So before I get into what I'm talking about just know I put feminist in quotation marks because most of the modern retellings are not actually feminist; not to mock feminist theory.
There are many different interpretations and versions of the myth so I'm going to try to summarize it with no bias or opinions showing through. If you're already familiar with the myth please skip this or don't. Narcissus, a beautiful young man, was out hunting with his friends (or alone, every version I read says different) and he got lost. He rest himself near a pond (he might have been napping) and along comes Echo, a nymph, she sees Narcissus and instantly falls in "love", Echo can only repeat words that she has just heard do to a curse. Echo decides that there is no better way to show a man she just met than to hug him, he "rudely" rejects her. Echo dies due to a broken heart and prays to Nemesis, the goddess of balance, retribution, and vengeance, to curse Narcissus. Narcissus sees his reflection in the water and falls in love with himself and drowns or sees the "errors" of his ways and kills himself either way he turns into a flower. Most of these things are pretty consistent in the myth and the parentheses provide the second most popular version.
In a lot of the media this myth is featured in, historical or modern, narcissus is the self absorbed, Ill-intentioned "bad guy" and echo is a poor little baby who's love. The problem with both of these is that the characters come off extremely one-dimensional and in my opinion it's not even a CORRECT poor characterization. A popular example of a poor job for both characters is Rick Riordan's Mark of Athena in which Echo is like an "i can save him" girl and Narcissus himself is so dumbed down and so aggressive he tries to shoot the main characters (forgive me if thats wrong, I was in middle school when i read those books). Hades 2 definitely makes both characters more likable but it's not really accurate to the myth at all. Much of the discussion in podcast and talk shows around narcissus is very victim blame-y and often treats the entire myth like a joke with many people saying he deserved his fate because he was rude when he rejected people.
At the start of this I mentioned why I put feminist in quotation marks, to elaborate a little on that I was referring to the more popular trend of making women violent, sexual and crude instead of giving them a personality, btw I'm not saying women being violent, sexual, or crude is bad I'm just saying that these authors are swapping those traits for a personality and are even removing some of the characteristics the women already have in the original text.
To understand my pov a little more it might help to know what I'm defining as feminist. I'm using the word feminist as in the idea that all women are equal to men and should be seen and treated as people. So women who are main characters in stories should have in depth personalities, their successes be celebrated, they shouldn't just be there for sex, and their wrongs should be treated as wrongs.
A little more back story for Echo. Echo was a nymph who loved to talk and loved love, so when Zeus came down from Olympus to have sex with other nymphs, Echo distracted Hera from finding out. Hera eventually found out and she cursed Echo to only repeat what she had just heard. So echo isolated herself from the other nymphs as not being able to start a conversation and only copy what they said probably sucked. One day she went outside for just a walk I'm pretty sure, and she saw narcissus, asleep, alone, 16 years old, and one of them was naked i cannot remember who but neither option is very good.
This where the actual myth begins.
Making echo the "bad guy" is not actually very difficult at all and I think it would be easier to treat her as a more in depth character this way because for her not to be the antagonist she'd have to be really dumb and shallow which is possible but if we're aiming for feminism I think dumb and shallow misses the mark. I says it's easy to make her bad or at least morally Grey because:
1.obviously she is not a "girls girl" or she wouldn't have distracted Hera from her husband's cheating
2. it is usually quite frowned upon to approach 16 year old strangers in the woods for a hug while one of you is nude.
3. After said stranger rudely rejects you, you pray for a goddess to curse them.
I know three doesn't seem like a lot of reasons but it's a relatively short myth and they are three pretty good reasons
Narcissus was a beautiful young man with a prophecy about him, if he would have a long and happy life as long as he never knew himself. So in response to that his mother never let narcissus see his reflection. Everyone desired narcissus, everyone told him how great and beautiful he was, which probably went to his head but it was also really annoying. One of narcissus's male friends confessed his love to him and Narcissus rejected him, told him to kill himself or both it depends on who you ask ( sometimes the myth says it was actually this guy who prayed to Nemesis but I'm going to say it was Echo for continuity) so during the night the guy killed himself outside of Narcissus's house. Which i don't care if Narcissus told him to hang himself with his own umbilical cord, killing yourself outside of someone you allegedly loved house is fucked up. Anyway one day narcissus was out hunting by himself or with friends and he got lost near a pond and took a nap, he woke up to a stranger approaching him for hug with "love" in her eyes. And that's where the actual myth begins.
Obviously I have extreme sympathy for narcissus or this whole post probably wouldn't exist so sorry for any super extreme bias I might be about to spew. So narcissus is a young man most often said to be 16 years old, who had been constantly annoyed by other people's "love" for him which actually often lust. In Stephen fry's words "it maddened him to see the unmistakable look of love leaping into the eyes of others. There was something so angry and ugly about that look." This is a really good quote for how im viewing the story, I think it shows perspective on Narcissus's part and makes him seem worn down and tired of love instead of thinking he is the only one worthy of his own love. Coming back to the part where narcissus tells or doesn't tell someone to kill themselves, which is not actually relevant to the myth but i want to talk about it anyway, in some variations of the myth Narcissus's friend pestered him into such a harsh response and some say he said that immediately, while telling someone to take their life is in fact bad the punishment for saying that is NOT seeing their dead body hanging outside your window. You can say no however you want when it's in regards to your body and telling someone to kys does not mean that they have to do it. I just want to note I am not condoning telling people to off themselves I'm just saying the punishment severely outweighs the crime.
A pretty reasonable defense for Narcissus and a pretty popular one is that he was asexual while he doesn't have to be to make the hypothetical retelling work it would serve as a reason that creates depth. I'll do the same three bullet points as I did for Echo as to why I don't think Narcissus did anything wrong in this myth:
1. It's reasonable to be a little bit pissy if everyday you have to hear about how some random "loves" you
2. You can say no to anyone for any reason in anyway if it is your feelings/body involved
3. Idk about you but if someone I don't know is approaching me in the woods for a hug (potentially nude) I'm gonna do worse than rudely say no you can't hug me.
Now I'm going to do something I hate buts it's actually very applicable for this, due to the treating everyone the same and perceiving women's wrongs as wrong i was talking about earlier. Imagine if instead of a young man, Narcissus was a young lady and imagine instead of a nymph, Echo was a satyr. I think it's a little easier to perceive the story for what i believe it to be if you think that way. And here's a more modern example with the gender swap: a 16 year girl is walking down the street of a town she doesn't know. A man approaches her for a hug with lust in his eyes. She tells that man to jump off a cliff. The man goes home hires a hit man to kill that 16 year old and than purposely overdoses and dies. The hit man then kills that girl. Making Echo the good guy in the story is basically saying the grown man was right to hire the hit man.
If you want me to elaborate on anything anymore or have any questions or think im full of shit, I would love to know your thoughts on this
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