Representation of women in Athenian tragedy

Last updated

The representation of women in Athenian tragedy was performed exclusively by men and it is likely (although the evidence is not conclusive) that it was performed solely for men as well. [1] The question whether or not women were admitted at theatre is widely contested and tends to polarise fronts. [2] Even though Henderson excludes women from all public poetry: “drama, like all public poetry in the classical period, was written, produced and performed only by men, and the dramatic festivals were organized and controlled by the demos, the sovereign corporation of adult male citizens”, he does not rule out female spectators. [3]

Contents

Archaeological evidence collected by Haigh [4] and Lucas [5] and more recently by Hughes seems to point to the direction that women were in fact admitted to tragedy, and probably even to comedy. Dover added that women, like children, foreigners and slaves, could take a seat only after male citizens were accommodated. [6] As Hughes points out: “we ought to say we have no direct proof that women took part; there is only a massive absence of evidence, an historical vacuum.” [7]

In a society that valued women’s silence, their predominance in the most public of Athenian art-forms constitutes a paradox. Only one of the surviving 32 plays has no female characters: Sophocles' Philoctetes . Female tragic choruses also outnumber the male choruses by twenty-one to ten. [8]

Cultural stereotype

Macaria, in the Heracleidae states that "for a woman, silence and self control are best." [9] The philosopher Xenophon thought females possessed the positive traits of 'vigilance' and 'love for infants'. However Xenophon reflects the Greek fear of these 'others', highlighting their irrationality, religious fervour and sexual passion. [9] Aristotle went further, stating that women were deformed, incomplete males, designed to be subservient to men. [10]

As a result, women had their freedom restricted and were believed to have lived in separate areas to men. In a speech recorded in the Lysias Orations 3.6, a speaker seeks to convey his opponent’s licentiousness by telling how he trespassed into "the women’s rooms where my sister and my nieces were – women who have always lived so decently that they are ashamed to be seen even by relatives." [9] Sheila Murnaghan argues that "it is no accident that what little evidence we do have for actual Athenian women comes largely from courtroom speeches or medical treatises, genres brought into being by conflict and disease." [9]

In Ancient Greece, a woman was viewed as a passive conduit of male fertility, on long term loan by her father. [11] Marriage was an unequal relationship, whereby the husband owned the children and didn’t have the same obligation toward sexual fidelity that the wife had. [9] The playwright Euripides presents two very different reactions to this cultural norm. Firstly, his female protagonist Alcestis, represents the "perfect wife" sacrificing her own life, so her husband, Admetos, can live. [11] Yet as Blondell points out this "female fame is hard won, even oxymoronic" as her own marriage kills her. [11]

The most important relationships within this play are between the men. Heracles goes to the underworld not for Alcestis, but to honour his male friend’s hospitality. Admetos goes against the promise he made to his wife, so as to obey his male friendship. "Alcestis drops out," Easterling argues, "to facilitate the interaction between the men." [8]

In contrast, however, Euripides' Medea breaks the marital conventions, choosing her husband herself and reacting against his infidelity by breaking the female oath and killing her children. "In a sense," Blondell argues, "every bride was a stranger in a strange land. And every married woman was dependent on her husband." [11]

Theatrical themes

The problem of male absence

In the surviving plays, women become tragic figures by men’s absence or mismanagement. [9]

Sophocles' Antigone takes action after her uncle Creon refuses to bury her brother Polynices. In Aeschylus' Oresteia , Clytemnestra takes power in Argos because her husband Agamemnon has been away fighting at Troy for ten years. Clytemnestra's later murder of him is motivated by a range of male abuses. Medea becomes the aggressor when her husband Jason plans a new more advantageous marriage. [9]

The public versus the private

There is also a theme running through the plays based on the setting. Performed in open-air theatres, Classical Athenian tragedy was set outside the private sphere of the home. [9] Indeed, Euripides was notorious for "taking the streets, the bedroom, into tragedy" and thereby reducing its remoteness. [12]

In Hippolytus , Phaedra first appears, carried out of the house by her servants, demanding open air, in order to declare her love for her stepson and thus the spiral of tragedy to unwind. [9] In Aeschylus' Oresteia , Clytemnestra in the first play of the trilogy orders her husband's death outside, while in the second play, her son Orestes forces her into the house to be killed. It is only in the third play, which is in an entirely public space of the court of Areopagus, that order is restored. "This three play sequence," Bushnell argues, "which begins when a self-willed woman takes matters into her own hands, finally achieves closure as figures representing women are removed from view.' [9]

