Victoria Grossack's Blog, page 2

Should Elizabeth Have Accepted Darcy’s First Proposal?

I always want to play “what-if” with stories. Juliet should not have faked her death; Romeo should not have swallowed the poison, and heck, maybe the Montagues and the Capulets should have ended their feud earlier. So here’s a question: when Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth in Kent, should she have accepted him?

Some will cry out: Of course not! Because in that case we would not have had the second half of Pride and Prejudice (and amazingly, the proposal scene occurs at the exact midpoint of the story). And the second half, in which Elizabeth revises her opinion and Darcy atones for all his defects, is absolutely delightful.

But let us put aside the fact that an acceptance by Elizabeth would ruin the story. If you were living in the novel, how would you advise Miss Elizabeth Bennet?

If your primary concern were money, you would recommend that she accept the proposal immediately. We have not seen Pemberley yet, but Mr. Darcy seems to be very rich and Elizabeth Bennet’s expectations are fairly bleak. So if we were to take the attitude of Mrs. Collins, we would tell her to accept the proposal immediately. In fact, Mrs. Collins is one of the few (other than Miss Bingley) who detects Darcy’s interest in Elizabeth, and she is convinced that if Elizabeth knew of his interest in her that her dislike would vanish.

However, money is not everything. It is something, even quite a lot, in the worlds of Jane Austen, but it certainly is not everything. As Mr. Bennet says, “…let me not have the grief of seeing you being unable to respect your partner in life” (Chapter LIX). Mr. Bennet has been unable to respect his life partner for years, and so this is heartfelt. He advises her (after Darcy’s second proposal) to reconsider her answer.

So, let us consider Elizabeth and her relationship with Mr. Darcy at the novel’s midpoint. She has been angry with Mr. Darcy because she believes that he has interfered with respect to the romance between her sister Jane, and she gives this as one of her reasons for refusing him. However, her response may be understandable emotionally, but rationally, it does not make sense. If Elizabeth agrees to marry Darcy, making a match between Jane and Bingley is going to be pretty easy. So saying yes would make her both rich and would benefit her dear sister.

The second reason she gives for refusing him is his treatment of Wickham. But Wickham has not been treated badly by Darcy; Wickham is, in fact, a colossal liar. So this is also not a particularly good reason for refusing the proposal. So far we have three reasons for accepting the proposal, and none against.

Yet, I think she was right to refuse him, because what she has seen and heard has given her every reason to think the marriage would turn out badly. Darcy’s behavior to her up to this point merits, as he admits later, the severest reproof. Now, I think some of it has been because he is a little shy. He also has good reason to be standoffish – half the country wants his money.

However, as he realizes later, he insulted her at length during his proposal, dwelling on the inferiority of her connections and the degradation he is enduring by proposing to her. Elizabeth has good reason to think that this is how he would speak to her during their married life – with reproaches and insults. Being Mistress of Pemberley would not compensate for this type of conversation. Even Mr. Collins said that he was aware of the limits of her financial situation and would never reproach her after they were married.

So, in my humble opinion, Elizabeth was right to refuse him, because Darcy did not address her in a gentleman-like manner.

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Victoria Grossack is the author of several novels, including The Highbury Murders: A Mystery Set in the Village of Jane Austen's Emma, has published more than 70 articles on the craft of writing, and pulled many of them together to create Crafting Fabulous Fiction.

Untied Shoelaces of the Mind: Memory Delete

Last summer I had a terrible dream. I dreamt that one of my neighbors (greatly disliked by nearly everyone on my street) had crept into my house during the night and had stolen my computer. Then, when I went to pursue him, I discovered that he had also removed the shoelaces from my shoes.

When I woke, I was shaken to my core. I knew at once that it was a dream, for my computer was beside the bed. And my shoelaces - hot pink - were likewise still in my shoes. Nevertheless I felt as if it had happened and it took me several hours to get over the emotional impact.

Besides immediately backing up all of my work (something that I have done with great discipline since) I brought it up on Facebook for a discussion with my friends. It was easy to see that the computer could represent my thoughts - my mind - but what the heck was the significance of the shoelaces? This was debated. It turns out that there are people who assign a meaning to untied or missing shoelaces when they appear (or don't) in dreams. It can indicate a state of unpreparedness.

Again, I backed up my work.

And now, like in the best short stories, there is a twist. I have had a short story - "Memory Delete" - accepted by the ezine Untied Shoelaces for the Mind.

Because of the way my contract with them works, I can't post "Memory Delete" here - but here is the link.

http://www.untiedshoelacesofthemind.c...

It is very short, 1000 words, so hop over there and enjoy!

Did Oedipus Really Marry His Mother?

Most people know the story of Oedipus, made famous by Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex, which was first performed in Athens in 429 BCE. In the play, King Oedipus of Thebes is deeply concerned about a plague afflicting his city. He is told that the suffering is caused by the gods, who are angry that the death of Laius, the previous king, was never avenged. The killer needs to be properly punished.

Oedipus sets out to solve the murder (one of the world’s first “cold cases”). His sleuthing leads in a circle and he discovers, to his horror, that he is Laius’ killer! To make matters worse, Laius was his father, which means that Oedipus has committed patricide, a crime considered much more terrible than an “ordinary” murder. In marrying Laius’ widow, Jocasta – which the people of Thebes invited Oedipus to do after he solved the riddle of the Sphinx, freeing them from that monster – Oedipus has inadvertently married his mother. By the time the Sophocles’ play opens, Oedipus and Jocasta have been married for many years and have produced four children.

But did it really happen? Did Oedipus really marry his mother?

If you consider only the elements of Sophocles’ play, then the answer is a resounding yes, of course he did! That’s the point of the story. However, if you are asking whether these events really occurred at some point in history, determining the answer is more difficult.

Some may argue that Oedipus is only a myth; that he never even existed. That’s certainly possible. However, if he did exist, he would have lived in the Late Bronze Age, approximately 1300 BCE – a few generations before the traditional date ascribed to the Trojan War (we know this because one of Oedipus' grandsons participated).

The time period makes things difficult. In 1300 BCE Greece a few people were writing things down – pottery shards dating back to this era have been discovered in Thebes bearing scraps of writing – but the script used, Linear B, was employed mostly for making inventories rather than recording history. And shortly after 1200 BCE, the region went through some sort of cataclysm. During this period, the population decreased significantly and most cities were burned and/or abandoned. Some, like Mycenae, were never repopulated. Writing became a lost art in both the Aegean and western Anatolia.

The cause of this upheaval has not been determined. There are many theories, including natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, climate change, and invasions from distant marauders who had mastered the use of iron. But for the purpose of this blog what matters is that there was a break in the continuity of knowledge and history. Hence, the playwrights of Classical Greece – such as Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides – based their dramas on stories that had been passed down for generations by word of mouth. They may have not cared whether the stories were actually true.

So, perhaps our first question should not be whether Oedipus really married his mother. Instead it should be: Did Oedipus even exist?

Legends place Oedipus mostly in Thebes (the city in central Greece, not the city in Egypt bearing the same name). Excavating in Thebes poses problems not faced by the archaeologists digging up Troy in what is now Turkey, or Mycenae in the Peloponnese, because Thebes is still inhabited – and has been for millennia. It’s harder to dig where a house currently exists: the owners may object! Moreover, because of the long inhabitation, much of the past has been destroyed. Those engaged in construction a thousand years ago saved themselves time and effort by taking stones out of the crumbling city wall rather than traveling to a distant quarry to chip out new ones. Hence, the ancient city walls of Thebes, among many other structures, no longer exist.

So searching for evidence of Oedipus in Thebes is problematic. Nevertheless, there has been some success. Although I know of no direct evidence – yet – of that ill-fated king, a pair of caves just east of Thebes has been determined to be a pair of royal tombs. Some claim that these tombs belonged to Polynikes and Eteokles, the twin sons of Oedipus. If archaeologists can show that Oedipus’ sons existed, then that makes it more likely that Oedipus did as well.

