12. Man’s Fear of Woman

You heard his answer. You struck him, turned him into a frog. You set him to dwell in the middle of the garden, where he can move neither upward nor downward. So you’d love me in my turn and, as with them, set my fate.⁸⁵85 Gilgamesh, tr. by John Gardner and John Maier, New York: Knopf, 1984, pp.149, 152, 153.

When Gilgamesh, having learned from the fates of his predecessors, turned down Ishtar’s advances, what did she do? Feeling spurned, she caused her father Anu, god of the heavens and father of the gods, to create a heaven bull which devoured Gilgamesh’s warriors, killing hundreds before it was slain by Gilgamesh and Enkidu, his partner in arms. Ah Ishtar, terrible Ishtar; cruel, callous and capricious goddess of love, whose embrace may neither be accepted nor spurned without danger! Ah Ishtar, personification of the terrible core of woman-in-love, as men experience her!

Odysseus, in his encounters with the Sirens, with Calypso and with Circe, survived attempts to lure, trap and hold him prisoner by woman-in-love.

First, who were the Sirens? They were lovely sea maidens who lured men to destruction with songs which men could not resist. Outside of mythology, a siren is any woman on the street, any seductive and destructive femme fatale, who fascinates a man with her eyes, her voice, her bearing, or some other riveting action or attribute, and lures him to his ruin in one form or another. Odysseus survived his encounter with the Sirens by waxing up the ears of his ship’s crew so as to make them deaf to the songs, and by having himself tied tight to the mast of his ship. He was thus able to enjoy the enchanting songs of the sirens as he sailed past them, without throwing himself into the sea and swimming to them and to his doom.

And what about Calypso? When Odysseus landed on her island, the nymph received him kindly, looked after him, proposed to marry him, and planned to give him immortality and ageless youth, if only he would remain with her for ever. Why did all that not persuade Odysseus to stay? He had other plans. After his years away at the Trojan war, he was keen to get home to his wife and son. Calypso had no sympathy for that. Hoping to habituate him to herself, she plied him with hospitality, and kept him on her island for eight years, kept him there a “cold lover with an ardent dame” (after) “the nymph had long ceased to please.”⁸⁶86 Homer, The Odyssey, tr. by E.V. Rieu, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970, p.92. She might have kept him prisoner for the rest of his life had Zeus, king of the gods, not intervened and ordered her to give him up. Now, no man who loves his liberty, who has other plans for his life, would welcome being held against his wishes, however gently and sumptuously, even with a promise of immortal youth.

Circe was the sorceress who turned men into swine. When Odysseus came to her island, he sent his men out to explore it. They found the home of Circe. She welcomed them, fed them pottage, and then, with a wave of her magic wand, turned them into pigs, and ordered them off to her pigsty for later slaughter. Only Eurylochus escaped to tell Odysseus what had happened. After consulting his gods, who told him how to resist Circe’s charms, Odysseus set out to meet Circe and rescue his men.

Let us consider Circe’s tricks and how Odysseus countered them. Her first trick was to serve him drugged pottage, which would weaken his resistance to her magic, and then to wave her wand and order him off to the pigsty. When her pottage and wand technique failed, she didn’t give up, but tried another trick. She shrieked, fell on her knees, burst into tears, and invited him to her bed, where she planned to rob him of his courage, and so render him susceptible to her magic wand. To counter her tears and sex appeal, Odysseus drew his resolute sword. When capitulating, Circe praised Odysseus, saying: “you must have a heart in your breast that is proof against all enchantment.”⁸⁷87 Ibid., p.164. That was high praise indeed! She added: “I beg you now to put up your sword and come with me to my bed, so that in love and sleep we may learn to trust one another.”⁸⁸88 Ibid.

The encounter between Circe and Odysseus illustrates that, when tangling with a woman’s desire, a man is embattled with a predatory goddess whose appetite is implacable. Any man who would thwart her needs all the guile and discipline of an Odysseus, plus the good counsel of his gods. Any man who would keep his freedom must also be prepared to use violence if need be. Woman, like the slave hunter, wants to live. If you don’t want to be captured, you must make it clear that an attempt on your liberty will cost the attempter’s life. Nothing less will make her back away and leave you alone.

