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Medea in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones

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Notes

  1. A first version of this essay was delivered at the 2013 annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States. It could not have reached its present form without detailed suggestions from two anonymous readers and IJCT’s editorial staff. It is dedicated to my mother, Mary Sue Eldon, who recommended I read Salvage in December 2012.

  2. Parenthetical page numbers for Salvage are from Ward (2011). Ward has only begun to be treated in scholarship; some work is noted as relevant below. On Hamilton see Hallett (2008) and Hallett (1996-1997).

  3. A variant on ‘salvage’ may be found in Ward’s 2013 memoir, The Men We Reaped (Reaped); some connections between Salvage and Reaped are noted below. For an illuminating interview with special focus on Reaped see Hartnell (2016).

  4. A related perspective emphasizes ‘the personal voice’ in classical scholarship: see Hallett and Van Nortwick (1996).

  5. Cf. Hallett (2013: 132) on “the value and impact of individual experiences and lived realities, and … human emotions that shape not only experience and reality but also research inputs and outcomes.”

  6. For classical receptions and African-American literary traditions, see, e.g., Greenwood (2010), Tatum and Cook (2010), Goff and Simpson (2007), Walters (2007), Rankine (2006), Fikes (2002a) and (2002b), Ronnick (1997), and Haley (1995) and (1993). Some of these are discussed as relevant below.

  7. Walters (2007: 11).

  8. Ibid. (2007: 11, emphasis added). For Morrison see below, n. 13.

  9. (2006: 109), after Heyman (1995).

  10. 2006: 14 and 3, respectively.

  11. Rankine (2006: 15). Cf. Walters’s argument that “contemporary renditions of ancient texts engage in a social commentary about issues relative to urban blight, victimization, and racial oppression” (2007: 4), after Haley (1993).

  12. Such issues are addressed more directly in Reaped, focusing on the often-violent deaths of young men, including Ward’s brother.

  13. For the classics and Beloved see Roynon (2013: 82-92), Walters (2007: 106-112), Otten (1998), Kimball (1997), Haley (1995), Schmudde (1993), and Corti (1992); Morrison more generally: Roynon (2013), Walters (2007: 99-132), including attention to Home (e.g., Roynon (2013: esp. 117-127)) and Miner (1985). On Morrison and Margaret Garner see Roynon (2013: 81 and 84); generally Weisenburger (1998); cf. Malamud (2011). Some connections between Beloved and Salvage are noted below.

  14. Cf. Du Bois’s chapters V, comparing the city of Atlanta to the mythic Atalanta (55), and XIV, rewriting Plato’s allegory of the cave (Rep. 7.514a-521b; see (1989: 352-354)). On Du Bois and the classics see Tatum and Cook (2010: 93-154, with 126-134 on the Golden Fleece) and Broderick (1958). On Cullen's Medea see Tatum and Cook (2010: 148-154, with 141-148 on his classicism generally), Rankine (2006: 94-103), Corti (1998), and Dorsey (1969). On Medea as a woman of color see Davis (2015), de Paiva dos Santos (2015), Wetmore (2013) and (2003), McDonald (1975). Cf. O’Meally (2007).

  15. Locke (2013). On Persephone’s reception by African-American women authors, see, e.g., Tatum and Cook (2010: 346-375), Walters (2007: 68-97, 112-132, and 150-170), and Hayes (1994); in other contemporary work, e.g., Hurst (2012). For resonance between Salvage and Rita Dove’s Persephonic Mother Love see below, n. 43. Salvage should also be read in context of contemporary women’s writing and classical reception (Theodorakopoulos (2012)).

  16. Moynihan (2015) makes a similar argument about Salvage’s politicized rereadings in terms of ‘recycling,’ with special reference to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, which Esch has read for school (Salvage 7). I am grateful to an anonymous reader for the reminder that Faulkner’s title comes from Homer (Od. 11.424-426). Ward’s ‘salvage’ or ‘recycling’ could be compared to the ancient practice of ‘recomposition,’ with McGill (2005; 31-52 on Medea).