A visitor to Thebes can find other places associated with the Oedipus myth. The locals can point out the crossroads where Oedipus allegedly killed Laius, as well as a spring where Oedipus supposedly washed off Laius’ blood. The route to the north leads between two mountains, where the Sphinx was reputed to attack travelers (certainly it would have been an ideal place for bandits).

Oedipus’ grave may never be found in Thebes because the stories say he’s not buried there. Sophocles’ play Oedipus at Colonus has him dying in a precinct of Athens; according to Pausanias’ Description of Greece, written in the second century CE, Oedipus’ grave could be seen near Athens, the body having been brought over from Thebes.

These bits of information could have been passed down for generations. After all, those living near Troy never “forgot” where it was. So it’s possible that the events actually took place where people today say they did. On the other hand, it’s also possible that the sites were assigned to certain spots by locals wanting to take advantage of the tourist trade. At any rate, oral tradition claims that Oedipus at least existed.

Assuming that Oedipus did exist, could he have really killed his father and married his mother?

Even if we prefer to stay with the natural, as opposed to the supernatural – not permitting gods, for example, to influence our speculations – we have to admit that such an awful coincidence is possible. And given the billions of couples which have existed since the beginning of time, probably a mother-son pairing has happened more than once. But how likely is it that this happened to Oedipus?

Let’s consider the best-known source of the myth. Sophocles was an Athenian playwright, and Athens had a great rivalry with Thebes, partly because Thebes had sided with Xerxes during the Persian invasion. Setting scandals in Thebes was not unusual, and playing up a Theban scandal might have been a way to gain popularity with the Athenian audience and judges.

But Sophocles wasn’t the only playwright to write about Oedipus’ marriage with his mother; we know that others did as well, although their works have since perished. And there are earlier mentions of Oedipus; for example, Homer has his hero Odysseus meet Oedipus’ mother-wife in the Underworld. In The Odyssey her name is Epikaste, not Jocasta – but Epikaste, like Jocasta, hangs herself after learning the truth about her accidental marriage with her son.

As Homer lived more than two centuries before Sophocles, and in a very different part of the Greek-speaking world, we can conclude that the Oedipus myth was not the result of an Athenian grudge against Thebes. Sophocles did not invent this Theban scandal. Possibly – probably – he embellished it for dramatic purposes, but he didn’t make it all up. The story already existed.

Let’s consider the different elements of Sophocles’ version and ask ourselves what is likely to be true. Certainly it would not be so unusual if Oedipus killed Laius. Men have killed each other throughout history. Furthermore, it would not be strange for a new king – who had gained a kingdom through conquest or even as the victor in a riddle contest – to seal his claim to the throne by marrying into the local royalty. That’s a practice that has been repeated throughout the ages. So it’s not unlikely that Oedipus killed Laius, and that he subsequently married Jocasta (from now on I’ll use just that name as it’s the best known).

But what about the other parts of the story? Was Laius Oedipus’ biological father, and Jocasta his biological mother? And what about the prophecies: did an oracle really foretell Oedipus’ killing of Laius and marriage to Jocasta, impelling the parents to expose their infant son on the mountainside to die? And was the mirror message given to Oedipus, causing him to abandon his (adoptive) city and parents, the king and queen of Corinth?

Though people have sought oracles throughout history, I have trouble believing that such specific and accurate prophecies were actually given. I think it’s much more likely that Sophocles took established bits of myth – Oedipus’ killing of his father and marriage with his mother – and created something to motivate the characters’ actions. If Laius and Jocasta, and later Oedipus, had received such prophecies their actions – abandoning a healthy child, vowing never again to see beloved parents – would be more understandable. So dramatically the prophecies were extremely helpful. But I’m still very skeptical.

Two bits of circumstantial evidence support my doubt. First, Homer makes no mention of prophecies. While absence of evidence is not definitive evidence of absence, it helps. Second, the other prophecies that have come down to us – as in Herodotus’ Histories – are obscure and confusing, whereas those in Oedipus Rex are extraordinarily clear.

Although there’s reason to doubt the prophecies ever took place, what about the rest? Is there anything that indicates Oedipus was not really the son of Laius and Jocasta?

In Homer’s version of events, Oedipus remained king of Thebes even after his parentage was discovered. This is not logical: a man who had killed his father and committed incest with his mother would have been considered irredeemably cursed, and the Thebans would almost certainly have banished him or killed him (they had already killed three previous kings for offenses against the gods). Sophocles corrects this situation by having Oedipus blind himself and then go into exile, but it is not consistent with Homer.

It’s also possible that the Oedipus myth is an allegory, illustrating a sociopolitical shift. Some scholars have speculated that there was once a tradition whereby the throne passed along the female line – and so the king was the man who married the queen, rather than the son of the previous king. Killing the prior king could even have been a prerequisite to marrying the queen. The Oedipus myth could reflect tensions between these two systems of succession.

So one explanation is that Oedipus was unrelated to Laius and Jocasta – a foreign prince from Corinth who killed Laius in a roadside encounter, then married Laius’ widow and assumed the throne of Thebes. If Oedipus was revealed only later as Laius’ killer, possibly this news could have motivated Jocasta to hang herself. If Oedipus subsequently needed to strengthen his claim to Thebes’ throne, reflecting the sociopolitical shift above, he could have claimed to be Laius’ long-lost son. Of course, this would have made him his father’s murderer and his mother’s second husband – odd, to say the least.

A further twist on this is that there may have been two women, as we have two different names. Perhaps Oedipus first married Epikaste, who committed suicide when she discovered that Oedipus killed Laius, and married Jocasta afterwards.

But in the tale that has been passed down across the millennia, Oedipus definitely kills his father and marries his mother. Perhaps the story has survived for so long because it truly did happen, and the morsel of history was too riveting to forget. Without forensic evidence, we may never know the truth.

Victoria Grossack is the author of Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus, Antigone and Creon: Guardians of Thebes and several other novels.

Jane Austen and Her Mothers

Jane Austen is celebrated for many things: her wit, her irony, her insight into the human heart, her romances, and her skill in creating characters. This article looks at Jane Austen’s mothers, the ones she brought to life in her stories.

The mothers in Jane Austen’s novels differ in each book. In part this is due to her mastery of characters – they are all unique and three-dimensional – but they also reflect Jane Austen and her own development as a person and an author. Jane Austen had two main writing periods. When she was young, before 1800, she wrote Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. These books were not published until later, and certainly they were revised, but the mothers in them reflect the author’s youthful attitude. Between 1800 and 1809 Jane did not produce much, mostly because her life was unsettled. The novels that she wrote later, after finding a new home in Chawton – Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion – show motherhood with greater maturity.

Not all of Jane Austen’s the heroines have mothers, and some of the mothers in the novels are designed to make their daughters cringe.This is not because Jane Austen did not value mothers. Her own relationship with her mother, Cassandra Austen, was excellent. No, mothers were so important that Jane Austen had to remove them from her stories, or else give their characters serious flaws, in order togive her heroines something to struggle against.

The removal of the mother is addressed explicitly in Northanger Abbey, the first novel of Austen’s that was accepted for publication (the publisher did not, however, actually print it, so it only appeared after Austen’s death). Northanger Abbey is a satire on the gothic novels that were popular at the time, and they tended to remove mothers by having them die in childbirth. Austen mocks this trope with:

Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on—lived to have six children more – to see them grow up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself.(Northanger Abbey, chapter 1.)

Nevertheless, Austen recognizes that it is useful to get the mother off the stage. Instead of killing her off, Austen removes Mrs. Morland simply by making her very busy:

Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children everything they ought to be: but her time was so much occupied with lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves. (Northanger Abbey, chapter 1.)

