Hera is author Jennifer Saint's complex, fascinating retelling of the story of an often-vilified figure from Greek mythology: Hera, sister and wife of Zeus and queen of the gods on Mount Olympus. (Many of the Greek gods married their siblings or were products of sibling marriages, as the family tree at the beginning of the book shows.) Hera is usually depicted in mythology as jealous and vengeful, especially toward Zeus' many lovers and their offspring. We see this side of her in Saint's novel, but we also see the reasons why Hera acts as she does. In the novel, she comes across as, if not a sympathetic character, certainly a complex, multi-layered one, and we also see a more admirable side to her.
The book begins with Hera as a young goddess, when she and Zeus overthrow the tyrannical rule of their father, the Titan Cronus. Hera, with her command of various mythical beasts, plays an instrumental role in the Titans' defeat. After the gods establish themselves on Mount Olympus, Hera, who is not yet married to Zeus, enjoys wandering in the forests and swimming in the rivers, and has several affairs with river gods. The original seven Olympian gods--the six siblings Zeus, Hera, Hestia, Demeter, Poseidon, and Hades, plus Aphrodite, goddess of love, who helped them in their fight against Cronus--all have their thrones in the palace on top of Mount Olympus, and Hera expects that they will all share power equally.
Zeus, however, has other ideas. He decides to split the world into three realms: the sky, the sea, and the Underworld, with the realm of the sky having the most power, and he takes the sky for himself and the other realms for his two brothers: the sea for Poseidon and the Underworld for Hades. This, of course, leaves the male gods in charge of everything, with no power for the goddesses. Hestia accepts her role as goddess of the hearth and Demeter accepts hers as goddess of grain and the harvest, with the agreement that they will never have to marry, although Demeter has a daughter, Persephone, by Zeus. There is, seemingly, no role for Hera unless she agrees to marry Zeus, which she refuses to do. Like her sisters, she had hoped to remain unmarried, but unlike them, she wants to rule. Hera has always been close to Gaia, the primordial earth goddess and ancestor of all the gods and Titans, and she briefly has hope, during the division of the realms, when Gaia hints at a role for her, but then this seemingly comes to nothing.
Feeling humiliated after being slighted by Zeus, Hera spends much time away from Olympus and she wanders over the world, often taking the shape of a hawk. Then, one day, Zeus tricks her by taking the form of a wounded bird. When Hera goes to help the bird, Zeus changes back into himself and rapes her. (The rape is not depicted in graphic detail, but readers should be aware of it. There are other scenes of rape in the book, none of them graphic, but if you have a hard time reading those scenes, this book is probably not for you.) Hera is, of course, full of justifiable rage against Zeus. And then she agrees to marry him.
The reason why Hera marries Zeus after being raped by him is left deliberately vague and open to interpretation. My own interpretation, and it is just a guess on my part, is that she does it because it is the only way she will ever be queen, which is what she had wanted at the beginning, and because it gives her a chance to plot her revenge on Zeus. It is her way of keeping her enemy close. There is no love in their marriage, on either side. Zeus repeatedly humiliates and insults Hera, and has many affairs with Titanesses, nymphs, and mortal women. He makes her the goddess of marriage, but he repeatedly refuses to honor his marriage vows.
Zeus and Hera have four children together. Ares, the god of war, is conceived during the rape, and he is born full of rage, and hates everyone except Aphrodite, who becomes his lover. The next child is Hephaestus, the misshapen blacksmith god. Hera never loves him, and he knows it. Instead, it is Hestia, goddess of the hearth, who brings him up, and teaches him how to use fire. Later, Hera and Zeus have two daughters: Hebe, cupbearer to the gods, and Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth. Hera is insulted when Zeus refuses to give thrones on Olympus to their two daughters, in contrast to their two sons, and relegates them to subservient roles. She is even more furious when he gives thrones on Olympus to the offspring of several of his affairs. These include Athena, goddess of wisdom, who is born out of his head after he swallows her mother, the Titaness Metis, who was Zeus' and Hera's foster mother. There was a prophecy that the offspring of this affair would be greater than Zeus. Later there are the twins , the huntress Artemis and the sun god Apollo, born to the Titaness Leto after Hera unsuccessfully tried to prevent their birth, and Hermes, the trickster god, born to Maia, the granddaughter of Hera's handmaiden Klymene.
