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In her internal monologue, Myrrha reasons: “For all the creatures it is natural / When the bull mounts the heifer, his daughter, / Neither feels shame. / A stallion fights to breed from his own daughter… / Man has distorted that licence / Man has made new laws from his jealousy / To deprive nature of its nature.” What does Myrrha’s argument from animal nature most directly reveal about the structure of her reasoning?

When Diana sees Actaeon, the text describes: “She twisted her breasts away, showing him her back. / Glaring at him over her shoulder / She blushed like a dawn cloud… / And raged for a weapon, for her arrows / To drive through his body. / No weapon was to hand, only water.” What does the substitution of water for arrows most directly reveal about the nature of Diana’s punishment?

When the statue comes to life, Pygmalion reacts in the following way: “He knew / Giddy as he was with longing and prayers / This must be hallucination. / He jerked himself back to his senses / And prodded the ivory. He squeezed it. / But it was no longer ivory. / Her pulse throbbed under his thumb.” What does Pygmalion’s act of prodding and squeezing the statue most directly reveal about his state of mind?

The text explains the origin of Pygmalion’s aversion to living women: “The spectacle of these cursed women sent / Pygmalion the sculptor slightly mad. / He adored woman, but he saw / The wickedness of these particular women / Transform, as by some occult connection, / Every woman’s uterus to a spider.” What does the phrase occult connection most directly establish about the nature of Pygmalion’s phobia?

During the nurse’s interrogation, the text records twice: “As if she had heard nothing else / That single word father went through Myrrha / Like a hot iron, and she sighed in misery. / The nurse missed that clue.” And later: “Again at the word father / Myrrha choked a cry.” What does the repeated triggering of this single word most directly reveal about Myrrha’s condition?

After the assault, Callisto’s behavior within Diana’s company is described: “She no longer led the troop, / Was no longer the boisterous nearest / To the goddess. She hung back, eyes to the ground, / As if slinking along from hiding to hiding.” What does Callisto’s physical withdrawal from the group most directly reveal about the consequences of the assault?

During the festival of Venus, Pygmalion struggles to articulate his prayer: “He hardly dared to think / What he truly wanted / As he formed the words: O Venus, / You gods have power / To give whatever you please. O Venus, / Send me a wife. And let her resemble, / He was afraid / To ask for his ivory woman’s very self. / Let her resemble / The woman I have carved in ivory.” What does Pygmalion’s refusal to name his true wish most directly reveal about his relationship to his own desire?

After the rape, Philomela declares to Tereus: “I may be lost, / You have taken whatever life / I might have had, and thrown it in the sewer, / But I have my voice. / And shame will not stop me. / I shall tell everything / To your own people, yes, to all Thrace.” What does Philomela’s declaration most directly establish about her understanding of her own situation?

The myth ends with the following image: “The gods were listening and were touched. / And the gods touched their parents. Ever after / Mulberries, as they ripen, darken purple. / And the two lovers in their love-knot, / One pile of inseparable ashes, / Were closed in a single urn.” What does the closing image of one pile of inseparable ashes in a single urn most directly accomplish?

As the hounds tear Actaeon apart, his companions call his name repeatedly: “They shouted / For Actaeon, over and over for Actaeon / To hurry and witness this last kill of the day… / As if he were absent. He heard his name / And wished he were as far off as they thought him.” What does this moment most precisely accomplish in the myth’s treatment of identity?