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Marriage, Identity, and the Tale of Mestra in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women
- American Journal of Philology
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 125, Number 3 (Whole Number 499), Fall 2004
- pp. 303-338
- 10.1353/ajp.2004.0030
- Article
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Fragment 43a of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women tells the lively tale of Mestra, a female shape-shifter who supports her father through serial marriages. I argue that this narrative demonstrates a typical mythic pattern, in which female shape-shifting is both a method of avoiding marriage and emblematic of an unmarried woman's unstable social position. I argue further that this version of Mestra's story in particular represents an attempt to mediate a question that was becoming increasingly important in sixth-century Athens, namely: to which household does a bride belong, her father's or her husband's?