obsessed with the way epic manhood is defined as being remembered– doing great deeds that will be the stuff of song for generations to come, dying in glory and being memorialized by tombs that inscribe greatness on the physical landscape– and epic womanhood is defined as keeping memory alive– helen weaving the images of men about to die, penelope weaving laertes’s glory into his shroud, cassandra raising the cry and andromache the lament for hector–
something about manhood as passive and womanhood as active in relation to memory is just… such an incredible way of framing things
oh and the way it’s helen who calls it κακὸν μόρον, ὡς καὶ ὀπίσσω ἀνθρώποισι πελώμεθ᾽ ἀοίδιμοι ἐσσομένοισι (a terrible fate, that we will become the songs of men yet to be)!
because helen wants to be a storyteller, helen is meant to be a storyteller. helen wants to encode men’s lives in tapestry and eulogy. that’s how we see her when she’s left on her own: striving for domesticity and simplicity, not fame. she is, in homer, the ideal woman, not just beautiful but devoted to her family, modest and hardworking, and so very aware of the responsibility of carrying the memories of those who die.
but her curse is to be the stuff of stories, not a storyteller. the very epitome of woman, yet cut off from the purpose of womanhood within epic.
#the ideal woman in accordance with ancient greek misogyny stays within the home and therefore has no reputation #helen is automatically disqualified by leaving with paris but also by having such extraordinary beauty that she has kleos #this would be acceptable for a goddess but not a mortal woman #helen is on the threshold of those two states as a demigod #anyway i love op’s point that women are expected to preserve the kleos of men while having none themselves! (via @terpsikeraunos)
