Rewriting myth through a feminist lens: Circe and Kaikeyi

Background: Contemporary mythological retellings revisit women whose reputations have been shaped by narratives centred on other characters. This article compares Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018) and Vaishnavi Patel’s Kaikeyi (2022) through feminist literary criticism, revisionist mythmaking, and feminist narratology. Methods: The study uses qualitative comparative close reading, focusing on narrative perspective, knowledge, gendered authority, family relationships, and political power. Results: Both novels complicate inherited judgments by placing their protagonists’ experiences at the centre of interpretation. However, Circe’s trajectory foregrounds self-definition and personal autonomy beyond the immediate authority of the gods, while Kaikeyi’s agency is negotiated within familial and political institutions. Narrative centrality does not, by itself, dismantle the structures that constrain a character, and contextualising a woman’s actions does not necessarily justify them. Conclusion: The article proposes three connected dimensions for analysing feminist retellings—narrative reclamation, personal autonomy, and institutional change. The novels offer culturally situated rather than interchangeable models of resistance, demonstrating that feminist agency involves both expanded possibilities for action and continuing ethical and structural limits.