The Truth About Medusa

You could be forgiven for thinking the Greek myth of Medusa has zero relevance to us today. Snake for hair?! But as you'll hear in today's episode, she's a woman who was vilified for her femininity and sexuality. She was literally cast out of society for it - into a cave, of all places. Joining Kate to help us get to know this mythical woman and her story is author and historian Jasmine Elmer. This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:37Speaker 01

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• 1:14Speaker 02

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• 1:44Speaker 03

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• 2:21Kate Lister?

  Hello my lovely Betwixters, it's me Kate Lister. You are listed to Betwixt the Sheets, but it is of an adult spicy nature this podcast. So despite the fact that we've been going for three years, and I'm sure that people must know what we're doing here by now, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast book about adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And now, fair do's, we have warned you, so on with the show.

• 2:54Kate Lister?

  I know this isn't the most glamorous of meeting places, but we're here in a cave in ancient Greece, so it's got that going for it, but it's still a cave. But we are here for a very good reason. Somewhere in here is none other than Medusa. Have you seen her? Well, if the myth is to be believed, she would turn you to stone if you had, so I guess not. But has anyone actually spoken to Medusa? Heard her side of the story? Have they helped? I'd love to sit down with her and find out about how she ended up in this predicament before that knobhead Perseus shows up and starts trying to be a hero. What a twat he was. Let's go deeper into the cave and see if we can find her.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

• 3:46Speaker 04

  I make perfect compliments of whatever my boss needs by just turning him up and pushing him up.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

• 4:02Speaker 05

  Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness, what nothing to do with it, Darren.

• 4:09Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex Scandal in Society with me, Kate Lister. Greek myths were a fabulous oral tradition that tell us a lot about fantastical characters, but they do actually tell us quite a lot about the world that they were told in, their values, their fears, the fact that nobody should be shagging their relatives. All kinds of useful things. And Medusa is a prime example of this. It is an insane and bonkers story, featuring snake hair and winged boots and a helmet of invisibility. But it's also a tale and a portrayal of women's sexuality and victim shaming.

• 4:47Kate Lister?

  Joining me today to explore all of this and the lasting legacy of Medusa is friend of the show and all-round fabulous person Jasmine Elmer. All right, everyone. Have you got your mirrors ready? Then let's do it.

• 5:03Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Jasmine Elmer. How are you doing?

• 5:10Speaker 05

  I'm good, thank you. I'm back again. So I didn't mess up the first one, so that's a winner.

• 5:15Kate Lister?

  You were fabulous. I had so much fun talking to you. How's the book going? When we last met you, your book Goddess of a Thousand Faces was just about, it was crowning, it was getting ready to be born.

• 5:29Speaker 05

  What a disgusting image.

• 5:31Kate Lister?

  Sorry.

• 5:33Speaker 05

  Um, yeah, now all I can think about is the image.

• 5:36Kate Lister?

  You were fully dilated.

• 5:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, let's not, let's not. That book's gone now. Yeah, it's out in the world. It was born in this really weird description that you're going with. Yeah, so it's gone really well. I'm actually, you know what it's like with authors? Uh, that book's gone and flown in out into the world. Now I'm on the second book.

• 5:54Kate Lister?

  Oh, well done, mate.

• 5:55Speaker 05

  Which officially got announced today, so I can actually say words about it.

• 5:59Kate Lister?

  Can you tell us the words?

• 6:01Speaker 05

  I can. The words are, it's called Slay, and it's about female dragon slayers and the symbolism of dragons.

• 6:09Kate Lister?

  Oh, fabulous.

• 6:11Speaker 05

  Yes, they do exist. I know you're like, mm, do they exist? They do exist.

• 6:14Kate Lister?

  I know, I believe you entirely. I believe everything you tell me, yeah.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  Oh, good. That's a good career. Just make stuff up then.

• 6:22Kate Lister?

  Well, but we are here to talk about, she's not really a dragon, but she's certainly a monster. Medusa.

• 6:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, actually, there is, she's sort of like a sort of dragon. Because when there are serpents involved in Greek mythology, we consider them a dragon of some sorts. Yeah, so she's sort of like borderline. If you've got a snake, you've got a dragon. That's what, that's the sort of way that the Greeks approach it.