The female warrior

A woman displaying traits of the heroic Grecian male was not portrayed in a positive light. Euripides' Medea is the prime example. Her name in Greek means "cunning" and is also the word for the Persians (the Greek’s greatest foreign enemy). [11]

Most of the time, a woman is full of fear
Too weak to defend herself or to bear the sight of steel
But if she happens to be wronged in love,
Hers is the bloodthirstiest heart of all. [9]

Ruby Blondell argues that Medea displays stereotypically male attributes that the Greeks held as positive. Possessing courage, intelligence, decisiveness, resourcefulness, power, independence, the ability to conceive and carry out a plan effectively, as well as the art of rhetoric. [11] The nurse even likens her to a rock of the sea, as Patroclus famously does to Homer’s Achilles in the epic poem The Iliad . [11] Yet Medea, similarly to Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra, another "woman with a heart of manly counsel" [11] were not admired but portrayed as "Cruella de Vil" type characters; [12] Medea having murdered the King of the Corinthians, his daughter (Jason's new bride) and her two sons for the purpose of taking revenge on Jason. [13]

So the declaration "that a noble man ought either to live with honour, or die with honour" does not apply to women. [12]

Public reaction

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates thought the impersonation of inferiors, such as women and slaves, that drama utilised was morally harmful. Socrates was also worried "about the ethical damage caused by the representation of 'womanish' emotions in tragedy." [8] Plato unsurprisingly excludes poetry, embodied by the figure of a woman, from his ideal city-state. [9]

The Athenians however thought it important to place on "display those feature[s] of human experience that inspire terror, sorrow and rejection, and they accomplished their mission by giving women visibility and a powerful voice." [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aeschylus</span> 5th century BC Athenian Greek tragedian

Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Euripides</span> 5th-century BC Athenian playwright

Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete. There are many fragments of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sophocles</span> 5th century BC Athenian tragic playwright

Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those of Aeschylus; and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote over 120 plays, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. For almost fifty years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens which took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in thirty competitions, won twenty-four, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won thirteen competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles; Euripides won four.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tragedy</span> Genre of drama based on human suffering

Tragedy is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsis, or a "pain [that] awakens pleasure", for the audience. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electra</span> Figure from Greek mythology

Electra is one of the most popular mythological characters in tragedies. She is the main character in two Greek tragedies, Electra by Sophocles and Electra by Euripides. She is also the central figure in plays by Aeschylus, Alfieri, Voltaire, Hofmannsthal, and Eugene O'Neill. She is a vengeful soul in The Libation Bearers, the second play of Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy. She plans out an attack with her brother to kill their mother, Clytemnestra.

<i>Oresteia</i> Trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus

The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus in the 5th century BCE, concerning the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes, the trial of Orestes, the end of the curse on the House of Atreus and the pacification of the Erinyes. The trilogy—consisting of Agamemnon (Ἀγαμέμνων), The Libation Bearers (Χοηφόροι), and The Eumenides (Εὐμενίδες)—also shows how the Greek gods interacted with the characters and influenced their decisions pertaining to events and disputes. The only extant example of an ancient Greek theatre trilogy, the Oresteia won first prize at the Dionysia festival in 458 BCE. The principal themes of the trilogy include the contrast between revenge and justice, as well as the transition from personal vendetta to organized litigation. Oresteia originally included a satyr play, Proteus (Πρωτεύς), following the tragic trilogy, but all except a single line of Proteus has been lost.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greek chorus</span> Group of performers who comment on a drama

A Greek chorus, or simply chorus, in the context of ancient Greek tragedy, comedy, satyr plays, and modern works inspired by them, is a homogeneous, non-individualised group of performers, who comment with a collective voice on the dramatic action. The chorus consisted of between 12 and 50 players, who variously danced, sang or spoke their lines in unison, and sometimes wore masks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dionysia</span> Festivals of Dionysus in ancient Athens

The Dionysia was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia. The Dionysia actually consisted of two related festivals, the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, which took place in different parts of the year. They were also an essential part of the Dionysian Mysteries.

Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by murdering his new wife as well as her own two sons, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.

Greek tragedy is a form of theatre from Ancient Greece and Greek inhabited Anatolia. It reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy.

<i>Electra</i> (Sophocles play) Ancient Greek tragedy by Sophocles

Electra,Elektra, or The Electra is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes and the Oedipus at Colonus lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career. Jebb dates it between 420 BC and 414 BC.

