Ovid Metamorphoses: Gods and Nymphs

On the surface Ovid’s Metamorphoses appears to question traditional gender norms, in particular those held about elite Roman men. Even women are given the opportunity to tell their own stories in the poem. Yet, the Metamorphoses is full of stories about violent rapes that effectively silence the voice of the victim. Moreover, women are often presented in two stereotyped roles: as lovers or mothers. This then raises the question of whether or not gender stereotypes about women are really contested in Ovid’s work, and it would seem that, as is often the case with Roman literature, which was almost always written by men, we then learn more about male views of women than we do about real women. This is not to say that gender is entirely stable in the Metamorphoses but that the work is ultimately concerned with the male gaze. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.