Scorned, angry and vengeful. That is how Hera, the Queen of the Gods, Goddess of Wives and Marriage and Zeus’s wife is often portrayed. The punishments she inflicts on her husband’s many lovers and their offspring form the backbone of many a myth. But in Jennifer Saint’s Hera we get to see the person behind the veil.
Hera in Jennifer Saint’s telling, isn’t just a despotic mad woman, desperate to get revenge for being made a cuckold, she’s a Goddess with her own hopes and aspirations. She’s someone who thought she and Zeus could be partners. They were the son and daughter of Cronus meant to bring about his downfall after all.
Saint shows us what becomes of these hopes and how they shape Hera moving forward. We get to see how Hera becomes something between the Goddess of myth and what she wanted to be, and we get to see the why. In the first third of the book, Saint’s look into Hera’s inner mind and her reactions to so much of what Zeus does and does not do to her, is what makes the reader feel for her.
But, in the second third, Hera’s spite, her anger and her desire for revenge—or is it justice?— left me wondering how to view her. On the one hand, I wanted to yell at her for being so foolish and short-sighted. Ares, Hephaestus and the countless others she discarded for not meeting her standards, could have made a difference to her goal. That she could feel something when Typhon and his brood appeared on the scene made her actions towards her other children all the more sad.
It is in the final third, after the devastation that book-ended a seminal period in Greek myth, that we see Hera evolve into something more. The anger is still there, but there is also contemplation and curiosity. She wants to learn more, she wants to be more and it is in that that we see true growth and perhaps even happiness for this goddess who for the longest time wandered alone.
Jennifer Saint has done a simply phenomenal job bringing Hera to life. Through giving us a direct look into Hera’s psyche, Saint allows us to see Hera not as the simple tyrant of myth, but as a fully formed person-or goddess-with hopes and fears and desires.
Simply put, this is a fantastic work and I urge you all to buy it.
Hera is out on 23rd May.
Vivek Rajkhowa 
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