• 6:48Kate Lister?

  Oh, right.

• 6:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:51Kate Lister?

  Oh, okay. Well, see, I'm learning things already. Right. What do I know about Medusa? And for anyone else that's listening, I can't imagine there's anyone listening going, I don't know what Medusa is, but just in case. Lady with the snakes, can you elaborate more on that?

• 7:05Speaker 05

  Yes, well, I mean, Medusa, as you know, very famous, image is probably what more people might pop into their head, but I don't know if people know her story. So she was a very beautiful maiden and priestess of the goddess Athena. And there are different versions of the myth, as always with Greek myths, right, different versions, but mainly Poseidon, the sea god, violates her in the temple of Athena.

• 7:29Kate Lister?

  Right, okay.

• 7:30Speaker 05

  It's definitely a fucking hell moment. And if you want a double fucking hell, you should have saved it, really. Athena then punishes Medusa, not Poseidon.

• 7:39Kate Lister?

  Fucking hell. Wow.

• 7:40Speaker 05

  Fucking hell by transforming her into the monster that we see, the sort of snakey haired scary monster. And famously, obviously, she is this woman that has these snakey, you know, hair, but also if she looks at you, you turn to stone.

• 7:54Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 05

  Isn't that awful? This is terrible, isn't it?

• 7:57Kate Lister?

  It's a terrible origin story, isn't it? Is, before we get into like how that develops, I'm hoping that you're going to say yes, but I think I might know how this is going to go. Is there anything in the sources that like you were encouraged to think, well, that was a really unfair thing to have done? What I mean, that was completely unjustified in what you did, or is it sort of just accepted as like, yeah, that sounds about right?

• 8:20Speaker 05

  I bet you can answer your own question there, really. Yeah, I know, it's ancient, it's the ancient world, it's a patriarchy. What do you think happened?

• 8:27Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 05

  I mean, this is gonna be the least informative thing, like guess for yourself. But because it's a patriarchy, the perspective here is not usually in favour of Medusa.

• 8:39Kate Lister?

  Hmm.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  But not, that's not to say that you can read some more, slightly more sympathetic perhaps viewpoints, like Ovid, maybe a little bit more sympathetic. That's not sugarcoating it. The blame here is mainly on Medusa in antiquity. That's the way it's perceived. Which is a real, well, I still can't get my head around it, even though I'm an expert in this area. I still can't understand. Even, even though I know this talk of context, it just seems completely, just completely inhumane to ever think like that. Regardless of what's going on in society, it just seems mad to me.

• 9:13Kate Lister?

  But it also tracks with Greek myths in general, because Medusa's not the, the only character in their pantheon to have been assaulted by a god and then they're the ones to have been punished. I can't remember names, but like someone got turned into a tree and somebody else, like, you know, like when all of this stuff is, is it's never very justifiable, but so she was a priestess and a beautiful priestess.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, like in most of the sources, she's really beautiful and dedicated to Athena as a priestess. I mean, in terms of in Greek, in, in the Greek view, like the perfect type of woman. You know, she looks beautiful, she is, you know, religious in the sense that she's, you know, dedicating herself to, to a goddess. She's doing all the tick, tick, tick things that you should do as a, as a Greek woman, really, until this thing happens. The majority of it is Poseidon forcing himself upon her, not that she willingly does that.

• 10:13Kate Lister?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 05

  But yeah, you're right. Absolutely. It is the narrative that the onus is on the woman to protect herself, her chastity. She's the one that's in the wrong, which is, yeah, I know. I mean, I think you've done the noise. Let's just leave the noise there. That's it.

• 10:31Kate Lister?

  The thing about these kind of stories and myths is they are passed along orally, which makes it very difficult to trace. But what are some of the earliest written accounts that we have of Medusa?

• 10:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally right. So it is important to note that it is an oral tradition. So I think people get quite interested in the earliest source material and just date it to that. But it is older than that, definitely. How old can't tell you. But these are originally stories that people are telling each other across campfires, in houses, what have you. So remember that, because I think it's quite important. But the earliest source is Hesiod, which is sort of eighth century. So in terms of what we have for source material is along the earliest. So it's an old, old myth for the Greeks. It's one of, one of the earlier documented myths.