Mrs. Morland is so busy that even at the end of the novel, she does not realize that her daughter Catherine is in love until Catherine’s beau, Henry Tilney, asks for her hand in marriage. After that, however, she is pleasant and supportive.

In Sense and Sensibility the young ladies have a mother but no father. The lack of a father and the stinginess of their half-brother means that the females are facing poverty for the rest of their lives. These circumstances create enough difficulty for the heroines, and so Mrs. Dashwood is allowed to exist. Nevertheless she is kept off stage when the two older girls visit friends in London. Her usefulness is limited, too, as she is emotional and feels things acutely – she resembles Marianne, and not Elinor – and so some of her impulses are not the wisest. She isgood-hearted and loving, doing her duty when Marianne is ill, but not always perceptive with respect to Elinor. It is up to Elinor for much of the book to assume the role of mother, but at least Mrs. Dashwood is never vulgar and rarely embarrassing, unlike Mrs. Bennet.

That brings us to Mrs. Bennet, who lives in the pages of Pride & Prejudice, the last novel written before Austen was twenty-five. Mrs. Bennet is a mother who makes sensitive daughters blush with embarrassment. She is loud and opinionated and seems all too worried about getting them married.

Mrs. Bennet may be vulgar, but she recognizes a reality that her daughters do not. Their inheritances are small, and so after the death of their father – whose estate is entailed on a distant cousin – they could be turned out to starve in the hedgerows. The prospect of want always haunts Mrs. Bennet’s mind and may be the reason for her many attacks of nerves. A neighboring young lady, Charlotte Lucas, reaches a similar conclusion:

Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. (Pride & Prejudice, chapter 22)

Mrs. Bennet always has her daughters’ best interest at heart and loves them dearly, although not always wisely. Her husband maintains that their three youngest daughters are three of the silliest girls in the county; Mrs. Bennet will not see it. Although the heroine, Lizzie, is her least favorite, Mrs. Bennet dislikes Mr. Darcy, because he once slighted that daughter.

As Pride & Prejudice’s readers know, the youngest Miss Bennet, a sixteen-year-old girl named Lydia, runs off with a dashing soldier, Mr. Wickham. After all is covered up – Mr. Wickham has been bribed to take Lydia as his wife– Mrs. Bennet is ecstatic at finally marrying off a daughter and tells absolutely everyone how happy she is, while Elizabeth is mortified because her mother does not feel the moral weight of the situation. It turns out that Mrs. Bennet’s attitude is somewhat justified; the circumstances of their life before marriage probably make little difference once the Wickhams have tied the knot. Besides, premarital sex is something that would bother few people today, which makes mewonder if Mrs. Bennet was secretly ahead of her time. At any rate, Mrs. Bennet’s approach is one that hopes the best for Lydia and clearly shows her affection for one of her daughters.

In a later chapter, Mrs. Bennet outmaneuvers her daughter Elizabeth in order to give Mr. Bingley the opportunity to ask for the hand of Jane Bennet, the oldest sister. Elizabeth and Jane recoil at their mother’s behavior, but in truth Mr. Bingley needed time and space in which to propose.

Mrs. Bennet may be annoying and vulgar but she loves her daughters and is in many ways very practical. When she learns that Elizabeth has accepted Mr. Darcy, her reaction is delightful. She is totally willing to make amends: “Oh, my dear Lizzy! pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. I hope he will overlook it.” And then she moves on to doing what she can to make Darcy feel welcome by feeding him. “But my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Darcy is particularly fond of, that I may have it tomorrow.”

I don’t know if I would want Mrs. Bennet as my own mother, but the older I get, the more tolerant I become of her – the more I actually love her.

Mansfield Park was the first of Austen’s novels from her later period, and the last one in which the heroine, in this case Fanny Price, has a mother living. For the first two volumes of the novel, Fanny is separated from her mother, having been taken by her rich aunt and uncle to live with them. Her two aunts in the area could supply maternal affection, but they do not. Lady Bertram is beautiful but indolent, spending nearly all the time on her sofa. Although she means Fanny no harm, she cannot make up for the active nastiness of her sister, Mrs. Norris, who lives close by and spends nearly all the time at the great estate.

In the third volume Fanny returns for several months to her much poorer parents in Plymouth. There she hopes to bond with her natural mother, but Mrs. Price, although kind, has many children and little attention to spare. However, now Fanny is older and stronger emotionally, and instead of just looking for a mother figure she becomes one to Susan, one of her sisters. This is a huge step for Fanny, and possibly shows that Jane Austen is already thinking, not just from the point of view of the daughter, but from the point of view of a mother or at least a mother figure.

When Fanny returns at last to Mansfield Park, at a time when the Bertrams have been suffering from setbacks and scandals, Lady Bertram finally accepts, welcomes, and even loves Fanny:

By one of the suffering party within, they were expected with such impatience as she had never known before. Fanny had scarcely passed the solemn-looking servants, when Lady Bertram came from the drawing-room to meet her; came with no indolent step; and falling on her neck, said, “Dear Fanny! Now I shall be comfortable.” (Mansfield Park, chapter 45.)

It is this act, even more than the marriage proposal that Fanny receives later from her cousin, which shows that Fanny has been accepted at Mansfield Park as a member of that family. She finally has her mother.

Emma was Austen’s next book. When we open the pages, Emma’s mother has long since been dead. Perhaps Austen, older and having seen more death in her friends and family by the time she wrote Emma, nolonger felt that having Emma’s mother be long dead was too severe a break with reality (though still not throughthe overused trope of death in childbirth).

Still, it is a matter or regret. In chapter 5, Mr. Knightley says: “Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. At ten years old she had the misfortune of being able to answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen. She was always quick and assured; Isabella slow and diffident. And ever since she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and of you all. In her mother she lost the only person able to cope with her. She inherits her mother’s talents, and must have been under subjection to her.”

Emma needs a mother, and although the vacancy is filled in part by her governess, Austen makes it clear how important motherhood is.

Persuasion was Jane Austen’s last novel, and like Northanger Abbey, was not published until after her death. Again we have a heroine without a mother. In the first chapter Austen writes:

“Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman, sensible and amiable, whose judgment and conduct, if they might be pardoned the youthful infatuation that made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence afterwards. She had humoured, or softened, or concealed his [her husband’s, Sir Elliot’s] failings, and promoted his real respectability for seventeen years; and though not the very happiest being in the world herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her children, to attach her to life, and to make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to quit them. Three girls, the two eldest sixteen and fourteen, was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath, an awful charge rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, silly, father.” (Persuasion, chapter 1.)

Because mothers do so much to smooth life for their daughters, it is still artistically necessary for Austen to remove Lady Elliot. In Persuasion, Austen pays tribute to the depth of a mother’s insight, so different from Northanger Abbey’s distracted, albeit kind Mrs. Morland who never even notices that her daughter is in love. In Persuasion, the regret is expressed from the perspective of the dying mother, showing that Austen, even though she was never a mother herself, clearly understood that point of view.

Persuasion in Persuasion

Some may think that focusing on the art and importance of persuasion in Jane Austen’s last written novel, Persuasion, is inappropriate, for she did not choose this title herself. The book was published after her death, and its title chosen by one of her brothers, Henry Austen. While writing it Jane called the story “The Elliots.” Henry Austen likewise chose the title for his sister’s other posthumously published work, Northanger Abbey, called “Susan” during Jane Austen’s life (readers may notice that Northanger Abbey has no Susan in it; when Jane Austen revised this work, she changed the heroine’s name from Susan to Catherine). Henry Austen may have selected the title "Persuasion" based on its similarity to the titles of two of his sister’s other successful works: Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Perhaps Persuasion, being shorter, merits only a single word.

