Medusa
One of the three Gorgon sisters, Medusa, is shown here in a traditional rendering of the archaic Attic painters. The interpretation of the mythology surrounding her is one of the most evolving and reinterpreted stories from ancient Greece. As read by Ovid, Medusa was once a beautiful maiden but had changed herself into a monster after being raped by Poseidon. This transformation was the first in a long history of symbolic usage of Medusa and her powers. Over the years she has been depicted as a representative of feminine rage; in a psychoanalytical sense, she is the embodiment of men’s fear of castration; and more recently Medusa was a point of the feminist movement in Helene Cixous‘ 1975 essay, The Laugh of the Medusa, where the author urges women to reclaim their language and voice through the reclamation of the body. I have used her image on this vase as a point of reference to the role and depiction of women throughout history, the verso of the vase holds an image derived from an early greek wall painting, furthering the placement of a woman inside her subversive role in a male dominated society.