Women Artists in Revolt: Adapting the Eurydice Myth in the Quest for Creative Emancipation

Abstract

The myth of the renowned musician Orpheus and his ill-fated love Eurydice has been a touchstone in Western culture for millennia. Ovid’s version of the myth—exploring themes of love, loss, creativity, and the human willingness to transgress convention in the name of all three—has been hailed by Charles Segal as the work of a poet in revolt. Ovid’s take on the myth, however, is flawed: it effectively silences Eurydice, and further reduces this central figure to an object around which Orpheus creates great art. Similarly, it portrays her consignment to the Underworld from his perspective, focusing on the impact Orpheus’s lastminute turn had on him, rather than paying any mind to Eurydice, forever affected by an action over which she had no control. The Orpheus/Eurydice myth has been adapted hundreds of times across literature, stage, and screen since Ovid’s version in 8CE. Male artists have dominated this practice, disproportionately perpetuating the gendered dynamics of the Ovidian adaptation. Even works explicitly titled Eurydice, such as Jean Anouilh’s play (1941), fail to avoid prioritising Orpheus in their narratives. Over the course of this past century, however, women artists have increasingly appropriated the myth to provide Eurydice with a voice. Expanding on Segal’s idea of the poet in revolt, this thesis explores how H.D., Carol Ann Duffy, and Céline Sciamma use the Eurydice myth to destabilise the man-artist/woman-muse dynamic and articulate their own quests for creative autonomy in the largely male-dominated artistic tradition. This thesis will also examine the treatment of the Underworld in each writer’s work. Ultimately instrumental in securing Eurydice’s personal and artistic agency, the Underworld evolves from a realm in which Eurydice is confined to an ‘Other’ world where she can exist beyond established norms. Investigating Eurydice’s textual emancipation and her relationship with the ‘Other’ world will reveal the progression of each writer’s revolt, foregrounding the autonomy H.D., Duffy, and Sciamma sought within their own social and cultural context, and the impact of that self-determination on the wider landscape of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art.