Patroclus And Circe: The Subverted Notions Of Femininity And Heroism In Madeline Miller’s Novels

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Abstract

Historically, the idea of nourishment is associated with women as they are considered to be the nurturers of humanity alongside nature. The French female writer and critic Helene Cixous believes that our language is responsible for forming a phallocentric image of the male that grants them attributes such as courage, valour, and a position of power, therefore, asserting the female as the weaker sex. American novelist Madeline Miller subverts such standardised conceptions of the gallant male hero versus the naive and passive female through her characterisations of Patroclus and Circe in her novels The Song of Achilles and Circe respectively. She, like eco-critical theorist Ursula Le Guin, foregrounds the power of femininity and its role in the growth of humanity. We aim to connect Cixous and Le Guin’s study to highlight how Miller has overturned these conceptions of femininity by portraying a man as a nurturing, feminine war hero in The Song of Achilles and presents the gatherer woman, the one with the ‘carrier bag,’ the nurturer of humanity and nature, and also as the heroic protagonist of her novel Circe. We assess how she successfully dismantles the persistent ideals of a ‘killer story’ through her placement of Patroclus as an empathetic male hero and her characterisation of Circe as an active female hero instead of a submissive woman.