• 11:17Kate Lister?

  And am I right in thinking she had sisters? Because in my, oh, my recounting of this myth, which admittedly is based on, I don't know what it's based on, it's probably not based on anything sensible. But did the sisters also have snakes for hair? They can't have been assaulted by Poseidon in a temple as well.

• 11:33Speaker 05

  No, no, that's the Gorgons that you're, you're thinking of.

• 11:36Kate Lister?

  Yes, that's, thank you. Yes, the Gorgons.

• 11:39Speaker 05

  And they're, they are three, she's one of them, right? Three powerful, kind of winged creature things, essentially. So they don't have the snaky bit. That's Medusa.

• 11:50Kate Lister?

  Oh, right.

• 11:51Speaker 05

  But the other two are essentially kind of, you know, if we think of Medusa more as immortal, they are more immortal. Because they have this kind of powerful ability almost as a trio. But Medusa has her own storyline that's kind of more specific. The other two are, are mentioned and they're important, but they're less important than Medusa. It's the story Medusa that the Greeks really kind of focus in on. So we don't hear as much about the Gorgons.

• 12:19Kate Lister?

  No, and then I don't suppose to give us any details on, like, was, was. Medusa, a sister to the Gorgons before she got turned into a monster? Or like was, why was she going to work in a temple if she was a monster? This is probably just one of those Greek things where they've just mashed it all together and gone, look, don't stop, stop asking us questions about this.

• 12:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're right. You're right. I think when you try and trace like a timeline like that and you try and think of how a storyline emerges, it's quite hard. Are they sisters first? And I mean, I think most of the time she becomes lumped in with these guys as a trio, really, but

• 12:57Kate Lister?

  It's like merged.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  As their sisters. It's all kind of murky. I think that's the best way.

• 13:01Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 13:02Speaker 05

  And I know it's annoying for us modern people who like a full plotline sorted out and then we can kind of follow it and it's got a nice trajectory. But these things are like, you think of mythology, it's live, isn't it? It's like, almost like a living creature. It's always changing itself. So a bit like Medusa.

• 13:17Kate Lister?

  Now, the most immediate story that people think of with Medusa is the one with Perseus. So can you tell us that story and where does that come from? So we'll flesh out her background story because it wasn't just that she was horribly assaulted and then she was punished and she has sisters of questionable origin. There's a whole story that emerges with Medusa. She didn't stop there.

• 13:42Speaker 05

  No. And again, this is another, I would say, kind of Greek myth trope that we always get where you can't have a baddie, a monster, especially a girly one, that isn't going to get taken out by a male hero. So it's part of the heroic cycle. So that's why we need him, right? So as expected, there's a monster and along comes Perseus, who is the son of Zeus. And his job is to behead Medusa, but he gets help from the gods, as is often the way. So Athena gives him a shield and Hermes gives him these little winged sandals. And Hades gives him this sort of hat of invincibility, invisibility, not invincibility.

• 14:21Kate Lister?

  I was going to say, that's handy as well.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  Invisibility. And he goes off to find Medusa at the edge of the world and behead.

• 14:28Kate Lister?

  He was minding her own fucking business, by the way, everybody.

• 14:31Speaker 05

  He was just knocking about on the edge of the world, just knocking about on the To the world as usual and he beheads her.

• 14:37Kate Lister?

  How does he do this?

• 14:39Speaker 05

  Everyone loves this one, don't they? Cause it's in everything. It's in all, it's in all, it's all in all of the movies and the books, everything. He uses the reflection of his shield so he doesn't have to look directly at her to sort of find out where she is. And then lop it, lop it off. You know, head flinging in the dust. Do you like that? Rolling around in the dust too much?

• 14:55Kate Lister?

  It's all right. It's, I mean, it's a very dramatic story, isn't it? And like, you know, if you're, if you're making a film of it, that's your sort of, that's your money shot, isn't it? That Persia turns up, he cuts her head off. We don't ask any questions about why this little upstart has just basically broken into her house and cut her head off, where she's still the monster. I'd like, what did she do to him at all? Nothing.

• 15:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I can help you with that as well.

• 15:21Kate Lister?

