University of Tuzla

Faculty of Philosophy
English Language and Literature

Objet petit a in Carol Ann Duffy's Poems

(Rethinking the objet petit a: Cannot complete me, for I am not Me)

Eldina Jahi

Tuzla, March 2016

Since the paper revolves not only around Lacan's theories relevant for the paper itself,
but also on the work of the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, it is important to present a
brief biography of the poetess, as her poems will serve as a medium through which I
will attempt to tackle the subject matter of the paper - objet petit a in poetry.

Carol Ann Duffy is an award-winning Scots poet who, according to Danette DiMarco
in Mosaic, is the poet of "post-post war England: Thatcher's England." Duffy is best
known for writing love poems that often take the form of monologues. Her verses, as
an Economist reviewer described them, are typically "spoken in the voices of the urban
disaffected, people on the margins of society who harbour resentments and grudges
against the world." Although she knew she was a lesbian since her days at St. Joseph's
convent school, her early love poems give no indication of her homosexuality; the
object of love in her verses is someone whose gender is not specified. Not until her
1993 collection, Mean Time, and 1994's Selected Poems, does she begin to write about
homosexual

love.

Duffy's poetry has always had a strong feminist edge, however. This position is
especially well captured in her Standing Female Nude, in which the collection's title
poem consists of an interior monologue comprising a female model's response to the
male artist who is painting her image in a Cubist style. Although at first the
conversation seems to indicate the model's acceptance of conventional attitudes about
beauty in art-and, by extension, what an ideal woman should be-as the poem
progresses Duffy deconstructs these traditional beliefs. Ultimately, the poet expresses
that "the model cannot be contained by the visual art that would regulate her,"
explained DiMarco. "And here the way the poem ends with the model's final comment
on the painting 'It does not look like me'-is especially instructive. On the one hand, her
response suggests that she is naive and does not understand the nature of Cubist art.
On the other hand, however, the comment suggests her own variableness, and
challenges traditionalist notions that the naked model can, indeed, be transmogrified

into the male artist's representation of her in the nude form. To the model, the painting
does not represent either what she understands herself to be or her lifestyle." Duffy,
who is currently the United Kingdom's poet laureate, was seriously considered for the
position in 1999. Prime Minister Tony Blair's administration had wanted a poet
laureate who exemplified the new "Cool Britannia," not an establishment figure, and
Duffy was certainly anything but establishment. She is the Scottish-born lesbian
daughter of two Glasgow working-class radicals. Her female partner is also a poet and
the two of them are raising a child together. Duffy has a strong following among
young Britons, partially as a result of her poetry collection Mean Time being included
in Britain's A-level curriculum, but Blair was worried about how "middle England"
would react to a lesbian poet laureate.
There were also concerns in the administration about what Britain's notorious tabloids
would write about her sexuality, and about comments that Duffy had made urging an
updated role for the poet laureate. In the end, Blair opted for the safe choice and
named Andrew Motion to the post. After Duffy had been passed over, Katherine Viner
wrote in the Guardian Weekend that her "poems are accessible and entertaining, yet
her form is classical, her technique razor-sharp. She is read by people who don't really
read poetry, yet she maintains the respect of her peers. Reviewers praise her touching,
sensitive, witty evocations of love, loss, dislocation, nostalgia; fans talk of greeting her
at readings 'with claps and cheers that would not sound out of place at a rock concert.'"
Viner lamented that Duffy only came to the attention of many people when she was
caricatured and rejected as poet laureate. However, the poet got some satisfaction
when she earned the National Lottery award of 75,000 pounds, a sum that far
exceeded the stipend that poet laureates receive. After the laureate debacle, Duffy was
further vindicated when her next original collection of poems, The World's
Wife, received high acclaim from critics. In what Antioch Review contributor Jane
Satterfield called "masterful subversions of myth and history," the poems in this
collection are all told from the points of view of the women behind famous male
figures, both real and fictional, including the wives and lovers of Aesop, Pontius
Pilate, Faust, Tiresius, Herod, Quasimodo, Lazarus, Sisyphus, Freud, Darwin, and

