Circe

Author: Madeline Miller

A story of a lost soul, finding herself in a wretched world. Of love, of letting go. Of being alive, and of truly being seen.

I like Madeline Miller’s depiction of Circe more than any other female characters I have read. Though she is strong, she isn’t flawless, and her independence comes from survival rather than rebellion.

Many “strong” female characters are unrealistic and create an impossible standard to live up to. The modern idea of masculinity builds on denying and shaming femininity. This masculinity is associated with strength, and it shuns displays of weakness to carve out its space in public perception. This perpetuates the toxic notion that strength denies femininity and flaws, when, in reality, strength and weakness are two sides of the same coin. Power and independence comes from experiencing the entire spectrum of human experiences, which is exactly what Circe does.

The men of the story are not the focus. They instead reflect her’s mindset as she grows—Glaucos, naivety; Hermes, disillusion; Daedalus, trapped; Odysseus, rage; Telegonus, letting go; Telemachus, patience, stability.

Miller’s Circe is fascinating in that she has complex relationships with other characters, and the way she interacts with them reveals how she deals with her own trauma. Her descriptions of the people that she encounter reveals how she interprets their actions and perspective, and absorbs her interpretations into her own world view. Through isolation and fragmented contact with the world, she grows as a person, too, eventually becoming comfortable in her own skin.

Miller’s description of emotions are so visceral that you can feel them physically. One can feel the pain that comes with the yearning and the longing that she feels as a prisoner on an island, and a prisoner within herself. This is not only a story of a mythological goddess, but also a story of self discovery and overcoming cycles of trauma, a story of reconciling your own identity with how society pushes a certain image on you.

notes

Immortality, love, emptiness, loneliness. Patriarchy, sexism, power. To be a woman. Strength, survival. Defiant. Letting go—freedom. To be alive when the world just wants to tear you down. Spite, weariness. Burdens to bear. Patience, courage, letting go of past demons. Guilt, gentleness. Simplicity. Know thyself.

Drowning together versus a solid, unwavering anchor. An arrow shot straight at its target, never veering from its path. That is Penelope, that is Telemachus, and that is, finally, Circe. Stillness.

Note

I named each chapter for fun; the original only has numbers.

01: Hawk

• Daughter of Helios and a naiad who demanded marriage
• Ugliest
• Made fun of
• Gentle heart
• Helios’s cows
• “Stupid Circe”
• Circe, the hawk

02 + 03: Prometheus

• Aeëtes: brother, philosopher
• Speaks to Prometheus after his condemnation
  • “Next time you’re going to defy the gods, do it for a better reason. I’d hate to see my sister turned to cinders for nothing.” (30)
• Pasiphaë and Perses
• Marriage with Minos at Knossos
• Curiosity toward mortals
• “It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two” (16)

04: Pharmaka

• A boat, asks to be let on
• Loves Glaucos
• Mother: Perse, brother: Perses
• “The earnest eyes, wet a little from his grief but smiling always when he looked at me” (39)
• Immortal in love with a mortal, willing to uproot the world for him. I’m weak for this trope.
• “I would not just uproot the world, but tear it, burn it, do any evil I could to keep Glaucos by my side” (46)

05: Godhood

• Turns Glaucos into a god
• Glaucos is ungrateful and wants to marry Scylla. He doesn’t credit Circe for his godhood. I’d punch him if I could.

06: Monster

• Turns Scylla into a monster
• Circe didn’t want to be like the other gods. She thinks of Prometheus and confesses.
• Aeëtes knew sorcery from a young age but does not understand why Circe confessed her sins

07: Exile

• Miller’s writing is pretty as a whole, but there is nothing spectacular in the individual sentences. It is, rather, the feeling they evoke.
• Circe’s greatest strength is transformation
• Lionness familiar: strength, power

08: Messenger

• Aiaia, the island
• Circe has a mortal’s voice—frail and thin
• Became lovers

09: Scylla

• Tried to cure Scylla out of guilt
• Does not accept worship

10: Minotaur

• Birth of the Minotaur for attention
  • Deviation from myth: cursed by Zeus to desire the bull after Minos refused to sacrifice it
    • Reclamation of agency despite bad intentions?

11: Daedalus

• Comradery in witchcraft adn invention
• Circe lay with Daedalus
  • Pattern of laying with those she finds different from the rest. Hermes, fearless. Daedalus, craftsman who created a monster, as she, too, had.
• “I was a goddess, and he a mortal, and both of us were imprisoned.” (151)
  • Gifts Circe a loom; lovers on borrowed time
• "But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation he was to me." (152)

12: Denial

• “No matter how vivid they were in life, no matter how brilliant, no matter the wonders they made, they came to dust and smoke.” (159)

13: Jason and Medea

• Mycenean ship with miasma
  • Transgressions against gods
• Jason and Medea
  • Need golden fleece from Aeëtes, Medea’s father
  • Medea in love, made draught for him, her contribution, dismissed and taken for granted as he tells his tales of glory
  • {Jason is portrayed as a Sophist in Medea}
  • Had her brother killed and chopped and thrown into the sea as she was pursued by Aeëtes, as he would have to stop to give him a proper burial
• Jason flinches from her for being a witch
  • “a fierce eagle love flashed in her eyes” (173)
    • She would fight the world for him
    • Reflection of Circe’s past
• Circe desires family
  • Memories of childhood with Aeëtes
    • Hope
    • Isolation
    • Loneliness
    • Reaching
    • But “I had lost him long ago” (175)

