Who are the actual monsters in Natalie Haynes' 'Stone Blind'?

!Warning! This is a deep dive! I can't help myself but unpack everything this book has to offer...

A few years ago in my uni flat, I stared at the stand still state of the world Covid had placed us in, and thought, hm, what to read. This was a perfect start for new beginnings, and I found this in literature that would help form my time in University. This book was Circe, and this was my fated (you’ll be sick to death of that word by the end of these reviews) introduction to the world of Greek Literature. From, the original translated poetry of Homer, to the now immensely popular retellings of saucy gay fanfic. Everything I could get my paws on, I wanted to consume as soon as I realised there was a whole world of a new culture to delve into. A culture so rich and so tainted and violated by tragedy and drama that I couldn’t help myself but lap it up.

However, this isn’t a review of ‘Greek Literature’, this a focus on a highlight in my odyssey of reading. Having lost count of who and what has been retold, its rare I sit back and think that an author has said something interesting and different. I found this in Natalie Haynes’ Stone Blind.

The first stand out decision of Hayne’s work is the use of multi-perspective. This isnt a new concept, as we see it in Jennifer Saint and Pat Barkers retellings, but it’s the easy flow and choice of perspectives that set it apart. We are given a healthy handful of characters to narrate the story, not too many to convolute, but enough to construct a world that has voices, that paints the pictures we see on the vases. These voices all collide and meld together by the end of the novel to create a whole narrative that sucks in the many victims of the novel. Haynes is drip-feeding you the story to evoke a consistent sense of tragedy as we are given different tales from different victims. For examples even though Medusa and Perseus are our main driving forces, the tale creates a whirlwind that sucks in Andromeda, Danae, Iodame etc. All these girls with a tale of their own, but are integral to what this story is trying to say.

So what is it trying to say? Arguably everyone in this book is a victim. Despite the obvious female gaze, Haynes never victimises or villainises any of the mortals, even Perseus who drives me up for the wall for not having a thought pass behind his eyes. Because what are the mortals more than in Greek Lit than play pieces in a game played by the Gods, a game we will get to later. What was interesting to me however was that Perseus never gets his own named chapter. He is merely narrated through the third person views of Athene. We only get to see Perseus as a face value figure, a speck underneath the Gods feet’s as we are told of his lack of thought, his cowardice, lack of intuition and his later on crave for violence. This characterisation should lead to the conclusion, Perseus is a bad person, he’s the villain. We are told throughout to never pity him, he is the one who takes the life of innocent Medusa. However, I don’t think it’s that clear-cut for Haynes. It’s easy to point a finger at the monster she says.

However, the behaviour of Perseus only emphasises how naïve and boyish he is. Because he IS just a boy. Throughout the book, the Gods confuse the age of Perseus, a man or just a boy? He’s a boy with no life experience, no dominant male figure to instil the male convention in him. It’s this sheltered upbringing that creates an oblivious boy, and who can fault him. When Polydectes arrives, he shows off, because he is a boy, he lashes out at offense to his mother, because he is a boy. Can we really grant him so much credit that he maliciously sets out on his quest with a plan and violence imbedded in him. Like a drawn out comedic skit, Perseus stumbles and falls in his journey and its only the meddling of the Gods that get him there. Nothing is done with wit or courage, the only exception may be his solution to the Graiai, but it doesn’t take much to think of blindness as a weakness. I’m not defending Perseus, he later becomes more corrupt and hungry for manly assertion in the book, but this is just inevitability. The Gods make him feel like he’s special, fated to fulfil his role as a son of Zeus so he is pushed into this role. He kills what he doesn’t understand or fears and this isn’t malicious. This may just be myself constantly comparing Perseus to other men in Greek mythology, I’ve read about the abandonment of Ariadne, the kidnapping of Helen and the isolation of Clytemnestra,. These women are hurt by men with power and (supposed) wit. Medusa is killed by a boy bullied by the Gods, a boy who wants to save his mother.

With no monster to point a finger to, what do we do now? Who is the monster? We know the answer to this but I wanted to discuss the power of the word monster in Haynes’ novel. In Greek myth, a monster is what you normally would associate with the term. Scylla, the cyclopes, they are all monsters that heroes encounter and fight in order to protect themselves. They’ve all got one eye, razor sharp teeth, a million limbs, and for the mortals that is a monster. However if they are monsters, why are they given names, the cyclopes is Polyphemus, the sailor eater is Scylla and the Gorgons is Medusa, Euryale and Sthenno. We don’t give monsters names? Yet in Greek myth the monsters that populate the story are just as human as humans themselves or once were. This provides context for what Haynes gets at when she accuses and shames the reader for calling anything or anyone in this novel, a monster. Can monsters nurture, can they love, raise and cry. These are all things the Gorgons do, yet they get punished for it. Another quick example of the ‘monster’ that is brushed under the rug is Ceto. The monster that had come to claim Andromeda. However, this changes as we learn she is the mother of the gorgons. A child of Gaia. These familial terms are chosen perfectly to combat the word monster. Haynes didn’t have to shine a spotlight on Ceto, but she did and it plays perfectly into a narrative of victims.

All victims in a game, a game puppet-stringed by the Gods. There’s nothing new that the Gods are absolute muppets. They are often conveyed as cruel calculating powers that manipulate mortals and create catastrophes for fun. However I’ve never seen quite as funny as the portrayal of the Gods in this novel. This book isn’t even border-line comedic, it is a fully fledged comedic skit that has the Gods as the main joke. All childish, thoughtless to the point of not even being menacing, Haynes really emphasises her view on them as bored children who play with their pawns. Zeus cant even remember the name of Perseus and who his mother was, Athene stamps her feet and pokes fun at Perseus and Poseidon cannot bare the thought of Medusa’s lack of submission (he literally goes into a huff). However one is not without complete lack of sympathy. We are only given Athene’s perspective for a reason, because even though she’s a God, she is still a woman. A woman put at risk by men. The stand-out offense being Hephaestus’s ejaculation on her when she is clearly disgusted by him. Despite events in the novel, to the Gods, only seeming like pointless snippets buried within immortality, this sticks with her and places fear and resentment in her. Hierarchy even exists on Mount Olympus. However, it can argued that this is ironic, considering how Athene takes out her anger regarding Poseidon, on Medusa.

My last thoughts when looking at my experience with this book was inevitably the role of our main gal Medusa. This book is labelled as her story after all, and when looking at the grand schemes of things, Medusa’s perspective doesn’t take up much space in the novel. Why? Because like the use of the multi-perspective, it’s there to emphasise the point that she is merely caught in the quarrels and interests of the Gods. Medusa may have never encountered them if she had chosen, but she was picked out for her beauty and exploited because of it. Nothing that happens in this book has anything to do with her, she’s just a tool and this is what really stood out to me when reading this book. How everything is because of the Gods, how mortality is a game, and how everyone in this book is a victim.