even King Kong. Not all the women are wives, however. For example, one poem is
told from Medusa's point of view as she expresses her feelings before being slain by
Perseus; "Little Red-Cap" takes the story of Little Red Riding Hood to a new level as a
teenage girl is seduced by a "wolf-poet." These fresh perspectives allow Duffy to
indulge in a great deal of humor and wit as, for example, Mrs. Aesop grows tired of
her husband's constant moralizing, Mrs. Freud complains about the great
psychologist's obsession with penises, Sisyphus's bride is stuck with a workaholic, and
Mrs. Lazarus, after finding a new husband, has her life ruined by the return of her
formerly dead husband. There are conflicting emotions as well in such poems as "Mrs.
Midas," in which the narrator is disgusted by her husband's greed, but, at the same
time, longs for something she can never have: his physical touch. "The World's
Wife appeals and astonishes," said Satterfield. "Duffy's mastery of personae allows for
seamless movement through the centuries; in this complementary chorus, there's voice
and vision for the coming ones." An Economist reviewer felt that the collection "is
savage, trenchant, humorous and wonderfully inventive at its best." And Ray Olson,
writing in Booklist, concluded that "Duffy's takes on the stuff of legends are . . . richly
rewarding."

Duffy has also written verses for children, many of which are published in Meeting
Midnight and Five Finger-Piglets. The poems in Meeting Midnight, as the title
indicates, help children confront their fears by addressing them openly. "They explore
the hinterland in a child's imagination where life seems built on quicksand and
nameless worries move in and will not leave," explained Kate Kellaway in
an Observerreview. Kellaway also asserted that "these are real poems by one of the
best English poets writing at the moment." In addition to her original poetry, Duffy has
edited two anthologies, I Wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine: Poems for Young
Feminists and Stopping for Death: Poems of Death and Loss, and has adapted eight
classic Brothers Grimm fairy tales in Grimm Tales. Not intended for young children
but for older children and young adults in drama and English classes, Grimm
Tales includes adaptations of such stories as "Hansel and Gretel" and "The Golden
Goose," which are rewritten "with a poet's vigor and economy, combining traditions of

style with direct, colloquial dialogue," according to Vida Conway in School Librarian.
[1]

I Introduction
I am not a poet, but a poem. A poem that is being written, even if it looks like a
subject. Jacques Lacan (1981, viii)
Words. We all rely on the mere strings of ready-for-use sets of letters that somehow,
regardless of so many rules imposed on them, still fail to convey the thoughts, let
alone feelings. However, poetry here comes as a rescuer who mediates between the
metaphorical and literal, calms the conflicts, and serves as an equaliser between the
visible and invisible - connects the reason and feelings, and mirrors the human psyche.
On the surface of things floats, of course, the language as a bridge between what is
thought, and what is said, selfishly retaining the essence of the two somewhere in the
middle. Along the same lines, language is essential medium when it comes to
psychoanalysis. Also, if one wants to understand human behaviour translated in one's
actions or thoughts, one as well have to be 'fluent' in the language of the both realms psychoanalysis and poetry. Additionally, language wise, psychoanalysis and poetry go
hand in hand for them both help understanding something that is hidden in images,
pauses, rhythm, and rhyme.
Language of poetry, thus, makes it perfect means of communication between the
psyche and the listener. Verses, in this case, are put to bed and being listened to. It is
not a strange thing to pay such a close attention to the written word - and why poetry,
indeed? Where does this strange romance between psychoanalysis and poetry come
from? Namely, the practice of writing in verses to a great extent facilitates the
imagination, deeply rooted in the unconscious, and translates the thoughts into words
that like paint stains the sheets like canvas, crating the portal into the human mind. We
should bear in mind that poems can be analysed in a number of ways. For instance, we

can analyse the speaker or as the poet as it mirrors something that stems from the
unconscious. Brostoff (2011) states that poetry serves as a perfect medium between the
subject and analyst primarily because of its nature. Namely, according to Brostoff,
poetry emanates impulses toward presence: "it seeks to embody itself in the moment
of its activation as it is read, to embody and unfold itself in voice, breath, and rhythm,
and in the particularity of the world."
This paper will address Lacan's notion of the objet petit a, and how it manifests in the
realm of poetry. Theoretical background of the paper will provide a solid basis for the
analysis of carefully chosen poems written by Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, from
several collections.

