Generosity and Personhood: How the Myth of the Three Graces Inspired My Debut Novel

When I walked toward the Roman statue of the Three Graces in The Metropolitan Museum of Art last month, my eyes began to water. I clocked the familiar details in person for the first time: The contrapposto stance of three sister goddesses, one facing away from the others. The graceful nudity of three women. A gentle marble hand on another’s shoulder.

I first heard of the subject of the statue—the myth of the Three Graces—more than twenty years ago. In high school Latin and art history classes, I learned that these three sister goddesses, known as “The Charities” in ancient Greece and “The Graces” in ancient Rome, each bestowed a distinct gift on humanity: Aglaea (radiance), Euphrosyne (joy), and Thalia (blossoming).

In practice, there were a range of depictions of these goddesses in ancient Greece—their number, their names, and their traits differ across sources. Benevolence and beauty were near universal attributes across their iterations and iconography, and scholars believe they may have first appeared as fertility deities. In one telling, the Graces were meteors who fell from the sky, sparked the first growth on earth, and morphed into goddesses. Homer also described the three as supporting Aphrodite, the goddess of love, after her birth. The Graces helped love bloom in the world, metaphorically and literally.

I created these mortal, modern counterparts to the myth…to reflect the generosity and grace that already emanates from women around the world in their flaws and imperfections.

Though they were minor figures on Mt. Olympus, cult worship of the Graces was widespread. They became a prolific visual motif in ancient Greece and Rome, visible on pottery, coins, mirrors, sarcophagi, mosaics—as well as magnificent statues like the one I saw at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was discovered in 1892 buried under a Roman road.

Because their likeness was undefined beyond their venerable beauty, the goddesses have served as symbols of the idealized female figure since they first appeared. Some of Western civilization’s greatest artists, including Botticelli, Raphael, Rubens, Canova, Cezanne, and Picasso, have all adapted their forms according to the tastes of the time.

The Three Graces are not only contained to the confines of high art and academic study. Once you’re aware of these goddesses, you see them everywhere. On a recent visit to Rome, I glanced up to see them depicted in a mass-produced print hanging above the bed in my hotel room. Last month, I learned that they were the framework for a beloved Greek sitcom in the 90s, Oi Treis Harites, about three sisters in their 40s.

For decades, I’ve felt pulled to these goddesses. Unlike other Olympians, who were often violent and wrathful, the Graces showed kindness and care to their fellow gods and mortals alike—bestowers of grace in every context. This unequivocable goodwill became my muse. Even so, I could not help feeling as though their symbolism fell short of my own feminine ideal. Radiance and joy are essential to a happy life, but I do not imagine them as the highest virtues. In a world where women endure the impossible to bring new life into the world—holding agony and beauty all at once—shouldn’t women be celebrated for more than just their idealized form and youth?

But as I dug deeper into research on the Three Graces, I found they were not merely idealized goddesses, but a visual allegory beloved by ancient philosophers. The original Greek word χάρις, or charis, which is the root of the Charities and the Graces, not only connotes beauty. It also refers to the gratitude and goodwill that unfurls when people give, accept, and return favors. As discussed by Denis Vidal in an academic article on the Three Graces, the late scholar Jean-Pierre Vernant defined charis as “the divine power manifest in all aspects of gift giving and reciprocity (the round of generous liberality, the cordial exchange of gifts), which, in spite of all divisions, spins a web of reciprocal obligations.”

In the ancient world, the Three Graces represented the virtuous cycle of giving, accepting, and returning gifts, which the stoic philosopher Seneca described as “the chief bond of human society.” Each Grace represented one aspect of this virtuous cycle, and in their totality, an ideal for society to aspire toward. Seneca explained that the visual elements of traditional Hellenistic and Roman depictions all reflect this allegory: The Graces are often shown in a circle holding hands to demonstrate the unbroken passing of gifts—with joyful expressions to express the joy of giving. “They are youthful because the remembrance of ‘benefits’ should not grow old,” he wrote.

Each of us have our own gifts, as distinct and varied as our fingerprints. Sharing those gifts—and receiving other women’s gifts in kind—is the closest thing I’ve experienced to grace on earth.

Approximately 400 years prior, Aristotle also referred to the motif of the Three Graces in Nicomachean Ethics when he explains their ubiquitous presence in the ancient world, “This is why we set up a shrine of the Graces in a public place, to remind men to return a kindness; for that is a special characteristic of grace, since it is a duty not only to repay a service done one, but another time to take the initiative in doing a service oneself.” These words became the epitaph to my debut novel and an introduction to the ethos of the story.

I felt called to embark on a modern riff on the myth not only to play with the symbolism of Three Graces’ virtues but also to relieve us of their dark shadow. As with many vestiges of the past, this myth is both a blessing and a curse. The word charis refers not only to this virtuous cycle, but of the way women must give themselves to men. The female figures of the Three Graces represent the literal gift of a woman giving her virginal body to a man as property bestowed upon a new owner.

In my own contemporary reimagining, I wanted to counter that legacy with nuance. I wrote about three generations of ordinary Italian-American women of Roman descent, all of whom are named after a statue of the Three Graces. This triumvirate uses their voices, their power, their compassion to embody this virtuous cycle of generosity and reciprocity without forfeiting their personhood, bodies, or resources to anyone. In fact, in this retelling, their free will and autonomy are essential elements of that virtuous cycle, rather than subjugated by it.

I created these mortal, modern counterparts to the myth not to make a grand aspiration statement—like the idealized statues erected across the ancient world—and instead to reflect the generosity and grace that already emanates from women around the world in their flaws and imperfections.

What I’ve found in studying these sister goddesses is the truth of my own life. No woman fits into an idealized form. Each of us have our own gifts, as distinct and varied as our fingerprints. Sharing those gifts—and receiving other women’s gifts in kind—is the closest thing I’ve experienced to grace on earth.

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The Three Graces of Pearl Street by Elizabeth Wellington Rollins is available from Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.