Sexuality, Part 1: Cultural Fears and Ancient Greece

I think one of the biggest questions I’ve had about monstrosity in history and literature, is how and why it frequently appears almost as a metaphor connected to some element of sexuality, seduction, or eroticism. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for example, the titular figure brings young, beautiful women into his thrall, and very seductively bites their necks to drink their blood. Later, they become his slaves (as seen in the characters of Lisa, the “brides” which live in Dracula’s Transylvanian Castle, and in his attempted seduction of Mina) which is a deeply sexual concept. Even Renfield’s obsession with Dracula, alongside his madness, could be viewed as an interpretation of early romantic infatuation.

These are easy points to make, but relevant ones I believe, in illustrating the more modern ties of sexuality and monstrosity. In reading that text (and others of its time) we have to ask ourselves if the monster is a metaphor for fears of the age, such as a common Victorian and pre-Victorian fear of the seduction of young, innocent women by scoundrels who leave them and/or their families ruined― an idea represented in many popular works of literature, from the character of Lydia Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, to Natasha Rostova in Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

But what did the Ancient Greeks fear, to use Gods and Monsters so liberally (and often interchangeably) in their stories? Unlike our famous and more recent creatures, their monsters were not implied sexual beings but in fact overtly sexual and monstrous beings. In Hesiod’s Theogony, for example, the Monsters are often created through or as a direct result of intercourse and sexuality― after Gaia and Ouranos have many “most dreadful of children” (line 155) she entices their son Kronos to castrate his father with a serrated silver sickle, as punishment for Ouranos’ “unseemly deeds”, and Kronos completes the task, but through it many more Gods are created (lines 170-185). One of these, Aphrodite, is conceived when Ouranos’ dismembered genitalia fall into the ocean, and, as Hesiod describes, “around them a white foam from the immortal skin began to arise. In it, a maiden [Aphrodite] was nurtured” (lines 1190-193).

This Ancient Greek sexuality/monstrosity is further represented in Robert Graves’ “The Greek Myths” in which he describes the creation of the Minotaur as occurring when an enchanted Pasiphae falls in love with a white bull, and is provided with the tools to allow her to fulfill her “unnatural passion” with the animal. Consequently, she later conceiving the monstrous Minotaur― possessor of a bull’s head and man’s body (page 174). It bears the question: did the Ancient Greeks fear sexuality? Or were they joyfully obsessed with it? We tend to ascribe Victorian morals to cultures that came before our own, and it is easy to assume that our current sexual attitudes are the most liberal they’ve ever been. But in my experiences visiting The British Museum, The Louvre, The Rijksmuseum, and many other international historical exhibitions, I’ve noticed, as most will, that overt sexuality is everywhere throughout history and represented in every kind of medium, from sculptures, to paintings; books, panels, and tombs. Clearly, the ancients were not nearly as straitlaced about sexuality as one might initially assume (and this could lead to a discussion on other accepted forms of sexuality or eroticism, such as pederasty― but I’ll save that for another day).

So I have to wonder where the ties were first formed between sexuality, and monstrosity. Is it an attempt to control or possess, as both sexuality and monstrosity represent that which is perhaps untameable, or chaotic? Dana M. Oswald tries to answer this in her book, Monsters, Gender, and Sexuality in Medieval English Literature, when discussing Alexander the Great’s conquest of the East. She says,

“…Humans are both fascinated and repelled by monstrous forms. …Like Alexander, humans want to witness strange bodies, but they also want to control, to circumscribe these bodies, in order to keep them somehow at a safe distance. This control is enacted textually and visually through the representation and erasure of the monstrous body. Through practices of erasure, the text allows both distance and proximity to the monstrous, standing in as a kind of protection for the reader or viewer that enables self-indulgence in the pleasure provided by the monstrous form.” (page 2).

Obviously this is all interesting food for thought. I will continue with part two of this discussion in another post, as I believe sexuality is too complex of a subject to be covered in just one!

References:

Oswald, Dana M. Monsters, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval English Literature. NED - New edition ed., Boydell and Brewer, 2010, pp. 1–26. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt14brr71.5.

Hesiod. Theogony. 700BC. PDF File. Retrieved from: https://myclass.ufv.ca/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/file?cmd=view&content_id=_1013373_1&course_id=_38794_1

Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. 1955. PDF File. Retrieved from: http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Robert-Graves-The-Greek-Myths-24grammata.com_.pdf