they are also products of broken cultures written largely from a male perspective. These myths about womanhood are both prone to error and pervasive. They inform our basic assumptions even when they are wrong.
Is it possible to reach beyond our cultural and socio-political conditioning to try to define womanhood? In a letter addressed to women in 1995, Pope John Paul II wrote,
“Women's dignity has often been unacknowledged and their prerogatives misrepresented; they have often been relegated to the margins of society and even reduced to servitude. This has prevented women from truly being themselves and it has resulted in a spiritual impoverishment of humanity. Certainly it is no easy task to assign the blame for this, considering the many kinds of cultural conditioning which down the centuries have shaped ways of thinking and acting.”
Women were historically excluded from participation in social and cultural discourse. Even today, a woman possesses few opportunities to learn about and express her true self beyond the prevalent forms of cultural representation.
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When we imagine a Siren today, we usually conceive of a sly, beautiful mermaid. She sings sweetly to men until they are captivated. Then she ruthlessly lures them into the sea to drown. This image deviates considerably from the Siren’s original form in classical mythology. Classical art and poetry represented Sirens as strange bird-like hybrids. Birds signified the gifts of prescience and clairvoyance; hence the Sirens were known as seers. Myths reported that they shared hidden knowledge in their legendary songs. Homer’s description of the physical appearance of the Sirens is not especially detailed, nor does it cast the Sirens as distinctly feminine. In ancient art, the Sirens were often even depicted with bearded, masculine faces.
The Latin poet Ovid proposed an unusually intimate account of the Sirens’ origin. In the Metamorphoses, the Sirens were close friends of Proserpine (more commonly known by her Greek name, Persephone). When Pluto abducted Proserpine, her friends “sought for her through all the lands” and “prayed / For wings to carry them across the waves.” The gods granted their request and gave the women wings. “Golden plumage” covered their bodies but they kept “their fair girls’ features and their human voice.” These Sirens had no interest in luring men to their death. They sang in the hopes that their voices would reach their beloved friend.
But that is not the Siren story with which we are familiar. Over time, the dangerous briny deep became more central to the Siren’s mythos; consequently, she morphed into a sea creature. In medieval literature, the fish-bodied Siren came to symbolize fleshly temptation. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Siren was an overtly sexual figure.
Emily Wilson, who translated The Odyssey in 2017, has discussed the subtle ways in which translators of the last two centuries tended to modify the original Greek to emphasize the seductive quality of the Sirens. The nineteenth century saw an abundance of Siren paintings, most of which depicted them as beautiful women of the sea. Artists typically painted them partially or entirely nude. The Sirens’ apparent sensuality came to define them. During this era, social commentators cast female identity in extremely dualistic terms: the “angel in the house” or “fallen woman.” Amid that context, the idea of a Siren as a femme fatale took root in the cultural imagination.
Nina MacLaughlin claims that “The longing isn’t pouring forth from the mouths of the Sirens—that’s all in the ear of the beholder. But the men don’t quite know it, or aren’t brave enough to admit.” The siren’s song itself was never seductive. Still, over the last few centuries, artists and poets have largely abandoned Ovid’s depiction of the Sirens as young women in search of their dear Proserpine, in favour of the (masculine) fantasy of beguiling, monstrous women. Homer’s suggestion of the depth and wisdom of the Siren’s song is curtailed by its listeners, who project onto the song their own desires and longings. As Virginia Woolf wrote in 1929, “Imaginatively, [woman] is of the highest importance; practically, she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history.”
Why should we worry about characters who begin as women and evolve into mere metaphors in art and literature? That process sustains a perception of women as suspicious creatures, and of their bodies and voices as provocative objects designed for male enjoyment. It places blame on women’s bodies instead of critiquing the male gaze. What’s more, these metaphors take a toll on each woman’s view of herself. John Berger described this process in his 1972 documentary Ways of Seeing: “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.” Many women self-police, mistrust our own bodies, try to take up as little space as possible, and ultimately suppress the worlds within us.
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Myths that depict women solely in relation to men fail to offer a holistic vision of women as individuals. Feminist theorists of the 1970s stressed the necessity of women expressing their own experiences in art and literature. They urged female writers and artists to rewrite the stories of mythical women from their own perspective. Hélène Cixous wrote, “I wished that woman would write and proclaim this unique empire so that other women [...] might exclaim: I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of songs.”