II Psychoanalysis and Poetry

The field of psychoanalytic literary criticism is very broad, but nonetheless

important when it comes to the analysis of any piece of literary work. Berry provides a
rather simple definition of psychoanalytic criticism, where it is seen as a form of
literary criticism which uses some of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the
interpretation

of

literature

(96).

The

Concise

Oxford Dictionary defines

psychoanalysis as "a system of psychological theory and therapy which aims to treat
mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious
elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious
mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association." Also, Barker
states that psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic literary criticism are both interested in
answering the question of human identity (98-99). There is, of course, a number of
theoreticians preoccupied with providing a valid answer, however, we must bear in

mind that there is no one valid interpretation of any piece of writing. In other words,
there is a number of schools with different approaches to this type of textual analysis.
In order to outline the relation between the poetry and psychology demands addressing
several crucial points that Jung (1971) addressed in his essay "The Spirit in Man, Art
and Literature." At first glance, it may seem that the two has nothing in common,
however there is a close connection between that seeks attention. Jung (ibid.) stated
that connections between poetry as the form of art and psychology heavily rely on the
fact that poetry like a number of human activities derive from psychic motives which,
according to Jung, are a proper subject for psychology. Jung (ibid.) here called for
attention when it comes to submitting poetry as an art form to psychological scrutiny,
and emphasized that verses would 'undergo' psychological analysis without violating
its nature. He also said that "in order to do justice to a work of art, analytical
psychology must rid itself entirely of medical prejudice; for a work of art is not a
disease, and consequently requires a different approach from the medical one" ( Jung
1971). In accordance with what Jung proposed here, an analysis of a work of art
should not be conducted regarding investigation of human determinants, but the light
should be shed on determinants that enable fully understanding of the art - in this case
poetry.

III The Mirror Stage, Objet petit a

Jacques Lacan's Ecrits (1966) is considered the most influential work of structuralist
psychoanalysis. According to Lacan, we are all shaped by the Symbolic order into
which we are born, an order that determines our gender identity and our place in our
families. He explained that the very moment we learn to make symbols; we also learn
to separate from our ambient childhood world of objects and achieve an independent
selfhood that is experienced as loss. Also, the lack, as Lacan stated, can never be filled,

and all human desire circulates around it, yearning to hark back to the lost unity which
results in yearning. The conception of the mirror stage proposed by Lacan focuses on
the formation of the I, the experience opposing any philosophy that leans on the notion
of the Cogito. Namely, Lacan noticed how children between the ages of six and
eighteen months experience a moment of self-discovery, or self-recognition, by
looking in a mirror. The mirror stage can be understood as an identification, the
moment when the subject assumes an image. The process of self-recognition, the
mirror stage, creates an existential image which means that we are actually identified
by otherness, a reflection, and not the actual Self. As a result, the I in this case is
formed from something that Lacan calls "mconnaissances" ( misunderstanding), that
results in a subject assuming an illusion as an image of the Self, which makes it
impossible for the subject to know the real Self. He viewed the mirror stage as a drama
"whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation and which
manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification."
Additionally, it was also viewed as the succession of phantasies that extends from a
fragmented body-image. As a result, the fragmented body usually manifests in dreams
through a number of images, as well as the formation of I, which in dreams is
symbolized through a variety of closed or fenced facilities (Lacan, 2001, pp. 441-447).
Lacan claims that the Mirror Stage initiates something what he calls the Imaginary
Order. Namely, the Imaginary Order is the world of images, a world of perception,
where the child experiences the world through images, and not words. It should be
noted that the child's sense of the Self comes from an illusion. Still, the child does not
experience itself as one, but as a union with a mother. This experience Lacan calls the
desire of the mother. Acquiring language is another important stanza where a child
enters the world Symbolic. This, for Lacan, plays an important role for a child, where
one finally enters the world of I, and not us (union). For Lacan, this separation
constitutes our most important experience of loss, the lack, a vast abyss that can never
be filled. Unfortunately, we spend a lifetime trying to fulfil something that can never
be fulfilled, without realizing it. Finally, this loss is referred as the lost object of
desire, objet petit a. It is worth noting that objet petit a can take a number of forms,

where each one puts the subject in touch with the repressed desire for something that
can never been obtained, but always desired (Tyson 1999).

