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Why are most Greek monsters in myths considered females?

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  • Why are most Greek monsters in myths considered females?
• Why are most Greek monsters in myths considered females?

• Why are most Greek monsters in myths considered females?

  badlands > May 18th, 2017, 12:30 AM

  In the Odyssey, there are more female monsters than males ones. This seems to be a common trend in Greek myths and most of time Hera is considered the bad guy for being loyal to her husbland while women who aren't loyal are considered monsters,too?

• Why are most Greek monsters in myths considered females?

  august > May 21st, 2017, 02:17 PM

  No, there are plenty of male monsters - chimaera, cyclops, Minotaur, Typhon, etc. But sometimes one needs to be female, for xample Echidna, who
  literally gave birth to most of the others, so therefore has to be female. I think in the Odyssey that's more coincidence than anything else - harpies,
  Scylla and Charybdis were pre-existing female stories that any adventurer, including Odysseus, would encounter, while Circe, Calypso, and the Sirens
  had the added quality of seduction, so they had to be female to lure the male sailors. The Cyclops, the Lotus-Eaters and the Laestrygonians weren't all female.

• Why are most Greek monsters in myths considered females?

  Michael > May 24th, 2017, 10:15 PM

  I think at one time there was a literary theory about corruption in the myths, and how the corruption of a woman was deemed a greater wrong than the corruption of a man. Hence, the female monsters were more horrifying. I could be misremembering that but I think that was the idea.
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