Circe: Contradictions of the Modern Feminist Epic
Image Description: Ancient Greek vase style, Circe located on the right, looking to the left with an expression of surprise. On the left is a stray hand reaching out under her line of sight.
Design by Yuri Mansukhani
For someone who loves spinoffs of classic tales so much she named her dog after Riordan’s Percy Jackson, it feels almost blasphemous to admit I picked up Circe six years after the internet had hailed it a masterpiece. Written by Madeline Miller, one of the best loved modern retellers of Greek mythology, Circe immediately gained the “feminist” label for giving voice to a figure long reduced to the mere archetype of a predatory femme fatale.
I started the book at lunch with the expectation that it would be an enjoyable pastime for the next few days; I finished it by the end of my classes that same evening. To say I loved it is an understatement. Not only does Miller miraculously fit enough plot points into Circe to give the novel the sprawl and emotional heft of an epic, but she also maintains a perfectly balanced pace. The story is fast enough to sustain the reader’s attention, yet languorous enough to flesh out the main characters and their relationships. As I made my way through the book, I eased into the comfort of knowing that nearly every male character would prove unreliable, and that most of the women would gain a depth and complexity they were rarely afforded in the original myths. Even Pasiphae, who was initially portrayed as simple in her cruelty towards Circe — no different from her brother Perses — was granted a deeper, more painful reason for her behavior.
Still, once the initial haze of admiration faded a bit, I found myself circling back to a certain lingering unease. For all the ways Circe breathes life into its women, the most important relationships in Circe’s life — the ones that inspire her, wound her, shape her magic — are still overwhelmingly with men. Her brother, Aeëtes, is the one who introduces Circe to her powers; Prometheus’s defiance against the gods plants the seed of her empathy; even Daedalus, quiet and kind, leaves a mark no woman ever quite comes close to. The few women who orbit Circe — her sister Pasiphaë, the nymphs she shelters, even Scylla — are often cast in the role of rival, betrayer, or disappointment. When Scylla crosses her, Circe’s retaliation is swift and merciless, far crueler than the casual magic she inflicts on the predatory sailors who threaten her peace, for Scylla’s punishment is lonely and eternal. And Circe is not the only one who makes such a distinction in her vengeance. Pasiphae’s rage towards her husband’s infidelity is also redirected onto the women he sleeps with, who, more likely than not, have no say in their relations with the king. In a world where power is entirely dictated by men, internalized misogyny becomes another weapon of survival, teaching women to guard themselves not just against men, but against each other. All this raises the question of how much autonomy the women of this world truly have; whether their treatment of one another is an inescapable consequence of living within a system that offers so few avenues for trust, solidarity, and grace between women.
This imbalance becomes especially stark on Aiaia, her island of exile. Men who wash up on her shores are given the opportunity to be treated with mercy, forgiveness, and hospitality, depending on their behavior. On the other hand, the nymphs Circe is tasked with overseeing are automatically met with a weary sort of contempt, their frivolity and cattiness grating against her solitude; this is an especially confusing aspect as Circe is constantly complaining about how lonely she feels. Her relationship with these disobedient daughters of gods is complicated. There is no effort on Circe’s end to get to know any of the nymphs past Alke, the first one sent to Aiaia. On the other hand, she does her best to protect them from the sailors by sending them away whenever she’s playing host to the men. Through her brief commentaries on the nymphs, there’s a detectable tension: a sense of obligation to protect them as fellow women, paired with a persistent disdain for their presumed vapidness — perhaps a judgment skewed by internal misogyny on Circe’s part?
That is not to say that Miller creates no opportunities for Circe to find deeper bonds with women, yet the ones that come to mind — Medea, Ariadne, Pasiphae, Penelope — seem rather unsatisfying to me. Medea becomes yet another scorned woman archetype who unleashes her spite onto Circe, Ariadne is not given much screen time, Pasiphae’s past treatment of Circe was too vicious for her to be redeemable without considerably greater effort.
Out of the four, Penelope had the greatest potential to become the significant female connection Circe claimed to have craved. Not only are the two able to bond over shared experiences, especially of Odysseus, but their relationship is also a realistic one, built on a steady foundation of mutual respect and understanding. And yet, just as it begins to hint at something richer, finally a companionship that does not stem from rivalry or trauma, the narrative shifts focus and places greater weight on Circe’s growing affection for Penelope’s son, Telemachus.
For reasons never fully explored, she ultimately trades her island, her power, and her solitude not for the woman who might have been her equal but for the young man who only ever seemed to orbit the women in his life — first his mother, then Circe, both of whom seem to define his character far more than any independent action of his own. His gentleness and quiet strength are clearly meant to be a counterpoint to the many brutish men Circe has encountered, but they feel more symbolic than substantive, as though his primary function is to provide emotional payoff for the women around him. It is not that I begrudge her the choice, exactly, for the life she leads after choosing Telemachus is fulfilling and it does seem like she finds her happiness. Yet. I cannot help but wish the story had followed through on the promise of a truly meaningful female bond. After all that time yearning for connection, it feels like Circe chooses something safer, both on a personal and societal level. More familiar, maybe, but also far less daring.
Finally, there is also something sharp and fascinating about the way Miller subverts the classic image of the predatory woman from Circe onto Athena. Traditionally revered as a symbol of wisdom and strategy, Athena here becomes something far more chilling: an omnipresent shadow of divine vengeance, devoid of warmth or empathy, wielding power in a way that is exacting, impersonal, and deeply isolating. Her obsession with Odysseus’s legacy and her attempts to manipulate his son highlight how even the most “rational” goddess is driven by possessiveness, vanity, and a ruthless sense of order.
Maybe the argument to be made here is that the godly represent a state of stagnancy and perpetual pettiness that only immortality can breed (and perhaps that is why our protagonist is “afflicted” with the voice of a mortal) but such a claim is hardly worth mentioning when, even here, power among women is framed as cold and violent, something to be feared rather than admired. Athena, Pasiphaë, Medea — each powerful in her own right — are all eventually rendered more antagonist than ally, more threat than possibility. True intimacy, true kinship, remains largely the province of Circe’s bonds with men. So, what are we meant to take from this? That mortal vulnerability, especially when embodied by men, is more trustworthy than female authority? That women with power inevitably weaponize it against one another? For a novel celebrated as a feminist retelling, it is striking how often power in the hands of women is portrayed not as liberating, but as corrosive — even when the story’s heroine is herself a minor goddess learning to shape her own fate.
I kept wondering, then: what does it really mean to call this a “feminist” retelling? Is it enough to give a silenced woman a voice, even if that voice still finds its echoes in men? Perhaps Miller was simply making a deeper commentary on how Circe was able to reclaim her voice (literally and figuratively) but not quite the world she lives in. All that said, Circe remains one of the most thought-provoking reads of the year for me, not despite its contradictions but because of them. Circe may not have passed every feminist litmus test, but it passed the most important one: it made me write a long essay about it — for fun. Miller’s other works? Already on my to-read list.