  17. Rankine (2006: 15 and 33).

  18. Greenwood (2010: 5-6 and 4, respectively). For classics in post-colonial contexts, see Goff and Simpson (2007), Hardwick and Gillespie (2007), and Goff (2005). On reception generally see Hardwick and Stray (2008) and Hardwick (2003).

  19. In Esch’s reading, Hamilton’s sixth chapter, called ‘Eight Brief Tales of Lovers,’ “leads into the story of Jason and the Argonauts” in such a way as to make that story, too, chiefly a love-story (7). Cf. Apollonius Arg. 4.423-425, emphasizing Aphrodite.

  20. Esch saying “I was beloved” evokes Morrison’s novel, whose reception of Medea has also been read as “re-imagin[ing] what precipitates [the] decision to commit infanticide”: “Medea is recast not as the malicious wife who mercilessly kills her children, but as a victimized slave who desperately tries to protect her brood” (Walters (2007: 107 and 109)).

  21. A potentially surprising omission is Medea’s ethnic identity: although her status as outsider and barbarian was of persistent interest in ancient sources, in Salvage she is identified as a “Greek” (e.g., 17, 32). Cf. Graf (1997: 27): “What mattered to [Apollonius] before all else were the impulses within Medea’s soul--and they, of course, could not be allowed to seem exotic,” in context of how Jason’s linked story “long ago moved away from any possible ritual context in order to become the stuff of Panhellenic epic” (42); cf. Od. 12.70, where the Argo is described as “of interest to all” (πᾶσι μέλουσα).

  22. Esch’s father gets badly injured in parallel to a puppy being killed by China:“[t]he meat of his fingers is red and wet as China's lips” (130). Given Skeetah’s identification with Jason, does their father recall Jason’s father Aeson, who in some ancient stories is mutilated?

  23. In a plot culminating in the arrival of a hurricane, in parallel to the death of Medea’s brother during her flight by sea, water means danger; cf. 216, “water meant death,” and see further below.

  24. For Esch’s rereading cf. 216 and 225 (both below, section IV).

  25. As noted above, Esch is aware of Hamilton's attention to “different versions” (Salvage 154; cf. Hamilton 175). Although Salvage does not name any ancient author, Hamilton draws on Apollonius (primarily: “the whole story of the Quest”), Pindar (a bit: “the part about Jason and Pelias”), and Euripides (a larger bit: “what Jason and Medea did” in Corinth; all 160). For summaries of ancient Medea stories see, e.g., Green (1997: 21-30) and Hunter (1989: 12-15).

  26. Preceding three quotations from Hunter (1989: 18-19).

  27. “The idea of love as a wind is found already in archaic poetry” and then frequently later, per Hunter (1989: 204 ad 967-72). Green (1997: 18) notes that “[t]he erotic element” in the Medea story “can be traced back as early as the first quarter of the sixth century” (with 28 on Apollonius' “modernizing psychological portrait”).

  28. Hunter (1989: 203) astutely compares the stillness of Jason and Medea to the paralysis afflicting Daphne upon her transformation into the laurel tree (torpor gravis occupat artus; Ovid Met. 1.548). Esch compares herself to Daphne (Salvage 16).

  29. Virtually the same tree-simile appears later in Apollonius to describe the “earthborn men” who arise from the dragon's teeth (3.1375-1376). For the “fierce gale” (ἀνέμοιο κατάικες) cf. the identical phrasing at 1.1187-1205.

  30. For other examples of tree-imagery in Ward see Reaped 247 and 249; cf. Salvage 254.

  31. It would be interesting to consider how the literary history behind Apollonius’ simile, stretching back to Homer, might help us read Salvage. E.g., Homer Il. 12.131-134 and Od. 6.162-167, but “[t]he comparison of people to trees is a common one” (Hunter 1989: 204 ad loc., referring to Pease ad Virgil Aen. 4.441).

