‘Not perfect boy nor perfect wench’: Hermaphroditus

Abstract

Ovid’s tale of Hermaphroditus in the fourth book of Metamorphoses provides an etymology for a rare anatomical abnormality that challenges cultural concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality. According to Lauren Silberman, ‘references prior to Ovid ascribe the Hermaphrodite’s bisexual-ity to birth, not metamorphosis’.² In Ovid’s original narrative, the nymph Salmacis desires Hermaphroditus, the beautiful fifteen-year-old son of Hermes and Aphrodite. Rebuffed by him, the nymph hides and watches as Hermaphroditus undresses and swims in her pool. Salmacis is unable to contain herself, and leaps naked into the water. She forces herself upon the boy, whose continued resistance causes Salmacis to pray never to be separated from him. The gods, ever fickle, transform the two into a single being, the original hermaphrodite, ‘Ye could not say it was a perfect boy/Nor perfect wench: it seemed both and none of both to beene’ (4.469–70).³ Hermaphroditus’ retaliation is a request to his parents to make the pool of Salmacis eternally emasculating. Nothing more is said concerning Hermaphroditus’ life in Ovid or any other classical source.

An earlier version of this chapter has already been published in The Survival of Myth: Innovation, Singularity and Alterity, ed. David Kennedy and Paul Hardwick (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), pp. 90–109. Published with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.