IV Objet petit a in verses

Since we have covered the theoretical framework essential for the paper, we will now
proceed to the analysis of Carol Ann Duffy's poems from three collections, Standing
Female Nude, The Wold's Wife, and Rapture, published in 1985, 1999, and 2005,
respectively. The first poem to be analysed is "I remember Me" from Duffy's Standing
Female Nude. The second poem is "Medusa", and the third one is "River." All poems
will be analysed and discussed as intensively as possible, where the focus will be on
the style, and certain literary devices that help us recognize objet petit a, that can take
many forms - as it is already explained in the part of the paper dedicated to theoretical
background. Also, since all the collections are written in different stages of the poet's
life, we will address all the possible changes we encounter during the journey on the
wings of Duffy's literary genius.

4.1. Of The Gaze

I Remember Me

There are not enough faces. Your own gapes back

at you on someone else, but paler, then the moment
when you see the next one and forget yourself.
It must be dreams that make us look different, must be
private cells inside a common skull.
One has the other's look and has another memory.
Despair stares out from the tube-trains at itself
running on the platform for the closing door. Everyone
you meet is telling wordless barefaced truths.
Sometimes the crowd yields one you put a name to,
snapping fiction into fact. Mostly your lover passes
in the rain and does not know you when you speak.
(Standing Female Nude, 1985)

Even from the title of the poem we might hear the echo of the Lacan's the mirror stage
and the creation of the lack; the birth of the loss. Nonetheless, we will focus on the
objet petit a that, as it is already explained, can take many forms, but with the same
meaning - the lack. From the very first glance at the title, we cannot but notice the
usage of first person pronouns, 'I' and 'me', in the title, linked with the verb 'remember.'
Here, 'remember' links "I" that to some extent might be perceived as something that
we think we are, something rather symbolic and residual. On the other hand, 'me' here
is timely distant and obviously more complete, as the verb 'remember' denotes the loss
of something that existed before. Also, this self-reflection that is embedded in 'me' is
closely related to the verb 'remember,' which echoes the voice from the abyss of the
past.
There are not enough faces. Your own gapes back
at you on someone else, but paler, then the moment
when you see the next one and forget yourself.

The objet petit a in the lines 1-3 can be explained through Lacanian gaze, that it to say,
the gaze as the objet petit a. In his The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis (1978), Lacan addressed - as he called it - the privilege of the gaze as
objet, and said that the moment when one sees oneself seeing onself there is no 'such
sensation of being absorbed by the vision' (80). In lines /Your own gapes back /at you
on someone else, but paler, then the moment/ when you see the next one and forget
yourself./ shows certain awareness of the split. Let us take a look at the following lines
from the poem that are more graphic, and dare I say exemplary when it comes to the
perception of the gaze as objet a:
One has the other's look and has another memory.
Despair stares out from the tube-trains at itself
running on the platform for the closing door.

Lacan proposes "that the interest that the subject takes in his own split is bound up
with that which determines it - , namely, a privileged object, which has emerged from
some self-mutilation induced by the very approach of the real, whose name, in our
algebra is the objet a" (83). He also said that from the moment that the gaze appears
the subject tries to adapt to it, to adapt to the point of complete disappearance. The
objet a is, as Lacan explains, something from which the subject, "in order to constitute
itself, has separated itself off as organ" (103). Consequently, this serves as a symbol of
the lack, which by definition relates to objet petit a. Here, we are focusing on
something that it not there, and as Duffy writes /One has the other's look and has
another memory./ and you are not yourself, just a residue of someone else you recall.

4.2. Look at me now

Medusa[2]

A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy

grew in my mind,
which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes
as though my thoughts
hissed and spat on my scalp.
My bride's breath soured, stank
in the grey bags of my lungs.
I'm foul mouthed now, foul tongued,
yellow fanged.
There are bullet tears in my eyes.
Are you terrified?
Be terrified.
It's you I love,
perfect man, Greek God, my own;
but I know you'll go, betray me, stray
from home.
So better be for me if you were stone.
I glanced at a buzzing bee,
a dull grey pebble fell
to the ground.
I glanced at a singing bird,
a handful of dusty gravel
spattered down.
I looked at a ginger cat,
a housebrick
shattered a bowl of milk.
I looked at a snuffling pig,
a boulder rolled
in a heap of shit.
I stared in the mirror.
Love gone bad
showed me a Gorgon.
I stared at a dragon.
Fire spewed
from the mouth of a mountain.
And here you come
with a shield for a heart
and a sword for a tongue
and your girls, your girls.
Wasn't I beautiful
Wasn't I fragrant and young?
Look at me now.
(The World's Wife, 1999)