Jane Austen’s other novels contain explicit examples of persuasion that are vital to their plots. In Sense and Sensibility, John Dashwood is persuaded by his wife not to assist his half-sisters. Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Bingley is persuaded by his sisters and Mr. Darcy to stay away from Jane Bennet, a decision he regrets and eventually puts aside. Emma persuades Harriet Smith that Mr. Elton is in love with her. The Thorpes persuade General Tilney that Catherine Morland is broke. Fanny Price is pressured by many to accept Henry Crawford as a suitor in Mansfield Park; even though she is generally considered the weakest of the heroines, she resists firmly.

Even if the title was chosen by her brother rather than Jane Austen herself, the problem of persuasion is at the core of this novel. Romantic difficulties exist only because Lady Russell, the best friend of Anne Elliot’s late mother, persuaded Anne to break off an betrothal eight years before. Anne regretted it then, and has regretted it since. Due to coincidence and circumstance, she is thrown together once more with her former suitor. Frederick Wentworth is now risen in the world, having made his fortune and having been promoted to captain, while Anne’s family, thanks to her father’s profligacy, is suffering under the disgrace of debt. Captain Wentworth still resents Anne for letting herself be talked out of a marriage that would have meant so much to them both.

So this is an example of the ill-effects of persuasion. There are many other instances of persuasion in Persuasion. An early example is shown when Mr. Shepherd, the lawyer of Sir Elliot, Anne’s father, with the awkward task of having to persuade his vain client to do something about his finances. His approach is very careful:

Mr. Shepherd, a civil, cautious lawyer… would rather have the disagreeable prompted by anyone else.

Mr. Shepherd waits until his client states, in a fit of pique, that he would rather leave Kellynch Hall than live in it in reduced circumstances, and treats this a serious suggestion. Mr. Shepherd’s method of persuasion is effective, and he convinces Sir Walter Elliot to rent out his estate and move to Bath. This change in situation allows the baronet to live within his means and to start paying his creditors. Few would believe that Mr. Shepherd’s persuasive efforts was unjustified. This instance of persuasion in Persuasion is justified by both the circumstances of Sir Elliot’s finances and by Mr. Shepherd’s expertise. Finally, it is beautifully done.

A less effective instance of persuasion is demonstrated when Anne Elliot warns her older sister Elizabeth about the dangers of an intimacy with Penelope Clay. She knows that her advice will be unwelcome but out of her scrupulous loyalty to her family gives her opinion anyway. Her sister Elizabeth lets Anne know how unwelcome her words are:

“…However, at any rate, as I have a great deal more at stake on this point than anybody else can have, I think it rather unnecessary in you to be advising me.”

Anne had done; glad that it was over, and not absolutely hopeless of its doing good. Elizabeth, though resenting the suspicion, might yet be made observant of it.

Jane Austen reminds us in these two examples that persuasion is a difficult and uncertain business, requiring tact and patience. Too often people expect the instant gratification of immediately convincing someone of something, and become frustrated when they do not succeed. Austen knew that people resist being persuaded when the advice goes against what they want to believe. There are instances in Persuasion when one character realizes that trying to persuade another is hopeless, as when Anne’s younger sister Mary knows when her husband’s mind is made up.

Persuasion clearly shows the dangers of not being firm – and of not seizing the moment – when one believes one is right. Although this is a novel of second chances, Jane Austen knows very well that second chances do not always occur. We can see that Anne has acquired more firmness of character in the years since she ended her engagement with Wentworth, for she has a deep sense of what is right and will not swerve from it. Yet firmness, insistence on one’s own way, is not always wise. Louisa insists on jumping down from styles while in Lyme, but ends up having an accident. Because she has insisted on her way, she ends up in a coma. After this Jane Austen writes:

Anne wondered whether it ever occurred to him (Captain Wentworth) now, to question the justness of his own previous opinion as to the universal felicity of firmness of character; and whether it might not strike him that, like all other qualities of the mind, it should have its proportions and limits.

Perhaps this is where Jane Austen’s philosophy rests. Although her characters frequently profess absolutes, Jane Austen does not, and realizes that chance also plays a role. Even Captain Wentworth acknowledges that there was a fair probability, early in his career, of his sloop being sunk by bad weather. In that case his death would have been noted in some small newspaper paragraph and Lady Russell’s advice to Anne Elliot not to marry him would have been wise. Jane Austen sometimes gives credit to what today is called “outcome-based morality.”

Persuasion is a novel with a happy end, and so Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth get back together. She asks him if he will ever forgive Lady Russell for the bad advice she gave eight years before. Captain Wentworth replies that he is considering it. Then he asks Anne if he would have accepted her if he had returned to Kellynch and proposed again six years ago. When she tells him yes, he says:

“It is not that I did not think of it… This is a recollection, which ought to make me forgive every one sooner than myself. Six years of separation and suffering might have been spared.”

Persuasion demonstrates the deep responsibility that comes with persuasion, and reminds us that we should proceed with caution on the advice we receive from others and also take care with the advice we give. Finally Jane Austen shows us that we should even be cautious with the advice we give ourselves.

Victoria Grossack is the author of The Highbury Murders: A Mystery Set in the Village of Jane Austen's Emma. Victoria studied Creative Writing and English Literature at Dartmouth College, and is co-author with Alice Underwood of the Tapestry of Bronze series, novels based on Greek myths and set in the late Bronze Age. She is also the “Crafting Fabulous Fiction” columnist at www.writing-world.com. Visit her website at www.tapestryofbronze.com, or contact her at tapestry (at) tapestryofbronze (dot) com.

Cross posted at My Jane Austen Book Club: http://thesecretunderstandingofthehea...

Fathers and Father Figures in Jane Austen

As Father’s Day comes around, celebrated on the third Sunday in June in most, although certainly not all, countries around the world, Jane Austen devotees can contemplate the rich array of fathers portrayed in the author’s works.

By all accounts, Jane Austen had a wonderful relationship with her own father. He believed in her abilities and encouraged her to read anything and everything in his library. Despite the excellence of her own father, Jane Austen, by exercising her powers of observation and her lively imagination, created a completely different set of fathers and father figures in her six novels.

The Fathers of the Heroines

Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Bennet has five daughters. He loves them, especially the heroine, Elizabeth, but not so unconditionally that he is unaware of their shortcomings. He is witty and insightful but also indolent. As a father he has been deficient, as he did not save money to buy them husbands, worthless or deserving. He had not reigned in the excesses of his wife or his younger daughters. Mr. Bennet, perhaps because he is older and therefore wiser, shows more insight into people than do many of the people around him. He is not taken in by Mr. Wickham, for example; whereas Elizabeth’s mistrust of that officer only occurs after she learns more information.

Mr. Woodhouse in Emma. Mr. Woodhouse has two daughters, and is particularly fond of Emma, who still lives with him, takes care of him and runs his house. He is older, not in the best health and also a bit of a hypochondriac. He is little fearful and has difficulty imagining that anyone could feel differently than he does in any situation. He dreads change but he never sees it coming. He is kind and charitable; as the wealthiest man in Highbury he has benefited many in the area, and his daughters’ portions are handsome. Nevertheless, his fear of any change in his life leads him to behaviors and desires that are very self-centered; the prospect of Emma’s marrying fills him with dread.

Sir Walter Eliot in Persuasion. Sir Walter Eliot has three daughters. He cares most for the eldest, Elizabeth, as she considered the most beautiful. He is a vain, weak man, and especially proud about his appearance and about his status as a baronet. He is also selfish and at the opening of the book and broke as well, because ever since his wife died, no one has been able to reign in expenses. This means that the dowries owed his daughters may never be paid.

Mr. Price in Mansfield Park. He is coarse, occasionally drunk, and rather loud. He has had at least four daughters, including one who died as a child, and many sons. He does not care for much beyond his newspaper and his sons and his navy. He has not provided for his daughters but does not care whether they are gentlewomen or not.

Reverend Morland in Northanger Abbey. Reverend Morland has many children, including several daughters. Catherine is his oldest girl, but with so many children and the position of a clergyman he can be presumed to be very busy and makes only a brief appearance in the pages.

