work was so exquisite that the bull seemed lifelike. Athena herself admitted the girls work was flawless. Though no winner had been proclaimed, Athena, angered with the audacity of Arachne’s challenge, destroyed the girls tapestry and loom. Although Athena wanted the girl to feel guilt, she never imagined she would commit suicide. She took pity on her and brought her back to life as a spider. In Arachne’s new form she and her descendents would forever hang from threads and be great weavers. The Freudian aspect of this myth is not blatantly sexual, it lies more in the power struggle among the same gender. Athena, being the goddess and supposedly superior, became jealous when Arachne’s work rivaled hers. Whether or not the tapestry was better, Athena was furious at the thought a mortal could be on the same level as her. In destroying Arachne’s weaving, Athena was releasing her unconscious motivations of anxiety-provoking drives. An individual does this when something is socially or ethically unacceptable to a person. In Athena’s case she was reacting on both of these thoughts. Freud looks at anxiety in three categories: realistic, moral, and neurotic. Moral anxiety is not an outside, physical threat, but in the internalized social world of the superego. This can be seen as guilt or shame a person experiences within themselves. The unconscious instinctively resorts to the defense mechanisms. Hera’s rage in the myth of Io showcases the similar thought that mortal were to be inferior to gods. When this threatened to be untrue, the goddesses reacted in ways driven by fear. An interesting aspect of the Arachne myth is that Athena took pity on the girl. When an injustice is committed against a god, there is usually no compassion for the offender. Though this is the case with the male deities, female deities had a tendency to show mercy. The matriarchal theory can be applied to underst...
