Michèle Roberts and Clare Pollard

This chapter examines the reception of the Heroides and the psychology of women ‘answering back’ through short stories and through translations. It analyses Michèle Roberts’s reworking of the myth of Jason and Hypsipyle, in which Hypsipyle, far from performing the role of one of Ovid’s abandoned heroines, revels in the independence and freedom of time spent alone while Jason is absent. Such subversion is also apparent in the translations/adaptations of selected Heroides by Clare Pollard, who transposes them to a modern Britain, peopled with domestic goddesses, internet trolls, and bag ladies. In the hands of both authors the female speakers of Ovid’s letters speak in contemporary and assertive tones.