Victoria Hodges (Rutgers University)
The Rope, the Witch, and the Non-Binary in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses
In Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, a novel about a man’s journey towards (sexual) subservience to a female divinity after his transformation into an ass, issues of erotic autonomy, contested identity, and power differentials play a constitutive role in the novel’s expressions of gender. Reflected in characters such as the asexual anus or the (mis)gendered cinaedi, these power differentials simultaneously constitute and complicate a thematic gender binary encoded throughout the novel (see Adkins 2020; Gardner 2018; on power differentials, see Hartsock 1983). A framework inherited from Greek tragedy and refashioned in Roman comedy, the ‘parasuicidal’ scene appears at these critical moments of gendered disjuncture, when the novel’s protagonists face a paralleled loss and restructuring of their identities (MacAlister 1996). Though the function of suicidal vignettes and their transformative capabilities has been explored (see Michalopoulos 2002; Dutsch 2012; Van Hooff 1990; Loraux 1987), scholarship has yet to appreciate the multifaceted role of gender in the ‘parasuicidal’ scene. In Aristomenes’ introductory tale in Metamorphoses 1, replete with erotic metaphor and generic allusion, Apuleius appropriates a tragic topos of binaries in order to cast the characters who undergo similar gender (trans)formations as antithetical to notions of opposition.
This paper explores the function of the ‘parasuicidal’ topos in Aristomenes’ inset narrative within the novel’s larger discourse of gender fluidity and disjuncture. After his magically charged encounter with the anus Meroe, Aristomenes describes himself as if “recently reborn” or “semi-dead” (quasi recens utero matris editus, immo vero semimortuus, 1.14), characterizing his encounter not only as a psychological restructuring of the self, but as a constitutive (re)birth of the body. In the ‘parasuicidal’ scene, Aristomenes, much like Sophocles’ lauded Jocasta and other heroines from Greek tragedy, adopts the language characteristic of a feminine topos: he contemplates (deliberabam, 1.16) which method would be most appropriate; he searches for an absent weapon (nullum aliud telum mortiferum); he experiences grief and humiliation (Cerberum prorsus esurientem mei). Ultimately, he uses a method over-represented by female characters in tragedy (immisso capite laquem induo) while enclosed behind the conventional double-door divide (in cubiculum itaque reversus) between the public and private. In contrast, the use of sexual terminology to outline Aristomenes’ ultimate failure to reenact the expected heroic death (dirumpitur, ascenso grabattulo, immisso capite, festinanti, ponderis deducto, 1.16; on which see Adams 1982) complicates and subverts the gendered conventions of the topos, while setting the stage for subsequent interactions with the peripheral femme (e.g. Pamphile, the miller’s wife, Psyche’s sisters).
Apuleius’ play with a sexualized ‘parasuicidal’ scene in book 1 problematizes gendered expectations within the tragic topos and facilitates the protagonist’s transformative journey into ‘otherness.’ Through these moments of generic subversion, Apuleius’ characters reconstitute themselves outside and against the gender binary. The interplay with encoded gender in the ‘parasuicide’ topos characterizes the protagonists as tragically heroic, yet comedically fallible characters. Thus, reading these scenes as reflective of gendered disjuncture in the Metamorphoses, reveals the way in which Apuleius interrogates the gender binary in a novel of layered identities.