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But most of all my father’s voice, speaking those words like trash he dropped. Such as you. Any other day in all my years of life I would have curled upon myself and wept. But that day his scorn was like a spark falling on dry tinder. My mouth opened.
‘You are wrong,’ I said.
After transforming Glaucos and Scylla, Circe confesses her deeds in Chapter 6 to Helios. When he dismisses her and says that someone like her would never have access to that kind of power, Circe defends herself for the first time in her life. Even though she has always bowed and deferred to her father, the knowledge of her power to do witchcraft and her potential to grow in that power makes Circe change. Despite the fact that she recants her confession when Helios tortures her, Circe is on a path of personal transformation. She is capable of much more than her family has ever led her to believe, and it’s incredibly revealing that Helios and the rest of the gods cannot abide it. Circe is essentially on a path of becoming a new kind of deity, one who is different from her arrogant and greedy family and who instead heeds Prometheus’s advice that all gods don’t have to be the same.
“The worst of my cowardice had been sweated out. In its place was a giddy spark. I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.
I stepped into those woods and my life began.”
After being exiled to her island in Chapter 7, Circe is terrified. After her first night alone, however, she undergoes a significant transformation. She realizes that she can overcome fear, and she faces her first morning with joy at the idea of being able to create a life for herself. Exploring the island allows her to explore reserves of strength within herself that she never knew existed. Circe compares herself in her previous life to a weaver without wool or a ship without the sea, because she has never had the freedom to discover who she is or what she wants from her life. Now, for the first time, she can explore her witchcraft and be who she was always meant to be without the demeaning and vengeful eyes of her family. Here on Aiaia, she can now begin her transformation into a powerful witch who is confident and sure of herself.
“I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing more in their hands.”
At the very end of the novel in Chapter 27, Circe transforms herself. She finally understands that it is danger and the threat of death that serve as a crucible for change. In order to truly live, Circe must become mortal so that she may have the capacity for growth and transformation. Although she has learned a great deal throughout her life and undergone many changes, Circe knows that her own growth occurred in spite of, not because of, her immortality. It is her final epiphany that circles back to the words of Prometheus who said gods can be different, and it sets her on a course to try to do the opposite of what gods would do. The ultimate act of repudiating the gods is for Circe to give up her immortality and live as a mortal, becoming the best version of herself
