Actress in Nolan's 'The Odyssey' says she would grill ancient Greek Homer about female representation

Actress Lupita Nyong'o revealed in an interview that if she watched the upcoming adaptation of "The Odyssey," she would then turn to the original author and ask him why the original lacked more female representation.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5880789&forum_id=2/en-en#49986322)

I don't like Nolan's work much

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5880789&forum_id=2/en-en#49986325)

not that i'd expect modern feminists to have any grasp of the classical world. (one of the leading classicists today is Mark Zuckerberg's sister who has been busy trying to destroy the classics.)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5880789&forum_id=2/en-en#49986331)

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Having in my first chapter met the only à priori objections to my views concerning the sex of the writer which have yet been presented to me, I now turn to the evidence of female authorship which is furnished by the story which I have just laid before the reader.

What, let me ask, is the most unerring test of female authorship? Surely a preponderance of female interest, and a fuller knowledge of those things which a woman generally has to deal with, than of those that fall more commonly within the province of man. People always write by preference of what they know best, and they know best what they most are, and have most to do with. This extends to ways of thought and to character, even more than to action. If man thinks the noblest study for mankind to be man, woman not less certainly believes it to be woman.

Hence if in any work the women are found to be well and sympathetically drawn, while the men are mechanical and by comparison perfunctorily treated, it is, I imagine, safe to infer that the writer is a woman; and the converse holds good with man. Man and woman never fully understand one another save, perhaps, during courtship and honeymoon, and as a man understands man more fully than a woman can do, so does a woman, woman. Granted, it is the delight of either sex to understand the other as fully as it can, and those who succeed most in this respect are the best and happiest whether men or women; but do what we may the barriers can never be broken down completely, and each sex will dwell mainly, though not, of course, exclusively, within its own separate world. When, moreover, we come to think of it, it is not desirable that they should be broken down, for it is on their existence that much of the attraction of either sex to the other depends.

Men seem unable to draw women at all without either laughing at them or caricaturing them; and so, perhaps, a woman never draws a man so felicitously as when she is making him ridiculous. If she means to make him so she is certain to succeed; if she does not mean it she will succeed more surely still. Either sex, in fact, can caricature the other delightfully, and certainly no writer has ever shown more completely than the writer of the "Odyssey" has done that, next to the glorification of woman, she considers man's little ways and weaknesses to be the fittest theme on which her genius can be displayed. But I doubt whether any writer in the whole range of literature (excepting, I suppose, Shakespeare) has succeeded in drawing a full length, life-sized, serious portrait of a member of the sex opposite to the writer's own.

It is admitted on all hands that the preponderance of interest in the "Iliad" is on the side of man, and in the "Odyssey" on that of woman. Women in the "Iliad" are few in number and rarely occupy the stage. True, the goddesses play important parts, but they are never taken seriously.

Shelley, again, speaking of the "perpetually increasing magnificence of the last seven books" of the "Iliad," says, "The 'Odyssey' is sweet, but there is nothing like this." * The writer of the "Odyssey" is fierce as a tigress at times, but the feeling of the poem is on the whole exactly what Shelley says it is. Strength is felt everywhere, even in the tenderest passages of the "Iliad," but it is sweetness rather than strength that fascinates us throughout the "Odyssey." It is the charm of a woman not of a man.

So, again, to quote a more recent authority, Mr. Gladstone in his work on Homer already referred to, says:

It is rarely in the "Iliad" that grandeur or force give way to allow the exhibition of domestic affection. Conversely, in the "Odyssey" the family life supplies the tissue into which is woven the thread of the poem.

Any one who is familiar with the two poems must know that what Mr. Gladstone has said is true; and he might have added, not less truly, that when there is any exhibition of domestic life and affection in the "Iliad" the men are dominant, and the women are under their protection, whereas throughout the "Odyssey" it is the women who are directing, counselling, and protecting the men.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5880789&forum_id=2/en-en#49986599)