When Kate Forsyth first decided to write a novel about the myth of Eros and Psykhe, she never imagined that her life would begin to take the shape of her art.
“Psykhe is a reimaging of the ancient myth of Eros and Psykhe, a story of a young women who was so ‘strangely and wonderfully fair’ that people began to worship her as a living incarnation of Aphrodite,” Forsyth tells 9honey.
But as she wrote her novel, making the decision to make her heroine visually impaired, Forsyth never expected to lose her own eyesight along the way.
READ MORE: Tennis star Jannik Sinner confirms relationship with Anna Kalinskaya
”It was a really uncanny experience,” she says. “I was working on the earliest stages of my novel, and playing with all the possible meanings of ‘fair’.
“I decided to make my character a person with albinism, to make her fairness truly unusual and striking. Researching albinism, I discovered that the condition is often accompanied by vision impairment.”
Forsyth explains that since according to the myth, her heroine was forbidden to see the face of her lover, it seemed like the perfect fit.
But gradually. as she began to write, she says she began to feel her eyes aching, her vision blurring, and throbbing headaches.
“I went to see an eye specialist. He told me I had pre-macular fibrosis, and that if I did not have surgery straightaway I could lose my eyesight,” she says. “So I went into hospital and had what is called an epiretinal peel, the surgeon peeling away the thin wrinkled layer of tissue that had grown over my retina.”
For a daily dose of 9Honey, subscribe to our newsletter here
One of the side effects of her surgery was that a cataract slowly formed over her eye, slowly forcing her to lose the vision she had just regained.
“By the time I was finishing writing Psykhe, I could once again scarcely see. I delivered my manuscript, then went into surgery to have the cataract removed and an artificial lens inserted,” Forsythe explains.
“It was as if the book needed me to be slowly going blind the whole time I was writing it, for me to truly understand the difficulties of living with impaired vision.”
The author’s eyesight isn’t yet back to 100 per cent, but she says it’s a lot better than it was.
“My eyesight is by no means perfect now, but it is infinitely better than it was the whole time I was writing a book about a young woman who had difficulties seeing.”
Forsyth explains that at the crux of her work is the importance of retelling fairytales which have always been viewed through a male lense, to refocus on the female voices within them.
”I was drawn to the myth of Psykhe because it is one of the few in which a young woman plays the most active role,” she says. “However, the version that is best known was told by a man named Lucius Apuleius in the 2nd century CE.
“In his story, when Eros visits Psykhe undercover of darkness, she is absolutely terrified. She has no idea who he is.”
READ MORE: The designer handbags you can get for less
Forsyth explains that in the original version, Eros ‘makes Psykhe his bride,’ which Forsyth says is a euphemism for sexual assault.
So, she instead decided to weave the myth of Psykhe together with the story of The Snake Prince, a Greek variant of Beauty and the Beast which places consent at the heart of the story.
However, the novel is still set in a time where men had full autonomy over women’s bodies, and while Forsyth says she was aware that women of that time had few rights, upon doing research she was shocked just how strictly they were confined.
“They were not permitted to attend or speak at political assemblies, let alone vote in them, for example,” she explains.
“One of the few places a woman had control over their own bodies was in childbirth and child-rearing, and so my character learns how to be a midwife, one of the few jobs that was done exclusively by women.”
READ MORE: Hannah Waddingham opens up about perks and pitfalls of fame
And while the world has obviously progressed in terms of women’s rights, Forsyth says that she was able to draw some parallels between the world in which her novel was set and the world in which we live today.
“While I was writing my novel, we saw the loss of some hard-won women’s rights,” she says. “It reminded me that we can never relax, never stop defending our right to choose what is done to our own bodies.”
FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.