The dangers of toxic femininity
The American critic and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn has just published a new translation of The Odyssey. In his superb introduction, Mendelsohn also does something that many modern translators and critics avoid, which is to point to the oddness and different-ness of Homer's world. For that and many other reasons, reading Mendelsohn's fresh and clear translation was a counterweight to one of the great imperatives of our time: 'Let us look at this long-ago thing only in order to see if it can shed any light on the glorious us and now.'
Yet a timeless work remains timeless both because we marvel at the different nature of the world described and because it occasionally tells us things we have forgotten.
Which brings me to the Sirens. Every schoolchild knows the story. Odysseus is warned by the goddess Circe of the challenges he will meet on the way home to Ithaca. Among them are the Sirens, whose cry is so beguiling that Odysseus must order his men to stop up their ears with wax as they row past. Odysseus himself must be tied to the mast as they navigate the waters so that while he alone can hear the Sirens, he will not encourage his men to row towards them.
Like everyone, I supposed I knew the story, but there is something in the clarity of Mendelsohn's translation which brought a fresh thought to me.
The Sirens get only eight lines, but they are enough to make Odysseus risk everything and need tying even more firmly to his ship's mast. I'd never given much thought before to why the song of the Sirens should be so beguiling. I think I imagined their song was merely beautiful, like Wagner's Rhinemaidens. But there is something else. Here is how Mendelsohn renders their song:
O Odysseus, rich in praise, great glory of the Acheans,
Come hither now, halt your ship and hear the sound of our voice!
For no one has ever rowed past us aboard his black-hulled ship
Before he's heard the voice from our lips with its honeyed harmonies,
But once he has taken his pleasure, he returns knowing so much more.
For well we know all the hardships that there, in Troy's sprawling plains,
Both the Argives and the Trojans endured through the will of the gods.
And we know whatever happens on the earth, which nourishes all.
That's it, but enough to make Odysseus lose his self-control. As I read it, I thought of several happenings on our own island.
This month parliament debated two pieces of society-changing legislation. One was the decision to extend the date at which women can terminate life in the womb. The other was legislation that means that from now on we may choose the day on which we die.
These are interesting priorities for a country. But the debates on extending abortion limits and the introduction of euthanasia came like a pincer movement. On the one hand a woman will be able to abort a child after six months of pregnancy. Meaning that a life that is viable out of the womb may be killed inside it. I happened to be with a friend this week who is six months pregnant, and was horrified that the child she and her husband were already caring for would be deemed good to abort in England and Wales. And while the proposer of the amendment, Tonia Antoniazzi MP, was content with simply allowing women to abort a baby at any point during pregnancy, Stella Creasy MP tried to use the opportunity to enshrine abortion at any stage as a 'human right'.
At the other end of the life spectrum, MPs spent the same week voting – and approving – a bill to finally make euthanasia (or 'assisted dying') into another 'human right' in this country. Kim Leadbeater seems to have made it her life mission to retract our lives at the opposite end from Antoniazzi and Creasy. As I have said for many years, there is no country into which euthanasia has been introduced in which the slope from the arena of palliative care has not slipped into the killing of the mentally ill, the young and those who feel they have become a burden on their families or the state. And if anyone in this country thinks the state will be competent to decide who does or does not feel compelled to end their life, they should look at how easy it is just to get a GP appointment.
But never mind, because in all these cases the argument and rationale has each time been reduced to 'compassion' and 'understanding'. Leadbeater and Creasy are masters at making speaking and emoting the same thing. Both present their moral arguments – such as they are – in a way in which their faces crumple and voices crack with empathy at all times. Everything is about 'understanding', 'listening', 'speaking for' and 'alleviating' the suffering of others.
Which brings me back to the Sirens. Because what is so compelling to Odysseus is that the Sirens' song tells him that on their island, alone, he will be understood. The Sirens promise that they, uniquely, appreciate what he has been through at Troy. They will listen to him and understand him. He, for his part, will achieve one of the greatest of all human desires: to be understood.
At risk of making more enemies, let me point out that while we have heard plenty about 'toxic masculinity', there is also such a thing as 'toxic femininity'. This includes the idea that we will be saved and our problems resolved by compassion and empathy, all other judgments and rationales being put to one side.
