The hit musical “Hamilton” famously includes “The Schuyler Sisters.” In the show’s feminist anthem, the Schuyler sisters take issue with the Constitution and the line “all men are created equal.” Angelica defiantly sings that when she meets Thomas Jefferson, “I'm a compel him to include women in the sequel.”
Now women are not just in the sequel, thanks to reimagined works of classic fiction, women have become the major players. Through new explorations of ancient mythology and classic plays, authors are putting female characters at the forefront and giving them more complete personalities, histories and goals.
Take Medusa, for example. She is arguably one of the most famous women from Greek mythology, and yet only a part of her is remembered.
“Medusa is literally a body that Perseus makes his name upon. And then she becomes famous as just a head,” said author Lauren J.A. Bear.
Bear was feeding her baby daughter in 2017, when she started thinking about Medusa's story. She also stumbled across a quote by historian Jane Ellen Harrison referring to Medusa’s sisters as “mere superfluous appendages” to her. Worried about the future for her daughter during the time’s charged political climate, she was dissatisfied with the assertion that her daughter could ever be considered an appendage to someone else. So, she got to writing.
Her novel “Medusa’s Sisters,” out in August, took the opportunity to tell the previously underdeveloped story of the gorgons Stheno and Euryale.
“Personifying her, giving her a voice and then giving her sisters some voices was such a deeply cool experience,” Bear said.
When it comes to having a voice, Shakespeare’s Juliet finds hers by way of New York Times–bestselling author Chloe Gong.
Gong landed her first hit while still a college senior at the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 with “These Violent Delights,” a reimagining of “Romeo and Juliet.” Set in 1920s Shanghai, the book features rival Russian and Chinese gangs, monsters and blood feuds.
Her work, she said, is more in dialogue with the original source material than a faithful retelling. Gong made sure to keep essential themes of Shakespeare's material in her own work — teenage hope, the pull of hatred — and alter things such as the original Verona setting. When working with older texts, she found bits and pieces of Shakespeare's Juliet that she infused in her own, transforming her from a character that falls in love and dies into a strong heroine that has control over her agency and motivations. In a way, she considers her books fan fiction.
“It isn't the original Juliet,” Gong said. “But these little moments, you can almost argue if you put that character into a new setting completely, maybe that's who she could have been.” Now she’s released four books in that universe, continuing with an adaptation of “As You Like It” and wrapping up this September with the finale, “Foul Heart Huntsman.” Her next venture is an adult debut series, “Immortal Longings,” a reimagining of the play “Antony and Cleopatra.”
Retelling a story in the 21st century makes it natural to have better representation than previous works, Gong said. A main character of her series, Celia, is a transgender woman. The books also feature its Benvolio and Mercutio equivalents as a same-sex couple.
“I think we have this idea that queer people didn't exist in history, and that's absolutely not true,” she said. “It's just because it's all been erased. So just in writing historical fiction, that is something that's important to me.”
For writer Costanza Casati, retelling classics gives her the opportunity to recast female characters that have often been vilified. Author of “Clytemnestra,” Casati became “obsessed” with the title character of her book, known for killing her husband Agamemnon after the Trojan war in Greek mythology. Heroes, like Agamemnon, are allowed to be imperfect; arrogant, boastful, single-minded and ruthless, specifically toward women. Yet female characters that have these same characteristics, as Clytemnestra does, are villainized for it.
“It was about showing how powerful she already was, in a way,” she said. “With these retellings, we are allowing readers to think about things such as women in power and just what is our perception of powerful women? Do we really allow women to be powerful and likable? Sometimes we do struggle with with angry female characters.”
"Do we really allow women to be powerful and likable? Sometimes we do struggle with angry female characters."Costanza Casati
Vaishnavi Patel also takes on female stereotypes. Author of the New York Times–bestselling novel “Kaikeyi,” which reimagines the story of the infamous queen from the ancient Sanskrit epic “Ramayana,” Patel said women were often relegated to the role of the nagging wife, villain or pretty princess. In Indian mythology, there are some stories that center women strongly, but their actions are often motivated by their relationships with men, instead of with other women, Patel said.
“Clearly women weren't just sitting in a blank room for decades waiting for their moment and then went back to their blank room,” she said.
While famous myths often centered on their male heroes, their violence toward female characters was acceptable. This is something Jennifer Saint, author of the bestselling novels “Ariadne,” “Elektra” and the upcoming “Atalanta” is challenging.
“Zeus has got very many marriages somehow,” Saint said. “And you have to start reading between the lines and working out what's really going on. And when you do that is such a terrible shock and you realize how baked into the very fabric of these stories is this relentless, constant assault on women. And once you have seen it that way, you can't look back. And I think that really kind of compels me to keep writing.”
Jamila Ahmed is the author of “Every Rising Sun,” a book that retells the story of Shaherazade from the collection of Middle Eastern folk tales “One Thousand and One Nights.” In the original text, Shaherazade is a powerful heroine, Ahmed said, but the story doesn’t get into “the heart and soul of her.”
“I think it is just sort of really rich grounds, especially as people from marginalized communities, whether you're a woman or you’re from a Muslim community or people of color,” she said. “I think there are a lot of spaces in which our stories have been told by others. And this is a really great way to get agency over some of the most powerful stories that we do continue to tell each other over the course of hundreds, if not thousands of years.”
Patel encourages readers to read retellings that are immersed in settings outside of the Western cannon.
“With the current trend, we are now starting to see a bunch of books from non-Western myth retellings,” she said. “And I think that's really fun and exciting because I think these stories feel familiar. Even if you didn't hear that exact story growing up, like there is something timeless about ancient epics and ancient stories, and I think we can learn from all of them.”
Saint said classic stories are often dramatic tellings of very real human emotions, relationships and experiences.
“I think it's so special that we have got that connection that we're part of this centuries-long chain of stories.”
