Week 3 Essay: Ovid's Metamorphoses II (Books 5-7)

Secret's in the Sauce

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Found on Red Hook Flicks

This week I choose another story from the Classics reading unit and went with Greek Myths: Ovid's Metamorphoses II (Books 5-7). I very much enjoyed this unit, as I expected I would. My favorite readings were the stories of Prosperine (who I learned was the same person as Persephone) and Dis as well as Procne's Revenge. The overall story of Prosperine is not a happy one, but it did inspire me to learn more about Prosperine and who she became later on in her role as Queen of the Underworld. It also made me wonder why Cupid chose Prosperine to be he wife of Dis. As for Procne, I did not enjoy the story much because it is a horrific story, but got a weird since of justice served at the end and also liked that it went on to explain why a few birds look the way they do. Origin stories have always been of interest to me.

I felt like this unit was somewhat lacking in background information. I'd have liked to have a sentence or two about many names who popped up in this story and who they are/what their significance is. For instance, I ended up Googling who Ceres was as well as who Typhoeus and why they could influence the weather. I also thought the sing-song nature of the stories made them more difficult to read and understand, but was grateful that the entire story was not told that way.

This story was chosen because it featured females that I knew were powerful, however they were often not portrayed as such and many times were made victims in their stories. I suppose this is how many strong women are thrown into the light. Their power is often not known and their ability to create great change not realized until something terrible happens and they have to demonstrate their abilities in response. I am possibly going to write about strong females for my storybook, so I chose this set of stories based on that. I learned a lot from this reading because, apart from Medea, I had not read the stories of the other women (I was slightly aware of Persephone's story).