<i>Electra</i> (Euripides play)

Euripides' Electra is a play probably written in the mid 410s BC, likely before 413 BC. It is unclear whether it was first produced before or after Sophocles' version of the Electra story.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Satyr play</span>

The satyr play is a form of Attic theatre performance related to both comedy and tragedy. It preserves theatrical elements of dialogue, actors speaking verse, a chorus that dances and sings, masks and costumes. Its relationship to tragedy is strong; satyr plays were written by tragedians, and satyr plays were performed in the Dionysian festival following the performance of a group of three tragedies. The satyr play’s mythological-heroic stories and the style of language are similar to that of the tragedies. Its connection with comedy is also significant – it has similar plots, titles, themes, characters, and happy endings. The remarkable feature of the satyr play is the chorus of satyrs, with their costumes that focus on the phallus, and with their language, which uses wordplay, sexual innuendos, references to breasts, farting, erections, and other references that do not occur in tragedy. As Mark Griffith points out, the satyr play was "not merely a deeply traditional Dionysiac ritual, but also generally accepted as the most appropriate and satisfying conclusion to the city’s most complex and prestigious cultural event of the year."

Philip Humphrey Vellacott was an English classical scholar, known for his numerous translations of Greek tragedy.

<i>Women of Trachis</i> Ancient Greek tragedy by Sophocles

Women of Trachis or The Trachiniae c. 450–425 BC, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles.

<i>Orestes</i> (play) Ancient Greek play

Orestes (408 BCE) is an Ancient Greek play by Euripides that follows the events of Orestes after he had murdered his mother.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clytemnestra</span> Figure from Greek mythology

Clytemnestra, in Greek mythology, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and the twin sister of Helen of Troy. In Aeschylus' Oresteia, she murders Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan princess Cassandra, whom Agamemnon had taken as a war prize following the sack of Troy; however, in Homer's Odyssey, her role in Agamemnon's death is unclear and her character is significantly more subdued.

Rush Rehm is professor of drama and classics at Stanford University in California, in the United States. He also works professionally as an actor and director. He has published many works on classical theatre. Rehm is the artistic director of Stanford Repertory Theater (SRT), a professional theater company that presents a dramatic festival based on a major playwright each summer. SRT's 2016 summer festival, Theater Takes a Stand, celebrates the struggle for workers' rights. A political activist, Rehm has been involved in Central American and Cuban solidarity, supporting East Timorese resistance to the Indonesian invasion and occupation, the ongoing struggle for Palestinian rights, and the fight against US militarism. In 2014, he was awarded Stanford's Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Service to Undergraduate Education.

Edith Hall, is a British scholar of classics, specialising in ancient Greek literature and cultural history, and professor in the Department of Classics and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College, London. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. From 2006 until 2011 she held a Chair at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she founded and directed the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome until November 2011. She resigned over a dispute regarding funding for classics after leading a public campaign, which was successful, to prevent cuts to or the closure of the Royal Holloway Classics department. She also co-founded and is Consultant Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford University, Chair of the Gilbert Murray Trust, and Judge on the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry translation. Her prizewinning doctoral thesis was awarded at Oxford. In 2012 she was awarded a Humboldt Research Prize to study ancient Greek theatre in the Black Sea, and in 2014 she was elected to the Academy of Europe. She lives in Cambridgeshire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz</span>

Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz is a classical scholar, specialising in ancient Greek literature and intersectional feminism.

References

  1. ↑ "Was Ancient Greek Theater Only for Men?". Classical Wisdom Weekly. 2018-09-05. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  2. ↑ Folch, Marcus (2015). The City and the Stage: Performance, Genre, and Gender in Plato’s Laws. New York. p. 265.
  3. ↑ Henderson, Jeffrey (1991). "Women and the Athenian dramatic festivals". Transactions of the American Philological Association. 121: 133–134.
  4. ↑ Haigh, A.E. (1889). The Attic theatre. London. pp. 297–301.
  5. ↑ Lucas, F.L (1954). Greek drama for everyman. London.
  6. ↑ Dover, K.J. (1972). Aristophanic Comedy. London. p. 17.
  7. ↑ Hughes, Alan. "Ai Dionysiazusai: Women in Greek Theatre". Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. 51, 1: 1–27.
  8. 1 2 3 Easterling, P. E. (ed.). (1997). Cambridge companion to Greek tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Bushnell, R. W. (ed.). (2005). A companion to tragedy. Wiley-Blackwell.
  10. ↑ "Thomas R. Martin, an Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander, New Directions in Philosophy and Education, Aristotle on Slaves and Women".
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Blondell, R., et al. (Ed.). (1999). Women on the edge: four plays by Euripides. New York, NY: Routledge.
  12. 1 2 3 McLeish, K., et al. (Trans.). (2005). Greek tragedy. London: Nick Hern.
  13. ↑ Hadas, Moses (2006). Greek Drama. Random House Publishing Group. pp. 234–248. ISBN   9781405102155.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.