Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India (Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion)

Respected scholar and writer Wendy Doniger brilliantly traces the many instances of doubling, splitting, and impersonation in ancient Greek and Hindu mythology, comparing, for example, the illusory Sita in many versions of the Ramayana with the illusory Helen of Troy, from Plato to Iris Murdoch. She also touches on later versions of the myths, such as Victorian descendants of Narcissus: Dr. Jekyll and Dorian Gray. This is academic writing at its most enjoyable: sprightly, rich, and unpredictable, elaborating the sort of satisfying and far-reaching connections that one finds in a Henry James novel or a Shakespearean comedy. Why compare these two distant cultures at all? "I am arguing first that ancient Greeks and Indians are cousins," Doniger explains, "and then that all women are sisters." In her introduction, she asserts that myths derive much of "their power and endurance from their ability to express a deeply troubling paradox that everyone in the community shares and no one can solve." Duplicitous lovers beware. --Regina Marler