Circe by Madeline Miller, Little, Brown and Company, 2018, 385 pages.

Retelling ancient myths for a contemporary audience seems to be a popular form of fiction writing these days, a branch of the fantasy genre. Rick Riordan has had major success with this for children and young adults. Madeline Miller, who has a MA in Classics from Brown University, brings more depth her retellings. It shows in the nuanced story with its host of references to classical literature. Her strengths are her familiarity with the world of Greco-Roman myth coupled with her humanizing approach that fleshes out the two dimensional mythic characters. 

Circe is the story of a nymph, a disappointing daughter of the sun god Helios, banished into exile on the island of Aeaea. The novel follows Circe through hundreds of years of her immortal life - from her time as a solitary witch on Aeaea developing her powers of magic, her struggles with her family and the various gods, her interactions with Daedalus and the Minotaur, Odysseus, her time as a mother raising a difficult son, and her later interactions with Telemachus and Penelope.

What is this book about? Despite the obvious answer of "relationships," there are four important themes in the book I would like to recognize.

First, the transformation of Circe. Circe craves attention and relationship - she takes risks to relate to others. Yet when she is banished to the island, she is thrust into isolation - settling into it, while also craving connection. Her isolation eventually becomes availability - whether for the roving god Hermes,  the bad daughters of the minor gods who are temporarily sent to her island for punishment, or for wandering sailors who happen upon her shores. Her availability becomes vulnerability and is taken advantage of. She suffers manipulation, abuse, and endures various forms of assault. 

When Odysseus is on the island, Apollo appears to Circe with a prophecy. Its delivery is an intense scene of violation and assault. Apollo is aloof and condescending, cringing away from the sound of Circe's human-like voice. When the prophecy comes, it is like an attack of divine violence:

"The wind stuck me across the face. I had no time to cry out. It rushed into my throat, battering its way to my belly as if all the sky were being funneled through me. I gagged, but its swelling  orce poured on and on, choking off my breath, drowning me in its alien power. Apollo watched, his face pleasant. . . . 'You dare,' I said. "You dare to misuse me on my own island? I am Titan blood. This will bring war. My Father _'" (229).

Of course it doesn't bring war. Neither her father, nor Apollo, nor anyone else cares about the assault, the indignity, the violation. As a result, she learns the necessity of creating and maintaining boundaries. Magic is the primary way that she creates these protective boundaries. She hides the island behind illusion to avoid rapacious sailors. She spends her life shielding her island from Athena who has threatened her son Telegonus, conjuring a boundary through rigorous magic working that repulses the gods and their intrusions.

This world of the gods is a world of taking without compassion reminds me of our world. It is at root a spiritual issue. Buddhism has understood the spiritual and ethical problem with taking, possessing, and owning. But Christianity has not. There is an assumption of possession, a supposition that things are ours to be taken within Christianity. Genesis is read to say that everything was created for us therefore it is already ours and can be taken. In the central biblical story of liberation and redemption - the Exodus - there is a taking of the land, wresting it from its inhabitants through violence and force. This centers the posture of taking and possessing. When this assumption gets framed within capitalism, it becomes about owning and using and reduction to commodity.

"Circe the Sorceress," John William Waterhouse, 1911-15

Second, Magic. Miller reclaims or or at least revisits the figure of the witch through Circe. Circe's powers, while impressive and strong enough to make others afraid, are refined and developed through learning, experimenting, dedication, and work. Circe's sister, Pasiphae, is also a witch but her powers are weaker than Circe's. When Circe enters Pasiphae's workroom, she see nothing but a few herb "and rudimentary ones at that . . . . she was lazy, and here was the proof. Those few simples were old and weak as dead leaves. They had been collected haphazardly, some in bud, some already withered, cut with any knife at any time. I understood something then. My sister might be twice the goddess I was, but I was twice the witch" (127). 

Sorcery, she says "is not divine power, which comes with a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched out, dug up, dried, chopped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung" (83).

This work, knowledge, learning, commitment all speak to Circe's virtuous inner life. And even more so, witchcraft might indeed be always an act of resistance, but it is not evil. Miller states that all witches have one thing in common, "they are women with more power than other people - men especially - think they should have" (Reading Group Guide, 4). Circe tells her sister and her readers "You were wrong about witchcraft.. It does not come from hate. I made my first spell for love of Glaucos" (156). Witchcraft, as seen through Circe, is the hard work of love, of protection, and even justice and judgment (Scylla and the rapacious men turned to pigs).

Third, Earth connection. Circe's magic grows along with her connection to the earth. She awakens to the living world, the powerful energetic quality of the earth, plants, springs, and landscapes. When she is exiled, she begins to experience her island in a deeper way - as a place of natural power. She works with the plants, learning from them, learning their properties, how to manipulate and use them. Turning the island into a home involved communing with it, bonding and taming it, the lions and the wolves living in harmony with her. On Crete, she climbs the sacred Mount Dicte in a mystical reverie, feeling the mountain thrumming under her feet. She could feel the herbs "swelling in their hollows, breathing tendrils of magic into the air." She was at one with the power of the mountain "the branches laced over me. The shade rose deep as water, tingling across my skin. The whole mountain seemed to hum beneath me" (128). 

Miller ask her readers as well to become witches in this way. Like Circe, to see the earth as a place of beauty and power - to awaken to its own intrinsic living qualities. To learn to live with the earth and its species. To learn their ways and their secrets, to become part of a community with them. 

Fourth, retelling the Odyssey. The novel revisits a number of intertwined Greek myths, most famously the Odyssey. And Miller puts her own spin on these. She seeks to personalize and humanize Circe as a woman and a witch. She brings a certain critical perspective to Odysseus, portraying him first as the heroic if troubled lover of Circe, but then layering on an anti-heroic twist. By bringing Telemachus and Penelope into the story as the wounded son and jaded wife, we see Odysseus through different eyes. We see his cruelty and its impact on those around him, and his dangerous descent into control, paranoia, and rage. In Telemachus, Miller gives us a Greek hero who rejects the heroic, spurns the gods, and chooses a quiet life without glory. Perhaps we are ready to rethink about The Odyssey, glory, heroism, rulers and their power along with Miller's novel.