This is a guest post by Suchitra Vijayan

When I first read the Myth of Sappho, I was reasonably troubled that a famed Greek poetess would jump off the Leucadian cliffs for love of Phaon, a deeply flawed man. Why would a woman like Sappho kill herself over unrequited love? Did she not realise that she deserved better than the love of a loathsome man? Rationality dictates that no life is worth giving up for another. But the prudent pragmatist in me would beg another version, a rethinking. It was not unrequited love that made Sappho’s leap – a mainstay of our myth – it was something else. It was a comforting misogynistic tale attached as an afterthought, many hundred years after her death. First it suggested that a “woman” who had dared to trespass, and be different had to be mad all along. Second, the subversives always had to be reclaimed. Political rebels, internal subversives and non ideal types had to be tamed or done away with. In Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, a man “acquires” a headstrong woman as his bride. Minus the comedic sub-plots and slapstick humour, the bare bones of the story include “notoriously aggressive” Katherine and her “tamer” husband Petruchio. But Katherine is neither aggressive nor notorious, she wears her indescribable naivety and sheer straightforwardness with the innocent integrity of a woman who is comfortable in her skin. This sits uncomfortably with the author, readers and commentators. Later Petruchio drags Katherine away from her own wedding celebrations, insisting she is his “chattel”, he deprives her of food and sleep until she learns to bend her will to his entirely. Some have argued that Katherine subverts patriarchy by acting like a submissive wife, manipulating Petruchio to her ends. Whatever interpretation you choose to favor, the fact remains that the woman had to be tamed, she had to manifestly re-fashion her self to comply with the new set of realities. To win she had to transform herself into something else, someone she is not.

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