  Oh, go on, tell me.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, like I said, yes, I can see from our perspective that that don't sound fair. But in terms of Greek myth, this needs to happen. Because remember that, well, I know we're going to get into this, but what does Medusa symbolise to the Greeks? And when you have a monster of any sorts, we'll get into a nuance in a bit, but when you have a monster of any sorts, that monster needs to be vanquished by a hero, usually a bloke. And so this needs to happen because of that. But just a little side point, because the, the people don't always know this, but when Medusa's head gets knocked off and she starts bleeding, what pops out of her decapitated, well, from her decapitated body, I guess,

• 16:04Speaker 05

  is the winged horse Pegasus and this giant called Creosor, which we, we don't really see anything, anything else of ever. But you get Pegasus out of it.

• 16:12Kate Lister?

  Right, okay, okay.

• 16:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know. And that is the reaction I wanted, Kate. Like, right, okay.

• 16:17Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 16:18Speaker 05

  Why?

• 16:19Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 16:20Speaker 05

  What's that about?

• 16:22Kate Lister?

  Did she also have acid for blood or am I thinking of aliens? I might be thinking of aliens.

• 16:27Speaker 05

  I think you're thinking of aliens.

• 16:30Kate Lister?

  Oh no, I've mixed up Sigourney Weaver and Medusa. Don't even, we're moving past this, moving past this.

• 16:37Speaker 05

  In myth though, as everything is always cyclical, there's always like these stories evolve. You've got as well, what I find interesting, Pegasus later is involved in the killing of another dragon, the Chimera, rode by Belerithon, the hero Belerithon. So it's like, when you look at dragon stories, I know you're thinking this ain't the dragon, but like I said to you before, to Greeks, if it's got snakes in it, it's dragons to some degree. They tend to have like this evolution that they pop up in the next one, like the sequel. There's like, you kind of get that character that carries on. It's like, oh, Pegasus is carrying on to now kill and help kill another dragon. It always keeps evolving and moving. So it's quite, it's quite a little family often of dodgy dragons that are connected in this thing.

• 17:24Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Jasmine and Medusa after this short break.

• 17:41Kate Lister?

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• 20:45Kate Lister?

  There's a lot of symbolism in this Medusa thing. There's like, you can just pull it apart with so many different things. What is your take on it? Because you've got, she's a woman, she's quite clearly a woman. She was once beautiful. There is a kind of like a weird sense that she's avenging herself on, on all mankind. And then there's the snakes as well. And the fact that her head is decapitated. Whenever a sword turns up, me being the pervert I am, I'm thinking phallus. Like the fact that Perseus decapitates her with his sword. And also, what's your take on who this character is?

• 21:23Speaker 05

  I mean, that's, it's really nuanced and there's loads of like levels to this, which is fascinating about her. But you know, you just said about the sword and the phallus. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's all sorts of sexual imagery in all of this. So I'm going to start with my favourite though, which is the furthest, most mad one, really. I'm not saying I agree with this, but I love it, which is Freud. Freud wrote an essay on this, I think in the twenties. And it was obviously, you know, what he's like. So there's this idea that Medusa, the thing about Medusa, obviously is that she turns men to stone. Often it's men in mythology, there's no examples of women, men to stone. And that could be some kind of euphemism for erection.

• 22:05Speaker 05

  As well as her hair, her snaky hair, representing female pubic region, shall we call it? So it's literally what happens when a vagina looks at a penis, technically.

• 22:17Kate Lister?

  He did take a lot of cocaine, did Freud.

• 22:21Speaker 05

  I don't know what he was doing, but.

• 22:22Kate Lister?

  It's weird that you'd bring that one up because I was reading about that one not so long ago. And I was trying to let make sense of it. Because another idea he has about Medusa is that her face or a severed head represents the site of castration.

• 22:36Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 22:36Kate Lister?

  Which, and you kind of, I'm sorry, could you just go over that one, one more time, Freud? Just from the top. I don't really get what you're talking about. But he had this thing about castration anxiety, didn't he? I mean, who isn't anxious about castration? But what did he mean about that? There's no one out there like, I'm fine with this.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  You know, when you're at school and your maths teacher says, show me your work in. I wanna know what his work in is. I wanna know the steps that he gets to.

