Fragment 43 A of the Hesiodic « Catalogue of women » tells the tale of Mestra, a female shape-shifter who supports her father through serial marriages.
This narrative demonstrates a typical mythic pattern, in which female shape-shifting is both a method of avoiding marriage and emblematic of an unmarried woman 's unstable social position.
This version of Mestra 's story in particular represents an attempt to mediate a question that was becoming increasingly important in 6th-cent. Athens, namely : to which household does a bride belong, her father 's or her husband 's?
