ABSTRACT
To demonstrate a feminist revisionist myth of Medusa, the introduction shows how opera singer Maria Callas is figuratively an example of a struggling young woman transformed by society and the media into a diva. As a paradox, the example of Callas might echo the ancient Greek Medusa myth. But to understand the complexities of Callas, or of any other contemporary woman for that matter, is to know that there are many retellings and interpretations of a woman’s story, and to start with, there are many different meanings of Medusa. This exotic and mythical creature has been all sorts of things: beautiful victim, femme fatale, frightening monster. But more likely she is a mirror of other women’s experience and stories. The patriarchal, canonical myth of Medusa, however, relies on a dichotomy of women, that as David Leeming in Medusa in the Mirror of Time puts it, “makes no sense” (97)—transfigured suddenly from a beautiful woman to horrifying monster. It is important to understand how she gets there, and previously the answer has always been, at best, too vague.
