Many people don't understand Feminism. That's understandable, many people don't understand Racism or Homophobia either. The more extreme members of any movement tend to drive away outsiders. But the thing to remember is that Feminism has perhaps the deepest hole to dig out of. Before biological racism existed, before homosexuality was even a thing (sex in the ancient world was viewed in terms of aggressive and passive partners, not gender), misogyny was alive and well. Below I am including an analysis of Greek tragedies based around the Oresteia that I have written.
Bibliography
The tragedies of Aeschylus’ Oresteia and both Sophocles’ and Euripides’ Electra provide ample opportunities to view the ideals of gendered
roles and behavior in fifth century BCE Athens. Of special note is that the
plays are written and performed by men to a mostly male audience which can lead
to a skewed view of women. The view of women in these plays promotes a
perspective of women where they are dangerous when they exercise power and agency
typically reserved for the male world of their time.
From the very beginning of the Agamemnon we are presented with this idea of a woman exercising
male power; the watchman speaks of his mistress who has a heart that plans like
a man.[i] Given the thoughts in
medicine at the time which believed intellect resided in the heart this could
be a quite literal implication that Clytemnestra both had feelings such as
ambition like a man and thought in ways that a man would think. Yet despite
this distinction of man-like thought, she is consistently judged by her
biological sex. Only Clytemnestra argues that Agamemnon bringing home his
foreign bed slave is a slight against her; the chorus of Argive country women
argues that Clytemnestra should have acceded to her husband’s wishes.[ii] At the same time
Clytemnestra is derided for her own liaison; her own daughter calls her a slut
for doing the same thing a man does.[iii]
Something that is notable in these tragedies is that the
authors use women to criticize women. From Cassandra in the Agamemnon who calls Clytemnestra a
wretched woman the feminine condemnation outnumbers the male[iv]. In the Libation Bearers and the two Electra plays, where the condemnation of
Clytemnestra is the main focus, it is Electra who decries the deeds of
Clytemnestra far more than her brother Orestes. In Eumenides the deciding vote against the Furies comes from Athena.[v] While it can and has been
argued that Athena is more masculine than feminine in behavior and thought,
this is the exact argument of Clytemnestra; they both have a man’s heart. If
Clytemnestra is judged by her biological sex rather than her actions, so too
must Athena in the context of the story.
While
the Electra in Aeschylus’ Libation
Bearers is fairly tame, she is much more aggressive in Sophocles and
Euripides works. In Sophocles’ play she is the ecstatic narrator of
Clytemnestra’s death urging her brother to strike her and again.[vi] In Euripides’ play we see
the largest divide, here Orestes plans Aegisthus’ murder while Electra plans
her mother’s, and even participates in killing her.[vii] As her agency grows,
Electra herself becomes less and less of a proper Greek woman, as exchanges
between her and the chorus emphasizes.[viii] This sets up a system
in which Clytemnestra is judged by Electra who is in turn judged by the proper
women of the chorus.
Examining
what delineates between Clytemnestra’s conduct which required punishment and
the conduct of Electra which is merely pointed out reveals a theme. The
distinction would seem to lie in that Clytemnestra enacted her agency into the
realm of men, while Electra is still subject to the will of men. In both Electra plays she is constrained by the
will of Aegisthus; in Sophocles’ play he constrains her from going outside and
in Euripides’ play she is subject to his will in marriage to the farmer.[ix] This would seem to imply
that a willful young woman is tolerable, so long as she knows where the limits
are to her agency. Only Sophocles’ Electra shows any inclination of acting
outside of these limits, and then only when she learns that Orestes is dead.[x] This proposed course of
action is rejected by both the chorus of women and Electra’s sister.[xi]
While
it is clear that the authors utilize women to refute other women rather than
men of authority the reason for this is impossible to say for certain, but it
is likely to give legitimacy to their views of society. To have women
pronounce, even if they are only masked men pretending to be women, that the
submission of women to men is right and good and that agency in women is
dangerous and bad lends credence to the idea; more so than men proclaiming it
to women. This idea of legitimacy has born itself out in other periods of history
for which we have better documentation, such as Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta
Compromise, but these time periods are separated by large spans of time and
culture and no certain comparison can be made.
Another
point of difficulty for the modern reader with these plays is that our culture
mostly pursues ideals of equality; it is more likely that a modern reader would
celebrate Electra’s rebelliousness and agency in the face of oppression, but we
do not know how the men of fifth century Athens would have reacted. Would they
have felt shock, revulsion, fear, humor? We have no good way of knowing.
Zeitlin
argues compellingly for a polarized view of rule in fifth century Athens; rule
by men or rule by women.[xii] When looked at in this
light we see that these correlations of female agency to a disastrous and
unnatural event serves as a self-justifying fable to legitimize Athens’ and
Greece’s patriarchal society. The defeat of the Furies by Athena’s vote takes
place on the same place where an Athenian army defeated an Amazonian army.[xiii] This turns the ground
upon which the justice system of Athens met one of cyclical defeat of female
agency both in the army of the women ruled Amazons and the vengeance seeking
Furies.
In
light of this the gendered roles presented in these tragic works may be viewed
as an emphatic confirmation of the rightness of patriarchal rule in fifth
century Athens and a stern warning against allowing women to have agency. One
of the more telling passages comes when Clytemnestra portrays the cause of the
Trojan War in a gender reversed role and the chorus of women tells her that her
claim is just, but that it is a shameful justice.[xiv] To have such gendered differentiation in the meaning of justice renders such a system unequal; that
the rights of men are greater than the rights of women. Throughout these
tragedies women promote this idea as being just and right over and over. Only Clytemnestra
spoke otherwise and it ended in both her death and the denial of her vengeance.
Bibliography
Aeschylus. 2009. Oresteia: Agamemnon.
Libation-Bearers. Eumenides. Translated by Alan H. Sommerstein.
Cambridge: Havard University Press.
Euripides. 1997. Medea and Other Plays.
Translated by James Morwood. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sophocles. 2007. Four Tragedies: Ajax, Women of
Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes. Translated by Peter Meineck and Paul
Woodruff. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Zeitlin, Froma. 1978. "The Dynamics of
Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia." Arethusa 2:
159-194.
[i] Aeschylus Agamemnon
9-11.
[ii] Euripides Electra 1030-1034; 1051-1054.
[iii] Euripides Electra 1069-1075.
[iv] Aeschylus Agamemnon 1107-1109.
[v] Aeschylus Eumenides 734-743.
[vi] Sophocles Electra 1400-1420.
[vii] Euripides Electra 647; 1160-1168.
[viii] Sophocles Electra 121-150; Euripides Electra 111-213.
[ix] Sophocles Electra 310-316; Euripides Electra 59-60.
[x] Sophocles Electra 938-989.
[xi] Sophocles Electra 990-1017.
[xii] Zeitlin 1978, 91.
[xiii] Aeschylus Eumenides 685-690.
[xiv] Euripides Electra 1041-1054.
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