In recent days the meaning, depth and value of life in this country contracted at both ends. Not for any rational reason, but because if we did not we would be lacking understanding and kindness. But the calls are a mirage, and the promises a lie. We'll see who hits the rocks first.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time Out
18 minutes ago
- Time Out
A Moon for the Misbegotten
It's a trap, almost, to think of Eugene O'Neill's final play A Moon for the Misbegotten as a sequel to his miserable masterpiece Long Day's Journey Into Night. Sure, they share the character of Jim Tyrone, a dissolute young actor in Long Day's Journey and a dissolute older actor here. But you go in expecting despair and instead find something that's more like an episode of Steptoe and Son. Maybe that's down to director Rebecca Frecknall – now a master of whipping the lesser-revived plays of the American canon into shape – putting space between this and the old workhorse of Long Day's Journey (which we've seen three times in London in the last 13 years): not the faded grandeur of a seaside home here, but a wooden yard full of splintered timbers pointing into the sky, messy and dusty. The production itself, though, is anything but dusty. From the first moment, every line is a punch or a jab or a dagger. Peter Corboy and Ruth Wilson as siblings Mike and Josie burst onto the stage and whack each other with dialogue, and their fists. Fed up with his dad Phil's drunkenness and slave-driving on their rock-infested farm, Mike is leaving. All that's left to Phil is daughter Josie, whose sleeping around has made her 'the scandal of the neighbourhood', and their landlord Jim Tyrone who may or may not sell the farm to them and who may or may not be in love with Josie. David Threlfall is a hoot as Phil, roaring and whimpering, and giving us some hilarious line deliveries. It's surprising just how funny these early scenes are, especially the exchanges between Josie and Phil, the two of them as roguish and stubborn as each other, like two blunt instruments. But what this does share with Long Day's Journey, and with all of O'Neill's best work, is the seven or eight layers of contradictory meaning that each line hides, and a cast full of characters who can't tell themselves the truth. Here, they are all bent on believing they are the worst versions of themselves: Josie that she's a whore, Jim that he's a drunk, Phil that he's got no heart. Like L ong Day's Journey, the play becomes an excavation until the characters have dug themselves down to bare rock. Clapping her hands, slapping castmates' shoulders, Wilson plays Josie with an almost hoedown physicality that's impossible not to watch. It takes Josie the longest to pick apart the shell that entombs her, and Wilson shows us someone so shored up with defence mechanisms that every movement and every word has become a careful act - though it's sometimes too fine a line to tell whether it's Wilson acting or Josie acting. Stick that alongside Michael Shannon's sloth-like slowness, and it's like the quick and the dead: him sharp-suited and sluggish, her in rags and restless; her playful ribbing a world apart from his instant, unrelenting severity. Even his mouth seems reluctant to open too widely, and that complete lack of hurrying is completely engrossing. My god the man has presence. Frecknall handles it brilliantly: she knows how to let the humour ebb away, how to let the anguish build. Maybe there's a bit too much whisky-swilling and moonlight melodrama, but even when O'Neill's text sags, the production holds it up with fine-wrought acting or slowly circling lights or heartrending stage pictures, like Shannon doubled over in agony while Wilson holds him tightly to her. As she did with Tennessee Williams's Summer and Smoke, Frecknall turns the tilth on a half-buried play, and digs up something extraordinary.
Spectator
5 hours ago
- Spectator
Dear Mary: Where should I seat Hollywood stars at dinner?
Q. My husband and I have recently made very good friends with some neighbours in France. They know I am having a 60th birthday party in London and have assumed they will be invited too. My problem is one of these new friends is a world-famous Hollywood actor and his wife is famous in her own right. I am worried about where I will seat them. I wouldn't want to give the impression to a roomful of my oldest friends (none of whom is famous) that I think the 'stars' are more important than they are, but neither do I want to offend the stars, who I fear will expect to be next to us at the top table (and possibly even sitting side-by-side American style). What should I do? – Name and address withheld A. The Hollywood party veteran Graydon Carter, author of When the Going was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines kindly steps in to advise. 'Have two long tables if possible. No wider than 30 inches. You sit in the middle of one table and place your husband in the middle of the other, facing each other. Put the world-famous movie star across the table from you and the wife who is famous in her own right across from your husband. Find the most interesting four people among the rest and put them on either side of the famed couple. Then select the second most interesting group of four people and put two of them on either side of you and the other two on either side of your husband. Movie stars as a rule don't have a lot to say outside their own bubble of interests – themselves, their work, what you think of their work. So make sure there's sufficient alcohol and pray for the best.' Q. I now live in Scotland but have a pied-à-terre with garden in London, normally rented out, which I'm going to use myself to give drinks to old friends. I've realised I only have 15 possible places to sit – but 50 coming and since these old friends are old now, most will want to sit. Help! – J.B.-H., Edinburgh A. Ask the most reliable guests to each bring their own chair to the party. If they are much-loved friends, they will think it fun to carry a collapsible chair to a social event and no more of a nuisance than wearing the correct kit for Royal Ascot. Q. I have moved into a house with three other recent graduates, none of whom respects my ambition to learn mindfulness. How can I get any peace to listen to the app? – T.W., London SW18 A. Churches are perfect venues in which to practise mindfulness (via headphones) undisturbed. They are spiritually appropriate and mainly empty.