Mr. Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. Mr. Dashwood has three daughters and a son from a previous marriage. He loves his daughters but does not provide for them, because the estate in his family is entailed away from the female line. About a year after he comes into his estate, he dies, leaving his daughters at the mercy of their half-brother and their mean-spirited half-sister-in-law. How the Dashwood girls cope and make their way

Father Figures

Sir Thomas Bertram in Mansfield Park. As uncle and guardian to the novel’s heroine, Fanny Price, as well as the father to her four cousins, he has the most fatherly role of the older men in Jane Austen’s novels. Sir Thomas means well, and does what he truly believes to be the right thing. His judgment, however, is often deficient, especially with respect to young ladies; he tends to look at the surface of a person as opposed to their characters and motives. Because of this, he makes several mistakes in raising his children that seriously impair their futures. On the other hand, he learns from his mistakes, and in the end is rewarded with a loving daughter-in-law.

Mr. Gardiner in Pride and Prejudice. Brother to Mrs. Bennet and hence uncle to Lizzie Bennet, he serves as a father figure in certain situations, especially when Mr. Bennet is judged deficient. He is a man of business, proactive and sensible, and assists in the rescue of his youngest niece, Lydia Bennet, when she runs away.

Sir William Lucas in Pride and Prejudice. Father to Charlotte, Lizzie’s best friend, he also makes up for some of Mr. Bennet’s deficiencies. Sir Lucas is vain about his knighthood and having been presented at St. James, but he is kind, happy to socialize where Mr. Bennet prefers to be alone, and supportive of the younger generation.

Sir John Middleton in Sense and Sensibility. A cousin of Mrs. Dashwood, he provides some paternal security by providing his cousins with a place to stay for a very reasonable sum. He is also very sociable, and his many invitations introduce them to others who have an influence on their lives and their futures.

General Tilney in Northanger Abbey. The father of Henry Tilney, he is a rather terrifying man with a tendency to overreact. At first, believing Catherine Morland to be an heiress, he treats her excessively well. Then, when he believes she is an impoverished fortune seeker, he expels her from his household. In a way he resembles the heroine, Catherine Morland, whose overactive imagination has led her to believe absurd things about him. The truth regarding both of them turns out to be in the middle: she is neither rich nor destitute, and he is not the murderous monster that she imagined.

A Grand Array

The fathers, with virtues and flaws, are all three-dimensional people - characters instead of caricatures. We can appreciate Jane Austen’s skill in their creation and even her charity towards them, for even the worst of them, Sir Walter Eliot, is treated with respect by his daughter. Perhaps reading, or re-reading Jane Austen will help us better understand the fathers in our own lives: to forgive the faults which can be forgiven, if they exist, and to celebrate what virtues they may have.

About the Author

Victoria Grossack is a co-author of five novels based on Greek mythology, the “Crafting Fabulous Fiction” columnist at www.writing-world.com, and the author of
The Highbury Murders: A Mystery Set in the Village of Jane Austen's Emma.

The Mystery of the Delphic Oracle

by Victoria Grossack

If you visit Delphi today – a few hours by car from Athens – you will be treated to spectacular ruins in a stunningly beautiful setting. Even on a very hot day – and there are plenty of hot days in Greece – the breezes and the mountains give the place an aura of serenity. You can see the amphitheater, the marble columns, and the treasuries where various city-states sent offerings to be put on display. There is also one spot, underground, where the Pythia – the priestess of the oracle - sat on a tall tripod, breathed in the prophecy-enabling vapors coming out of the earth, and muttered. Her mutterings were then reinterpreted by a priest as an answer to the petitioner who had posed his question. Why was this place revered? Did it have any truly prophetic qualities? Why are people fascinated by oracles, even today?

Mythological Beginnings

There are many stories about the origins of Delphi, a place that was sacred for millennia. Supposedly it was first guarded by a monster called Python (from which word we get the name of python snakes), a creature belonging to Gaia, a name for Mother Earth. At some point the god Apollo slew the monster and took over the site, and from that point on Delphi was considered one of his holy places. Many see this as part of the conquest of the female gods by the male gods. Although the cult of Apollo instituted male priests at Delphi, they kept the Pythias – women who breathed in the fumes, and went into trances and muttered.

Another legend involves Zeus, the King of the Gods, when he wanted to locate the center of the earth. He took a pair of eagles, and had one fly from the east and the other from the west. The birds met at Delphi, and since that myth was first told, Delphi has been known as the “navel of the earth.”

Role in Myth and History

The Oracle at Delphi played an important role in many myths. The Corinthian prince, Oedipus, went there to ask about his parentage – someone had mocked him for his lack of resemblance to his supposed father, the King of Corinth – but instead of getting a direct answer to his question, he received a terrible prophecy. The oracle informed him that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, he left Delphi while resolving never to return to Corinth so that he would not risk fulfilling the prophecy. Distraught, when his right-of-way was challenged by an angry older man on his way to Delphi, the encounter got out of hand and Oedipus ended up killing the older man. The man, ironically, was Laius, King of Thebes, and actually his natural father, although Oedipus was unaware of the man’s identity at the time. Then, even more ironically, while doing all he could to avoid Corinth, Oedipus traveled to Thebes and married the recently widowed queen, Jocasta – his natural mother – thus fulfilling the prophecy.

It is impossible to avoid noticing the circular nature of the prediction at Delphi: if Oedipus had not received the prophecy at Delphi, he would never have fulfilled it. Perhaps the gods have a harsh sense of humor. After all, if you’re immortal, things could get rather boring and Oedipus’ situation may have provided some amusement.

There are many other instances of Delphi’s role in mythology, but let’s fast forward through several centuries to Herodotus and The Histories. His first example pertains to Croesus, a King of Lydia. Croesus lived long enough before Herodotus that the stories about him may not be as reliable as later stories told by Herodotus, but it is still worth examination. The Persian empire in the time of Croesus was not as large as it would be later, and Lydia itself was quite powerful. Croesus, although very rich – he’s the source of the phrase “rich as Croesus” – yearned for still more, and the Persian empire was tempting. Croesus, though, was not sure if attacking would be a good idea and wanted reassurances from the gods.

Curious, Croesus sent rich gifts to Delphi and asked what would happen if he attacked the Persians. The Oracle’s response went something like this: “If you attack the Persians, you will destroy a great empire.” Emboldened by this prophecy, he attacked the Persians, and lost, badly. The Persians took over his empire and his wealth, but let Croesus live – which allowed him to voice reproachful protests to the gods. What had they meant by giving him such an inaccurate prophecy? Especially since he had made such opulent offerings?

The gods responded that the prophecy had indeed been fulfilled. They had never told him which empire would be destroyed – it turns out, the empire destroyed had belonged to Croesus and not to the Persians. Evidently it is important to read prophecy fine print. The gods maintained, too, that they had demonstrated mercy in acknowledgment of Croesus’ rich gifts, for his original intended fate had been far worse.

The Greeks versus the Persians

Let us continue with Herodotus. Although he is famous for his digressions, the main focus of The Histories is the conflict between the Persians and the Greeks. As these events were nearer to him in time, he would have been able to interview those who participated, and we can put more reliance on his accounting of the details. First, it is important to understand how enormous the threat of the Persians was to the Greeks. A professor once described it as equivalent to the Soviet Union taking on Luxembourg – and Luxembourg winning. Many Greek city-states surrendered immediately, hoping to avoid annihilation, but this option was not available to the Athenians, as they were the ones who had angered the Persians in the first place. Desperate, they sent a contingent to Delphi in order to ask what they should do.

Like people who ask a question of a Magic 8 Ball and receive an unsatisfactory answer and then shake it again to receive a different fate, this happened with the Athenians and the Oracle at Delphi. The first response given by the Pythia was very, very bad: she told them that they should flee because if they did not, they would all die. The Athenians asked again; the second answer contained a phrase about “relying on the wooden walls.”

