shipperx | This is Beginning to Bother Me

I know that I should wait. I'm only halfway through the book. But at the halfway point of I, Claudius I am growing annoyed by what I increasingly suspect is out and out misogyny in the text. From a bit of google I see that Graves is touted for having 'strong women', but what is striking to me is that the women (thus far) are pretty uniformly evil and men are rather consistently their victims. Every self-serving thing that Augustus did is Livia's fault. Germanicus is betrayed by grandmother and traitorous wife. Claudius is forced into a marriage with an ill-spirited giantess by the machinations of two women, etc. I know that Livia is generally cast as a villainess in history and assumed to have murdered Augustus (Although in Everitt's non-fiction book on Augustus: Life of Rome's First Emperor, the author seems to feel that she's been over vilified), but even assuming her treachery, the fact that virtually every cruel or vindictive choice that Augustus made is consistently laid at his wife's feet, rather than a Roman Emperor behaving like a Roman Emperor, defies credulity. I mean, come on! Octavian didn't become Augustus without some ruthlessness of his own! (And in 'Rome' a great deal of steely-eyed creepiness as well). It can't have all been Livia. Exactly how much power could she, or any of these women, have actually wielded...at least in comparison to the men?

It isn't that I protest there being villainous women. It's that I can't accept that they all are. It's also that I can't accept that all of these men were honorable woobies surrounded by manipulative harpies who 'forced' them to do the wicked deeds in history. Maybe I'll feel differently by the end. Surely all of Caligula's excesses cannot be blamed on women, but from what I've read thus far I wouldn't entirely bet against it where this novel is concerned.