"Medusa" is a poem from Duffy's collection of poems titled The World's Wife,
published in 1999. This dramatic monologue offers us an unusual perspective on the
myth about Gorgon Medusa. The poem serves as a perfect canvas where we can see
the gaze as the objet petit a. First of all, we will focus on the parts of the poem that
best exemplify the phenomenon of the Lacanian gaze as objet a.
The first stanza describes the emotional state of the speaker and we follow the
transformation (lines 1- 17). The transformation, or in this case distortion, is triggered
by strong emotion of jealousy. Actually, the audience is very well aware that the selfperception of the speaker is not the reflection of the physical, but of the psychological
state of the speaker. The reflection the speaker sees is not real, is not really there, so to
say.
I stared in the mirror.
Love gone bad
showed me a Gorgon.
I stared at a dragon.

The image of something the speaker wants to see, and believes to see are two different
representations. Lacan (1978, p.99), addressed Cailliois' Medusa et compagnie who
brought three headings that are of vast importance when it comes to explaining the
relation of the subject and the domain of vision, and one of them being intimidation.
Namely, the phenomenon known as intimidation involves over-valuation that the
subject tries to attain in the appearance (lines 31-34). At the bottom of things, here in
question is the reproduction of an image. Lacan (1978, p.102) also addressed the
reference to the unconscious, where the lacking in the real might be attained in the
sexual goal. In other words,- the gaze as the objet a - a lure is captured in the dialect of

the eye (of the speaker) and the gaze (that stares back at her), which is perfectly
capture in the last line of the poem:
Look at me now.

4.3. I will recognise you when I see you, If

River
Down by the river, under the trees, love waits for me
to walk from the journeying years of my time and arrive.
I part the leaves and they toss me a blessing of rain.
The river stirs and turns consoling and fondling itself
with watery hands, its clear limbs parting and closing.
Grey as a secret, the heron bows its head on the bank.
I drop my past on the grass and open my arms, which ache
as though they held up this heavy sky, or had pressed
against window glass all night as my eyes sieved the stars;
open my mouth, wordless at last meeting love at last, dry
from travelling so long, shy of a prayer. You step from the shade,
and I feel love come to my arms and cover my mouth, feel
my soul swoop and ease itself into my skin, like a bird
threading a river. Then I can look love full in the face, see
who you are I have come this far to find, the love of my life.

In the poem "River," Duffy juxtaposes nature and love as they complement each other.
Nature can be both gentle and cruel, and is as unpredictable as human emotions.
Nature is personified and given a role of someone whose power is to weather condemn
or bless: "I part the leaves and they toss me a blessing of rain." In the second stance

the mighty river is portrayed as playful and clean (of everything, somewhat divine and
filled with grace) greeting the lovers, being greeted by the heron.
In the second stanza, the speaker free oneself from the past, the burden as heavy as the
heavens above, experiencing pain "I drop my past on the grass and open my arms,
which aches though they held up this heavy sky." Here the speaker resembles Atlas,
whose punishment was to carry the Heavens on his shoulder. With this myth Duffy
managed to, very modernist of her, present the pain and persistence. Regardless of
how difficult it is to endure the pain, to thread the troubled waters, the speaker still
manages to reach to one's final destination - the lover.
We are not only given a story about love, but we are given a journey. We learn about
the speaker's past that was not filled with happiness, and who spent many a night
gazing at the stars, praying for love, for someone who is being loved for too long.
"Against window glass all night as my eyes sieved the stars" - here through the eyes of
a speaker we can see what mouth "shy of a prayer" failed to convey; it is difficult to
translate the pain into words, or any emotion for that matter, so it is not strange that we
are given a perfect display of bond between emotions and nature.
Feel my soul swoop and ease itself into my skin, like a bird
threading a river. Then I can look love full in the face, see
who you are I have come this far to find, the love of my life.