Certainly this answer was an improvement over, “You’re all going to die,” but when the message was brought back to Athens, it still caused confusion. Which wooden walls did the Pythia mean? Some believed that the oracle’s words had referred to walls within the city or thorn bushes outside of it. Others believed she meant their fleet of ships, all built from wood.

We don’t have a reliable transcript of the discussion, but eventually the Athenians decided to sail away on their ships instead of staying to defend their city. Possibly they truly believed this interpretation, although to me it seems that the Pythia could have been more explicit and wooden walls. Possibly they preferred leaving their citadel to remaining to be slaughtered by the hordes of Persians – which was basically the warning in the Pythia’s first utterance. Perhaps they were persuaded by Themistocles, an Athenian citizen whose deeds are too long and too convoluted to detail in this article, who was the one who had recommended the building of the ships in the first place.

At any rate, most Athenians fled in their ships, depositing the women and children at a safe distance. They then engaged the Persians in a naval battle known as the battle of Salamis. I won’t describe it here, but suffice it to say that through deception and cleverness, making use of the straits and narrows and the fact that the Athenians could swim, the Athenians won, turning the tide of history.

Archaeology and Geology

Although many might scoff at the idea of there being anything factual to the stories that have reached us from antiquity, it turns out there was something to the legends concerning the Pythia. When an archaeologist, J.R. Hale, teamed up with a geologist, J.Z. De Boer, the geologist pointed out immediately that the area surrounding Delphi was full of fault lines and that the Pythia’s chamber was where two fault lines met.

Because of the fault line intersection, it was possible for fumes to be coming out of the earth. But did they? Research indicates that there may have been ethylene, methane, and other gases which induced trances in the various Pythias.

We know from Plutarch that the Pythias who breathed in the fumes experienced shorter lifespans, according to him due to the intensity of the work. What if it was due to the unhealthy gases which they breathed? One young woman actually died on the job, so to speak, or a short while after being exposed to fumes.

Why Do People Believe in Oracles?

Why were people ready to trust their decision-making to an oracle? We could ask the same question of many other activities, both past and present. Why do people read horoscopes today? Why did people examine livers of sacrificed animals in the past? Why do people go to fortune tellers?

Sometimes a decision must be made – actions must be taken – without enough information for making that decision. In the case of Athens facing the threat of the Persian army, it was a question of survival – not only of their army, but essentially their entire civilization.

By the way, not all Greeks accepted the notion that they should turn to the Oracle at Delphi. Some preferred more rational solutions. And although the Pythia’s prediction proved prophetic in the end, we should remember that it was not her first prediction.

Perhaps this means that we should pester fate when we don’t like its initial answer. And perhaps an answer, open to multiple interpretations, is useful in quelling panic and encouraging creative solutions.

The fumes have long since evaporated from the intersection of fault lines at Delphi, so you cannot go there to listen to oracular responses to your most pressing questions. Nevertheless the place is worth a visit. And thinking over your most pressing questions – and coming up with your own answers – will help you fulfill the most famous Delphic maxim, “Know thyself,” which according to the ancient travel-writer Pausanias, was inscribed in the forecourt of Apollo’s temple at Delphi.

References

De Boer, J.Z. & Hale, J.R. , The geological origins of the oracle at Delphi, Greece. From: McGuire,W.G., Griffiths, D.R., Hancock P. L. & Stuart I.S. (eds) The Archaeology of Geological Catastrophes, Geological Society, London, special publications, 171, 399-412

Herodotus, The Histories.

Plutarch, Moralia.

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Victoria Grossack is the author, with Alice Underwood, of several novels set in Bronze Age Greece, with characters who occasionally visit the Oracle at Delphi. The books include: Children of Tantalus, The Road to Thebes: Niobe and Amphion and Arrows of Artemis: Niobe and Chloris, and Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus. For more information visit their website, www.tapestryofbronze.com

Did Income Inequality Cause the End of the Republic?

I believe that income inequality played an enormous role in the end of the republic. Why past tense? Because this column is concerned mostly with the end of the Roman Republic, which ended at about 27 BCE. After that it was known as the Roman Empire.

It has been determined that the Roman Empire suffered from severe inequality of income. Only a few nations have had worse – and yes, the USA is now one of them. But what may not be known or understood is how much the increase in income inequality led to the end of the republic.

A brief history of Rome: Rome (Roma) was founded in 753 BCE, by Romulus, along the Tiber River on one of 7 hills (some of the hills have been razed and other valleys filled so if you visit today you won’t see them). It was an ordinary city-state at first, ruled by kings probably of Etruscan origin. These kings were so brutal and corrupt that the Romans rebelled and began a republic, by investing power in a pair of consuls who ruled for a year, “a list of which can be seen here ”. The system had checks and balances, because there were two men and not one and a variety of other positions in government, from a Senate that consisted of men from elite families to the tribunes of the plebians, who represented those in lower classes.

It was a Republic, with votes cast by citizens (to start to qualify for Roman citizenship you had to be male and not a slave) but not all votes were equal. There were many classes of votes – the votes in the first class (the richest and those with the best ancestry) counting much more than votes in the lower classes.

Despite this institutionalized inequality, the Roman Republic thrived. Those in the upper classes had a sense of responsibility, noblesse oblige, and spent their wealth and efforts on public goods ranging from entertaining games to public buildings and temples to aqueducts. Those in the lower classes had enough – they were small farmers and businessmen, and they were able to provide enough men for Rome’s main industry: war.

In many respects, war was a necessity in that period, because other city-states were also aggressive, and if you could not defend yourselves, your city would be burned, the men mostly killed, the women raped and enslaved. So having a well-trained army – and Rome’s army was incredibly well-trained – was matter of survival.

But like every other military industrial complex, those who profit from war will lobby for it. Rome’s armies were used to defend itself from threats such as Carthage’s Hannibal and the gladiator-slave Spartacus – and actually not very successfully at first – but many of Rome’s wars were aggressive. They gradually conquered the Italian peninsula and then Greece and what is now Spain.

These conquests provided great sources of wealth for the armies and especially their generals. There were natural resources such as minerals and metals, but the greatest source of riches were the people. Hundreds of thousands were captured and sold into slavery.

The creation of a huge slave class led to the creation of huge factories and farms, undercutting the smallholders. It was like what happened to many small, independent booksellers when mega bookstores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble entered neighborhoods – many of the smallholders literally lost their farms. The rich, of course, got richer, to the point where the Republic was no longer stable.

During the last 80 or so years of the Roman Republic, the most ambitious men were not content with just accumulating vast wealth. They wanted to be known as the First Man in Rome (I heartily recommend the series by Colleen McCullough). Only that would satisfy their immense egos. So the Roman Republic was devastated by civil wars between Gaius Marius and Lucius Sulla. A generation later the opponents were Julius Caesar versus Pompey Magnus; the generation that followed was Mark Antony against Octavian (later Augustus). There were lesser conflicts along the way.

Besides funding these ambitious men who would not be content with being consul, but who hankered after the position of either Dictator or King, income inequality played another role in the downfall of the Roman Republic. All those men displaced from their farms and small industries needed something else to survive. Many joined the army, and felt more loyalty to their generals than they did towards the Roman Republic. This is important for everyone to realize: when there is too much income inequality, those at the bottom have nothing to lose.

Those at the top might have lived in luxury, but they also lived in fear. Being too rich could be dangerous. In order to raise funds and to rid themselves of threats, both Sulla and Octavian engaged in proscriptions: they sent members of their guards to rich households and often killed the head of the family and confiscated the fortune (some of those they deemed less dangerous ones were allowed to choose exile). This method of raising money and ridding themselves of enemies was continued by emperors even after the fall of the republic. The wealthier you were, the more tempting you a target you made.

