Stone Blind

The sea goddess Ceto and her daughters, the Gorgons and Graiai, are considered monsters in Greek mythology. They are either old gods or inhuman creatures who physically differ from the human-like gods of the Olympian pantheon, with Stone Blind’s protagonist, Medusa, and her Gorgon sisters, Sthenno and Euryale, wielding snake hair. The novel seeks to deconstruct the physicality of monstrosity with such characters: The Gorgons are powerful women, which makes them threatening to toxic men who seek to control women. In Zeus’s patriarchy, Sthenno and Euryale’s unwillingness to tolerate Poseidon’s predation makes them “monsters.” Despite their unconventional features, the Gorgons prove more humane than the Olympians, loving their mortal sister Medusa unconditionally. Medusa herself remains compassionate even after being wronged by Poseidon, Athene, and Perseus. Overall, the Gorgon sisters challenge conventionally attractive characters like Perseus, who embodies true monstrosity with his cruelty. Toward the end of the novel, the Medusa-Narrator, horrified that she was weaponized against her mother Ceto, stresses the unknown as monstrous to Perseus, “and any monster needs killing” (332).

Throughout the novel, Perseus faces traditional monsters and proves the most monstrous: He throws away the Graiai’s shared body parts, and upon seeing Ceto poised to kill Princess Andromeda, he wields Medusa’s head to stop her. The biased Medusa-Narrator admits that Andromeda’s situation was dire but still criticizes Perseus’ fear, as looks alone don’t determine a monster. At this point in the novel, she herself is a severed head with the power to turn living things to stone—blurring the line between goodness and beauty prized by Zeus and other male gods. In reality, goodness and beauty are not mutually exclusive: The Medusa-Narrator argues, “Men will tell you that Gorgons are monsters, but men are fools. They cannot comprehend any beauty beyond what they can see” (321). For example, while Ceto is “distracted and disoriented” by the futility of killing one mortal (Andromeda) at Poseidon’s command (318), Perseus “is malevolent and he wants to kill” (322).

Perseus’ bloodlust mirrors his father, Zeus, as both men’s desires dictate their actions. In a moment of no return, Perseus attacks Medusa while she is sleeping. The Medusa-Narrator is born of this murder and “wonders if he feels any remorse at all as he hears [her] sister crying no, no, no, no” (294). To cope with her anger, she admittedly thinks about Perseus’ mother cradling his dead body but argues that “even that act of imagination makes [her] more human than him” (294). The novel ends with Medusa’s head at the bottom of the sea, having extended enough grace to grant Athene a consensual “death” before “drowning” herself. Overall, the novel frames monstrosity as abuse of power. In this regard, men like Zeus, Poseidon, and Perseus—who wield authority, strength, and others’ lives as weapons—are true monsters.