• 23:01Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 05

  To get to that conclusion. And the problem is, there aren't any. It's just like, oh, maybe this is this. Dude, I mean, Freud is really interesting, but I'm like, is that, is that what the Greeks are thinking? No, but I think we can definitely take a great number of kind of like male fears about sexual, female sexual power from Medusa that we can almost certainly take from the original myth and the original Greek context. You know, we've got to remember that this is a very beautiful woman that is punished for her sexual power. And, you know, from, from her perspective, no men are even allowed to look at her. There's, you're not allowed to look at her because you will turn to stone. So, for, I mean, I'm not saying she was vain like this, but for a beautiful woman,

• 23:47Speaker 05

  that is a really awful thing in a Greek context. I mean, maybe even in a modern context, I don't know. It depends how you're feeling, right? So she is damned to be this monster, like you say, chucked on the edge of the world, ripped out from her, you know, kind of life as it was. And then men aren't allowed to look at her and she is utterly isolated. And I think there's so much as well that we can look into about victim blaming and that culture, which I know we could look at from a modern point of view, but in an ancient point of view, it just shows you how horrific the attitudes are to these sorts of issues. It's on the woman and it's the woman's fault. And that was often seen as the case even in Greek society. So, you know, people don't know that a lot about Greek society, how

• 24:33Speaker 05

  women were very much, you know, kind of closed off, like they lived in, they lived upstairs in their own quarters. They had to be escorted by men. Obviously, they don't have any of the powers that that we share today, you know, be able to vote and all that, none of that, none of that. You go out, they're often kind of covered in headdresses and stuff, a very chaste kind of appearance. And, you know, you're guarding your virginity and it's your job almost to look after all of that, which is ridiculous. And so the Medusa story is, is very much a really important part of that. And I think the fact that she becomes a monster shows you how the Greeks are really afraid of a woman who has any sexual power and really wants to show what can happen to a woman that has sexual power.

• 25:14Kate Lister?

  I think what Freud was getting at in his odd Freudy kind of a way. Is it was a very fancy way of saying that Medusa is an emasculating figure. I think with all all of his like, oh, her face and the severed head represents the vagina and that's going to sever a penis and blah, blah, blah. I think that kind of what's underneath that is that she is an emasculating figure. What do you think?

• 25:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know if that the reason I'm hesitating is because I don't know. Maybe maybe this is my modern bias. I'm just trying to like, see if I can just shoot that to the side a little bit, but there's something about this that I think is so much more nuanced than that, even in the Greek thinking that I'm not as comfortable saying, yeah, that's right. It's not that I don't think it's right. I think that we're taking something away from her.

• 26:04Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 26:05Speaker 05

  That makes me uncomfortable because it's it's not just about her emasculating men. This is also about some people talk about this as what power she does continue to hold on to. And how there is power in her ability to turn men into stone, you know?

• 26:21Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Speaker 05

  So I I think this is where when we're looking at from a more modern point of view, we get we get many layers of meaning. And I think that's why she's been so taken into sort of the modern mindset, you know, kind of imagination today. And become many different things. Is she emasculating? I mean, yeah, maybe, but I don't know. I just see her as more powerful than that. I just don't I don't know if that just typecast her into something.

• 26:46Kate Lister?

  One of Freud's many problems is that he can never see outside of the many problems. Listen to me mouthing off, telling Freud where he's where he's got things wrong. We're going to do it anyway, is he can never quite relate to a woman's experience because it's not his own. He can only understand of a vagina as not being a penis. He can only understand a woman as not being a man. So his interpretation of Medusa as emasculating, again, it's centering the male experience within that of of like, well, men are very scared of her, so that must be never mind the fact that, well, men did that to her. Jeez.

• 27:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I get you. You know, I get it. But what I think is really interesting is that, like, Medusa has a lot of power, like these men want to look at her because she's

• 27:34Kate Lister?

  They they go to her, right?

• 27:35Speaker 05

  Either she was beautiful or because she's a monster, either way, whichever part of the story. People want to look at her, men, let's say, men want to look at her. And so where's the power then? Because she's drawing their gaze and then she looks back at them. They have to look at her for shit to get real.

• 27:55Kate Lister?

  Which isn't an active thing to do.

• 27:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, so but I just think that there's that kind of interaction.

