Parthegenia

Whisper her name three times and you’ll have that unsettling retrieval sensation: Where have I heard that before? I’m certain I have. Parthegenia.

Don’t check your Edith Hamilton. And no, she doesn’t show up even as a footnote in The Goddesses in Every Woman. Don’t bother to look.

In ancient times Parthegenia was banished, like some immortal Romeo, to an unidentified cave on Mount Olympus; the others in that clique swore never to utter her name—to ex her out of the Grecian heavenly host.

The Goddess of Asexual Reproduction (among other powers), banished?  Seems unlikely. Why would the Olympians, who thrive on back-biting and bickering, cast out lovely Parthegenia, that primo example of divine womanliness. That mons Venus, begging to be mounted; those breasts, ripe for nurturing; those lips of love, ever so capable of breeding and birthing.

Jealousy wasn’t the cause, I assure you; that crowd thrives on jealousy. It’s one of those petty human emotions they suffer along with their unearthly powers; the tension that’s kept the celestial soap opera going all of these ages. But there lies the rub, too, for our cast-aside goddess:  Fear, the garden variety human sort, that’s what made the other holinesses try to suppress Parthegenia. It would throw the whole male/female dynamic out of whack if one was as self-sufficient as Parthegenia, the reasoning went at the hearing in the Temple to Dionysius. The decision was unanimous: she couldn’t stay. Even her name had to be expunged from myths and legends.

You can see why the dodgy male gods like Zeus and the envious female goddesses like Hera (the uncertain demigods and goddesses never uttered a word) put her in some Olympian witness protection program, tried to disappear her, make her apocryphal at best, obliterate her from all the Greek plays at the very least. For centuries, audiences have known someone was missing from The Trojan Women; we couldn’t quite unlock the memory cell to figure out the problem...

Cast out by Hera, who made no bones about loving sex and hating beautiful females; and Zeus, who’d take any form to get his goodies off. Even Athena and Aphrodite wouldn’t speak her part, though they couldn’t speak against her, either.
How could Parthegenia reproduce by herself?  So independent, so self-aware, so UN-needy? Imagine the unrest such self-sufficiency could cause on Olympus, not to mention among mortals. Nope, she had to go.

But they didn’t factor in one of her other everlasting traits, stubbornness; she will not be erased from our collective memory. From afar Parthegenia refused to be swept under the magic carpet, have her mysterious energy rubbed out.

Mick Jagger didn’t quite work. Joan of Arc got closer. But think about parthegenic snails. Don’t ignore earthworms—not her most elegant creation; call them a work in progress, an experiment gone awry. Still, every basic
biology student, male and female, examines them, wonders How is this
possible? Such wonder and curiosity have kept Parthegenia animated at the edge of our consciousness.

Recently, the hammerhead shark and Komodo dragon have stunned modern science with their ability to reproduce asexually in captivity – that’s Parthegenia at work. Labeling it an evolutionary step forward is bogus. She’s gotten stronger as she’s seen contemporary mortal women strive for her procreative powers, her independence. We’ve conjured her.

It’s likely she came to Gloria Steinem in a vision, served as muse to Naomi Wolf, took possession of Hillary Clinton in the midst of the Bill/Monica fiasco. The evidence certainly suggests she’s made forays into female consciousness through the centuries. Go ahead, explain Emily Dickinson and the suffragettes without her.

Lucky for us, Parthegenia lives. In my writing group, one woman is re-creating the women of ages past who lived alone and kept the lighthouse flares burning. Another explores open marriage. A third envisions new galaxies. Parthegenia will not, cannot, be stifled or silenced by Hera, Jonathan Edwards, Doctor Laura, or even Dick Cheney. She’s part of the mitochondria of every woman on earth, hidden inside some powerful cell packet, ready to replace longing with creative action. To create and re-create, create, re-create. All by herself. Don’t be afraid to say her name, go ahead: Parthegenia.

Charlotte G. Morgan earned an MFA from VCU, where she studied with amazing writers Lee Smith and Paule Marshall. She has published a novel, One August Day, and been awarded a Pushcart Prize for one of her short stories.

~Charlotte Morgan