Our Voice Matters: Reclaiming Women’s Agency in Popular Myths
Women in mythology have often enacted change through their psychological and literary gifts. The evidence presented shows us that the words and the act of writing are feminine, and the act of storytelling emerges as a kind of divine act associated with the goddess principle.
—Samantha Echo
When I chose Echo as my stage name, I meant it as a direct reference to the Echo and Narcissus myth. Years later, I chuckled a bit when I read the opening line of Patricia Berry’s essay “Echo’s Passion,” which states, “Little has been written on the figure of Echo, and those who have commented tend to regard her negatively.” (Berry, 2017, 113). This marked unpopularity was precisely why I chose to reclaim Echo’s myth. It all seems rather meta; of course in a myth called Echo and Narcissus, people only remember the Narcissistic man who fell in love with his reflection, and they would forget that there was another character in the title. Of course, Echo’s initial capacity for agency is misunderstood; many have forgotten that before Echo was the sad, voiceless one who repeated other people’s words and pined for an unavailable man, she was a beautiful nymph who charmed everyone with her talent for music and storytelling.
Although the tragic undertones of unrequited passion and loss of agency resonated with me and although Narcissus’ doomed love affair with his reflection (and subsequent transformation into a daffodil) remains compelling, I wanted to connect my own artistic endeavors to Echo’s, in order to unite her eventual tragic end with her past role as an artist and her enduring role as a natural phenomenon; I wanted to make her whole again. But perhaps reclaiming Echo as a feminine spirit of storytelling was most important of all; around the world, women have always been the weavers of words into something meaningful–indeed, many popular European fairy tales originated in spinning circles. Although women have often been barred from participating in the stories, the act of narrating them has an almost divine feminine power.
In The Heroine with 1,001 Faces, esteemed folklorist Maria Tatar states: “In fairy tales, we have not just the perspective of women but also their voices. Women may have been silenced in the myths told and retold by bards, but they spoke up in the narratives that were told by women not just to children but also to all those who made up sewing circles…” (Tatar, 2021, 11). Some argue that women have been left out of the commonly understood hero narratives and that Campbell’s twelve-step hero’s journey, steeped in patriarchy, is exclusive to men–indeed, Tatar challenges it in her introduction: “Nowhere does the rigidity of archetypal thinking emerge more clearly than in the binary model of the male and female principle as it surfaced in Campbell’s study of world mythologies.” (Tatar, 2021, xv). However, Tatar then proceeds to show us that women have always had their own hero narratives, but with fewer overt, or physical acts of traditional heroism. Women in mythology have often enacted change through their psychological and literary gifts. The evidence presented shows us that the words and the act of writing are feminine, and the act of storytelling emerges as a kind of divine act associated with the goddess principle.
The mythological Echo is a mirror of sound, she is a kind of yes-woman. Yet she is never completely silent. She endures not violence but a kind of psychological trauma, losing the ability to speak her mind. That’s what makes this tale so timeless and so nuanced. Narcissism predates the myth of Narcissus. Echo, before meeting Narcissus, finds herself helping one narcissist escape the wrath of another narcissist. As Hera is entering the domain of the mountain nymphs about to discover Zeus cheating on her and no doubt seeking cruel and unusual ways to torture his mistresses, which is one of her favorite things to do, Echo distracts her by telling her a funny story and getting her to have a lighthearted conversation. It is never quite clear in most versions of the myth whether Echo intends to enable Zeus to continue cheating and lying, but her engrossing conversation has had the effect of distracting Hera from her revenge mission, and so Hera curses Echo so that she can express no original thoughts and only repeat the ends of other people’s sentences (sentences…sentences…).
We see this repeated, or echoed, in other tales as well. For example, The Thousand and One Nights can be read as a testament to the importance of stories, and a presentation of stories as the most holy things in the world. Scheherazade is not forming her own original thoughts, but repeating what others have written, and yet, within the context, this retelling of stories is a heroic act. Echo was once a storyteller like Scheherazade, but she lost her agency. And of course, Scheherazade’s use of story is a uniquely brave and selfless act meant to save the lives of countless women who would otherwise have been served to Shahriyar as virgin sacrifices. Another example is Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” which Tatar references when she writes, “The mutilation of the organ of speech lives on as a form of silencing in its most devastating form…The title figure’s tongue is severed when she trades her voice for a pair of legs…” (Tatar, 2021, 63) When we view The Little Mermaid as a direct descendant of Echo, we see how the loss of identity reveals their charm and storytelling ability. The loss of her singing voice adds pathos to the loss of basic speaking abilities. Although it is worth noting that neither character is actually human.
The fact that Hera chooses this as a form of torture, indicates Echo’s almost supernatural power and charm. I chose this as my last name because I find Echo to be one of the most compelling female characters in Greek Mythology; her storytelling abilities and personality were so influential that they altered the course of a Goddess’s life–or at least, her plans for the day. A narcissist will rage at anyone who inconveniences them for even a minute, so perhaps it is unremarkable that Hera cursed Echo just for being a distraction. But I like to think it was because she presented a special kind of threat.
I started singing when I was a child. My favorite movie growing up was Disney’s The Little Mermaid (although, unlike the title character, I preferred mermaids to humans). Being a singer is weird and it makes me uncomfortable, but it is one of the most important parts of my identity, and the Echo myth has helped me come to terms with it, because Echo, also a singer, is a nymph, and a nymph is something more than human–somewhere in between human and goddess, which sounds about right for a diva; incidentally, the word “diva” literally means “goddess” in Latin. It is my personal belief that every time a talented female singer is pressured into signing a restrictive contract that controls her public image and other aspects of her life, there is the spirit of Echo saying, “no…no…no…” So in using her name as my stage name I like to think that I am invoking the spirit of her original power to speak her mind, and reminding everyone of what she was before her voice was taken away.
Berry, P. (2017). Echo's subtle body: Contributions to an archetypal psychology. Spring Publications.
Tatar, M. (2021). The heroine with 1,001 faces. Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company.