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Hargreaves
Unregistered User
(1/4/04 10:56 pm)
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Apollo and women
I've just been reading Melanie Klein's essay on the Oresteia and she
makes the point that Apollo is one of the most aggressively cruel gods
where women are concerned. Is there any myth that depicts Apollo showing
kindness to women?

Klein adds that the only goddesses Apollo really likes are those who
identify exclusively with males.

Geoff H.

Cicero
Unregistered User
(1/4/04 10:57 pm)
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Re: Apollo and women

Well, Apollo certainly had a very close relationship with the Muses,
who are hardly masculine goddesses. But I think that Apollo's
relationship to woman is twofold - first, he is not neccesarily cruel,
he merely perceives a desire and acts to fulfill it in a supremely
rational, if direputable, manner. But the other aspect of that
relationship is, I think, far more important. Apollo, as the god of
reason, is supposed to present this face of glorious light and wisdom
to the world. But by treating women as he does, he shows either an
acceptance on the part of the classical race-conciousness that reason
is much less powerful than our primal instincts, or a belief that from
a masculine, rational viewpoint, women should not be considered as
anything more than an object for men to be used - in either case, an
immensely signifigant statement about the classical mind.

conrad
Unregistered User
(1/4/04 10:59 pm)
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Re: Apollo and women

Yes, very significant. Yes, and ho! Did you know that in the Boetian
Oreadides, that woman were shacked to their looms at the age of 7,
impregnated by their arranged husbands who were usually twice their age
between the ages of 12 and 14, and made to give birth while they wove!
It's true, and the special stools have been found on numerous occassions in
archaeological digs. If they were no longer producing babies or rugs at age
15, wooden thongs were driven through their heels and they were exposed in
the fields to wandering predators, the sun, and other elements.

The men were either remarried or "friendship bound" to a good male companion
who had brought forth surplus progeny that the former held in trust but
raised as his own. In return, he was made to wear ceremonial
pseudo-feminized threads and attend unto his marital friend.

Thank god Marxism came along to untangle this mess!

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