Medusa and the Monstrous Feminine

by Kaitlin Smith

Earliest appearances

References to Medusa appear in the earliest Greek literature, from the eighth century BCE. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey mention an unnamed “Gorgon,” but Medusa makes her first named appearance in literature in Hesiod’s Theogony, which describes her as one of three Gorgon sisters living in the Western Ocean: Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa are the daughters of Phorcys and Ceto, primordial sea gods (who themselves have some monstrous aspects). The fifth-century BCE tragedian Aeschylus, in his Prometheus Bound, warns of the three winged sisters with snakes for hair, hated by men, “the Gorgons—no mortal can look upon them and live” (PB 799–800). Other early Greek authors similarly describe the Gorgons as monstrous, winged women. Archaic Greek art represents them as having the bodies of winged human women but with enormous heads with lolling tongues, as pictured below.

Above left: detail of Gorgon Painter name vase, with Gorgon pursuing and Perseus. Dated to between c. 600 and c. 580 BCE. Public domain photo by Bibi Saint-Pol. Above right: the full image of this Archaic Greek black-figure bowl (dinos) on stand, with Gorgons and Perseus in upper register.

Medusa’s metamorphosis

Perception of the Gorgons as monsters, both in antiquity and in later reception, comes as a result of these early literary and artistic representations that effectively “other” the sisters’ appearances. They are fearsome, dangerous, and—despite having the shape of women—inhuman, which makes them monstrous. While Hesiod, Aeschylus, and a few other ancient Greek authors mention the Gorgon sisters and specifically Medusa, the Roman author Ovid, in his Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE), gives us the most complete version of her origin as a monster. Before her transformation, Medusa’s beauty was “far-famed” and “her hair was the loveliest” of all her features (4.793, 795). In short, she was far from monstrous. But, Ovid writes, Medusa was raped by Poseidon in a temple sacred to the goddess Athena, who then punished Medusa, rather than Poseidon, for this desecration: she “transformed / The Gorgon’s lovely hair to loathsome snakes,” targeting Medusa’s most alluring attribute (4.800–2). This metamorphosis turns Medusa into the monster as most readers know her, with an appearance so hideous that anyone who saw her was turned to stone. The narrative of a woman punished for a man’s actions explains why Medusa prevails in the literary and cultural consciousness. She is, in the simplest sense, relatable because she represents women who have struggled against brutalization at the hands of men and who have had to reconcile their consequently “monstrous” nature with their humanity.

(Text selections from Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. A. D. Melville, Oxford World Classics, 1986.)

Medusa’s death

While the ancient sources provide very little information about Medusa’s life, we do know that it ended at the hands of the Greek hero Perseus, in an effort to protect his mother, Danaë, from King Polydectes, who wished to wed Danaë against her will. He demanded Medusa’s head as a gift from Perseus, believing that Perseus would perish attempting to complete this dangerous feat, leaving Polydectes free to force Danaë into marriage. But Perseus succeeded through the aid of various deities, especially Athena, who was still furious over the desecration of her temple and unsympathetic to Medusa. Following the goddess’s instructions, Perseus beheaded Medusa while she slept by watching her reflection in his shield. This prevented him from looking directly upon her and being turned to stone. Returning to Polydectes, Perseus instead turned the wicked king to stone by showing him Medusa’s head, freeing his mother from the impending unwanted marriage. Perseus subsequently gives the head to Athena, who places it on her breastplate (the aegis) for safekeeping. Despite Medusa’s literary operation as a plot device for male heroism, she has prevailed as a representation of monstrous women in literature, and her continued reception proves that she is more than only a victim or a monster.

The Head of Medusa, c.1618 by Flemish painters Peter Paul Rubens (scenery, Medusa) and Frans Snyders (snakes). Public domain.

