How Is Conflict in Relationships Presented in Les Grands Seigneurs and Medusa Essay Example

no more a confrontation than it is a call of despair at the fact that the power levels have now been reserved and it is she that is powerless now, she is man’s ‘bit of fluff’ like men once were her ‘hurdy-gurdy monkey men’.

Therefore, the line of conflict and the bitterness behind it is more bold, and ominously decisive in Medusa. However, Medusa’s narration turns to the same level of powerlessness and feeble despair as in Les Grands Seigneurs towards the end. After the intimidating lists of animals and creatures whose life the narrator killed by simply looking at them in the eye, turning ‘buzzing bee’s into ‘pebble’s, ‘ginger cat’s to ‘house brick’s and so on, the poet signifies the conflict between this narrator and her previous lover in that while this woman can control almost all of nature’s creatures, she cannot control him.

This metaphor of having the power of the wicked and fearful gorgon, Medusa, from ancient myth, makes the contrasting idea of not being able to control the man in her relationship all the more striking (and even saddening) as she turns to hopeless despair and desperation in the form of rhetorical questions in the final two lines: ‘Wasn’t I beautiful? Wasn’t I fragrant and youn.