Given that Pompey, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony all came to bad ends – murdered or compelled to suicide – and the many others who suffered, either from slavery or penury – perhaps this income inequality is worth discouraging, even for those at the top.

Yet income inequality in the USA is greater now than it has ever been. Those at the top cannot strive for just more stuff because they cannot use more houses, yachts and toys – after a while they start questing for power and to be “THE” alpha male. If they follow the way of the Roman Republic, eventually they will turn on each other.

Of course, there are other paths that history can take: consider the French Revolution, where the commoners chopped off the heads of most of the aristocracy (and then the revolutionaries turned on each other). We’re watching the results these days of the Arab Spring, and crossing our fingers that the new governments take decent care of their people.

But all too often, serious income inequality leads to upheaval, which in the short term is uncomfortable or even deadly for many who were at the top. In the long run there is no guarantee that the revolutions lead to anything better, but when people have nothing to lose they have everything to gain and are willing to take risks in the hope that matters will improve. Too great an income inequality is inherently unstable, and most of the ways it gets reset is painful and unpleasant.

Some References

A list of Roman consuls: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...
Income inequality in the Roman Empire: http://www.businessinsider.com/even-t...

Victoria Grossack is the author, with Alice Underwood, of the novels Children of Tantalus, The Road to Thebes: Niobe and Amphion, Arrows of Artemis: Niobe and Chloris, andJocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus. For more information visit their website, www.tapestryofbronze.com

The Myth Behind the Olympics

The official ancient Olympics began in 776 BCE in Olympia, Greece, whose ruins you can visit today. However, the ancient Olympics were based on even earlier athletic exploits. Some say that the inspiration was Herakles (Hercules), others cite the funeral games in The Iliad, and others talk about the Nemean games conducted by those going to war against Thebes. But the founding myth that goes back the furthest belongs to a hero called Pelops.

According to legend, Pelops, a son of Tantalus, founded the games to celebrate an important chariot race that he won against King Oinomaios. (The names are challenging. If you want suggestions on pronunciation, go to www.tapestryofbronze.com/Pronounce.html where you can listen to my co-author saying these names and many others.) At some point in the late Bronze Age, Oinomaios was the King of Pisa. This is not the Pisa of leaning-tower fame in Italy, rather a lesser-known but older Pisa, located on the southern Greek peninsula. (Some claim that Italy’s Pisa was named after Greece’s Pisa.) King Oinomaios had a beautiful daughter, Hippodamia, and announced that he would award her in marriage, as well as his kingdom, to the man who beat him in a chariot race. However, any suitor who raced against him but lost would forfeit his life. Usually athletes competed for something small, such as a laurel wreath or a tripod; the main prize was in the glory associated with victory. However, in the race offered by Oinomaios, the actual stakes could not have been higher: a kingdom if you won, and death if you lost.

A number of men were desperate or ambitious enough to accept Oinomaios’ offer, but it was our hero Pelops who finally won the chariot race, the hand of the princess and the kingdom of Pisa. (If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t still be talking about him.) Later he held chariot races and other competitions to commemorate his victory, and these events became the inspiration for the Olympic games that would begin five or six centuries later.

The details of his Pelops’ festival games are not well known, but the myth gives more information about his race with King Oinomaios. In that story we can find three sets of traditions that would become part of athletic competitions for the next 3000 years.

Talent and Skill

The myths say little about the chariot-driving abilities of Oinomaios and Pelops, but both must have been excellent charioteers. Before Pelops’ challenge, Oinomaios had already won many races, so Oinomaios must have been a chariot driver who was both skilled and talented. Since Pelops ended up winning that race, he must have possessed talent and skill as well.

Natural talent and practiced skill were as necessary to dedicated athletes as they are today; they are the first leg in our metaphorical tripod of victory.

Equipment

Today’s athletes do everything they can get the very best equipment, whether it be bikes, or tennis racquets, or even running shoes. (By the way, Nike’s running shoes are named for the Athenian goddess of victory, Nike.) Engineers and scientists work hard to find ways to give athletes advantages in their sports.

In chariot races, the most important part of the equipment were the horses. King Oinomaios’ horses were magnificent; so much so that their names have come down to us: “Fly” and “Snatcher.” He claimed that they were given to him by his father, who happened to be – a more outrageous claim – the war god Ares.

What do you do if your opponent’s horses were given to him by a god? The answer is to get your horses from another god, hopefully a more powerful god. Pelops – a handsome, dark-eyed youth – was taken as a lover by Poseidon, the god of the sea. In return Poseidon sponsored his mortal lover by giving Pelops a pair of horses for the race, and as Poseidon was the god who created horses in the first place, the horses he gave to Pelops were probably better. At the very least, Pelops’ steeds were a match for Fly and Snatcher.

So with the fabulous horses Pelops’ story gives us an example of the second leg of the tripod of what many athletes have sought: the best equipment available.

Cheating

The myths tell us about unethical behavior on both sides of this famous race. Oinomaios put blades on his chariot wheels. Whatever he did with them was extremely effective because legends has it that he won at least thirteen races. Afterwards he killed the suitors and placed their heads on spikes as trophies for everyone to see.

With such grisly ends meeting his predecessors, it is not surprising that Pelops took extra steps to guarantee his own victory. He bribed Myrtilos, King Oinomaios’ charioteer, to sabotage Oinomaios’ chariot. The charioteer replaced at least one of the pins keeping the chariot’s wheels in place with a pin of wax. When the race started, the pin melted and the wheels came off Oinomaios’ chariot. Not only did Oinomaios lose the race, in the ensuing accident he lost his life.

Now, I can’t blame Pelops for cheating Oinomaios to win this particular race. Oinomaios did not play fair; Oinomaios had already killed a number of suitors and put their heads on spikes. There’s even a rumor that Oinomaios was molesting his daughter, Hippodamia. He appears to have been a thoroughly nasty character, and the only way to beat him was to kill him.

Yet Pelops’ treachery was not limited to the lynch pin of wax. In order to get the charioteer Myrtilos on his side, Pelops promised him a substantial bribe. He offered half the kingdom and a chance to sleep with Hippodamia.

Pelops did not keep his bargain with Myrtilos. After the successful race, the three conspirators – Pelops, Myrtilos and Hippodamia – went off together for a celebratory chariot ride. Myrtilos thought this was when he would collect one part of his prize, but instead of making sweet love to Hippodamia, Pelops pushed him off a cliff. As he fell to his death, Myrtilos retaliated the only way he could, by cursing all of Pelops’ descendants. As Myrtilos claimed to be the son of Hermes, another one of the gods, his dying curse had especial power.

So, Pelops in his famous chariot race against Oinomaios employed what would become the third great tradition used in many competitions: cheating.

Unfortunately we still have cheating in the Olympics. There are performance-enhancing drugs and questionable rulings by judges. Many recall the ice skating drama of 1994 when men associated with ice skater Tonya Harding attacked her rival Nancy Kerrigan with a couple of sharp blows to the leg.

Of course, there are many athletes who do not cheat, athletes who win without breaking the rules (or having the rules broken on their behalf by others). I suspect that there is another group of athletes – those who have been successful circumventing rules – athletes who cheat but who have not been caught. Finally there are those who cheat and who are caught. Even if we are angry with them, even if we punish them, we often remember them better than we remember those without scurrilous stories.

So in Pelops’ legendary chariot race against we have the three legs of the metaphorical tripod of victory: talent and skill; equipment; and cheating. All three have helped make athletic events great entertainment for the rest of us for millennia.

Long-Lasting Glory

So, what came from this successful chariot race? For Pelops, it has been long-lasting glory. First, by winning the lovely Hippodamia and the kingship he was able to rule a kingdom and to develop influence in the region. His descendants spread throughout the area, and were likewise powerful, and include Trojan War greats such as Agamemnon and Menelaus – still suffering from Myrtilos’ curse – as well possibly as the greatest hero of them all, Herakles.

