So many women in myths and history become ( or simply are named) monsters because they are too sexual, sexually alluring or sexually unavailable, opinionated or non-compliant, different and therefore frightening. Debbie Felton wrote that this “spoke to men’s fear of women’s destructive potential. The myths then, to a certain extent, fulfill a male fantasy of conquering and controlling the female.” ( via Smithsonian magazine). I enjoyed Jess Zimmerman’s “ Women and Other Monsters”, which explored some of the Greek monster myths anew, and more and more people are exploring the collision of our out-sized ( monstrous) ideas and expectations of both women in general and mothers specifically.
For a slightly different ( and extremely lovely) take, I was really struck by a brief passage in Ocean Vuong’s “ On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous”, which is written as a letter to his traumatized, complicated mother.
“ ‘Youre not a monster,’ I said.
But I lied.
What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root monstrum, a deivide messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an anmil of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse:both shelter and warning at once.”
This is an old Mexican postcard I found in a junk store in Texas.