Conversely, there is, it seems, always a sexual element to the beheading of Medusa. Freud saw it as a castration myth, because his need to make everything about the male experience apparently precluded him from noticing that it is Medusa who gets beheaded and that she might therefore be a more relevant archetype for women than men. A Freudian slip, perhaps. If you were looking for a gendered psychological interpretation of the Medusa story, surely it would make more sense to suggest that it represents an abiding fear of the power of the female gaze.
Sexually charged representations of Medusa continue to the present day: look at the women who have played or been photographed as her: Uma Thurman in the Percy Jackson film; Rihanna （as styled by Damien Hirst） as a naked Medusa, hair full of snakes, and a pair of snake-eyed contact lenses to boot, on the cover of GQ magazine.44 These beautiful women are playing with the duality of Medusa （or one duality, at least）。 She is a monster, but also a deeply desirable woman. Indeed, we’re hard-pushed to find an asexual depiction of Medusa in contemporary culture, although The Lego Movie manages it beautifully, if briefly.45 Her Lego snake hair is particularly good.
Even when Medusa is not viewed as a monster by an ancient author, her desirability is apparently intrinsic to her story. The second-century CE geographer Pausanias offers an account of her in which he promises to miss out all the fantastical elements and stick to the rational parts of her story.46 For Pausanias, Medusa is a warrior queen who ruled the Libyans who lived near Lake Triton, and hunted and led them into battle. One day, Medusa is encamped with her army and Perseus （leader of the opposing army） assassinates her in the night. Wondering at her beauty even in death, Pausanias continues, Perseus cut off her head so he could take it and show it to the Greeks. The story may have been stripped of the fantastical, but its sexualised fear and objectification of women have survived just fine.
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Let’s conclude by going back to one of the earliest depictions of Medusa, which shows her alongside her offspring, the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor, who – most versions of the myth tell us – sprang fully formed from her severed neck. And yet this sculpture – originally on the pediment of the temple of Artemis on Corcyra （modern-day Corfu） and now displayed in Corfu’s Archaeological Museum – shows Medusa with her head very much still attached.
The Archaic temple and its pediment sculptures date back to the early sixth century BCE. We see Medusa at her most strange and monstrous: bulbous tongue out, snakes slithering out of her hair. She also wears a pair of snakes as a tight belt around her short dress: their bodies are twisted together and their heads face one another across her mid-torso. Her head and body are facing straight out at the viewer, but her highly muscled legs are sprinting sideways, as if she is fleeing her killer. She is flanked by both of her children, although they are less intact than she is （the sculpture is made of porous limestone）。 Behind Pegasus and Chrysaor, on each side of Medusa is a large cat, a lion or a panther, tying Medusa to the goddess Artemis in her role as mistress of wild animals – potnia therōn. This is a pleasing echo of Medusa’s face in those early gorgoneia, if we interpret them as apotropaic devices to help rid us of our fears of wild animals: Artemis controls wild creatures, and here is Medusa in pride of place on Artemis’ temple, surrounded by snakes and big cats. Already our fear of the unknown wild seems a little more manageable.
No wonder Medusa’s name means ‘ruler’ or ‘guardian’。47 She is dual in her nature, both a monster and a protector （as I write this, a small terracotta gorgoneion looks up at me from my desk. I have always preferred to see her as a protection rather than a threat）。 Indeed, Medusa is made up of dualities. She is beautiful and hideous, one of a trinity and yet alone. She is the mother of two mythological creatures, but also the slayer of one. She is most powerful after death, a death which occurs only because she was temporarily powerless in sleep. She gives birth in the act of dying.
One final illustration of her dual nature: once the god Asclepius has learned the healing arts, he is capable of saving the dying and bringing the dead back to life. This, Pseudo-Apollodorus tells us （long after he has finished with the story of Perseus）， is because the goddess Athene gave Asclepius two drops of the Gorgon’s blood.48 The blood from the left-hand side of her body is deadly, but the blood from the right-hand side of her body is sōtērian – salvation. Medusa is – and always has been – the monster who would save us.
The Amazons