Hera also gives birth, without any help from Zeus, to Typhon, a monstrous being with a snake's tail. He is the product of her rage against Zeus, and she loves him more than her children by Zeus, because he has nothing of Zeus in him. She must keep him hidden, because if Zeus ever found out about Typhon, he would think Hera was unfaithful to him, which he would find unforgivable, despite the many infidelities on his part. Hera has an affinity with the serpent goddess Ekhidna, who lives deep underneath the earth, and hides Typhon in Ekhidna's realm. Later, Typhon and Ekhidna become lovers, and their offspring include several of the famous monsters of Greek mythology: the Hydra, the Nemean Lion, and the three-headed dog Cerberus.
Hera decides to use Typhon as the instrument of her revenge on Zeus. He agrees to attack Mount Olympus by her side, but he doesn't wait until she is ready, and so the plan goes disastrously wrong. Typhon ends up attacking Olympus alone and is defeated and consigned to spend an eternity under a volcano. Zeus punishes Hera by chaining her to a rock. She gets Hephaestus to release her, but Zeus, in his rage, punishes Hephaestus by throwing him under Typhon's volcano, breaking his leg in the process. Hephaestus perfects his art as a blacksmith in his underground forge, but instead of blaming Zeus, he blames Hera because it was as the result of helping her that Zeus punished him. When he eventually returns to Olympus, Hephaestus creates a beautiful throne for Hera, but when she sits in it, it traps her inside. Hera promises that whichever god helps her to get out of it will marry Aphrodite. Ares tries first, because Aphrodite is his lover and he wants to marry her, but, to his rage, he is unsuccessful and Hephaestus eventually relents and releases Hera, which means he marries Aphrodite, much to Ares' rage. (It is interesting to see the contrast between the way Saint portrays the relationship between Hera and Hephaestus and the way Claire North portrays it in Ithaca, a retelling of The Odyssey where Hera is the narrator. In North's novel, Hera loves her son and will not hear anything bad about him.)
Zeus' affairs continue, and Hera repeatedly takes revenge on his lovers and their offspring. Why does she blame the victims, instead of Zeus, who should be the object of her hatred? That is an interesting question, and, again, one that is open to interpretation. My feeling is that Hera thinks she is taking revenge on Zeus through those he loves, or claims to love. (I doubt that Zeus really loves anyone except himself.) One of the mortal women with whom Zeus has an affair is Semele. Hera tricks her into asking Zeus to show himself in his true form, and when he does, she is burned to death. The product of Semele's affair with Zeus is Dionysus, god of wine, who becomes the youngest of the Olympian gods. Later, Hera takes revenge on Dionysus by making him drink the blood of Typhon, which makes him go mad.
The mortal offspring of Zeus whom Hera hates the most is Heracles (better known as Hercules). Hera plays a trick on Zeus so that another baby is born before Heracles, meaning that this child, not Heracles, will be king. Later, it is this king who gives Heracles tasks to perform. At first Hera agrees to this, because she hopes Heracles won't survive the ordeal, but, to her fury, he completes the tasks, which often involve his killing her beloved creatures such as the Hydra and the Nemean Lion. Hera chooses Jason to be her champion among mortal heroes, in opposition to Heracles, and she helps Jason and the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece, but she is furious when Heracles joins the voyage.
Later, during an attack on Olympus by giants, Hera fights alongside the other gods to defend their home, and Heracles, her enemy, saves her. As a reward for his help, Zeus promises Heracles that, when he dies, he will join the gods on Olympus instead of going to the Underworld. The gods become involved in the mortal world when they take sides in the Trojan War, with Hera siding with the Greeks. But the Trojan War, with all its death and destruction, represents a turning point in the lives of the gods. Hestia, who, with her hearth, has been the one they all turned to with their problems, decides to leave Olympus. Eventually, the others desert Olympus as well, until only Zeus is left, a shadow of himself. There is a wonderful scene where Hera steals Zeus' thunderbolt before she herself leaves Olympus.
The final part of the novel is very interesting, as Hera learns to live among mortals in Athena's city of Athens. She becomes closer to Athena, whom she used to hate, and learns to appreciate mortals, even though, in the beginning, she didn't want Zeus to create them. It seems to be the beginning of a new world, one that belongs to humans, and not to the gods. Hera realizes that the gods need humans just as much as humans need the gods.
Hera is a fascinating novel. It is not the easiest read, and some of it is hard to take, particularly the rape scenes. But it is a complex portrayal of a goddess who is so often depicted negatively. Jennifer Saint humanizes Hera and makes her actions understandable. Claire North does this, too, in Ithaca, but North's portrayal is more humorous. Saint has written other retellings of Greek mythology, and her heroines have included Ariadne, Elektra, and Atalanta. Hera makes me want to read her other novels.
Hera is available from the Frances Willson Thompson Library Main Collection on the University of Michigan Flint campus. Library users on the Ann Arbor campus can request it by clicking on "Get This" in Library Search.