"From the shadows": Goddess, Monster, and Girl Power in Richard Woff's "Bright-Eyed Athena in the Stories of Ancient Greece"

This chapter explores the potential of Cohen’s theory of monsters and culture to frame a study of the beheading of the Gorgon in children’s literature. The Gorgon, on Cohen’s reading, is the monster that by ‘dwell[ing] at the gates of difference’ (1996: 7) signals an otherness that can be variously cultural, political, racial, economic and sexual – and more. I consider what kind of alterities are enacted by the Gorgon’s appearance in children’s literature, with a particular focus on Richard Woff’s Bright-Eyed Athena in the Stories of Ancient Greece, where Perseus’ quest is narrated under the aegis (as it were) of a ‘bright-eyed’, normalising and civilising goddess. I explore how far the quest, as told by Woff, monsterises the other by demonising that which falls outside the norms signalled by Athena. I consider how Woff’s Gorgon fits Cohen’s premise of monsters as those against whom ‘we’ – here children – take action because they contravene the boundaries of ‘I’ or ‘us’.