Woman: Life, Temptress, and Tool

Woman: Life, Temptress, and Tool

Abhirami Sankaran

2/3/2023

Throughout Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth he refers to women as life itself. More specifically, he suggests that the hero must possess and control women as this proves their mastery over life. This symbolism largely derives from reproduction. Since women both give birth to children and are often delegated their care, they are synonymous with life force. Yet Campbell suggests there is an equal revulsion and reverence placed on women. “But when it suddenly dawns on us, or is forced to our attention, that everything we think or do is necessarily tainted with the odor of the flesh, then, not uncommonly, there is experienced a moment of revulsion: life, the acts of life, the organs of life, woman in particular as the great symbol of life, become intolerable to the pure, the pure, pure soul. “

I can understand the symbolism and warped logic used to raise these points, yet every time I am required to contemplate them I can not help being disgusted. To read such classic works of literature and see the continuous degradation of those like me is unsettling and I find that every time I leave feeling unsettled in my skin. It is so exhausting to be born a symbol rather than a person, to be objectified. Whether it is to be placed on a pedestal as life itself or viewed with disdain as the source of strife the result is rather the same, dehumanization. It makes me wonder how a woman can partake in literature. How can she exist in a space that valorized works which directly disparage her? Any virtue given to a woman is her service to a man. Her greatest accomplishment is to submit properly to possession, demure and pure yet enticing.

Whenever I interact with works like Campbell’s monomyth I find it hard to value them. Yes, his structure for the hero’s journey was revolutionary and incredibly useful in analyzing stories, but woman as temptress? Really? The hero would not be so easily led astray if he had more self control than a toddler. 

I can understand that Campbells writings often reflect the original intention of the story but I can not bring myself to accept them. For example, take Odysseus. When he happens upon the island of the Sorceress Circe he, with some divine intervention, overpowers her and elicits a vow of safety from her. Then he sleeps with her. She is the “temptress” who keeps him on the island for a year. But how much of that can be interpreted as consensual. How can I accept her as the issue when the subtext implies that she was violated. The original story views her as the issue but I can not bring myself to sympathize with such a reading.

How can I appreciate any work that subjects its women to such a one sided horror, then does not even have the decency to humanize them? What is the path forward? How can one such as I participate in literature without unending exhaustion or forced apathy?