Editing Myrrha (section)

==Interpretation==
The myth of Myrrha has been interpreted in various ways. The transformation of Myrrha in Ovid's version has been interpreted as a punishment for her breaking the social rules through her incestuous relationship with her father. Like [[Byblis]] who fell in love with her brother, Myrrha is transformed and rendered voiceless making her unable to break the taboo of incest.<ref name="Newlands167">{{Harvnb|Newlands|1995|p=167}}</ref>

Myrrha has also been thematically linked to the story of [[Lot's daughters]]. They live with their father in an isolated cave and because their mother is dead they decide to befuddle Lot's mind with wine and seduce him in order to keep the family alive through him.<ref>[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis%2019:31-36&version=ESV Genesis 19:31-36]</ref><ref name="Miller216">{{Harvnb|Miller|Tougaw|2002|p=216}}</ref> Nancy Miller comments on the two myths:
<blockquote>
[Lot's daughters'] incest is sanctioned by reproductive necessity; because it lacks consequences, this story is not a socially recognized narrative paradigm for incest. [...] In the cases of both Lot's daughters and Myrrha, the daughter's seduction of the father has to be covert. While other incest configurations - mother-son, sibling - permit consensual agency, father-daughter incest does not; when the daughter displays transgressive sexual desire, the prohibitive father appears.<ref name="Miller216"/>
</blockquote>

Myrrha has been interpreted as developing from a girl into a woman in the course of the story: in the beginning she is a virgin refusing her suitors, in that way denying the part of herself that is normally dedicated to Aphrodite. The goddess then strikes her with desire to make love with her father and Myrrha is then made into a woman in the grip of an uncontrollable lust. The marriage between her father and mother is then set as an obstacle for her love along with incest being forbidden by the laws, profane as well as divine. The way the daughter seduces her father illustrates the most extreme version a seduction can take: the union between two persons who by social norms and laws are strictly held apart.<ref name="Detienne63-64">{{Harvnb|Detienne|1994|pp=63–64}}</ref>

James Richard Ellis has argued that the incest taboo is fundamental to a civilized society. Building on [[Sigmund Freud]]'s theories and psychoanalysis this is shown in Ovid's version of the myth of Myrrha. When the girl has been gripped by desire, she laments her humanity, for if she and her father were animals, there would be no bar to their union.<ref name="Ellis191">{{Harvnb|Ellis|2003|p=191}}</ref>

That Myrrha is transformed into a myrrh tree has also been interpreted to have influenced the character of Adonis. Being the child of both a woman and a tree he is a split person. In [[Ancient Greece]] the word Adonis could mean both "perfume" and "lover"{{efn|E.g. from a love letter written by a courtesan to her lover: "My perfume, my tender Adonis"<ref>From the ''[[Palatine Anthology]]'' as cited in {{Harvnb|Detienne|1994|pp=63}}</ref>}} and likewise Adonis is both the perfume made from the aromatic drops of myrrh as well as the human lover who seduces two goddesses.<ref name="Detienne63-64" />

In her essay "What Nature Allows the Jealous Laws Forbid" literary critic Mary Aswell Doll compares the love between the two male protagonists of [[Annie Proulx]]' book ''[[Brokeback Mountain (short story)|Brokeback Mountain]]'' (1997) with the love Myrrha has for her father in Ovid's ''Metamorphoses''. Doll suggests that both Ovid's and Proulx' main concerns are civilization and its discontents and that their use of images of nature uncovers similar understandings of what is "natural" when it comes to who and how one should love. On the subject of Ovid’s writing about love Doll states:

<blockquote>
In Ovid’s work no love is "taboo" unless it arises out of a need for power and control. A widespread instance for the latter during the [[Roman Empire]] was the practice by the elite to take nubile young girls as lovers or mistresses, girls who could be as young as daughters. Such a practice was considered normal, natural.<ref name="Dollpaper" />
</blockquote>

Cinyras' relationship with a girl on his daughter's age was therefore not unnatural, but Myrrha's being in love with her own father was. Doll elaborates further on this stating that Myrrha's lamenting that animals can mate father and daughter without problems is a way for Ovid to express a paradox: in nature a father-daughter relationship is not unnatural, but it is in human society. On this Doll concludes that "Nature follows no laws. There is no such thing as "natural law"".<ref name="Dollpaper" /> Still, Ovid distances himself in three steps from the horrifying story:

First he does not tell the story himself, but has one of his in-story characters, Orpheus, sing it;<ref name="Ovid228-245">{{Harvnb|Ovidius Naso|1971|pp=228–245}} (Book X, 143-739)</ref> second, Ovid tells his audience not even to believe the story (cf. quote in "Ovid's version");<ref name="Ovid233-2" /> third, he has Orpheus congratulate Rome, Ovid's home town, for its being far away from the land where this story took place (Cyprus).<ref>{{Harvnb|Ovidius Naso|1971|p=233}} (Book X, 304-307)</ref> By distancing himself, Doll writes, Ovid lures his audience to keep listening. First then does Ovid begin telling the story describing Myrrha, her father and their relationship, which Doll compares to the mating of [[Cupid and Psyche]]:{{efn|Doll remarks that the union of Cupid and Psyche is a metaphor for the union of love and soul.<ref name="Dollpaper" />}} here the lovemaking occurs in complete darkness and only the initiator ([[Cupid]]) knows the identity of the other as well. Myrrha's metamorphosing into a tree is read by Doll as a metaphor where the tree incarnates the secret. As a side effect, Doll notes, the metamorphosis also alters the idea of incest into something natural for the imagination to think about. Commenting on a Freudian analysis of the myth stating that Ovid "disconcertingly suggests that [father-lust] might be an unspoken universal of human experience".<ref>{{cite book | last1 = Ovidius Naso | first1 = Publius | author-link1 = Ovid | title = The Metamorphoses: Ovid |editor1= F. J. Miller | publisher = Barnes & Noble Classics | year = 2005 | location = New York | page = xxx | isbn = 1-4366-6586-8}} as cited in {{cite journal | title = What Nature Allows the Jealous Laws Forbid: The Cases of Myrrha and Ennis del Mar | journal = Journal of Curriculum Theorizing | year = 2006 | first = Mary Aswell | last = Doll | volume = 21 | issue = 3 | pages = 39–45}}</ref> Doll notes that Ovid's stories work like metaphors: they are meant to give insight into the human psyche. Doll states that the moments when people experience moments like those of father-lust are repressed and unconscious, which means that they are a natural part of growing and that most grow out of it sometime. She concludes about Ovid and his version of Myrrha that: "What is perverted, for Ovid, is the use of sex as a power tool and the blind acceptance of sexual male power as a cultural norm."<ref name="Dollpaper" />

In 2008 the newspaper ''[[The Guardian]]'' named Myrrha's relationship with her father as depicted in ''Metamorphoses'' by Ovid as one of the top ten stories of incestuous love ever. It complimented the myth for being more disturbing than any of the other incestuous relationships depicted in the ''Metamorphoses''.<ref name="The Guardian 2008">{{cite news | first = John | last = Mullan | title = Ten of the best incestuous relationships | date = 2008-04-10 | url = https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/13?INTCMP=SRCH | work = The Guardian | access-date = 2011-01-29}}</ref>

Particularly in light of the themes of secrecy in the taboo, and the patriarchal nature of Ovid's society, the myth may also serve to reverse the narrative on cases where the father manipulates and sexually abuses his own daughters and no actual seduction of the father by the daughter occurs, except in his own mind. This would be similar to how [[The Freudian Coverup]] theory functions socially.