That passage comes from the essay entitled “The Laugh of the Medusa,” which is framed by that cardinal archetype of dangerous women, the snaky-haired Gorgon. Medusa is a multi-faceted archetype, which makes her, in turn, an important symbol of multi-faceted womanhood. To some, her chaotic serpentine hair and piercing gaze exhibit a version of femininity that is aberrant and, by extension, dangerous. But this attitude towards such a character fails to acknowledge her history and her perspective. Although Medusa is commonly remembered as the monster whose grisly head became Perseus’s trophy, in her mythological origin she was a victim of rape. Once a beautiful maiden, Medusa was sexually assaulted by Poseidon in Athena’s temple, and for the desecration of her temple Athena punished Medusa. This violent genesis, which stripped Medusa of her agency, is a glimpse into a woman’s experience that demands closer attention.
Cixous’ essay builds upon the writings of female authors during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who reimagined stories such as Medusa’s from a female perspective. They understood Medusa’s rage in context; this is a woman who is perpetually grappling with the pain of abuse, of repression, and of marginalization. As Emily Erwin Culpepper wrote in 1986, “violence against women is widespread and multiform. Such dangers make it desirable and vitally important for women to learn how to manifest a visage that will repel men when necessary. We are not repelled by the Gorgon’s face.” It’s worth remembering that after Perseus kills Medusa, Athena places the Gorgon’s head on her shield as a protection from danger. In this way, Medusa’s gaze is a protector of women.
But Medusa is even more than her anger and pain. Cixous writes that “You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing.” In her multivalence, Medusa embodies the liberated female gaze. Programmed to adhere to narrow standards of femininity, women often view their own intricacies as monstrous. Twentieth-century poems about Medusa centre around a reclaiming of these aspects of the self women often feel obliged to conceal. Patricia Smith’s poem “Medusa” conveys both strength and vulnerability wrapped up in forceful female desire as Medusa relates the process of her bodily transformation. Colleen McElroy’s poem “A Navy Blue Afro” invites African American women to embrace their blackness, grieving “Medusa hair tamed”–an interpretation that affirms Medusa’s intersectional significance. Medusa provides a new lens through which to view women’s desires, experiences, fears, feelings, and loves. Hers is a gaze that regards women as bright and kaleidoscopic subjects.
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While thinking about the female gaze has helped me to discover “unheard-of songs” within myself, I cannot know myself fully. No matter how much I strive for self-awareness, my inward gaze often proves insufficient. My insecurities, my inclinations, my blind spots, even my own internalized misogyny feeds me lies about my identity. On whose gaze can I rely when I am weak?
What would happen if one particular man from Nazareth heard the Sirens singing their song? What if Jesus looked the Medusa straight in the eye? My guess is that such an encounter would match those he had with women throughout the Gospels. Jesus heard and saw women as humans—not seducers or objects of seduction. He commanded that all Christians do the same: “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her.”
As Pope John Paul II wrote in 1995, our Church requires a “renewed commitment of fidelity to the Gospel vision. When it comes to setting women free from every kind of exploitation and domination, the Gospel contains an ever relevant message which goes back to the attitude of Jesus Christ himself.” Consider the way Jesus looked upon Mary Magdalene with a gaze not of shame, not of objectification, and not of condemnation. Jesus knew her holistically. He heard her, he saw her, and he loved her. When all other men made her a scapegoat for their own weakness, Jesus took her in and loved her perfectly. Do we as Christians measure up to such empathy, such tenderness?
As a Catholic Christian, I strive not to let every cultural current move me from here to there. I want to be unwavering in my faith in Jesus and His Church. But I know that as Christians, we are not separate from culture. For better or worse, cultural conditions inform the way that we think. It can be difficult to distinguish which ideas are from God and which are not. I do not know precisely how I am supposed to separate my God-given identity as a woman from the many ways culture has attempted to define and limit it throughout history. The best thing I can do is trust in the gaze of the One who sees me–really, really sees me–and in turn invites me to see Him too.
Emily McConkey
Writer & MA Student
Photography by Maishoua Kim