Lavinia

In book XII of The Aeneid, Aeneas endeavors to marry Lavinia, a local Latin princess, to achieve power. Sybils tell Lavinias father that she’s got to marry a foreigner, instead of the pre-planned Turnus, which sets off some of the drama in the end of the The Aeneid. Being an ancient poem about muscular manly men, written in the deeply chauvinistic and misogynistic Roman order, Lavinia does not even have a speaking role in the Aeneid. She’s akin to what they call “a McGuffin.” Ursula K Le Guin aspires to a feminist re-telling of the last 6 or so books of the Aeneid from Lavinia’s perspective, wherein she is an active participant in her fate rather than an object to which events simply happen. There is a nice post-modern kind of twist present here, where Lavinia kind of knows she’s a character in a work of fiction and has an ongoing tête-à-tête with Virgil. But I didn’t like this book – Lavinia is not a very strong character, and it is a recounting of events that I didn’t find particularly interesting the first time I read them. I respect the ambition, although the more interesting feminist themes seem to be textual recapitulations of Medea. No particularly moving passages in this book to my recollection. Okay, maybe it’s mythohistorical fiction, but whatever. It counts.