• 28:01Kate Lister?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:02Speaker 05

  It's a two-way thing, like that man might have some aspect, but then she's looking back at him and there's this kind of two-way thing, right? And it's all about this kind of, I guess, sexualised interplay between men and women. And you're right, it absolutely centres in the male perspective about this and the male fears about these women. But at the core of that is the fear of women that hold their sexual power at the core of that and what they become. They become monstrous. Remember, a monster is something that we we're terrified of, we don't like, and we want to chuck at the edge of the world. Remember, in Greek myth, most monsters live, not all of them, but a lot of them live at the edges of the known world, edges of civilisation.

• 28:42Speaker 05

  Because what we're saying is you have been ostracised, get out, you need to be over there because you're not part of your things that we don't really want to meet. It's similar to like, you know, Freud would love it, right? It's things that we suppress in our subconscious. It's like, let's get it over there. It's not it's not something that's around us, it's a way. And that's what I mean about being nuanced and complicated because it's personal as well to an individual experience.

• 29:06Kate Lister?

  Because if I could turn people to stone just by looking at them and have snakes for hair, I wouldn't be fucking living on an island somewhere. I would be marching my way into civilisation, would. What are you gonna do?

• 29:19Speaker 05

  That just says a lot about you, doesn't it, really? That just says a lot about you.

• 29:23Kate Lister?

  Heading straight to the Bank of England. What are you gonna do?

• 29:26Speaker 05

  I'm a bit scared that they ever give you the nuclear codes, what are you gonna do with them? If that's your attitude, it's a bit gung-ho, isn't it?

• 29:32Kate Lister?

  Let's talk about the snakes, though. Like, why? What are the snakes? Because it could have been anything. But that is one of her defining features, isn't it? The snakes for hair.

• 29:42Speaker 05

  Few layers again, you'll love this because there's always a few layers. I think on one hand, there's this idea that she had beautiful hair and that was one of her best qualities on a practical level. So let's turn it into something yuck. Then you've got the idea of the snake and how it can be connected to both female fertility sometimes, but also the phallus again.

• 30:06Speaker 05

  It being a bit like a schlong.

• 30:08Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 05

  Whatever word you wanna use it, snake, little snake in the pants, whatever you wanna think about it as. Then you've got this other layer that she belongs to a wider family of dragon-like creatures. So like the Trachontes, or this kind of like, anything that's got a serpent is part of this. So then she belongs to this kind of group of like uber-monsters that we see in all over mythology. So you've got like, you know, you've got Skilla, you've got Typhon, you've got, oh my god, Hydra. You've got all these different, you know, dragons. So in lots of ways, remember that when these myths are being told, that symbolism would then echo in the minds of the Greeks. And they go, oh, she's one of them, which is a bad monster. So we're getting into that as well.

• 30:52Speaker 05

  There's this idea, I guess, as well, like snakes have venom, they bite, they hiss. And that is a kind of like, I guess, a very visceral feeling of being around that kind of fear. It's like the real feeling of the fear of being around this woman. So there's quite a lot of stuff in it, in terms of symbolism, just the snakes on their own.

• 31:13Kate Lister?

  Yeah. So, I mean, Medusa, she's, she went through a lot. But I have noticed in recent years, I say recent years, it's probably been maybe sort of like since the nineties, eighties, nineties, maybe even before that, that she is being reclaimed more and more by feminists. How are they reading her story?

• 31:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, that's one of the most, I think, I really like, I think this is great. I mean, there's been obviously a few mythical retellings around Medusa. So Natalie Haines wrote Stone Blind a few years back, I think. And Rosie Hewlett wrote about Medusa, where they're obviously centring on the story of Medusa. And I think after the Me Too movement, there's a lot of interest in her as a figure of subversion, where a victim is able to reclaim her power. Did you see Rihanna dressed up as Medusa for a magazine, Vogue or GQ or something like that? I can't remember when it was. If you Google Rihanna and Medusa, you'll find it.

• 32:13Speaker 05

  So there's a lot about what does it look like when women choose to take a figure? I mean, this is a movement anyway, and I'm involved in it, so I do my writing, right? But what does it mean when a woman can reclaim this figure as an empowering image? Not as a victim and as, as we have discussed her in a kind of more historic sense. So there's been loads of interest in her. That's great. I mean, it's, it's really what we're trying to say is stuff the patriarchy, that's the bottom line.