14: Pigs

• “That old sickening feeling had returned: that every moment of my life I had been a fool” (177)
• Disobedient daughters are sent to Aiaia; Circe hates it
• Lionness dies
  • Powerless
  • Prisoner
  • Lonely
• Love visitors and the imperfection of mortals
• “The fragility of mortals bred kindness and good grace” (185)
  • Only in the face of power; Circe is not seen as a goddess
  • Violated, she turns them to pigs
  • Beauty of trusting, of love, of kindness, yet the world is cruel

15: Men

• Let the good ones leave
• Take the handsome ones to bed
  • “It was a sort of rage, a knife I used upon myself. I did it to prove my skin was still my own. And did I like the answer I found?” (193)
    • Not out of desire, but power
    • Power, pleasure in cowering, ignorant men, for men only feared men
• Hermes likes Circe preciseley because she does not yield to him like all others do
• Odysseus
  • Trust and love

16: Odysseus

• “Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.” (206)
• “A knife I have named him, but I saw that he was sliced down to the bone” (208)
• Unfolding him to see his face. Commander of men.
• “When he talked, he was lawyer and barred and crossroads charlatan at once, arguing his case, entertaining, pulling back the veil to show you the secrets of the world. It was not just his words, though they were clever enough. It was everything together: his face, his gestures, the sliding tones of his voice. I would say it was like a spell he cast, but there was no spell. I knew that could equal it.” (212)
  • “Then you’re like Daedalus after all. Only instead of wood, you work in men.” (213)
• On weakness: “He kept them on his person as other men keep their knives.” (215)
• “A door that did not open at his knock was a novelty in its own right, and a kind of relief as well. All the world confessed to him. He confessed to me.” (218)
• On Penelope
  • “Nothing she says, has a single meaning, nor a single intention, yet she is steady. She knows herself.” (222)
  • A fixed star
  • Love for his son, Telemachus

17: Prophecy

• Tiresias at the underworld
• The Fates’ toy
• “He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.” (237)

18: Telegonus

• Pregnancy, stopped taking draught in last month Odyesseus was there
• Athena’s wrath
• “I would look at him and feel a love so sharp it seemed my flesh lay open.” (243)

19: Horizon

• “For sixteen years, I had been holding up the sky, and he had not noticed” (272)
  • Reckless, sheltered, does not care about the threat to his own life
  • Circe: clinging, anger, love, fear of loss

20: Trygon

• Wins the poison of Trygon’s tail to protect her son. Willing to suffer an eternity of pain for it.

21: Eternity

• “Everything was united by the steady rise and fall of nature’s breath. Everything except for me.” (286)
  • “a cold eternity of endless grief” (287)
• Joke of the fates. Odysseus is dead. By the poison of trigon’s tail, trying to take the sphere from Telegonus. Telemachus and Penelope traveled to Aiaia.
• Odysseus is blinded by anger, vengeance, and weariness
• Telemachus is a coward
• Parallel rage: Circe’s pigs and Odysseus’s slaughters

22: Curse

• “He would rather be cursed by the gods than be no one” (322)
• Athena wants Telemachus
• Penelope seeks time before she loses him
  • Waiting, patience, all hurts will heal with time
• Parallels: pain of motherhood, Athena at their backs

23: Telemachus

• Telemachus is the opposite of Odysseus. Blunt, straight to the point, and not manipulative.
• Medea was hated for her witchcraft, Jason has a new bride. “I believe she would rather set the world on fire than lose.” (338)
• Odysseus carries his “knife in the dark”, Telemachus “carried his blade in the open” (340). Patience is called dullness by Odysseus.
• Telemachus and Penelope are not on speaking terms—“they were like eggs, each afraid to crack the other” (340)
• Telemachus does busy work to linger. He reminds Circe of her lion. Companionship. Tell Circe Telegonus is stamped from Circe: “It is no curse” (342). Forbidden love because of so many complications. Including the fact that he is owed to Athena.
• “Some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season” (349)

24: Exchange

• “I had let Penelope stay on my island so she would not lose her son. I would lose mine instead.” (353)
• “Fair minded and warm … He had never been hungry for glory, only for life.” (355)
• “For me, there was nothing. I would go through the countless millennia, while everyone I met ran through my fingers and I was left with only those who were like me.” (358)
• Blackmails Helios to set her free. Penelope chooses to stay.

25: Past

• Telemachus was angry with Circe for thinking he would go with Athena. Circe was angry thinking he wanted badly to leave. He leaves with her. He sees her truly for who she is.
• Turns Scylla to stone
• No more fear—she shares her full story

26: Constellation

• “But though I looked and sounded like a mortal, I was a bloodless fish. From my water, I could see him, and all the sky behind, but I could not cross over.” (377)
• Patience. Adroit. He knows he well
• Telemachus is true to himself
• “If you go anywhere, I want to go with you.” (379)
• Penelope becomes the new witch of Aiaia
• “It was so simple. If you want it, I will do it. If it would make you happy, I will go with you. Is there a moment that a heart cracks?” (381)

27: It Will Be All Right

• Circe turns herself into a immortal and lives a life with Telemachus to be alive. She has finally released from her eternal loneliness.
• “Circe, he says, ti will be all right.” “He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the Earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.” (385)
• “I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, and can hold nothing in their hands.”