Note also that it is only in defeat that Circe finally accepts a relationship based on love and trust. Only when a man-hunting woman is persuaded that she cannot enslave you is she prepared to settle for a friendship which, to her nature, is only second best. Alas, a beast of prey does not take easily to fair exchange; a parasite does not take easily to symbiosis. Men who insist on fairness in relationships with women must have a resolute heart proof against all enchantment, as well as a sharp and ready sword, and the will to use it on any would-be enslaver.

The man-entrapping spirit of Calypso and Circe is echoed in Barbra Streisand’s famous lines about a woman in love who would do anything to get a man into her world and hold him within. Man’s fear of that entrapment is expressed in this Japanese poem:

Take me in your arms, said the woman. The man took her. And remained, for the rest of his life, Between her hands.⁸⁹89 Bernard Soulie, Japanese Erotism, tr. by Evelyn Rossiter, Fribourg-Geneva, Productions Liber SA, 1981, p.68.

Women may delight in such a prospect; men, naturally, fear it, and therefore fear women.

The most important lesson from Odysseus’s encounters with these women is that the lot of a man in the hands of a woman hungry for a consort depends on him. If he allows himself to be trapped and tamed, his lot will be enslavement; if he stands his ground, he could escape, or at least exact an equitable and symbiotic relationship.

It is perhaps significant that though Odysseus was able, with advice from his guardian gods and goddesses, to scheme his way out of the fangs of Circe, he had to rely on a direct order from Zeus, the all-powerful, to effect his release from Calypso. Does this not suggest that it is more difficult for a man to rescue himself from a courteous and gentle weakener of resolve, like Calypso, than from the not-so-gentle Circes of the world? A woman’s soft approach, being less resistable, may be more dangerous to the liberty of a man.

Nevertheless, if a man must choose between a Calypso and a Circe, which should he choose as his mate? Better a Calypso than a Circe, for Calypso’s heart is not a block of flint. She knows what pity is; she has some sense of what is fair; and one could negotiate a deal with her. Which is most unlikely with a Circe, whose style of domination is not amenable to negotiation or compromise, not until she is decisively defeated, and perhaps not even then. The wonderful thing about the adventures of Odysseus is that he is a master of ruses, one from whom many survival tricks may be learned. His encounters with the Sirens, with Calypso and with Circe ought to be used to teach standard lessons to adolescent boys as they begin relationships with predatory women.

The Hebrew myth of the Fall of Man is usually read as the story of the fall of the human species, male and female together, from paradise, and of its banishment to a life of toil and hardship outside the primeval Garden of Eden. But it includes a much more specific fall than that. Its kernel is the story of the fall of man below woman; of how Adam, originally lord and master over Eve his consort, was pushed, fell and became Eve’s slave.

It is the story of a brilliant coup whereby woman, pleading the hardships of pregnancy and childbirth, caused a division of labour which dumped upon man the hard economic tasks and risky adventures of society. For eating the apple given to him by Eve, Adam was condemned to eke out a living by the sweat of his brow, and to sustain his children and his child-bearing consort. Eve’s crowning subterfuge was to fix responsibility for the new arrangement on the serpent, Adam and God.

It is only natural that man should fear woman for the success of her fundamental coup. It is natural for man to fear a femme fatale who turned the tables of power on him, and consigned him to a life of risks and toil. Given the very strong aversion all primates have to snakes and snake-like forms, it is even more natural for man to fear a person who trafficks with, and is a confidante of, snakes.

These myths encapsulate the male experience of woman as consort. They are sometimes experienced as Ishtar, whose desire may neither be satisfied nor spurned without danger; or as Circe, the enslaving magician; or as the Sirens, the deadly enchantresses; or as Calypso, the gentle imprisoner and weakener of resolve; or as Eve, the temptress who communes with snakes and reduced man to a life of hard labour. Their common lesson to men is: FEAR WOMEN! The average man reacts to them thus: If Adam, the father of all, fell before Eve, who am I to resist a daughter of Eve? Yes, Gilgamesh and Odysseus overcame those dangerous women; but do I have the talents and resolute wills of those heroic men? Yes, indeed, FEAR WOMEN, and if and when they catch you, obey and serve them.

A psychological climate of fear greatly helps the arbitrary ruler. Just as the many, though implicitly stronger, are inhibited from overthrowing their ruler and his handful of guards, so too the cowed man, even if stronger than his woman, is inhibited from freeing himself from her rule. Man’s fear of woman establishes a psychological climate in which female power can hold sway without brute force. The operative principle is:

Cow the spirit, awe the mind, And you don’t have to whip the body.