Ancient World Seminar: Living Dolls: somatechnics and erotic desire in Greek Literature

Abstract

The 1972 feminist horror film Stepford Wives, based on the novel of the same name, ends with the shock revelation that the men in a seemingly idyllic community have been quietly replacing their wives with physically enhanced robot-dolls. These dolls are created to be the ultimate submissive wives, subservient to their husbands’ every need. Surprisingly, this modern horror scenario is anticipated in several passages in Ancient Greek literature, in which (mostly) female bodies are manufactured and used to substitute for living humans. In Euripides’ tragic play Alcestis, the grieving husband Admetus tells his dying wife of his intention to craft a statue identical to her and sleep with it. This strange statement is even more problematic when it is read in the context of Alcestis’ death: she is dying precisely because she has agreed to sacrifice her life so her husband can live. This paper explores the ethical implications of this passage, reading Admetus’ transactional approach to his wife’s life and his explicit desire to sleep with a replica of her body alongside her eventual silent return from the grave.

The second somatechnic creation of interest to our discussion appears in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods. In ‘Zeus and Hera’, the human Ixion has become sexually fixated with Hera, the queen of the gods. Zeus decides that the solution to this is to craft a cloud-doll identical to his wife, which Ixion will sleep with, under the impression he has seduced Hera herself. Zeus remains impervious to all Hera’s misgivings about this plan, ignoring the shame she feels at knowing Ixion will sleep with an exact replica of her naked body. Lucian plays with the boundaries between illusion and reality in this dialogue, picking up a theme implicit in the Alcestis, but also alluding to the famous alternative Troy-story, in which a phantom of Helen’s body goes to Troy with Paris while the ‘real’ Helen is loyal to Menelaus and trapped in Egypt. Cloud-Hera’s hyper-realistic fake body, like the Helen-phantom, blurs the boundaries between plastic and organic, fiction and reality: in both cases the fictive bodies are also closely associated with negative reputations and false rumours. Thus, questions are raised about deception and desire, female beauty, and sexual agency. Building on recent pioneering work on the technologized body (Gerolemou 2023), this paper argues that these Greek texts use manufactured female bodies to explore male fears of the power of female sexuality and reproduction, as well as exploring the tensions between gender and power in sexual relationships.

About the Speaker

Dr Sarah Cullinan Herring completed her BA and MSt in Classics at Oriel College, University of Oxford, followed by a DPhil in Ancient Greek at University College, Oxford. From 2019 to 2024, she held the position of Hody Fellow in Classics at Wadham College, Oxford, where she also served as College Dean. Prior to this, she lectured in Ancient Greek literature at Balliol and Trinity Colleges and was Head of Classics at Winchester College. Her research is rooted in Greek literature, with published work on Epic, Lyric, and Hellenistic poetry, and a forthcoming monograph with Oxford University Press titled The Power of Performance: Embedded Songs in Greek Poetry. She has several articles forthcoming on gender fluidity in Greek literature, disability in Lucian’s depictions of sex workers, and the symbolism of Clytemnestra’s dream of breastfeeding a snake in Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers. Her second book project examines epigenetic trauma in Greek and Roman tragedy.