Circe

Circe scrubs herself raw trying to remove the feeling of her rapist. She expects Helios to come and yell at her if nothing else, but he does not. She considers how expected rape is among nymphs and how even in her father’s halls, one of her relatives could have paid her father after assaulting her and all would be considered honorable. She considers Daedalus’s stories of constructing houses on faulty foundations and decides the only thing to do is “tear down and build again” (192).

More sailors come to the island again with the same story. They always claim to be tired, hungry, and grateful. She does not appear to be human anymore, but “none of it made a difference. [She] was alone and a woman, that was all that mattered” (193). They drink her wine and turn to her, eager to attack, but are shocked when she shows no fear. Instead, she turns them into pigs as they scream and beg for mercy. They claim they are sorry but she knows better, saying, “Sorry you were caught […] Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong” (195). On rare occasions, “pious” men arrive who do not view her as “dinner.” In such cases, she sometimes takes them into her bed to assert agency over her body after the trauma of her rape. She muses, “It was not desire, not even its barest scrapings. It was a sort of rage, a knife I used upon myself. I did it to prove my skin was still my own. And did I like the answer I found?” (193).

More men arrive, and she turns them into pigs without waiting for them to attack. Odysseus soon arrives; he notices Circe’s loom and speaks of his wife. No one else had ever done that before. Despite knowing Circe is a goddess, Odysseus does not seem in awe of her. He knows who she is and has moly from Hermes so she cannot harm him, but she has turned his men into pigs, so they are at an impasse. She offers a truce via sex; he says he will accept if she swears an oath on the River Styx not to harm him. She agrees.

Odysseus shares the stories of his great adventures and misfortunes, from the Trojan War to his stymied attempts to return home to Ithaca. Circe thinks, “No wonder he limped, no wonder he was gray. This is a man who has faced monsters” (207). Their relationship begins as a dare but becomes affectionate, and Circe feels that old urge to mend him as she does all torn things. She turns the pigs back into men and they stay on the island. Odysseus does not sugarcoat the horrors of war or his actions, but he does paint himself as a necessary leader making tough choices for the greater good, “a mind to guide the purpose and not flinch from war’s necessities” (213).

Circe shares no stories of her own so that he cannot collect her weaknesses as he has for so many others: “[A] door that did not open at [Odysseus’s] knock was a novelty in its own right, and a kind of relief as well. All the world confessed to him. He confessed to me” (218).

Circe’s relationship with Odysseus grows and opens her mind to hope for true happiness and love. She remembers, “I had once told Daedalus that I would never marry, because my hands were dirty, and I liked my work too much. But this was a man with his own dirty hands” (221). Odysseus asks to stay the winter, and she agrees. Circe realizes that his time with her is practice transitioning from war to domesticity. Their relationship is a dress rehearsal for when he goes home to his wife, Penelope.

Apollo appears and forcefully delivers a prophecy about Odysseus to Circe. She’s furious and laments that she still forgets that her entire life is subject to the whims of the gods:

How many times would I have to learn? Every moment of my peace was a lie, for it came only at the gods’ pleasure. No matter what I did, how long I lived, at a whim they would be able to reach down and do with me what they wished (230).

Odysseus announces that he is leaving, and she tells him of the prophecy—he will make it home, but first the gods demand he speak with the prophet Teiresias in the house of death. She advises him on what to do when he speaks with Teiresias. She asks him to bring back a phial of blood touched by the shades of the underworld as a part of the summoning ritual, but she regrets it as she considers it something one of her heartless siblings, “someone with only witchcraft in their veins and no warmth” (234), would ask for. When he returns, she welcomes him back and gives him advice on how to survive the dangerous journey home. Circe does not take contraceptive draughts in the last month she shares with Odysseus.