  32. “[W]eather, the sea, and seafaring” are “common [sc. areas for figurative language] in much of classical Greek poetry” (Mastronarde 2002: 35); for parallels to the passages from Euripides noted below see Page (1938 ad locc.). Thus Apollonius, who treats the voyage of the Argo, naturally refers to ‘hurricanes,’ ‘windstorms,’ ‘squalls,’ etc., e.g., 1.1016 (θύελλαι), 1.1078-1152 (ἄελλαι at 1078; ἐριώλας at 1132), 2.1125 (ἄελλαι). Medea uses wind-imagery to emphasize her desire that Jason not forget her (3.1113-1114). In this connection another useful set of comparisons for Salvage would be fictions about storms (e.g., Natasha Trethewney’s Beyond Katrina, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God).

  33. Cf. 1075, where Medea apostrophizes her children’s breath. This would seem to evoke Medea's changed feelings, formerly passionate love and now conflicted motherhood: in the same scene she strongly implies her decision to kill her children (1078–1080).

  34. Quoted question from Page (1938: xxi), who thus writes that “Euripides' Medea begins when the romance and the days of adventure are over”; cf. Hunter 1989: 18–19.

  35. Cf. Ward's description of the death of her brother Joshua (Reaped 242): “the terror that I will forget who he was … pulls me down further, until I am stuck … in a quagmire of quicksand, mired in the cold, liquid crush, and then: drowning.”

  36. The phrase ‘black Athena’ recalls the title of Bernal (1987), which sought to show African origins for classical motifs and themes, but Esch’s usage here seems mainly to compare her thought about her baby to the mythological birth of Athena from Zeus’ head.

  37. See Nussbaum (1997) on the snake in Seneca; cf. Knox (1950).

  38. Cf. how their father's voice is drowned out (129) in a way that leads to his physical harm (130, discussed above).

  39. China does not harm her litter at first: Esch has “never seen her so gentle” as with her newborns (Salvage 17). At one point Skeetah mercy-kills a sick puppy: although “his hands” are “as sure as mama's” (52) when she would kill a chicken on a special occasion (51), this too represents displacement of violence from the mother, and her children are not the object.

  40. Reaped has a similar running theme of misogyny and violence in men being matched by cruelty and mistrust in women (e.g., 158, 162, 169); see further below on Salvage 250.

  41. Mastronarde (2002: 64 and 20-21; see further 50-53 for controversy over prior traditions and 57-64 for the possibility that Euripides drew on Neophron). Cf. Green (1997: 29): “the iconographic evidence … largely ignores Medeia as Kindermörderin till the Roman period.” Other versions of Medea’s story omitting the infanticide include 19th-century burlesques (with Macintosh (2000)); cf. Derek Walcott’s Omeros, omitting Odysseus’ killing of the maidservants; I am grateful to an anonymous reader for this point.

  42. Cf. Walters (2007: 36): Hamilton “underscores the fact that Medea’s motive for killing her sons is not about revenge but rather about protecting her children …. Medea realizes that she has no choice but to kill her sons because they would not be safe in Corinth.” Walters suggests that this “reworking of Medea’s story probably served as the inspiration for Morrison’s Beloved.”

  43. To “mother with large, merciless hands” cf. Reaped 203: “the inexorable push of my mother's hands”; I think of Bill Withers’s song ‘Grandma’s Hands.’ Ward’s phrasing echoes Rita Dove’s Mother Love; e.g., Dove has Persephone “cr[y] out for Mama, who did not / hear. She left with a wild eye thrown back,” a Demeter-figure who “left us singing in the field, oblivious / to all but the ache of our own bent backs”: this anticipates Ward’s description of Katrina as a “murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive … left us a dark Gulf … [and] left us to salvage” (Salvage 255, discussed below). On Dove see Steffen (2001).

  44. Cf. Esch’s description of “world-uprooting mothers” alongside other “women who kept me turning the pages: the trickster nymphs, the ruthless goddesses” (Salvage 15-16).

  45. Greenwood (2010: 6), referring to Goldhill (2002).

  46. Is there also a Tempest element to Salvage’s depiction of contemporary life, with people continually ‘washed ashore’?

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Stevens, B.E. Medea in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones . Int class trad 25, 158–177 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-016-0394-6

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