An Atalantean Effort
I love rabbit holes. Not literal places where rabbits live, but the figurative kind. As a writer, I can start the day in one place, follow creative sparks, and end in a new place that I had no idea even existed. Today, I spent most of my morning on such a path, wandering from the craft of memoir writing to feminist word-choice to Greek mythology (hello, Atalanta!). In the process, I learned an important lesson about enhancing the feminist voice in my writing, and I found what I think will be the start of my book. This has been a very productive day.
I’ve been working on a collection of essays focused on the stories that live in my body. I work on the book most days, and I generally enjoy the process of writing, organizing, and tweaking. For a while, I was stuck on how to begin the book. Each essay focuses on a part of my body, and I’ve organized the stories in order of a meditative body scan, from toes to head. But how to get readers into that structure in the first place? What’s the reading equivalent of arriving in my meditation chair, taking a deep breath, and preparing my body to begin?
One day, I decided to experiment with the idea of a preface. The idea came to me when I began reading Christine Montross’ memoir, Body of Work. The book starts with a preface explaining the main themes and how the book came about (dissecting bodies as a med student made her think more about what dead bodies tell us about life). So far, it’s a fascinating and thought-provoking read. But that’s beside the point. After reading and dissecting her preface, I decided to try my own.
After an hour or so of fiddling with the snippets of text I’d already written for some kind of introduction, I started to rewrite a section on how my book came about. I thought the book might start with something like this:
“I began writing this book in a bed in my living room. My left leg lay immobile and tightly wrapped from my upper thigh to my toes. Even the slightest movement could invoke a sharp inhale behind clenched teeth. Getting to the bathroom required Herculean effort.”
Huh, I thought. A “Herculean” effort. Why is it always Hercules? Weren’t there any strong women in Greek mythology? And so began my first step down the rabbit hole.
A simple Google search turned up a woman named Atalanta. I’d never heard of her, but from the Wikipedia and the World History Encyclopedia I learned she was an excellent hunter and beat men in arm wrestling competitions. Wanting to know more, I found an episode of Greeking Out from National Geographic Kids on Atalanta the Warrior. As it turns out, Atalanta was one of the strongest, fiercest women in the world of Greek mythology. Abandoned by her father because she wasn’t a boy, Atalanta lived in a forest with bears until a band of hunters found her and took her in. With them, she honed her hunting skills and became one of the best hunters in the land. As with many powerful women, some men respected her abilities and others resented her physical superiority. She adamantly resisted marriage, but eventually struck a deal with her father (with whom she’d reunited) to marry any man who could beat her in a foot race. She handily beat all of her suitors until one enlisted the help of Aphrodite and some magic apples to trick Atalanta into slowing down and eventually losing the race. She kept her end of the deal and married the man and had a child with him. The man had forgotten to pay tribute to Aphrodite, so she took revenge on them, ending with Zeus turning Atalanta and her husband into lions.
A search for the term “Atalantean effort” brings up only one result. One, In the whole universe of indexed websites. It’s a recap of a women’s basketball game back in 2019 that includes a sentence beginning, “An Atalantean effort was necessary to escape with victory,…” I thought maybe a different spelling would return more results, so I tried “Atalantian effort.” That too found only one match, a post on a Facebook page for a dragon boat racing club that recounts a race in 2016. The post includes the following sentence:
“With about half the crew backing-up immediately following the Senior A Mixed race, and with only 16 paddlers able to race, it was a Herculean effort (or more appropriately an Atalantian effort (after the Greek Goddess Atalanta who possessed power, strength, and speed)) to be able to race.”
This author appears more intentional in calling up the image of Atalanta to replace Hercules, and even goes further to explain the choice of words.
Searching for images of the legendary Atalanta brought a few more surprises. Of course, there was a picture of her statue in the Louvre in typical Greek style (that’s the picture at the top of this post), but I also discovered that Atalanta is a professional football (soccer) club in Italy named after the Atalanta of Greek mythology. There was also a car bearing her name, the 1937 Armstrong-Siddeley Atalanta produced in the United Kingdom.
The phrase “Herculean effort” flows easier than “Atalantean effort.” My spell checker flags the latter as a misspelling, but even so, I chose to use “Atalantean.” Perhaps my readers will wonder just enough to look into this little-known mythological figure. Perhaps they’ll see how common phrases can reinforce the idea of strong, powerful men and in doing so erase strong and powerful women. Or perhaps they’ll only linger for a split second on the odd phrasing before moving on to the rest of the preface. Either way, intentionally choosing my words is one way to bring attention to a strong woman who defied gender norms by being one of the fiercest and fastest hunters in the land.
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