• 32:43Kate Lister?

  It's interesting that Medusa never really has a voice in, in the myth, does she? I'm not aware of her getting any lines in, in any of the, the story.

• 32:52Speaker 05

  The women never do, and that's an important point, Kate, you're right. This is why there's so much interest in giving, especially in literature, giving these women.

• 32:59Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 32:59Speaker 05

  A voice, giving them a chance to voice, I mean, imagined, of course, but giving themselves a voice. So, yeah, you, you're right, that is not a thing we, we don't hear in mythology very often, the stories from the women themselves. Usually if you're going to get that, you get them in Greek tragedy in, in the plays. You might get women then, but not necessarily Medusa, but for example, Euripides is Medusa. So we hear from Medusa, obviously, in that. But remember, it's written by bloody Euripides, isn't it? And it's for a largely male audience. So even then, it's, it's not, you know, it's not like a free flowing voice. So, yeah, you're right, it's about reclaiming that too, isn't it?

• 33:39Kate Lister?

  You can see why her story would hit such a note, especially post Me Too. The fact that like she was so unfairly treated, quite obviously. And then she becomes this like avenging, well, is she an avenging character? Cause she, she sort of just lives on her island. And as you said, people keep coming to her. It's like, we don't want to get killed, leave her alone. Just, just fucking hell.

• 34:06Speaker 05

  I loved it. I feel like you just want to be, I feel like you want to knock off to a little place on the edge of the world and be left alone.

• 34:11Kate Lister?

  I do. And if, and if teenagers kept turning up to try and cut my head off, I'd turn them into stone as well, quite frankly. And, and there's not a court in the land that would convict me. I was gonna ask you, do you think that Medusa is an empowering story after like everything that you've read about her and you know about her? Because it's it's easy to sort of like reclaim her without really looking into the background of it. And she's become more of a symbol than an actual story. But what do you think? Is she an empowering character?

• 34:40Speaker 05

  I think that's really interesting. I don't know that I'd call her empowering, actually. But I think, like, I mean, I'm having a really exciting adjective now to like, describe what I actually would say. But basically, I really like how we can take figures from the ancient world and reexamine them through a new lens to learn something about ourselves. So I love that myth can have these like nuanced layers that continue to keep on giving. And I think her one is an excellent, excellent example of that. And that's what I find about if you want to call that empowering, then for some people that would be empowering. That experience of doing that would be empowering. I think

• 35:24Speaker 05

  for me, I don't know if it's just because I'm a geek or something, but I just think it's just really fascinating.

• 35:30Kate Lister?

  Yeah, she I mean, she's that, isn't she? She's fascinating.

• 35:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, there we go. There's one fascinating.

• 35:35Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 35:35Speaker 05

  I don't know. I love that it keeps it alive. Like, these are old stories that have, like, long gone, you know, we're not, but we're still engaging with it. And that's what myth is about. Like, it doesn't need to die off and be in the past. It can can keep evolving. And I love that about. And I think she just is one of the best examples of that. So that's why I think she's she's up the top there on my like Hall of Fame of, I don't know, cool, cool myths or whatever.

• 35:58Kate Lister?

  A legend. And so are you, Jasmine. Thank you so much for coming back to talk to me again. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 36:05Speaker 05

  They can get me on the old Insta. I've changed my new handle. It's now at history underscore with underscore soul, which doesn't sound very easy to say, does it? So just write my name Jasmine Elmer in and that'll come up. But that's because that's my brand of history, history that we can feel in our hearts, not just our heads. So it's history with soul.

• 36:24Kate Lister?

  That. Oh, nice. Will you come back again and talk, talk to us about more myths?

• 36:29Speaker 05

  I shall.

• 36:30Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much. You've been amazing.

• 36:38Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much for listening and thanks to Jasmine for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. Coming up, we've got the first episode in a new mini-series on beauty standards throughout history, starting with the always appalling Romans, as well as an episode on female executioners. This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith.

• 37:08Speaker 07

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• 38:18Kate Lister?

  Senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again at Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.