Interpreting Medusa and her legacy

In our knowledge of ancient cultures, it’s difficult to say exactly what led to the creation of the myth of Medusa. Sigmund Freud argued that Medusa’s decapitation represented castration (“Medusa’s Head,” 1940), theorizing that boys did not fear the threat of castration until they looked upon female genitals, with their drastic difference. This is also why, according to Freud, no women are noted as being turned to stone by Medusa (which ignores the fact that in the world of Greek myth, women were not free to roam the world, unlike men). Other scholars such as Joseph Campbell cite historical consciousness. He relates the beheading of Medusa to the desecration of shrines across Greece in the thirteenth-century BCE. This origin of the myth, then, is a reaction to real-life “sociological trauma” (The Mask of the Gods: Occidental Mythology, Vol. 3, 1968).  More recent scholarship on Medusa has turned to contemporary feminist receptions. Hélène Cixous argues that Medusa represents male fear of female desire when the myth is retold by men (“The Laugh of Medusa,” 1976). Cixous urges women to retell the myth not as one of fear on the part of women but as one reflecting women’s strength. Emily Erwin Culpepper argues that Medusa represents what we’d now define as feminine rage cultivated by reactions to contemporary displays of patriarchy (Gorgons: A Face for Contemporary Women’s Rage, 1986). Medusa’s “othered” appearance, for the modern audience, is a refusal to conform to traditional beauty standards imposed upon women in Western cultures. The myth is thus a transformative narrative that rallies against beauty being a woman’s only value. To be considered ugly by men and yet be seen as strong by women creates an interesting dichotomy not represented by many other ancient mythological figures. Medusa’s body is the subject of much mistreatment and yet she remains terrifying in her ability to protect herself and harm those who harm her.

Above left: Medusa by Caravaggio, c. 1597. Public domain. Above right: Medusa, by American artist Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, c. 1854. Public domain.

We can go on to consider the viewpoint of the #MeToo movement and see Medusa’s death as a representation of sexual assault. She is preyed upon in a moment when she cannot defend herself and it is a man who comes out victorious with no consideration of the impact to Medusa or her family. In the context of Perseus’s story, she shows that even the strongest of women can be vulnerable targets. But for women, Medusa’s story can be one of survival. Her literary afterlives, such as the recent publications that re-envision her story, lend themselves to this idea that Medusa is a nuanced character with monstrous bodily qualities rather than only a monster to be slain. Gillian M. E. Alban’s The Medusa Gaze in Contemporary Women’s Fiction (2017) delves into this very topic, citing works by authors such as Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Jeanette Winterson, all of whom have all turned to Medusa in their literary works, reclaiming her from the male gaze. Natalie Haynes, in Pandora’s Jar (2020), her exploration of women from Greek mythology, conveys the literary history and cultural reception of characters such as Helen, Eurydice, Penelope, and Medusa, noting that a feminist reading of Medusa’s transformation might suggest that Athena was trying to protect Medusa from further harm by making her undesirable (89). Haynes’s interest in Medusa continued in her novel Stone Blind (2022), an engaging contemporary reimagining that returns agency to Medusa. Haynes complicates Athena’s complicit role in the creation of Medusa as a monster while fleshing out Medusa as a woman who thrives on the love she shares with her sisters. She is multifaceted and smart—as Athena is, too. Medusa’s last question in the novel aims to haunt readers: “Who decides what a monster is?” (272). Stone Blind comes at a time of popularity for books that likewise retell Greco-Roman myths through the lens of contemporary feminism, such as Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018), Pat Barker’s Silence of the Girls (2018), and Costanza Casati’s Clytemnestra (2023).

So, what makes Medusa a monster? Her body. Her rejection of male desire (depending on the version of the myth one reads). Her brutalization at the hands of Poseidon and then Perseus. What this says about ancient and contemporary cultures is that beauty comes with a price. When beauty is retracted, when nonconformity prevails, monstrosity begins. In his “On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery,” English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) describes the decapitated Medusa’s head as representing “the tempestuous loveliness of terror” in its disturbing appearance (line 33). The tempting terror that is the classical Medusa is a warning to conform, to keep to the status quo. The Medusa of our time rejects this notion. What will continue to become of Medusa, I suspect, is her continued alliance to feminist movements and female resistance to male standards. She will continue to be the lovely terror that is women’s existence in all its persistent, headstrong forms.

Although Leonardo’s painting of Medusa’s head has not survived, this Medusa’s Head by an unidentified Flemish painter, c. 1600, is thought to be a copy of Leonardo’s work.

Above left: Benvenuto Cellini’s bronze sculpture Perseus with the Head of Medusa (1545–1554) depicts Perseus looking down at Medusa’s decapitated body. Above right: Lucian Garbati, intentionally playing off Cellini’s version, upended the artistic and literary tradition with Medusa with the Head of Perseus (2008) by reversing the roles of Medusa and Perseus, representing Medusa as having killed Perseus in self-defense.