However, it should be noted that unlike in other two poems where the gaze is the
object petit a, here the desire is portrayed through the absence of love - as simple as
that. Objet petit a is never simple to explain and takes many forms, is never here, nor
there, it is an ever-present lack that one hope to fulfil, but miserably fails.

V Conclusion

There is a strange love affair existing between the poetry and psychology. Both
address the same issues, but from a different point of view. The underlying question is
where we find the common ground. Namely, poetic expression holds the power of
uncovering something that stems from the deepest caves of human psyche and brings
it to the very surface to the reader. Regardless of the voice we hear, be it the speaker's
or the echoes of our own hidden desires, the voice is given to something that is not
even there, hence, we might be found in fields of dreams where our desire is never
ours, for we are never certain of our own Self, nor the very existence of it.
Since the self is incomplete, residing in the realm of Symbolic, as it is explained in the
section of the paper that deals with the theoretical background, the void, or the lack
once created can never actually be filled no matter how hard we try. Our desire is
never ours, simply because it was never there in the first place. However, with the
persistent feeling of the lack that resides in the subject, it can take many shapes, love,
food, the absence of someone, the gaze, the reflection in the mirror that never reflects
the real, but the construct. According to Lacan, the objet petit a does not have
objective 'reality,' that is to say, does not exist outside the subject and as Lacan points
out, this supposedly 'lost' object can never really have been lost by the subject, since
the subject can never have possessed it in the first place. Consequently, the objet petit
a may as well be defined as an object that has come into being in being lost. In all of
the poems analysed in the paper, we can see that the gaze may function as objet petit a,
as well as the absence of something that was never there, like in the poem "River," the
lover who is being missed, but was never there in the first place

Works cited

Brostoff, Richard. "Some Thoughts on the Relationship between Poetry and

Psychology." Rattle 34 (2011). Web. 16 Mar. 2016. <http://www.rattle.com/somethoughts-on-the-relationship-between-poetry-and-psychology-by-richard-brostoff/>.
Duffy, Carol Ann. Standing Female Nude. London: Anvil Poetry, 1985. Print.
---. The World's Wife: London: Picador.1999. Print.
---.. Rapture. London: Picador, 2005. Print.
Jung, C. G. The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1971.
Print
Lacan, Jacques. "THE MIRROR STAGE AS FORMATIVE OF THE FUNCTION OF
THE I AS REVEALED IN PSYCHOANALYTIC EXPERIENCE." The Norton
Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2001. Print. 441-447.
Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis. New York:
Norton, 1978. Print.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-friendly Guide. New York: Garland Pub.,
1999. Print.

[1] More

information about the poetess can

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/carol-ann-duffy
[2]

be

found

on

the

website:

Medusa was a monster, one of the Gorgon sisters and daughter of Phorkys and Keto, the
children of Gaea (Earth) and Oceanus (Ocean). She had the face of an ugly woman with
snakes instead of hair; anyone who looked into her eyes was immediately turned to stone.
Her sisters were Sthenno and Euryale, but Medusa was the only mortal of the three.
She was originally a golden-haired, fair maiden, who, as a priestess of Athena, was
devoted to a life of celibacy; however, after being wooed by Poseidon and falling for him,
she forgot her vows and married him. For this offence, she was punished by the goddess in
a most terrible manner. Each wavy lock of the beautiful hair that had charmed her husband
was changed into a venomous snake; her once gentle, love-inspiring eyes turned into
blood-shot, furious orbs, which excited fear and disgust in the mind of the onlooker;
whilst her former roseate hue and milk-white skin assumed a loathsome greenish tinge.
Seeing herself transformed into such a repulsive creature, Medusa fled her home, never to
return. Wandering about, abhorred, dreaded, and shunned by the rest of the world, she
turned into a character worthy of her outer appearance. In her despair, she fled to Africa,
where, while wandering restlessly from place to place, young snakes dropped from her
hair; that is how, according to the ancient Greeks, Africa became a hotbed of venomous
reptiles. With the curse of Athena upon her, she turned into stone whomever she gazed
upon, till at last, after a life of nameless misery, deliverance came to her in the shape of
death, at the hands of Perseus.