If you visit the ruins of Olympia, which can be found next to the village of Pisa in southern Greece, and if you look hard enough, you can find a section of ground dedicated to Pelops. (The spot is known as a “cenotaph” and means “empty tomb” – a tomb or a monument erected to someone whose actual remains are elsewhere.) During the ancient Olympics – which happened every four years from 776 BCE to 393 CE – they sacrificed to Pelops’ ghost at that site. That’s over a thousand years of more recognition!

But it doesn’t end with 393 CE, when the Christians finally put an end to the pagan Olympics. The southern peninsula of Greece is called the Peloponnesus – a word that can be translated as “Island of Pelops.” Despite more than 3000 years having passed, and despite its not being the easiest word to say or to spell, the region is still named for Pelops.

That’s a lot of glory from winning a chariot race!

As you enjoy this year’s Olympics, savor the fact that you’re watching games based on a myth that goes back thousands of years.

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Want to learn more about Pelops’ race against Oinomaios and other myths associated with Pelops? Read the novels Children of Tantalus, The Road to Thebes: Niobe and Amphion and Arrows of Artemis: Niobe and Chloris by Victoria Grossack and Alice Underwood. They have written another novel, Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus. For more information visit their website, www.tapestryofbronze.com

Men Having Babies in Greek Mythology

The Komen debacle and the attacks on Planned Parenthood and now all forms of birth control are part of a long, long fight to dominate women and reproduction.

It may have not always been that way. Ancient artifacts of pregnant women were obviously very important: they made life!

There is some evidence that people were not sure of what role men played in the creation of children. Hera, now known as the sister-wife of Zeus and the queen of Mount Olympus, probably evolved from an older goddess. Before it was determined that men also played a role, the earlier version of Hera conceived by touching a lettuce leaf.

Although there is plenty of debate about whether or not there were matriarchal societies, there’s better evidence that many societies were at least matrilineal. Women may have not ruled, but they were the vessels of inheritance. Mary Renault’s The King Must Die is based on this. There are plenty of myths in which you catch glimpses of this. Helen of Troy was first (and last) queen of Sparta – despite having two brothers, and the man who married her became its king. Penelope, the long-suffering queen of Ithaca in The Odyssey, had to fend off drunken suitors who wanted to be king themselves. As she had both a father-in-law (Laertes) and a son (Telemachus), it seems clear that the inheritance was attached to her person, and not following the male line. We can see hints of this in many other stories: Hippodamia, Atalanta, and Jocasta, to name a few.

Nevertheless, gradually or suddenly, sons were considered far superior to daughters. This may be partly due to something inherent in the Y-chromosome, because we’re still seeing this today. Not only is there blatant infanticide in India and China – of baby daughters, of course – there’s evidence that men stay in marriages where their wives have sons, and are more likely to leave when their wives only produce daughters.

Of course, there may have been some justification for this in olden days, where might really did equal right and defending your home and your city was very important. Furthermore, so many women died in childbirth that they may have not had the chance to grow old and wise. And men, who at the age of thirty would often marry fourteen-year-olds, may have had some reason to look upon their wives as silly little things.

Whatever the reason, men were convinced that they were far superior to women, and lamented the fact that they had to go to women to get more sons. In their frustration, they did what they could to give that ability to Zeus. I mean, Zeus, the greatest male of them all, couldn’t be outdone by women, could he? He couldn’t let them have a monopoly on childbearing, could he? So we have two stories:

The birth of Athena. Zeus learned that if he had a son by his first wife, Metis, that the son would overthrow him. He took this prophecy seriously because he had overthrown his father, Cronus, who in his time, had overthrown his, Uranus. Now, Zeus’ father Cronus tried to stop the prophecy from coming true by swallowing his children as soon as they were born.

Zeus went one better. He must have heard about the prophecy shortly after getting his wife Metis pregnant. He invited her to play a game with him, in which they changed themselves into different animals and beasts. At some point Metis changed herself into a fly – and Zeus swallowed her. For some reason Zeus’ swallowing of his wife didn’t seem to cause the same outrage that Cronus’ swallowing of his infant children did, possibly because even then we had the double standard that has always applied to those in power, although back then it would have been known as “It’s OK if you’re Zeus” – which in a way was understandable, as criticizing the guy with the thunderbolts was imprudent, to say the least. In fact, Zeus’ swallowing of Metis was touted as a good thing, as she was a goddess of wisdom, and she imparted advice to him from within.

But, as we pointed out, Metis was already pregnant. Now, the immortals were really immortal – being swallowed did not kill them, although it must have been a serious inconvenience – and so Metis gave birth somewhere inside Zeus some time later. The child of Metis and Zeus refused to remain in such cramped quarters, and so she started banging things around, giving her father a wicked headache. Finally another of Zeus’ children, Hephaestus, the god of the forge, picked up an axe and opened his father’s skull with it (remember, gods could not die, so this was an act of mercy, not murder). Out sprang the goddess Athena, apparently in full armor, “born” from her father.

The birth of Dionysus. Zeus, despite being married, could not help himself around pretty females, whether they were mortal or immortal. He and most males had no problem with his wandering eye – remember, “It’s OK if you’re Zeus” – but at least one person disliked his infidelity. That was Hera, Zeus’ sister-wife, also the goddess of marriage. She did not take her anger out on Zeus – well, she probably did, but as he was the guy with the thunderbolts there were limits on what she could do to him – but she could harass his lovers.

Semele was a princess of Thebes. Zeus seduced her, telling her he was the king of the gods, and soon Semele found herself with child. Enter Hera, disguised as an old crone. She befriended the knocked-up princess but scoffed as Semele confided that her lover was actually Zeus. “Make him prove it,” Hera advised. “Make him swear an oath to let you see him in his glory.”

So Semele – obviously not the brightest of princesses, even if she was pretty – made her lover swear to keep a promise, and then demanded to see him in his glory. Zeus, being the god of oaths – evidently breaking your word was one of the few things that was NOT OK if you were Zeus – had to keep his word. He took his tiniest thunderbolt but it was still too much. His divine presence, revealed in all its glory, burned Semele to cinders. But Zeus was able to save the unborn child by sewing him into his thigh. Eventually, Dionysus was born.

But even if Zeus was able to claim giving birth twice, this was not available to mortal men. They might fantasize about having children themselves, but as long as this remained a fantasy, women were necessary. And so the resentment continued.

Some women might wish that men, too, could share in pregnancy and birth, as it’s not always a pleasant experience and we used to die fairly regularly during it. However, I think that if women were only optional in the reproductive process, we would have been killed off a long time ago. (See Euripides and his play Hippolytus.)

A second question was: who is the father? This was a serious question, persisting throughout the ages. I remember reading a play by August Strindberg (and I can’t remember which one) in which one of the characters obsessed about this. A man could never be completely sure that his children were actually his children, and not some other man’s. The question “who is the father” is no longer relevant, of course. If a man wants to know he can always arrange a paternity test.

Nevertheless, the problem isn’t just whether or not a child is one man’s or another’s. The problem is that many men do not want to let women have the choice – the power to have a child or not – because this is not something that can be outsourced (not yet, anyway) to men. Many men resent the monopoly women have on this.

And that is a large reason underlying the attacks on women’s reproductive rights. Obviously some women have bought into this as well, but I think the resentment has been around for millennia. This is not a new fight. And it’s a fight that each generation will have to keep on fighting. The situation should change now - there are birth control pills and the fact that there are 7 billion people ought to make a difference - but my belief is that a lot of it has to do with control, instead of rational argument.

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Victoria Grossack and Alice Underwood are authors of four novels based on Greek mythology:



For more information on their books please visit their website: www.tapestryofbronze.com where you can also find maps and a pronunciation guide.