In October 2023, I was honoured to give a public lecture at the Erasmus Darwin House in Litchfield. They have a series of Lunar Lectures, in which academics give talks under the full moon, and I was very excited to be invited to do one. I proceeded to a talk to mostly septuagenarians (and my mum) about toxic masculinity in Greek myth retellings. Although it was a little embarrassing at times, it went surprisingly well, and we even went into a QAnon and Incel segue in the Q&A, which married up my research interests in very interesting ways. My research lately has been focused on modern day masculinity, with a particular focus on the manosphere and online toxic masculinity. It was really interesting to tie that together with my ongoing love for the Classics and adaptations thereof.
I thought I would share a pared down version here, but it quickly became overlong and annoying, more like an essay than a blog post. So I'm going to split it into the different mythic men that I talked about in the lecture. This first instalment is on Atlas and Heracles, the protagonists of Jeanette Winterson's novella for the Canongate Myth Series, Weight (2005).
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed revisiting it!
'Ancient Myths, Modern Masculinities: Toxic Masculinity in Greek Myth Retellings'
I am interested in what the specific value might be of analysing mythic men with reference to modern theories of masculinity. If the role of myth in antiquity was to narrate and etiologically explain the social and natural order, adapting myth re-appropriates these ancient myths to shed light on contemporary society.
So, adaptations of ancient men can comment on contemporary masculinities.
Online, Alt-Right, white nationalist, men's rights groups (known as The Red Pill) use classical mythology, philosophy, imagery, and iconography to promote their vitriolic agendas. Donna Zuckerberg researches the weaponisation of the literature and history of ancient Greece and Rome by the men of the Red Pill, to promote white supremacist and patriarchal ideologies in her text Not All Dead White Men (Zuckerberg 2019: 5). She looks at how men on these Reddit pages use, for example, Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus to reinforce rape culture (Ibid., 5). For her, this trend cannot be ignored because it has the potential to reshape how ancient Greece and Rome are perceived in the modern world, and because they lend historical weight and legitimacy to discriminatory world views.
But, what we are seeing in contemporary literary retellings of Greek myth are versions of the heroes that engage with modern concerns about masculinity, such as homosocial bonds, hegemonic masculinity, and toxic masculinity.
Weight
Jeanette Winterson’s 2005 novella for the Canongate Myth Series, Weight, retells the myths of Atlas and Heracles.
In Greek myth, ‘Atlas, under strong constraint, holds up the broad sky with his head and tireless hands, standing at the ends of the earth, [...] for Zeus the resourceful assigned him this lot’ as punishment for his leading role in the war between the Olympians and the Titans (Hesiod, Theogony l.507).
Meanwhile, the hero Heracles is most famous for his Twelve Labours and subsequent immortality: as mythographer Edith Hamilton explains, ‘The greatest hero of Greece was Hercules. [...] Hercules was the strongest man on earth and he had the supreme self-confidence magnificent physical strength gives’ (1942: 225).
It is the strength of Atlas and Heracles that is emphasised in accounts of their mythos, and it is their strength as metaphors for masculinity in Winterson’s retelling that will be analysed here.
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| Atlas holding the world (Rockefeller, New York) & Heracles as a boy strangling a snake (Capitoline, Rome) |
Hegemonic Masculinity
If we understand hegemonic masculinity as the socially constructed masculine ideal that legitimises men's dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of most of the male population, women, and queer people, we can use this to explore Atlas and Heracles in Weight.
Exemplars of hegemonic masculinity might not necessarily be actual men: they may be fictional, such as actors, or ‘even fantasy figures, such as film characters’ (Connell 1995; 2005: 77), like John Wayne; or indeed, mythological figures.
So, in Weight, Atlas and Heracles’ strength typifies hegemonic masculinity because their mythic strength makes them exemplars of the hegemonic pattern. Atlas’ strength is evident in the way that he carries the Kosmos on his shoulders at great cost to himself:
‘I could hardly breathe. I could not raise my head. I tried to shift slightly or to speak. I was dumb and still as a mountain.’
