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A contribution to: Myth

Edited by John McKeane and Joanna Neilly

MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities 5

Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract.  ‘We can analyse a society’s dreams and anxieties through the myths in which it chooses to mirror itself’. In a twentieth century devastated by war, many turned to the classical myths of antiquity for solace and guidance. In the latter half of the century, many others turned to those myths in the struggle for representation and freedom from oppression. Isobel Hurst states: ‘Reworkings of the androcentric mythology of the ancient world proved indispensable for the feminists who fought against restrictions on women’s identity in the second half of the twentieth century. Monique Wittig responds to the feminist debate of the twentieth century with her text, Les Guérillères. In this article I shall argue that Les Guérillères constitutes a feminist reworking of the patriarchal epic as epitomisied by Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. It is the Iliad, that ‘canonical text of warfare and male heroism’, which provides the main inspiration for her feminist epic. In blatant defiance of the assertion in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon that ‘it is not womanly to desire combat’, Wittig places the female centre stage. The ‘guérillères’ are the central protagonists of the work, complete with their own unique weapons, their own military procedure, and their own community. With her text, Wittig questions the status of the male-dominated perspective of the patriarchal epic. Aware that myth is instrumental in both the establishment and challenge of deep-seated ideologies and stereotypes, Wittig chooses to manipulate this duplicity and execute an attack from within. She exploits classical myth to voice the concerns and experiences of the female and to reinsert woman into male- dominated history. In this way, I shall claim that her work constitutes a gap in the patriarchal transmission and reception of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

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