When is an Ethiopian not an Ethiopian?

Perseus and Andromeda in D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths

I have a pet paragraph I have written for the introduction of THE INVENTION OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY. It goes like this:

We are going to discover how, thousands of years ago, a ragtag band of local divinities and traveling myths, aided and abetted by an equal and opposite band of traveling divinities and local myths, transformed themselves into a self-generating content machine that has, ever since, mirrored and mediated the predispositions, values, and anxieties of every culture with which it has come into contact.

I hope someday that some lovely agent and/or editor will be so fascinated by that paragraph they’ll say “This deserves to be read by a wider audience! Let’s make it into a big book with a hard cover and an advertising budget!”

But sometimes I feel anxious that no one will understand what that paragraph means.

So let me give just one quick illumination of what I mean by “mirrored and mediated.”

D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths and the Perseus story

I will confess that I am not a fan of the wildly popular D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, which was first published in 1962 by a married couple named Ingri and Edgar D’Aulaire. The book is pitched to young readers, but it gets read by large numbers of people even today because of its beguiling narrative and even more beguiling illustrations.

Apologies in advance to everyone who loves the D’Aulaires’ book.

D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths does what just about every Greek Mythology book has done since Nathaniel Hawthorne’s groundbreaking 1851 work AWonder Book for Girls and Boys: soften the often gruesome, creepy, and generally icky details of the original Greek myths and make it seem like the Greeks were a sunny, simple people who were really very gentle and sweet.

That makes sense. Even the philosopher Plato wanted to censor Greek myths for children.

But the book does something else that I don’t like, which is to make all the characters in the stories white Europeans.

Now of course you might say, “weren’t the Greeks Europeans?”

Against which I would have my arguments. But let’s put that to the side. What about the Ethiopians?

Perseus and Andromeda

In the Perseus story, which is a huge favorite among children, the hero Perseus goes to the edge of the earth to kill the Medusa and bring back her snaky head with its stoning gaze.

On the way back, he happens by Ethiopia, where Queen Cassiopeia has made the mistake of saying she is more beautiful than the Nereids, a group of sea-goddesses. The sea-god Poseidon, taking offense, sends a monster to ravage the kingdom.

The only way out is for King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia to sacrifice their daughter, Andromeda, to the monster.

Enter Perseus. “I’ll save you!” he valiantly cries to Andromeda, who is about to be eaten.

He kills the monster, and all’s well that ends well.

And then we get to the part about mirroring and mediating.

Andromeda in trouble. Author photo.

This is a photo of the illustration of the terrified Andromeda in the D’Aulaires’ book. She is, as you can see, a young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. She’s chained to a rock (you can see the cuffs on her left hand) and is imminently in danger.

But wait a minute.

Isn’t Andromeda Ethiopian?

Isn’t Ethiopia in Africa? Aren’t people from this region of the world dark-skinned with dark eyes?

What gave the D’Aulaires the idea that it was appropriate to make a picture of an Ethiopian woman who looks like she comes from northern Europe?

Part of the reason: Ingri D’Aulaire was born in Norway, and Edgar was born in Switzerland.

In depicting Andromeda as they did, they were literally mirroring themselves. They were seeing their European selves in the mirror of Greek Mythology.

But they were also showing the results of their mediation.

Race and mythology

In the twentieth century, in Europe and America, princesses were normatively considered light-skinned, light-haired, and light-eyed.

In this culture, a princess is rich, beautiful, and from a powerful family. In the twentieth century, that meant white. (It still does, mostly.)

Dark-skinned princesses still face issues in the 21st century. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

If the D’Aulaires had depicted Andromeda as dark-skinned, it would have been jarring for their majority white readership that was steeped in contemporary American culture.

Moreover, since Perseus is Greek (and therefore white European, right?), if they had depicted Andromeda as an actual Ethiopian, they would have broken the current and very deep taboo against interracial marriage. In fact, in 1963, a year after the first edition of Greek Myths was published, lawyers began arguing the case of Loving v. Virginia, which challenged the commonwealth of Virginia’s ban on so-called miscegenation, or marriages between African Americans and European Americans.

So, instead of being true to the story, the D’Aulaires created a filter or medium through which they interpreted the story and made it more appropriate for their audience.

It is not that they were making the story gentler for children. It is that they were accommodating the sensibilities of the dominant culture for which they were writing the story.

That is what I mean by mirroring and mediating presuppositions, values, and anxieties.

By the way, the ancient Greeks themselves tended to depict Andromeda like a Greek woman. But at least she has dark hair.

A dark Perseus and a light Andromeda. Image from here.

My own blind spots

In the past, I have pointed out similar mediations to students through an activity with the D’Aulaires’ version of the Pandora story. But it’s a revealing indicator of my own blind spots that only this week did I first really “see” this illustration of Andromeda (after seeing it dozens of times in the past) for what it was.

I never thought it was unusual that Andromeda was so totally un-Ethiopian, because I was mirroring my own American/European presuppositions.

The Greek myths are multicultural in so many ways. I will continue to try to reveal that and, simultaneously, attempt to impress agents and editors. It’s not an easy job, but someone’s got to do it.