(Winterson 2005: 23)
Similarly, Heracles’ Labours demonstrate his stamina and strength; in Weight, when describing the ten Labours he has already completed, his tone is casual:
‘I have already killed the Nemean Lion, destroyed the Hydra, caught the golden hide of Artemis…’
(32)
Though their powers are of mythic proportions, they act as hyperbolic figures of male strength, which is one way that patriarchy maintains hegemony.
In Weight, Atlas and Heracles’ unrealistic strength becomes a hyperbolic reflection of physical strength as a masculine trait. Their powerful statuses as a Titan and a demigod mean that they are hierarchically above mere mortals and, in the same way that their mythic strength is magnified masculine strength, their godliness is an amplification of hegemonic masculinity.
Homosociality
Atlas and Heracles’ relationship can also be understood in terms of a homosocial relationship; ‘Homosociality refers specifically to the nonsexual attractions held by men (or women) for members of their own sex’ (Bird 1996: 121).
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| The ultimate homosocial relationship |
Although homosocial relationships can also be sexual, and they inexorably impact other sexes, and the (social, sexual, and political) relationships between the sexes. We see Heracles performing sex acts on himself unselfconsciously in front of Atlas, offer to lend Atlas a hand, if you get my meaning,** as well as having numerous violent sexual encounters with women throughout the short novel.
** in case you were wondering: yes, it was very awkward to say this in front of my mum.
Toxic Masculinity
Which brings us onto another theory of masculinity, which is ‘toxic masculinity’, a term that is increasingly popular.
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| (source) |
You’ve probably heard people call men toxic, or point to news stories or fictional characters as examples of ‘toxic masculinity’, but they may in fact be misusing the term. Though ‘toxic masculinity’ has become widely used in both academic and popular discourses, its is often misused.
This is a hill I will die on.
Toxic masculinity is not about just calling men's shitty behaviour 'toxic', it's about the toxic effect that enforced masculinity has, especially upon men. Toxic masculinity conceptualises the methods by which boys and men are conditioned to suppress ‘unmanly’ feelings, and how that has different negative effects for men, who are more likely to suffer with depression and commit suicide, and women, who are more likely to be victims of gender-based violence due, in part, to the toxic cycle of masculinity.
In Weight, Heracles is an example of such toxic masculinity.
An aspect of toxic masculinity is hypersexuality, and Heracles’ hypersexuality is demonstrated by his numerous explicit sexual encounters in the novel. For example, he imagines raping his step-mother Hera and he kidnaps Iole by sacking a city, killing all her relatives, and seizing her mid-suicide attempt.
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| Hercules and Iole (Foggini 1691-1700) |
The weight of Heracles’ hyper-masculinity is therefore tied to sexual violence and his seemingly insatiable sex drive, presenting him as an exemplar of toxic masculinity, as it pertains to sexual violence.
While Heracles’ hypersexuality is an example of masculinity’s toxicity for women, we also can see in his characterisation the toxic effects of masculinity on men. Heracles suffers from acute anxiety: ‘the thought-wasp, buzzing Why? Why? Why?’ (67).
A wasp is also notably something violent and poisonous which pricks, so it plagues Heracles in a way not dissimilar to how his sexual aggression affects women.
The pressures of performing the labours causes Heracles anxiety, which mirrors how the pressures of performing masculinity cause men anxiety.
Although, as Edith Hamilton notes, the ‘greatest hero of Greece was Hercules. [...] the strongest man on earth’ (1942: 225), Winterson portrays him as anxious, his ‘thought-wasp’ replicating this sense of being trapped in a box of his own poisonous masculinity.
Conversely, Atlas rejects the model of masculinity enacted by Heracles. He is as physically strong as Heracles and, therefore, by the logic of the novella, just as masculine, but he does not exhibit any of the toxic behaviours that Heracles does. Instead, he shoulders his burden with ‘such grace and ease, with such gentleness, love almost,’ (83). He's also a dog guy: he rescues Laika, the dog that the Russians sent into space, so ‘Now he was carrying something he wanted to keep,’ (127) which leads him to have ‘a strange thought.’ (Ibid., 134). Atlas asks himself ‘Why? / Why not put it down?’ (Ibid., 149), in which the repetition of an italicised ‘Why’ echoes Heracles’ thought wasp, but transforms it positively.
Ultimately, Atlas’ capacity to show love, and therefore eschew toxic masculinity, frees him from his weight.
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