Spectator
5 hours ago
- Spectator
The dangers of toxic femininity
The American critic and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn has just published a new translation of The Odyssey. In his superb introduction, Mendelsohn also does something that many modern translators and critics avoid, which is to point to the oddness and different-ness of Homer's world. For that and many other reasons, reading Mendelsohn's fresh and clear translation was a counterweight to one of the great imperatives of our time: 'Let us look at this long-ago thing only in order to see if it can shed any light on the glorious us and now.' Yet a timeless work remains timeless both because we marvel at the different nature of the world described and because it occasionally tells us things we have forgotten. Which brings me to the Sirens. Every schoolchild knows the story. Odysseus is warned by the goddess Circe of the challenges he will meet on the way home to Ithaca. Among them are the Sirens, whose cry is so beguiling that Odysseus must order his men to stop up their ears with wax as they row past. Odysseus himself must be tied to the mast as they navigate the waters so that while he alone can hear the Sirens, he will not encourage his men to row towards them. Like everyone, I supposed I knew the story, but there is something in the clarity of Mendelsohn's translation which brought a fresh thought to me. The Sirens get only eight lines, but they are enough to make Odysseus risk everything and need tying even more firmly to his ship's mast. I'd never given much thought before to why the song of the Sirens should be so beguiling. I think I imagined their song was merely beautiful, like Wagner's Rhinemaidens. But there is something else. Here is how Mendelsohn renders their song: O Odysseus, rich in praise, great glory of the Acheans, Come hither now, halt your ship and hear the sound of our voice! For no one has ever rowed past us aboard his black-hulled ship Before he's heard the voice from our lips with its honeyed harmonies, But once he has taken his pleasure, he returns knowing so much more. For well we know all the hardships that there, in Troy's sprawling plains, Both the Argives and the Trojans endured through the will of the gods. And we know whatever happens on the earth, which nourishes all. That's it, but enough to make Odysseus lose his self-control. As I read it, I thought of several happenings on our own island. This month parliament debated two pieces of society-changing legislation. One was the decision to extend the date at which women can terminate life in the womb. The other was legislation that means that from now on we may choose the day on which we die. These are interesting priorities for a country. But the debates on extending abortion limits and the introduction of euthanasia came like a pincer movement. On the one hand a woman will be able to abort a child after six months of pregnancy. Meaning that a life that is viable out of the womb may be killed inside it. I happened to be with a friend this week who is six months pregnant, and was horrified that the child she and her husband were already caring for would be deemed good to abort in England and Wales. And while the proposer of the amendment, Tonia Antoniazzi MP, was content with simply allowing women to abort a baby at any point during pregnancy, Stella Creasy MP tried to use the opportunity to enshrine abortion at any stage as a 'human right'. At the other end of the life spectrum, MPs spent the same week voting – and approving – a bill to finally make euthanasia (or 'assisted dying') into another 'human right' in this country. Kim Leadbeater seems to have made it her life mission to retract our lives at the opposite end from Antoniazzi and Creasy. As I have said for many years, there is no country into which euthanasia has been introduced in which the slope from the arena of palliative care has not slipped into the killing of the mentally ill, the young and those who feel they have become a burden on their families or the state. And if anyone in this country thinks the state will be competent to decide who does or does not feel compelled to end their life, they should look at how easy it is just to get a GP appointment. But never mind, because in all these cases the argument and rationale has each time been reduced to 'compassion' and 'understanding'. Leadbeater and Creasy are masters at making speaking and emoting the same thing. Both present their moral arguments – such as they are – in a way in which their faces crumple and voices crack with empathy at all times. Everything is about 'understanding', 'listening', 'speaking for' and 'alleviating' the suffering of others. Which brings me back to the Sirens. Because what is so compelling to Odysseus is that the Sirens' song tells him that on their island, alone, he will be understood. The Sirens promise that they, uniquely, appreciate what he has been through at Troy. They will listen to him and understand him. He, for his part, will achieve one of the greatest of all human desires: to be understood. At risk of making more enemies, let me point out that while we have heard plenty about 'toxic masculinity', there is also such a thing as 'toxic femininity'. This includes the idea that we will be saved and our problems resolved by compassion and empathy, all other judgments and rationales being put to one side. In recent days the meaning, depth and value of life in this country contracted at both ends. Not for any rational reason, but because if we did not we would be lacking understanding and kindness. But the calls are a mirage, and the promises a lie. We'll see who hits the rocks first.
